Grand Affair

Ottilie stared down at the news items on the damp floor in front of her. When the newspaper was laid on her breakfast tray in the morning she never found anything to interest her outside of the headlines, but once put on the dampened floor by Jean last thing at night certain items appeared to take on a fascination and a vitality that they had never had when Ottilie was first flicking through them.

Who wanted to know whether or not miniskirts would be allowed into the Royal Enclosure for Ascot? Now that they might all be going to be chucked out just as everything had started to come good it all seemed so trivial. Ottilie sighed suddenly and straightened up, but finding that she was afraid to go to bed in case she could not sleep she sat down suddenly instead in Mrs East’s rocking chair – ‘’tes mine and no-one’s else’s, Miss Flar-tee’, she always told Ottilie, patting it as if it was a dog.

The whole hotel, above Ottilie, and across the courtyard was completely quiet. It was that nearing-midnight kind of quiet that made her think of the old days at the Grand when she was little and she would have nightmares and wake up to find herself completely alone, because her parents slept on another floor and Edith on another corridor.

Sometimes she would feel so frightened that she would go right to the bottom of her bed, right to the end, and shut her eyes tight and just hope and pray that morning would come soon. Her eyes would close, as she could feel they were doing now, and she would fall asleep as she seemed to be doing now. She knew she shouldn’t sleep, that she should go upstairs to her room, but somehow what with the tiredness and the warmth of the kitchen range, and Mrs East’s rocking chair slowly tipping her backwards and forwards, sleep was irresistible.

How much later she wouldn’t at first know, but she was suddenly bright awake hours or possibly minutes later, with that feeling that someone or something was watching her. She stood up and looked around her. The kitchen was still warm, but she felt cold, and even colder when she heard what had woken her. Someone or something was scratching at the window. After a few seconds she knew that such an insistent sound must belong to a human being, and that the human being could not be someone who knew her or they would surely be calling to her instead of watching her.

Fear always had the same effect on Ottilie. It made her go forwards rather than backwards. Edith would always say ‘Grasp the nettle, dear, and then it stings less’ so now Ottilie straightened her shoulders and forced herself forward to the old-fashioned kitchen windows which ran in one long small-paned length down the whole of one side. The kitchen was halfway between the courtyard and the cellar so that it was quite easy for people outside to look down into them. Determinedly she climbed on a chair and pressed her face to one of the square pieces of old glass in front of her. Seconds later a face appeared, suddenly and instantly pressed against the same pane, but pressed far too hard so that the features were squashed beyond recognition. Ottilie jumped backwards from the window and as she did so heard a man laughing, but before she could run to the door and up the stairs into the main body of the hotel to fetch Nantwick, she heard her name being called. ‘Ottie! Ottie!’

She didn’t know why but half asleep as she was she immediately went and unlocked the door and flung it open to see a tall man in a polo-necked jumper and dark trousers, dark hair, grey eyes. Her hands flew to her face, and she said faintly, ‘My God, Joseph, what are you doing here?’

Lorcan stepped out of the darkness as Ottie stepped back, only realizing when Lorcan stood in front of her that, half asleep as she was, she had mistaken him for his middle brother, which was ridiculous because Lorcan had always been taller than Joseph, and although they shared the same colouring their manner was quite different. Well, practically everything about them was different except their grey eyes which were precisely the same, as if Mother Nature having given the eldest boy beautiful clear grey eyes with brown flecks had decided that they were so arresting she would press the button again with the second O’Flaherty boy.

‘I had to abandon the old dog collar because I’ve been down on the quays, hence the un-priest-like appearance.’ Lorcan indicated his polo-necked jumper. ‘You know how it is, Ottie. So many of my parishioners have the less than virtuous habit of spending their money on beer I have to try and meet them informally and remind them of their duties to their poor families before they get so insanely inebriated after returning from sea there is nothing left for shoes and food for their childer. Can’t go down to the quays dressed as a member of the clergy – I’d end up being thrown to the sharks. A dog collar is a red rag to a bull down there.’

Ottilie didn’t like to tell Lorcan that he had actually given her the fright of her life. Instead she went to one of the cupboards and brought out a bottle of whisky and two small glasses. She held up the bottle questioningly to Lorcan.

‘Well now thank you, Ottie, just a very small dram will not go amiss. Staying sober while everyone else is intent on getting footless is an enormously taxing occupation, believe me. It’s trying to get through to the poor fellows before the hop completely fogs their brain and they even forget where they live that exhausts you – did you know that’s why they paint their doors such different colours, so that they can remember where they live?’

Lorcan sighed and laughed, and shook his head as he watched Ottilie pouring them both small glasses of Scotch. Ottilie raised her glass to him, noting as she did that he, as she herself must be, was pale from tiredness.

‘Imagine your mistaking me for Joseph of all people, Ottie,’ he exclaimed, shaking his head and returning to their first conversation. ‘It’s almost like telepathy, so strange, really strange, that you should suddenly mention his name that way.’ The first taste of the Scotch had obviously had a reviving effect.

Ottilie would not have believed it for one second had she not already read about ‘Joseph Maximus’ in the American magazine in Paris all that time before. She had not felt that she could tell Lorcan, fearing that after all their anxieties, after all they had been through thinking that Joseph might be dead, Lorcan might be unimaginably hurt.

Lorcan stared at Ottilie. She stared back, completely silenced, but not as Lorcan must imagine because she was in shock from the realization that their brother was alive, but from having to cope anew with the realization that it was she, Ottilie, not Joseph, who had been really to blame, the cause of all Lorcan’s suffering over his brother. The immensity of this suffering, which up until that moment she had only ever been able to imagine, she could now see and hear for herself because it was reflected in the sheer relief in Lorcan’s eyes, and in the wonder in his voice as he caught at her hands, his own so warm and strong. ‘After all this time, Ottie, we have heard from Joseph at last. He is alive, he is well and he is coming to see us, here, in St Elcombe. Imagine, our Joseph is coming back to us. Our prayers have at last been answered, Ottie.’

Lorcan knocked on the table at which they were both seated in a steady, unceasing manner as he repeated, ‘Joseph is alive and coming back to us. Joseph is alive and coming back to us. God is good, Ottie. God is so good.’

Ottilie took a much larger sip of her Scotch and smiled but she still could not find words that were suitable for the moment. Of course Lorcan must be right, God was good, and of course it was wonderful that Joseph was coming back to them, alive and well, but then Ottilie herself had known that he was alive and well for three years now.

What she was not sure of was how much God Himself had to do with Joseph’s return to St Elcombe. But seeing the shining look in Lorcan’s eyes, his utter sincerity and belief in the goodness of the Almighty, she had to attempt to suppress her feelings, push aside the guilty knowledge that by throwing those wretched earrings at Joseph that night, some people might say it was she who had been responsible for his disappearance.

‘May God forgive me if I am wrong, Ottilie, but at last everything seems to be coming right for us all, everyone settled the way Ma would have wanted us to be, everyone with some good purpose, some place to which they can really direct their efforts.’

‘Many thanks, Ottie, but I must be on my way, for I am surely late as it is. Father Peter likes me to take him a hot cup of cocoa when I get in. The poor old priest has terrible trouble sleeping. I keep teasing him that if only he would give up the cocoa he would probably sleep like a baby. God bless you, Ottie.’

Lorcan smiled and waved to her from the door, and Ottilie began to shut it, feeling nothing but relief at the idea that her eldest brother was going, but before she could put the chain across again Lorcan turned back. ‘Oh, and one more thing, Ottie. I forgot to tell you in the excitement of my news. You’ll never guess what?’

‘Our Joseph’s not no-one any more. Do you know he is a very important young man now? Not yet thirty and managing director of Vision Hotels, Europe. How about that? Our Joseph? All those days hanging around doing odd jobs at the Grand, they obviously really paid off.’

Ottilie felt that it had to be a miracle of sorts that she was able to make any kind of reply to this news, but as Lorcan was clearly so happy she was able to get by with a murmur. She waved him goodbye for so long after he had actually gone that had anyone come into the kitchen she imagined they would have thought her both mad and drunk. Eventually, unable to control her feelings, she found herself turning back to the bottle of whisky, unscrewing the top, and pouring herself a second glass of Scotch which she sat and drank all by herself.

‘No, true.’ Ottilie put her cup of coffee down with unusual care. When Veronica wasn’t looking or was answering the telephone, she determined that she would quickly rummage in the bottom drawer of her desk and swallow some aspirin to relieve her throbbing head. ‘But what I think you will agree we cannot cope with, Veronica, is Vision Hotels taking us over.’

But one look at Joseph and Ottilie could see that Veronica did not believe her. One look at Joseph and Veronica fell for him, hook, line and sinker, and Ottilie could not really blame her. He walked into their office the following week looking every inch the successful businessman, dark suit, white shirt, dark tie, gold cuff links, except Joseph had the looks of a movie star. More than that, he had the tanned even-featured looks of a young god. In all the months that Ottilie had known Veronica she had never once known her to take any real notice of a man of any age, but one look at ‘Joseph Maximus’ and she fell for him. And that was before he had even opened his mouth and started to charm not just Veronica but the whole of St Elcombe. Certainly from the moment he gave notice of his arrival he could do no wrong for Lorcan. Arriving back in grand style – Mercedes, chauffeur driven – he invited Ottilie and Lorcan to join him at the Grand where he had taken the top suite – Blue Lady’s suite.

‘Imagine Joseph, in the top suite,’ Lorcan kept saying, over and over. ‘Can you imagine, Ottie? Our Joseph in the top suite at the Grand, as rich as a rajah and even now ordering caviar and champagne most like, and in the very place where we both once painted the railings and put up wallpaper? It’s hard put to understand it all I am. Wait until we hear about his adventures, Ottie, that is indeed going to be something. How did he do it? My, but how proud Ma would be on this day, wouldn’t you say? An O’Flaherty in the top suite at the Grand, and a managing director at that.’

Ottilie was finding Lorcan’s enthusiasm understandable but embarrassing. To her the Grand was just the Grand, a place that was either successful or not successful. Besides, Lorcan’s overt enthusiasm reminded her of the bad old days when she was the little princess in the castle and her brothers were the workmen. She herself was dreading her return, walking up the steps of the Grand again, dreading the looks that she would get from those staff that had not yet incurred Mrs Tomber’s displeasure and been dismissed – although she reasoned that the likelihood of still seeing anyone she knew there was very small.

Nowadays probably only Blackie would be a face that she would recognize. And after their last encounter he certainly would not want to even pass the time of day with her. Alfred she knew would not bother to mind or not mind where she was. After finding the nude drawing of Ottilie it seemed he had put his adopted daughter out of his mind for ever. And Melanie, it being past midday, would be on to at least her second large gin and tonic and not caring who was in the hotel unless room service was not responding to her calls.

Ottilie turned round to Lorcan. Standing there looking so nervous outside the heavy old mahogany doors of the Great Suite he was no longer a priest but her beloved brother who had arrived so hopefully at the hotel that day of her tenth birthday. As she patted his jacket and smiled reassuringly at him Ottilie remembered how even as a child she had noticed how cheap Lorcan’s suit had looked, and how heavy his shoes must have seemed as he walked bravely down that whole flight of stairs and into the dining room of the Grand.

Lorcan nodded, and Ottilie noticed that he looked slightly flushed with excitement. Seeing what a wonderful moment it was for him her own sense of dread about what Joseph’s revelations might be, about the diamond earrings, about everything, quite vanished and there and then she determined to take the attitude that with Lorcan so happy and Joseph so successful everything had surely all turned out for the best?

Joseph turned from the balcony and came quickly back into the large sitting room, his arms outstretched in welcome. Lorcan had always been taller than Joseph, but no longer. Now Joseph seemed to tower over his older brother, and even if he had not, dressed as he was, and with his aura of success, and power, and money, he swamped poor Lorcan in his cheap priest’s suit – until, that is, Lorcan held his younger brother at arm’s length and said in his warm fatherly way, ‘Well now, will you let me look at you, will you let me look at you, my little brother?’ at which point all Joseph’s confidence seemed to visibly melt away and for a second he appeared to be waiting for Lorcan’s verdict on him. Would he ‘do’ as the O’Flahertys would say? Would Lorcan be proud of him? Perhaps, most of all, had Lorcan forgiven him for disappearing?

‘How about this girl?’ he asked Lorcan. ‘I mean, how about this girl? Isn’t she grown beautiful? Isn’t she grown smart? You are one hell of a smart and beautiful girl, Ottilie. Turn round. My God, you must knock them all out around here. You look, well, so – New York, Paris, Tokyo, London, nothing to do with St Elcombe.’

Ottilie had her hair knotted as Monsieur had taught her and was wearing a navy blue silk shirt dress, just above the knee, very new, terribly expensive from a dress shop in Plymouth, but she had felt that no less was required for the return of a prodigal brother.

As Joseph poured some champagne Lorcan started to wander around the suite and they began reminiscing about the old days when they had both worked on the rebuilding of the hotel, and all the eccentric characters they had known. Mention was even made of ‘Blue Lady’ and how she used to scare the pants off everyone with her strange, clothes, always talking to someone who wasn’t there.

As he sipped at his champagne Lorcan kept shaking his head and saying, ‘Ah God, yes, imagine you remembering that, Joseph’. But as she stood laughing and talking with them, that awful moment when Ottilie had agreed to put Melanie’s earrings in her pocket seemed to have happened only the day before, and she could smell Joseph’s cigarettes and see the pot of tea on the dirty table as she handed them to him and said that she thought they were worth a thousand pounds.

‘I told the waiter to go away,’ Joseph said as he handed the champagne round. ‘I wanted us all to be quite, quite alone, to be able to talk, to be able to tell each other things that no-one else should hear. Like how much we love each other, like how much we loved Ma, all those things. Things that we must say to each other, no holds barred, don’t you think?’ Joseph raised his glass. ‘Come, let us drink to Ma, to Number Four, to us all.’

There was a short awkward silence while they sipped their champagne and conjured Ma back from their childhood memories, and it seemed to Ottilie that they could all hear her rich laugh and see her throwing back her thick plait of auburn hair and hear her say ‘Well now, isn’t this fine?’ and Ottilie thought of how her eyes would have really sparkled as only Ma’s eyes could at seeing Lorcan an ordained priest, at seeing Joseph in his fine suit, and how she would have wondered at the miracle of his success, and how she would have loved to have seen her two sons standing in the Great Suite at the Grand.

‘I still miss her, you know,’ Joseph said, sighing. ‘I still hold on to those wonderful years when she was all right, when we were all so happy at Number Four.’ He turned to Lorcan. ‘How proud she would have been of you. Her eldest son a man of God, a priest.’ Joseph shook his head.

‘And you,’ Lorcan said warmly. ‘You, Joseph, how proud she would have been of you. All we are missing today is little Sean and he will surely make his mark. Did you know he had gone into Australian television? Oh yes, he is making his way all right. He will get on, will our Sean.’ Ottilie’s heart went out to Lorcan as she watched him speaking, he was so much the proud eldest brother, and she could see that there was so much that he wanted to say, and yet it was almost as if the words would hardly come out so great was his love for and pride in his brothers. And then, realizing that she had not rated a mention, she felt a little sad, as he finished by saying, ‘This is a wonderful day, a great day for the O’Flaherty brothers.’

And it was a wonderful day and it was a great evening, and when at last they left, Lorcan smiling from ear to ear, and Joseph waving goodbye from his front balcony way above them, Ottilie could not bear to lower Lorcan’s mood by questioning him about his own impressions. But the next morning as soon as Veronica came into their office Ottilie pounced on her, saying, ‘I don’t know what has happened to the Grand. I wouldn’t have known it, filthy food, thick with dust, no flowers—’ but finally she ended up, quite despite herself, looking rather pleased.

As she spoke Veronica handed Ottilie a letter stamped PRIVATE. The envelope had no familiar look to it, no Clover House crest on the back, so she was not it seemed being given her marching orders, and yet it had a London postmark. As she always did when she did not know what the contents of a letter from London might be, Ottilie set it aside, giving herself the necessary time to think about where the letter might have come from, what it might have in it, to prepare herself in some way mentally in case it should be something that she would not like. It was a seemingly incurable habit of hers stemming from the days when Melanie would leave letters in the downstairs hall for her, letters of bitter crossness, full of indignation at the way the hotel was being run – usually written at half past one in the morning when the wine was flowing if not the ink. They were sometimes completely incomprehensible, sometimes all too comprehensible.

Still feeling in some superstitious way that the letter might contain something she would not want to hear she passed it back to her secretary saying, ‘Tell me the worst. It’s probably a demand for money from the charming couple who put the piece of glass in their food.’

Veronica cleared her throat before beginning. ‘“Dear Miss O’Flaherty, We understand from our investigations that you might be the former Miss Ottilie Cartaret who lived for many years at the Grand Hotel, St Elcombe, but that you have now changed your name back to O’Flaherty and are residing at the above address.”’

Veronica looked up, briefly lowering her glasses and looking at Ottilie over the top of them. ‘So far, so good. To continue. Yes. “If this is so might we ask you to get in touch with our Mr Nicholas Lyall Phelps, and arrange a convenient time for you to meet him? Or if this is difficult he could come to see you in Cornwall? The matter concerns a bequest made to you by the late Miss Edith Emilia Stanton. We regret having taken so long to be in touch with you about this matter but all letters addressed to Miss Ottilie Cartaret at the Grand Hotel, St Elcombe, were returned ‘address unknown’. Yours sincerely, George Gray Phelps.”’ Veronica smiled across at Ottilie. ‘It seems that chance might be a fine thing after all.’

‘No, no, she was one of the housekeepers at the Grand, but she turned into a sort of nurse. She took me everywhere with her really, because my adopted mother, Mrs Cartaret, didn’t believe in schools, only in reading books, learning French – oh, and dancing.’

‘I know what I would like . . .’ Ottilie said after a second or two’s thought as Veronica looked questioningly in her direction, momentarily distracted from the rest of the post. ‘It may sound really rather dreadful but I would simply love it if she had left me her cameo brooch.’

Nicholas Lyall Phelps was what Edith herself would have described as ‘quite a dish’. Tall, even-featured, but with a good big head of hair. Immaculately suited, beautifully shod, his shirt crisply white, his tie dark but not too dark. Only the colour of his socks – like his lapis lazuli cuff links a quite bright blue – showed just the right amount of dash.

‘Very well, thank you,’ Ottilie replied, and she looked up at him mischievously, realizing at once that although his fashionably thick gold wedding ring might declare him to be married, he was certainly not dead. ‘Do sit down, and would you like some coffee?’

Ottilie picked up the telephone, ordered coffee and sat down opposite him. It was a sunny morning, as yet there was no bad news of Philip, and she had every reason to feel as sunny as the morning, particularly since Edith might, just might, have left her the little cameo brooch which Ottilie loved and thought of as so much ‘Edith’.

‘No,’ he said quickly and then looked embarrassed before he went on. ‘I regret to say that I am staying at the Grand. My grandmother used to stay there every summer and always enjoyed it but I fear she wouldn’t know it today. I ordered coffee for breakfast and a poached egg and was served tea and a boiled egg and that was only the last straw. Before that my room was not ready when I arrived at four thirty, the tea tray not removed when I went to bed, and they forgot to wake me up at eight o’clock. Frankly it’s hell at a horrible price.’

After which Jean came in bearing an immaculately laid coffee tray with fresh white tray cloth, coffee pot gleaming, cups and saucers shining, home-made biscuits on an old Masons Ironstone plate. As Ottilie poured them both coffee and offered the lawyer a biscuit, she tried not to think nostalgically of Edith’s cameo as the lawyer first sipped his coffee and then broached the matter of their meeting.

‘Good.’ The fact that Ottilie was indeed the former Miss Cartaret seemed to please Mr Phelps no end, for he was now smiling broadly. Then he frowned and cleared his throat. ‘I have been told – this is always rather a difficult moment for lawyers, Miss O’Flaherty. One never quite knows how to break this sort of very serious news.’

‘I have been sent here today by my firm to tell you that you have been left a bequest by Miss Edith Emilia Stanton, a somewhat sizeable bequest. No – a more than sizeable bequest.’ Nicholas Phelps paused and shuffled the papers he had taken out of his elegant briefcase as if what he was about to say would embarrass them both. ‘This is what I mean by its being difficult for lawyers to break things to people,’ he continued more gently, lowering his voice. ‘Any news that one has to tell someone that will change their entire life is very, very difficult indeed, as I am sure you will appreciate. Some people of course completely refuse to let this kind of news change their lives. Some people just wish to carry on as they are despite whatever is coming to them. They may be what we would call “contented”, or they may be people who have lived their lives in so fixed a fashion that to change at some late date is quite impossible. I imagine that is what happened to Miss Stanton, because she herself was left this bequest late in life.’

‘In fact as I understand it, from everything my senior partner told me, it was, alas, the news of this bequest that caused Miss Stanton to have the first of her heart attacks. But you are considerably younger. I dare say we will not have such problems. I dare hope not, Miss O’Flaherty? I certainly hope not.’

‘To continue. As we understand it from her letters, by the time my senior partner was writing to her of her mother’s bequest to her Miss Stanton was already suffering from a weak heart, and was not able or was completely unwilling to change her life in any degree at all. She continued as she was, undisturbed, and determined to leave everything to you to enjoy.’

‘What do you mean by “everything”,’ Ottilie asked, clearing her throat and suddenly feeling as if the world had stopped turning on its axis and Mr Phelps was actually an elegant apparition who would shortly disappear.

‘What I mean by everything is – literally – everything. You see Miss Stanton was a very rich woman, Miss O’Flaherty, although I am sure you would never have thought it. She lived all her life as a spinster, as you know, worked at the Grand, and looked after her mother who was one of those miserly reclusive women whom you have no doubt read about in the newspapers from time to time? Not to put too fine a point on it, Miss Edith’s mother literally lived in dread of anyone finding out that she was rich and consequently became quite mad as a result. Her own father was a Conroy, Miss Edith’s maternal grandfather that is. They made the tops that fit into Biro pens, do you know what I mean by them?’

‘To continue. Edith Stanton knew nothing of her mother being an heiress and her mother determined that she should know nothing of it either. The daughter lived and worked, as you know, all her life in St Elcombe, looking after her mother until she died. The house was quite bare when we went there to value it for probate, nothing but bare boards, no curtains at the windows – and yet all the time Miss Stanton’s mother had a fortune on tap, but no desire to spend it, just lived with the terror that somebody might find out she was rich. She would only eat at the weekends and took nothing but toast and tea during the week, and she saved paper bags so obsessively that what with the state of the electricity quite frankly it was a miracle that the place did not catch fire and herself with it.

‘She finally departed this life leaving poor Miss Edith to cope with the running of this huge fortune, which of course she could not do. Nothing in her life had prepared Miss Edith for such an eventuality as being rich and the very idea of it was impossible for her to grasp. She had lived all her life in service and that is how she wanted to continue, which is why when she died she left it all to you. As of today, Miss O’Flaherty, you are a very rich young lady indeed.’

Ottilie stared at Nicholas Phelps and then rolled her eyes towards the door and gave him a panic-struck frown. Years of living in close proximity to resident staff had made her permanently afraid of eavesdroppers. As a result she found herself frequently dropping her voice, or, as at this moment, whispering in case someone overheard what she was saying. Now she murmured to the lawyer as quietly as it was possible for her to murmur and him still to hear, ‘Quickly, say “Only joking!” in case someone’s listening.’

‘I knew you were. You lawyers. Imagine if I had believed you.’ Ottilie laughed a little loudly and long while at the same time springing to her feet and encouraging Nicholas Phelps to do the same. ‘I expect you’d like some sea air? Let’s go for a walk, if you wouldn’t mind.’

‘Let’s go into the town,’ she murmured, ‘there’s a café down near the quays, it will be so noisy no-one can overhear us. Staff can be such a problem in hotels, always listening in – it’s a sort of hobby with them, like fretwork or knitting.’

They walked along to the café at a brisk pace. Once seated either side of the formica table Ottilie said, ‘Look, just to begin with, I think you’d better just write down the amount I’ve been left. That way there’s less chance that I will make a fool of myself and faint or something.’

‘And then I’ll swallow the piece of paper and we can both forget about it,’ she joked and insisted on ordering two coffees before looking at the note that Nicholas Phelps had pushed towards her. Ottilie took a good sip of coffee when it arrived and then opened the piece of writing paper which was headed, inevitably, PHELPS, PHELPS and PHELPS. ‘And now for the awful truth,’ she continued as she stared blindly at the figures written down for her benefit by the lawyer. Having tried to take them in she finally looked across at him. ‘Nothing about a cameo brooch, by the way?’

Ottilie frowned, trying hard and failing to imagine how it would feel not to have to work. It seemed to her that all at once she knew a little of the awful panic poor Edith herself must have felt on being told of her inheritance, as if she had been used to swimming backwards and forwards in a swimming pool, touching one end one minute and the other the next, only to find of a sudden that there was an ocean in front and behind her and no edges that needed touching.

‘Tell me, does everyone feel when they’re suddenly told they’re going to be very, very rich as if – well, as if there’s not much point to anything any more, as if they perhaps don’t know who they are or what they should be doing?’

Certainly Ottilie felt there was very little she could say. She listened to the lawyer talking about how the financial people were investing for her, and having only too recently prided herself on taking such an interest in how shares were doing Ottilie now found that she had no actual interest in them at all.

She could only think of Edith and her calming smile and how she had used to take her part so often against Melanie, but in such a way that Mrs Cartaret never knew, smuggling her up biscuits and little petits fours from the dining room once Madame was safely downstairs. ‘Just put it out of your mind, Miss Ottilie,’ she would say after Ottilie had been punished for some new offence. ‘Just put it out of your mind.’

Later, returning to the office, Ottilie found she was not to be alone with Veronica. To her irritation Joseph had somehow found his way down from the Grand to the inn and was sitting on the side of her desk charming her, one leg swinging to and fro, and Veronica who had always seemed so sensible was blushing and giggling in a way that made Ottilie want to shake her. Had she forgotten that Joseph was after all Vision Hotels – the enemy?

But instead of standing around being made to feel foolish listening to Joseph charming her secretary, Ottilie left them and went to the kitchens to see how the luncheon buffet was going. Once there a voice in her mind kept murmuring, ‘What does it matter? What does it matter now that you are so rich?’

Try as hard as she could it didn’t seem to matter any more whether or not Mrs East had overdone the rolls or the butter pats were looking warm, or whether they should take another ham out of the fridge. Two hours earlier, before Nicholas Phelps had arrived, it had seemed not only important but vital. Now, do what she would, in the light of what the lawyer had just told Ottilie, and always providing that he was not some sort of sick confidence trickster, it seemed faintly absurd to worry about such things as butter pats and hot rolls.

‘Mrs East, this cheese has had it, and these tomatoes – I thought we agreed yesterday that they were tasteless and we would not put them on the buffet any more?’ Without realizing it and probably to compensate for how she was feeling Ottilie’s tone had become hectoring, and she saw the kitchen staff turning round and staring at her in surprise. ‘Sorry, I’m expecting a food inspector,’ she lied on seeing their stares, and then disappeared up to her room before they could ask her any more.

Lying on her bed she tried to think of Philip, but even he seemed confused and far away, not real, and although she continued to try to imagine what he would say to her, how he would make her laugh and tease her the way he had when her parents threw her out of the Grand, she somehow could not hear his voice any more, or even see his face in her mind’s eye. Later she went back to her office.

Ottilie turned and frowned at Veronica who once again started to spell out the words ‘cameo brooch’ silently, using her finger to indicate the letters that she was slowly and carefully writing in the air. Watching her, Ottilie felt almost guilty. Cameo brooch! If she knew.

Over the next few days Nicholas Phelps and Ottilie met frequently. At these meetings they both struggled to reach some agreement as to what to do with the money – now code-named It. In her heart of hearts, try as she might (because she could see that he wanted so much to interest her in her new inheritance), Ottilie found that just the sight of the young lawyer undoing his briefcase started to fill her with unreasoning panic.

‘No, it’s not that. It’s just that I have really no interest in simply making money. My fascination is in making something from something I have done, not just being given it. I suppose what I’m saying is – I can’t see the point of money just being there for you, without working for it.’

‘Of course,’ Ottilie agreed. ‘Far too young to have so much money and much, much too young just to live off investments like old ladies do. I could give it away, of course, but Edith wouldn’t like that. I could travel, but I would be alone, and travelling alone for no purpose doesn’t sound much fun, does it?’ There was a long silence while Nicholas Phelps waited for Ottilie to voice her conclusions. ‘As a matter of fact, something did occur to me last night, in the middle of the night. I mean I have been thinking of what I really, really would like to do, a wonderful, crazy, hilarious thing that I could do with all the money, and what’s more I think Edith would approve.’

Ottilie cleared her throat and wondered how she should phrase what she was about to say. She found herself staring at his serious expression and, due to the tension of the moment and the protracted length of the meeting, suddenly started to laugh helplessly because it seemed impossibly, ridiculously funny to think that she was actually about to say what she was about to say, to think that she, Ottilie O’Flaherty, who had grown up with Ma at Number Four in London’s Notting Hill, could be even thinking of what she was thinking and that it might even be possible.

‘I’m so sorry, really I am,’ she said eventually, wiping the tears from her eyes. ‘I’ll start again.’ This time Nicholas Phelps leaned forward even more eagerly and the solemnity of his expression was even greater. Ottilie started to laugh once again but even less controllably, the tears actually running down her face until, shoulders still shaking, she eventually managed to straighten up, wiping her eyes and apologizing, ‘I’m so terribly sorry, so rude, oh dear, it’s just your face – so serious. Oh, I am sorry.’ Taking the laywer’s handkerchief for her eyes. ‘Thank you. Oh dear. Goodness, how rude. No, I’m fine. Really. No. Very well. Start again. What. I would. Like. Is – no, it’s no good, I’m going to go again. I’ll just have to write it down.’

She sprang up and going to a writing desk took a pen and some paper and wrote down what she wanted to do with her inheritance. The lawyer took the piece of paper from her, read it, folded it, and then put it among his papers as if it was a legal document.