Twenty-Two

‘My dear little Miss Ottilie, how are you?’

The newly installed telephone had rung on her newly acquired partner’s desk, the sound seeming to echo round the still barely furnished room making it sound louder and more demanding. Ottilie had stared at it and allowed it to ring several times before she finally picked it up and heard Mrs Le Martine’s voice. She had not heard from her old friend for so long it was almost shocking to hear her again. Too much had happened to her ‘dear little Miss Ottilie’ for her to be able to explain very much, and yet she had to explain something or else why was she answering the telephone? What was she doing back at the Grand?

But Mrs Le Martine seemed to know more about her than she realized because she said, ‘I heard on the jungle drums that you were back at the Grand, running it once more, and your sainted parents had departed. What a miracle! Have you married a millionaire without telling me, my dear Ottilie?’

Ottilie felt far too shy to tell her exactly what her new position at the Grand was, so she obfuscated by merely saying, ‘No, I haven’t married a millionaire.’

‘What a pity, but you will, n’est-ce pas?’

Ottilie felt like saying ‘Actually I don’t need to, Mrs Le Martine’ but instead she said, ‘I know you’re just the person who can help me.’

‘I love that phrase.’

‘We are pulling the old place apart and need someone to help us with drawings and suggested alterations, plans for the builders to work from, and also someone who will know what is needed for new designs for the Grand, someone who will help me furnish it comfortably, but with good taste and a feeling for the past.’

‘My dear little Ottilie, but of course! I know everyone. And that is why I have telephoned to you, because I knew you must be in need of me! I think I know exactly who you must want.’

Ottilie smiled and replaced the receiver. It was quite clear from her immediate resumption of their relationship that Mrs Le Martine must have forgiven Ottilie for whatever she had imagined ‘Monsieur’ in Paris might have told the sixteen-year-old about her starting life as the Countess’s maid, which was good, but it was also clear that Mrs Le Martine was as incorrigible as ever, still doubtless wearing ‘Shah-nelle’ clothes, still gossiping too much, and devouring Charbonnel and Walker chocolates which she kept hidden, for some reason best known to herself, in her lingerie.

Ottilie looked into Veronica’s office. She was busy typing at her usual breakneck speed of seventy words a minute, despite the hotel typewriter’s being as old as Ottilie herself.

‘I think we may have an architect coming to our rescue, and quite soon,’ she told her secretary.

‘The sooner the better,’ Veronica told her, stopping briefly to hurl a large book across the room at what she obviously imagined was a mouse. ‘But first a cat. Then an architect.’

‘And some dogs.’

Veronica straightened up, having crossed the room to pick up the book only to ascertain with some disappointment that it had missed the mouse yet again.

‘Dogs indeed. What kind of dogs?’

‘Black labradors. Very welcoming in the hall, like a real house—’

‘As long as they are good at catching mice.’

Ottilie smiled. She sensed that spring was on its way, and with it that blessed sense of renewal and purpose that makes even the dullest day seem filled with promise. Upstairs Blue Lady would be busy chatting to the ghostly presence of her husband, downstairs Jean and Nantwick were preparing for the arrival of new linen and glass, not to mention new casseroles, new marmites, new batterie de cuisine, for everything that had been there had been so badly kept that in Jean’s opinion ‘It’s a terrible risk to everyone’s health, even the kitchen mice. There’s even verdigris on their traps, Miss Cartaret, and really – that must be a first, wouldn’t you say?’

Things were beginning to happen, the past was being walled up behind the present. Already she had engaged some builders to come from Plymouth to give estimates and start as soon as possible on the more straightforward tasks around the place. Even the missing gold letters on the façade had been ordered. Now all she had to do was to sit back and wait for the architect-designer that Mrs Le Martine was so keen to recommend.

It was only when she found herself frowning through the upper half of the old glass into the lounge bar the following week that Ottilie realized that relying on her old friend’s choice might not have been so very sensible. Not only did the man whom she could hear saying, ‘Coffee would be fine’ sound resoundingly American, he looked far too young. Ottilie had hoped for a conservative, older man, someone with greying hair and highly polished laced shoes and dark socks, not a dark-haired restless young man in a suede jacket and polo-necked sweater.

‘Mr Justin?’

He turned and Ottilie stopped frowning.

‘Mr Pierre Justin?’

‘That’s right,’ he agreed, a little absently, still looking round at the lounge in which he stood as if he could not quite believe what he saw. ‘I’m waiting for Miss Cartaret, and someone is already fetching me coffee, thank you.’

‘I am Miss Cartaret,’ Ottilie told him, lifting her head, and looking at him slightly sideways which was a new habit she had adopted in the hope of making herself seem older and more remote in manner. If she looked too young to own and run an hotel, Pierre Justin could hardly have been more than twenty-five or six.

‘You are – Miss Cartaret?’

‘As a matter of fact, yes, I am, that’s one thing I am quite sure about.’

‘I see.’

She felt he looked let down, disappointed, and that the ‘I see’ meant ‘If you are Miss Cartaret you are far too young to own this place’, so she said crisply, ‘You don’t, Mr Justin, but you will.’

Ottilie sat down determined to be all proprietor while he too sat down, pushing at his small, gold-rimmed spectacles and frowning as if he was still sure that she must be the wrong person. Seconds later he sprang up again as Jean came in with coffee on a tray, and in an effort to clear the coffee table he managed to throw a pile of Country Life magazines under her feet, and all this before he lit a cigarette which threw sparks all down his sweater, not to mention all over the old Persian rug which was about the only one Ottilie actually wanted to keep in the whole hotel.

‘I expect you’re regretting that Mrs Le Martine recommended me already, Miss Cartaret,’ he joked, stamping on one of the larger sparks and at the same time pushing his spectacles up his nose again. ‘Don’t worry – places do recover from me, eventually.’

He looked across at her, suddenly helpless, frowning past Ottilie’s shoulder as if he had seen something of great interest, and then cleared his throat as if preparing to say something which he then quite forgot and so quickly frowned again.

‘Mr Justin, let’s start again. I am Ottilie Cartaret. Hello.’

‘Good idea. Hello.’

They leaned towards each other and shook hands this time. As they touched he suddenly smiled at her, a wonderful smile full of modesty and kindness. It was a smile that was reflected from eyes that had never felt anything but warmth towards the world and its inhabitants, the smile of a boy who had always been loved. A smile quite at odds with his nervous behaviour.

Ottilie frowned momentarily. Something about that smile reminded her of someone she had once known, but for the life of her she could not remember who it was, except that she was quite certain that the smile had belonged to someone she had really liked.

‘Are you engaging that funny American man for the refurbishments?’ Veronica asked Ottilie.

‘I am engaging him for the refurbishments, Veronica, and what’s more today we are going to try and find some furniture for this barn of a place. Pierre says the only good thing about it is that it’s big and the bigger the pieces of furniture the cheaper, because nowadays people only want small pieces for their refurbishments.’

Veronica started to laugh as Ottilie said ‘refurbishments’ yet again. It was ridiculous but for some reason at that moment they were both going through a phase when they found the word ‘refurbishments’ terribly funny.

Actually Ottilie was quite relieved to be able at last to laugh directly at something, because she had spent the previous half-hour consciously trying not to look happy in front of Veronica and she felt that Veronica knew it and was eyeing her beadily. She turned from the office mirror, pulling yet another of her high-necked dresses right up to her chin and tightly re-tying the black velvet bow that held her long brown hair in check, and faced her secretary.

‘Pierre Justin’s so frightfully good-looking, I have a feeling that he must be one of those,’ Veronica said in a warning voice. ‘Do you think he is?’

Ottilie frowned. She had not thought of Pierre Justin as being anything but now she did she said, ‘I don’t know – hadn’t thought.’

‘Interior decorators usually are, aren’t they?’

‘As long as he has an eye for colour I don’t really care if he’s a eunuch,’ Ottilie called back to her, quickly closing the office door.

Pierre was waiting for her at the front of the hotel and although she was already twenty minutes late for him, he only smiled and pushed his spectacles up his nose, opening the door of his Mini Cooper.

‘Morning, boss,’ he said, taking the picnic basket she was carrying from her, and then as he closed the door with a nod towards the sunshine and the sparkling sea, ‘and what a morning, n’est-ce pas?’

Ottilie pulled up the polo-neck collar of her cashmere dress. Cashmere was one of the reasons that she was enjoying being rich, and expensive perfume, and being able to take the day off whenever she wished. There were a few compensations for all the responsibilities that Edith’s money had brought her.

If Ottilie had had time to really talk to Veronica about Pierre, she would have told her that, despite his tall, dark good looks, from their very first meeting Pierre Justin had appealed to Ottilie as being perhaps quite the shyest and least confident man that she had met.

In fact setting fire to his clothes with his cigarette turned out not to be an occasional incident but a regular routine. When he went into a room, any room, hitherto innocent furniture that had never misbehaved itself before seemed to throw itself in front of him as he walked across a room. The handles of coffee cups fractured as he picked them up and rugs equipped with discreet weights became instantly lethal, before fires decided to throw logs out onto valuable carpets in sudden rebellious fury.

Pierre Justin behaved in such a way that it seemed he felt that any moment he was about to be an embarrassment both to himself and to everyone else, until he started to work. Miraculously, the moment he started to talk about his ideas, about his subject, he became elegant where he had seconds before been clumsy, articulate where he had been hesitant, and supremely confident where he had hardly a minute previously looked as if he wished the earth would open up and swallow him.

Happily it was evident to Ottilie from the start of their meetings and discussions at the hotel that despite his frequent mishaps – colliding with marble busts which had never before given anyone any trouble, drenching himself with a shower whose water had been turned off, falling over Veronica who had never been known to be under anyone’s feet – he quite definitely had the ‘eye’.

‘If there is anything more exciting than a picnic in the trunk of a car, and the idea that you have a whole day ahead in which to search for unknown treasure, I do not know it,’ he told her as he started up the car, and drove swiftly off in the wrong direction.

‘Never mind, we can take the scenic route,’ Ottilie reassured him once he realized his mistake. ‘It’s much more beautiful.’

Ottilie stared ahead at the day, thrilled at the sudden feeling of freedom from everyone and everything. ‘What is the perfect day, do you think?’ she asked him after a long silence in which he took the scenic route past sparkling sea views and deserted white coves.

‘Probably going to be today, I think,’ he said, suddenly smiling.

The moment they had parked in Truro, Ottilie realized that her life was about to become considerably more lively than it had previously been, for once he had confidence it seemed that Pierre could no more stop trying to entertain than he could breathe.

‘Right, now what we do here,’ Pierre instructed outside their first antique shop, ‘what we do here is to stand outside and decide how much everything should cost, and then we go inside and ask the price and whoever laughs when they shouldn’t buys both of us coffee.’

Ottilie had always found it calamitous to be told not to laugh so she took a pin from behind the jacket of her lapel and stuck it into her thumb. She had to prove to Pierre that she had complete self-control.

‘Well howdee, sir, I’m from Texas and I would very much apprecia-ate to know the price of this ’ere beautiful chest.’

‘The price, sir?’

For a fleeting second Ottilie wondered why it was that shop assistants always managed to look quite so amazed if asked the cost of something. Surely it was something they must grow to expect at least sometimes?

Pierre looked unblinkingly at the assistant and repeated his question, but at an even slower pace. ‘Yes, sir, if you don’t mind, I would sure apprecia-ate to know the price of this ’ere beautiful chest, if you would be so good?’

One glance at the serious face of the supposedly gullible Texan in front of him and the shop assistant in his tight black suit and his large mauve silk tie cleared his throat and said without even a blush, ‘Five hundred pounds, sir.’

‘Really, sir? May I repeat that? You want five hundred pounds for this—’

Pierre touched the chest.

‘It is a very rare Charles II walnut coffer, sir, remarkable of its kind as I am sure you will appreciate?’

‘It must be very remarkable of its kind,’ Pierre said in his normal voice, lifting the lid of the piece and closing it again while talking at twice his normal rate, ‘since this is not walnut but oak, and it is no more Charles II than I am. This is a Victorian piece – please look at those hinges and that lock – and undoubtedly Welsh, and you, sir, are equally undoubtedly a charlatan.’

Ottilie had done very well with her pin stuck into her thumb up until the moment that she saw the expression on the assistant’s face at the word ‘charlatan’. It was as if he had been slapped. He seemed to reel backwards at the word and Ottilie turned and walked quickly from the shop to the street outside where Pierre found her doubled up with laughter a few seconds later.

‘Not very good, Miss Cartaret,’ Pierre said, taking her arm and crossing the road. ‘I saw you were gone rotten within a second of my opening my mouth, so guess whose going to be buying coffee?’

They found a café of sorts and sat quietly working out from a street guide where to go next as the waitress put down a tray in front of them and poured out some black liquid into stoneware cups. She topped them up with milk and then sauntered off, flicking at dirty tables with a tea cloth as she retreated behind a door marked ‘Private’.

‘That’s something I miss so much, decent coffee,’ Pierre said, sighing and staring at the over-hot slightly bitter brew which had been carelessly topped up by milk from a pot with little pieces of skin floating in it. ‘The British drink coffee which tastes stewed and then they put boiled milk in it – ah God this is really disgusting.’

Embarrassed by the awfulness of the brew Ottilie quickly told him, ‘I am ordering proper coffee pots, individual coffee pots, for the hotel from a shop in France – it is ridiculous in this day and age not to get decent coffee. I mean the war’s been over twenty years and you still get that awful stuff with chicory added if you’re not careful, or that bottled coffee, all left over from rationing. But I’m preaching to the converted beause you are half French anyway. Mrs Le Martine—’

‘Oh, she told you the awful news, did she?’

‘Not awful, no, she just said you were educated in the States, and your mother was American – and then of course she went off on one of her tangents, you know how she is, something to do with Nancy Gordon having a terrific crush on you, and about your brilliance. She was very anxious to sell you to me.’

‘Well she would be, she’s an old friend. Do you know you have the most beautiful-coloured eyes?’

Ottilie stared into her now empty coffee cup. ‘Yes,’ she said, mischievously.

‘And absolutely no modesty.’

‘None!’

They both laughed and despite winning the bet Pierre paid for the perfectly awful coffee which said something about him to Ottilie, although precisely what it was she didn’t exactly know.

‘Come on, there’s still more fun to be had at the expense of the antique trade.’

As they walked along Ottilie found herself hoping that Pierre wouldn’t continue to pretend to be a Texan in every shop. Perhaps he sensed how she felt or perhaps he knew enough not to go on, but he dropped the game, obviously now satisfied that he had proved he could make her laugh whenever he wanted, and so began the serious business of buying.

‘After our meeting yesterday at least I know exactly what you hate now,’ Pierre told her as they hurried along the streets, stopping, staring and then moving quickly on the moment they discovered there was nothing of particular interest. ‘To recap, as I remember it, you hate overly patterned wallpapers, you hate fringes on sofas and curtains. You hate large ornate vases and lampshades with yet more fringes. As a matter of fact, why is it that I have the feeling that you hate all fringes? You hate still life paintings with dead geese, dead ducks, dead hares – in fact anything dead in a painting, although maybe a dead leaf suggesting decadence might possibly pass. You do not like fuss or clutter – unusual in your sex I have to tell you – oh, and you don’t like patterned carpets either. You know what, Miss Cartaret? I get the feeling that what you really are is – yes, you are – you’re really a Quaker at heart, aren’t you? As a matter of fact, Miss Cartaret ma’am, what is it that you do like, because that is something of which I am beginning to think I am not exactly sure?’

Ottilie thought hard as she followed him into a small, dark shop. What she did like wasn’t something she had ever really summed up for anyone else.

‘I suppose, just recently, I’ve only thought about what I dislike.’

She began slowly but then gathered confidence when she realized that she had rather more definite ideas than she had at first thought.

‘Since you ask, I like wooden floors with old rugs, I like soft colours which look old and old colours which look soft. I don’t like change for the sake of it, but if it means more comfort I want change immediately. I don’t like anything ornate, nor do I like collections of things – you know, china in glass cabinets and collections of vases on shelves. Too museum-like for me. I loathe mock Chinese or Japanese, in fact anything mock Oriental, however old or beautiful. As a matter of fact I don’t like anything Oriental except in the Orient, or in a restaurant. I hate orange, including marigolds. I prefer a garden to have old trees and look really rather unkempt rather than stiff and – well, stiff. I like white roses in gardens but not inside where I always think they look too white. I like black cherries in or on practically everything; and velvet. I like straw hats but only if they are made of panama straw. I like tea to be at teatime, but at no other. I like fourposter beds, but not if they have lamps sticking through the drapes. I like plain carpet if it makes a room cosier, but not if it’s covering a beautiful wood floor. I like large lamps with large shades but not if they look angular and stiff. I like a mixture of everything. I mean . . .’ she hesitated, thinking. ‘I mean I really hate to walk into a place and see it all done correctly with everything in the same style – like some sort of a room set in a museum—’

Ottilie stopped suddenly pulling a little face at Pierre because she realized she had been really talking out loud to herself rather than to Pierre whom she had been following round the little dark crowded antique shop as she spelt out her likes and dislikes. He turned as she finally finished, and looked down at her. ‘I do believe we are going to get on infamously, Miss Cartaret, do you know that?’ he said delightedly. ‘As a matter of fact, after that, there is only one more thing I need to ask and that is – will you marry me?’

Ottilie laughed, realizing that he was joking as he turned back to his task of sorting through a medley of old books, picking up vases, bending down and examining small dark uncleaned paintings close to, and pulling an old dress out of a trunk. It was long, velvet, gold-embroidered, with slightly large sleeves, tight at the wrists, low across the bust.

‘Very Tudoresque, probably made for some grand lady performing at some Edwardian house party,’ Pierre said, holding it up against Ottilie. ‘Suits you. That dark green is great with your hair. As a matter of fact I am determined that I will buy it for you, Miss Cartaret, as my gift, on this sunny day.’

Ottilie stared at it for a brief moment, and then turned abruptly on her heel.

‘Thank you but no,’ she said curtly and after clambering back over and through the many objects in the old place she found her way thankfully back to the sunshine outside.

Pierre did not follow her out of the shop for some quarter of an hour and so she was left to hang around outside wondering what he was doing, only to see from his expression of triumph as he finally emerged that it was all too obvious what he was doing. He was what he called ‘truffling’ and seeing his delighted expression Ottilie forgot her disquiet and found that all she could do was to smile at his delight.

‘I think you are going to love me when you see what your very own truffle hound has bought you,’ he said, as he walked briskly towards his car, and carefully placed a large cardboard box covered in old newspaper in the boot. ‘I think what we may have here are two very fine small eighteenth-century paintings which when cleaned up will grace the walls of your hotel with an ease hitherto unknown to them. No frames, which is a pity, but we can fake those. Oh and you must not be too angry, but I couldn’t resist one other thing—’

Ottilie looked at him. It was Pierre’s turn to pull a face.

‘And now these you are going to hate me for, but they will be great in the dining room. A pair of Ming vases, would you believe?’

‘Oh no.’

‘Oh yes.’

‘You have them.’

Pierre looked suddenly so hurt at her reaction Ottilie started to laugh.

‘Look, I’m sorry, but didn’t I just tell you I don’t like anything Chinoise—’

‘Not even Ming?’

‘Not even double or triple Ming.’

‘What about our picnic then?’

‘Oh I like picnics all right.’

They found a beautiful white beach, a tiny cove embraced by rocks. Ottilie put down a rug, and Pierre assiduously found stones to hold down each corner of its tartan wool as Ottilie began the joyous task of unpacking Mrs East’s picnic. Thank heavens the old cook’s idea of a picnic was not some miserable pile of sandwiches wrapped in greaseproof paper and a hard boiled egg with no salt. Mrs East’s picnics were made up of pies with meltingly soft pastry whose inner mixes were a surprise of tender chicken in lightly flavoured sauces made from their own stock, or tiny vegetables parboiled and chopped before being wrapped in pastry made with cream cheese. Homemade sausages, home-made sausage rolls, home-cooked ham baked in honey and cloves and served with peaches and potato salad made with just the right amount of home-made mayonnaise. Everything that could be home-cooked was home-cooked by Mrs East, but it seemed to Ottilie that never had Mrs East’s cooking tasted quite so delicious, so light, so meltingly perfect as it did that lunchtime on the beach as she sat staring out to sea with Pierre.

Later, as the wind became sharper and they walked along the sand barefoot, Ottilie slipped on a piece of seaweed. Catching her hand quickly Pierre steadied her and she clung to him laughing, but he held on only for a second, letting her go immediately so that she could go on paddling, allowing the cold frills of water to lap her feet, relishing the change in temperature.

‘You have very elegant feet for a man, most unusual,’ she told him as they went on paddling and staring at the water as if they were looking for something, momentarily calmed, as people so often are at the edge of the sea.

‘You sound as if you’ve made some sort of study of feet.’

‘For heaven’s sake, I was brought up at the Grand! I was always seeing men’s feet, when I took them breakfast, when they passed me on their way out for their inevitable “dip before breakfast”, when I had to take them fresh towels if they were sunbathing on the beach. They almost became an obsession with me. And do you know why? Because I hardly ever met a member of either sex who had pretty or elegant feet, except perhaps Blue Lady, and now you.’

‘Who was Blue Lady?’

‘Not was – is. Blue Lady is still a regular guest. She is in the top suite. Doesn’t mind the alterations, doesn’t mind who comes or goes, she must always be in her suite at this time. She commemorates her honeymoon every year, and as far as we know she always will. Her husband, who was much older, died you see, just at the end of their glorious six-week honeymoon, and it seems that she never got over it. She loved him that much.’

‘What a strange story . . .’

‘Mmm, she talks to him, out loud. It’s quite spooky if you go in there because you have to lay tea for two and she makes you put the teacup just so where he would have had it, and she goes through the kind of day they have had – you know, “Wasn’t it bright out today, darling?” that sort of conversation, and for years I couldn’t understand it because there she was stitching away and going on about how beautiful the day had been when anyone could see it had been raining stair rods and then I clued in suddenly when I saw her consulting her diary one morning, and I realized that she must re-enact each day up there in that suite just the way it was twenty or more years before, each day just the same, all over again.’

‘Is she beautiful?’

‘Very beautiful, but she even dresses from that era you know, the New Look from Dior kind of clothes that you see in old movies? I was scared stiff of her when I was younger but now – well, particularly now – she seems almost like a touchstone from the past, something precious that I want to preserve just as she is preserving her few weeks of happiness – you know, how it is before life happens and everything goes wrong?’

Ottilie could see Pierre wanted to ask, ‘But what has gone wrong?’ Yet he didn’t because he could see from the way she turned her eyes away and looked ahead down the beach that she wasn’t prepared to say any more.

‘Perhaps we should call the top suite after her?’ Ottilie wondered as they continued to walk to the end of the beach, where they turned. The wind had got up and the waves were pounding and growing white tops that curled over and rushed up the tiny cove, so they quickly packed up and went back to the car.

‘Bit difficult for men to book a suite with “Lady” in the title. But the Blue Suite might be quite chic. I’d love to meet her,’ Pierre said, as they drove on in search of more treasure. ‘What a story. I keep trying to imagine her and yet I know I’m nowhere near what she’s really like.’

But if Pierre wanted to meet Blue Lady he had no interest in hearing any more about Alfred or Melanie.

‘From what I have heard of them, they sound a bit – er, Victorian for my taste,’ he explained to Ottilie as they drove back, but Ottilie, realizing that he must know about the incident when Mrs Le Martine left the hotel, felt the need to justify her upbringing.

‘I didn’t mind that they were strict, really I didn’t, because I never was any good at being young. I mean even now I don’t like doing the twist, I prefer waltzing, and I hate the Beatles I’m afraid. If you want to make a nightclub in the hotel basement, fine, but don’t ask me down there. I can’t stand nightclubs unless they’re in Paris and really a jazz club like the Blue Note. I’m afraid I’m a flop as a young person and I always have been. Too much time spent with old ladies at the hotel.’

Pierre laughed and she knew at once that he completely understood.

‘You sound just my sort of person. When I was a little boy I always hated other little boys because they were always coming round and ripping up your train sets and smashing your Lego and then telling you they were bored and going outside and blaming you if they fell off your slide. Couldn’t wait for them to leave.’

‘I don’t know anything about you,’ Ottilie teased Pierre as they had dinner in the hotel restaurant that night. ‘Except, of course, that you like to make the lives of antique dealers miserable.’

‘I do love to be the bane of their lives, that’s true. I hate what they do to beautiful things – tearing apart wonderful books to frame the prints, cannabalizing furniture, pretending age, overcharging, it’s anathema to me,’ Pierre agreed, and lifting his glass he toasted, ‘To the destruction of cheats, everywhere.’

Ottilie raised her glass to his toast, and a little later she said, ‘You must tell me a little about yourself, please? You know, like where you were born and how your middle finger came to be that shape, shockingly intimate things.’

Pierre shook his head and for a second Ottilie remembered the sudden sharp sense of disappointment she had experienced when he had released her so quickly on the beach.

‘I never talk about myself to clients.’ He looked at her. ‘In what is after all a professional relationship, nothing matters except how I do the job for you, wouldn’t you say?’

As he finished speaking Ottilie remembered Veronica’s feeling that Pierre ‘must be one of those’ because so many interior decorators were, and although she had not cared in the least then, now, suddenly, for some reason she found she did mind, which was pathetic, because as Pierre had just said after all their relationship was professional.

‘No, of course not, no, I mean, yes, just professional.’ Ottilie dropped her eyes. ‘No. It was just that I really enjoyed today, and now, of course, it’s over.’ She fell silent thinking of Philip on the station at St Elcombe and of how he had said he would be back in a matter of a moment and how she had pleaded with him to reassure her that nothing would change, and yet everything had changed between them. In the end it could not have become more changed, and he had come back with no trace of the boy he had once been in his eyes or his voice, anywhere. She had thought that he would be like one of Peter Pan’s Lost Boys and would come back the same, but he had come back just a conventional Army sort of person.

Thinking of this in the silence that had fallen Ottilie realized that she was just about to make the same mistake with Pierre. She was just about to try to pretend that each second of each minute did not change everything.

She stood up suddenly, pushing her chair back and replacing her napkin.

‘This has been a coloured glass of a day, and I shall always remember it, thank you very much.’

‘But you haven’t finished your coffee.’ Pierre looked up at her in utter dismay, still seated. ‘Mrs East has made very good coffee!’

‘No, I know.’ Ottilie turned to look at Pierre. ‘I suddenly don’t feel like coffee, so if you’ll excuse me?’

She had always taken such comfort from walking down to the beach, particularly at night when it was empty, and when she was younger she had imagined that she had a dog, or even two dogs, and that they would be running ahead of her and then running back, and that she could throw them sticks and they would run into the waves barking and back again as she collected shells and stones that looked so wonderful on the beach but always faded indoors, as if pining for the sea and the rain outside where they really belonged.

Tonight, outside, the wind had got up and was making the trees sway so she did not hear someone following her out and down the green sward in front of the hotel, and when she did and saw it was Pierre she no longer wanted to walk but to run off towards the sea, to be quite alone.

‘Why did you get up and leave like that?’ he asked as, catching up with her, he finally managed to force her to a halt. ‘I didn’t say anything to hurt you, did I?’

Ottilie shook her head and lied, ‘Of course not. I just wanted some air, that’s all, I get claustrophobic sometimes, you know—’

‘No, I don’t. I mean one minute we were fine, really enjoying ourselves, and the next minute you just – disappeared.’

‘I told you I wanted some air,’ Ottilie insisted, not looking at him.

‘That’s not it at all, is it? That is not it at all!’

‘It is, really.’

‘No, it’s not. It’s because I said our relationship was “professional”, that’s why you became upset, and you know it. The “you” bit of you suddenly disappeared, by that I mean the Ottilie I’ve been with all day suddenly disappeared. Please bring her back again.’

Ottilie tried to turn from him, shaking her head, determined to keep her pride intact but Pierre pulled her back and put his hand under her chin, murmuring, ‘I’ve been longing to kiss that pretty mouth of yours ever since I first arrived and tried to set fire to your rug,’ and bending his head he kissed her so beautifully that Ottilie realized that the kissing she had done with Philip had been just kissing and that this kissing was nothing less than the wondrous confirmation of what she had been feeling all day, utter happiness. He stepped back a little, but still held on to her.

‘I’m sorry. That wasn’t very – er, professional, Miss Cartaret.’

Ottilie was silent for a moment, and then, looking up at him, ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ she said and started to laugh. ‘I should think most girls would give you ten out of ten!’ And after that they kissed again, and again, until Ottilie, feeling a little faint, murmured, ‘or perhaps even eleven out of ten.’

She touched Pierre’s cheek and without saying anything they walked back up to the hotel hand in hand. They passed Jean who tried not to stare, and Nantwick who did not bother to pretend not to see them, but only smiled in almost paternal approval. Ottilie did not care a jot. If life had taught her only one thing it was that when, that beautiful-coloured piece of pink glass known as happiness was put into your hand you held it up to the light and looked through it, and never mind if next day someone stole it from you, or you dropped it, it was yours for that moment.

As it turned out the delightful oasis of a day that she had spent with Pierre was the high point of Ottilie’s week. There was so much office work to be done she had to leave Pierre to get on with the plans upon which they had agreed while she and Veronica sorted through files of old papers, staring at the small print of previous agreements which governed the day-to-day running of the hotel, and updating valuations which were so long out of date they were laughable. All important, but endlessly dull after the laughter and the fun that she had enjoyed with Pierre searching for antiques and bric-a-brac to bring the old hotel back to life.

She found herself shifting in her seat and yawning when she should be attending to something, or staring out of the window and dreaming of more days spent hunting antiques and more picnics on white sandy beaches with only the sound of the waves and the wailing cries of the seagulls to break or add to the happy harmony that being with Pierre seemed to bring.

And so it was, faced with so many dull papers through which she had to sift, that on hearing the telephone on her private line ringing, instead of feeling irritated at having her concentration broken on such a rainy, cloudy afternoon, Ottilie felt only a glorious sense of relief. Hoping, indeed thinking, that it would be Pierre telephoning from his London office to which he had returned for a few days, she quickly picked up the receiver after only two rings, despite knowing that Veronica was watching her, she knowing only too well that Ottilie was praying it would be Pierre, no matter how much she pretended.

‘Hello.’

Disappointingly it was not Pierre. Worse it was Nicholas Phelps, the lawyer.

‘Oh, good morning.’

Ottilie could feel herself tensing up. It was not just the embarrassment, knowing that he must remember just how drunk she had been that night, it was everything. The fact that Joseph had accused her of being a thief in front of him, the fact that she had so demeaned herself, swaying about the room, arguing with Joseph and then finally passing out. Phelps was so proper, always so meticulous about everything, almost an old woman in his ways, not someone who would ever be so stupid as to drink on top of antibiotics and make a display of himself.

‘Long time no see you.’

Ottilie murmured agreement even though she hated the phrase, always wondering what people expected in return when they said it.

‘How is everything?’

‘Everything’s fine.’

She wished that he would get to the point so that she could ring off and then Pierre could telephone, every second delayed the moment. Nowadays Ottilie thought she knew what it meant to be ‘sent’ by a voice. Pierre’s voice literally ‘sent’ her. Briefly she wondered if she was at last becoming ‘young’ and thought she could hear Pierre laughing at the idea.

‘I have a friend who would like to try to interest you in a new cold drinks machine for the hotel. Would it be all right if I give him your office number?’ Phelps asked.

‘I don’t know that we really want a cold drinks machine, except perhaps if we build a games annexe, might be all right there.’ She was talking out loud to herself and not him. ‘OK, give him my number, fine.’

‘I will warn you however, he’s a bit like your brother Joseph.’

Ottilie suddenly knew that Phelps was dragging Joseph’s name into the conversation in some effort to embarrass her, that he actually wanted to remind her of that awful night.

‘He’s not my brother. Joseph is not my brother.’

‘But he was so proud of “Ottie”.’

‘No, he’s not my brother. He’s no relation. His mother adopted me for a few years, until I was six, and then I was re-adopted, and that’s how I came here. And by the way, no-one calls me “Ottie” any more.’

Ottilie suddenly felt strong because she could talk about Joseph, say his name and not mind.

‘But that night we had drinks he stated categorically that he was your brother. Although I must admit, Miss Cartaret, he is so – well, so American, my dear, I admit I did have a problem with that.’ Nick Phelps’ voice on the other end of the telephone had changed into a remarkably good imitation of Jack Kennedy, slight lisp and all.

Ottilie was silent for a second, and then she said quietly, ‘That’s a very good American accent that you do.’

‘I am afraid, Miss Cartaret, I have a horrible ability to mimic.’

‘Obviously.’

‘At Cambridge I used to be known as the second Peter Sellers. Want my Peter Lorre?’

‘No time for that I’m afraid.’

‘OK, Miss Cartaret.’ He did his Peter Lorre anyway. ‘Good, don’t you think? But not as good as my Kennedy. Mrs Kennedy is responsible for the White House decor.’

The American voice continued but Ottilie quietly replaced the telephone receiver and when she looked down at the hand that had done so she saw that it was shaking and she sat watching it as if it belonged to someone else.

Veronica must have noticed that she had not said goodbye because she looked up from her work and frowned.

‘Don’t tell me, not a dirty phone call?’

Ottilie nodded. ‘In a way, mm, ’fraid so.’ After a minute she sprang up from her chair and bolted towards the door, snatching at her coat. ‘Going to see Father O’Flaherty,’ she called back to Veronica.

Ottilie had not seen Lorcan since that awful night when he had tried to force her to confess that it had been in some way her fault that she had been molested. Of course, in a way, he had been right, and Ottilie knew it now. It had been her fault, but not because of the way she dressed – if that was the case then a nurse in a uniform, or a nanny pushing a pram, could be considered provocative. No, she had been stupid to drink and because of that a man had taken advantage of her, and that had been her fault, nothing to do with her blue silk dress.

Because she had considered Lorcan to have been totally wrong to even suggest such a thing Ottilie had not been able to face him. Also, knowing that he knew such a thing about her, that all St Elcombe seemed somehow to know, that too had meant that she could not face him and appear normal.

She left her office in such a hurry that Veronica called after her to take her umbrella because it was raining, but Ottilie could not wait for that, she had to run through the rain because yet again in her life she had to reach Lorcan. But this time she was not running towards Ma, she was not a child running back to find the only real mother she had known, she was a grown-up woman running through the downpour of a wet afternoon and the cold and the wet of the rain was a blessing and a relief because it was real and not something from the past.

The presbytery door was never locked, but Ottilie was afraid to go there in case she bumped into Father Peter and he would detain her. With his gentle kindness he would probably lead her to a fire and ask after her and the hotel, and worse he would feel sorry for her, and so she would start to feel sorry for herself, and it would make her cry, and this was not a moment for that. So she made her way through a different door and rang the bell for confession, praying that it would be Lorcan’s day to be hearing them.

‘Lorcan, I had to see you.’

‘Ottie!’

Lorcan always seemed taller in his priestly clothes, but he was pale too and the lines around his eyes were marked as they had used to be all the time when Ma was alive and he was having to carry the burden of them all.

‘You want me to hear your confession?’ he asked in a lowered tone because they were in church.

‘Oh no, Lorcan, no,’ Ottilie whispered. ‘At least yes, but not the way you mean. I hate confession, Lorcan! I think we all feel so guilty about everything most of the time it should be changed to “Feel Better” and people should go in and try and find a few good things to say about themselves instead of feeling it’s their fault about everything like the bomb and starving babies—’

‘Shsh, Ottie, calm yourself.’

At that Ottilie stopped whispering so fast. Drawing breath for a second, she demanded in a normal voice, ‘Lorcan. In all the time that you have known me when have I ever been calm?’

They both laughed, and Lorcan said, ‘You’re such a rebel, Ottie. Come into the presbytery and we can talk better, not disturb those at prayer.’ As they walked down the corridor to the end room he said, ‘It’s extraordinary, you know, Ottie, you always did have a sort of intuitive thing with you, didn’t you? Because as it happens I was just about to come and see you. Now.’ He went to an old dusty cupboard and taking out two strangely unmatched glasses he said, ‘Let’s warm ourselves with some of Father Peter’s lethal sherry.’

‘I could do with something lethal.’

He lifted out a dusty bottle. ‘Some parishioner gave it him last Christmas but he thinks sherry’s for nuns!’

Ottilie laughed but watching Lorcan polishing the bottle with his handkerchief she thought how cold the presbytery was after the hotel, and how bleak Lorcan’s life was in comparison to hers, but then it seemed to her that if your life was so bleak, perhaps it made the real things stand out better, the things that mattered?

‘Now. Let us drink to the future, Ottie.’

They raised their glasses and Ottilie drank the rather too sweet sherry gratefully, because it was at least warming, whereas Lorcan pulled a face and said, ‘I think Father Peter’s right, this is strictly for nuns!’

A second of silence and then Ottilie started.

‘The thing is, Lorcan, I had to come to tell you at once. Because you know that awful thing that happened to me?’ Lorcan nodded, his gaze unswerving, suddenly very much the priest and Ottilie was grateful for that, for his detachment, because it made it easier for her, and for him. ‘I told you that it was Joseph, because it was an American voice. But I don’t think it was at all, I don’t think Joseph would do such a thing, I think it was someone else. And you were right, and I was wrong. Not that it matters, now, because it doesn’t. It’s like Jackie Kennedy said – what does it matter who killed her husband, he’s dead. What happened to me is over, for ever. I was ill for a long time afterwards but now I am quite better. I should never have accused Joseph to you. I think I did because – well, because of the awfulness of his running away and our thinking he was dead all that time. I think I wanted to prove to myself that he was really more wicked than he is.’

All the time she was talking Ottilie did not once drop her eyes.

‘I shall not even go into who I think did what he did, but I know that sometimes when men do these awful things they don’t get – well, they don’t get the thrill out of it that they are searching for unless they let you know that it was them. And I think. I say I think I know who the person is, because I think he just phoned me, and that is precisely what he was doing. Letting me know that it was him. Apparently it is sort of compulsive with men like that.’

Lorcan nodded and quickly poured them both another tot of the perfectly revolting sherry.

‘You had no need to come here, Ottie, but I am glad that you did. I knew that Joseph was not capable of what you had thought, but it was up to time, and circumstances, perhaps even God’s will, which let us face it we shall never understand, to find the truth for you. Your truth, perhaps the real truth, who knows? Let me tell you, now, if you can spare a minute, about what happened when I left you that night. Remember? I obtained Father Peter’s permission for leave of absence and I drove after Joseph. I knew that he had been due to catch the afternoon plane next day and that he was stopping over at another of Vision’s hotels near Exeter and then on to one near Salisbury, which is where I caught up with him, and God forgive me – I gave him such a belting.’

‘My God, how awful, and all the time he was innocent!’

‘Joseph wasn’t innocent, Ottie! He was guilty. I belted him not for you, but for us. All those years, not knowing, thinking he was dead. But I said nothing to him about what had happened to you because he might be an egomaniac and many things but I knew, absolutely, that Joseph was not capable of what you thought, not even remotely and if he knew what had happened to you after he left that night I dare say, knowing his temper, he would have murdered the man by now, so it was as well I said nothing I think. Anyway, thank God you yourself have come here and the matter is now put to rest before I leave. God be praised for that.’

Ottilie stared at Lorcan. ‘You’re not leaving?’

‘I am, Ottie, I am going to Africa, which is such an honour for me, to be chosen to go. It’s something for which I have prayed.’

‘Oh, Lorcan.’

‘I know, I know, our little family, we’re all flung far and wide now, but it won’t stop us thinking of each other, will it? Thank heavens I’m leaving knowing that you are quite healed, that is such a relief to me, Ottie. More than I can tell you.’

‘You will be awfully good with all those black babies, Lorcan. You’re so good with children. And just think, they’ll be a cinch after looking after all of us, wouldn’t you say?’

Lorcan smiled, and Ottilie could see he was grateful that she was trying to make it easier for both of them.

As for Ottilie, it seemed to her that even as he stood in front of her Lorcan was fading away, and she was fading from him too, and that lying between them was the uneasy past and their devotion to Ma, and out of all of them that had driven down in Sullivan’s hearse and Mrs Burgess’s car that day, only she was left in Cornwall.

The next day Pierre was back. Springing through the hotel doors at breakneck speed, followed by his assistant, Alanna, a young girl about whom he was inclined to joke but who, it was immediately apparent to Ottilie, was utterly devoted not just to Justin and Gordon, the company recently started by Nancy Gordon and Pierre, but to Mr Pierre Justin himself. Pierre referred to her as ‘Orange Crush’ because she had a crush not just on him but on orange with which it seemed she wanted to decorate the world.

The arrangements for the decorators to move into the top suite having been finally confirmed for the time when, by long tradition now, Mrs Ballantyne left it and retired to Devon for two weeks, Ottilie and Pierre were able to leave Alanna in charge of it, and move down to concentrate on Ottilie’s own rooms.

She preceded Pierre up to them, jumping up the stairs and pushing open the door to the large, spacious rooms. He followed her as quickly, and then stood quite still, looking round at the childish decor, before pushing his gold-rimmed spectacles up his nose a little and saying, ‘Well, yes. This is all rather charming but a little juvenile for toi, I should have thought, Miss C.’

To begin with Pierre paced up and down a little, as he always seemed to do when he was thinking, and then he picked up his drawing pad and pencils and started to make notes, and then to sketch, during which time Ottilie fell to silence, for she was filled with reverence for anyone who could draw. While he paced and sketched she pushed her way out on to the balcony to see the sea, and to be out of his way.

‘I’m sorry, it’s no good.’ Twenty minutes later he pushed the balcony doors open and looked moodily at Ottilie and then out to the sea and the horizon. ‘I can’t.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Well.’ He frowned down at her. ‘Well. Let’s face it. If these are to be your personal rooms, Miss C, what do I know about you? Rien. We have only ever discussed the public rooms. These are “Ottilie’s rooms”, or will be.’ He looked at her with sudden sadness. ‘For you and you alone, n’est-ce pas?’

‘Well, yes, I suppose so.’

‘Exactly, so whom am I designing for? I mean am I designing for a single professional lady? Or – what?’

Ottilie frowned and shook her head, but finally said, ‘Well, I suppose, yes, the owner of the Grand, yes, that is whom you are designing for, yes.’

‘Exactly, and I don’t know anything about her, except that she is divinely funny, loves to play games and have picnics, has the most beautiful eyes and hair and kisses like no-one I’ve ever kissed. That’s all I know, and that, quite frankly, is not enough.’

Ottilie groaned. ‘I can’t tell you about myself, Pierre, really I can’t. Believe me I would have before if I could have but I couldn’t so I haven’t, that’s why you see—’

She stopped as she started to break up and as she looked across at Pierre she realized that he had too and they caught each other up laughing.

‘Oh, Ottilie, that was so funny, what was that you said – “I would have if I could have but I couldn’t so I haven’t”?’

Ottilie looked up at Pierre, silent for once, which she never really was with him, and then she reached up, took off his glasses, and this time she kissed him, and it was wonderful, and once again she realized that he had a taste just like his sweet nature and she put both her hands up round his face and kissed him a second time, much longer this time, and he kissed her right back and it was wonderful what there was in a kiss, and Ottilie realized that love could be even more intoxicating and ecstatic than she had imagined. Passion, commitment, love of life, it was all there in a single kiss.

‘I’m afraid I love you, Pierre.’

‘I love you too, but you know that, you’ve known that all along.’

‘I realized that I loved you two days ago, when you were in London.’

‘You can’t be serious? I fell in love with you much earlier than that. What kept you?’

‘OK, I’ll start again. When I went to say goodbye to Lorcan the other day – he’s one of my sort of brothers, except he’s not – well, it was very sad and so I started to run home to stop the sadness and as I ran home I realized two things. First that this was my home, and I mean my real home, and the second was that I was running faster and faster so that I could get back home to you ringing. To Pierre. And although I had started off feeling so sad I began to feel happier and happier and when I arrived outside the front here I realized why I had felt better and better as I ran towards this place was because all I could see was your face.’ There was a small pause. ‘Well look surprised, at least look a little surprised,’ she begged.

‘Yes, ma’am, I will look surprised for you, in my own time though.’ Pierre put his hand under her chin. ‘Two can play at being difficult.’

‘I’m not difficult, I’m impossible, that’s different.’

‘So what from here?’

‘I don’t know, I wouldn’t know.’

‘In that case how about Pierre Justin asks Miss Ottilie Cartaret to dinner at the completed top suite on a date to be arranged with the painters, the curtain makers, the upholsterers and not to mention Miss Cartaret’s secretary, Veronica of the same name?’

‘As long as there’s not twisting to that awful Chubby Checker—’

‘No twisting, just dancing to Johnny Matthis?’

‘I’m not sure.’

‘Now, Ottilie—’

‘I was only really going to say that I’m not sure who Johnny Matthis is,’ Ottilie confessed.

‘Not sure – not sure – not sure who Johnny Matthis is?’

Pierre did a pretend stagger back clutching his head and shaking it, and then eventually he raised it once more and with a mock brave expression he said, ‘Well, it’s about time you were sure, mademoiselle from St Elcombe. Dear heavens, where have you been all your life? No, don’t tell me, as you said with your upbringing here I suppose all you ever heard was a quickstep or a waltz drifting upstairs from the dining room. If you haven’t danced cheek to cheek to Johnny Matthis you have never lived or loved. And by the way, while I’m in a masterful mood I am going to choose our celebration dinner in the completed Blue Suite. I want none of your vapid steamed English Dover Sole, thank you. I want strong tastes to go with my passionate Yankee nature.’

At which they would have started to kiss again had Pierre’s secretary Alanna not burst in with what she called ‘the best news ever’. The curtains for the top suite had arrived.

‘Exaggeration is Alanna’s middle name,’ Pierre said affectionately, watching his secretary’s retreating dirndl skirt with one of his mildly puzzled looks. ‘I hardly think that “the curtains for the top suite have arrived” would rouse most people to excitement, but for Alanna this is “big news”, so who are we to argue?’

Ottilie stared at her face in the mirror. She actually could not wait for Pierre to tear all her rooms apart. She didn’t know why but it seemed to her to be going to be the most exciting moment of all the transformation of the hotel. She wasn’t in the least sentimental about her old furnishings. She could not wait to say goodbye to the swan-shaped bath, to the endless pink, even to the curtains with their Kate Greenaway figures. She thought of all this as she turned and turned in front of the mirror with its childish decorations of deer, looking anxiously at herself. She wondered what Pierre would think of her in her new dress? He had hardly ever seen her out of navy blue. She had to admit that deep down she feared that when he saw her dressed up he might laugh at her as Monsieur had done that evening in Paris.

This fear had not been helped by Veronica who when she saw the dress being lifted from its box had murmured, ‘Very seductive, Miss C.’

‘A Gina Fratini silk jersey dress is bound to be a little revealing.’

‘After you with it, I’ve got my eye on the newly arrived sous chef one Bruno by name. So handsome, so charming, I have already started learning real live Italian – so much better than from a book.’ Veronica rolled her eyes, and they both laughed. ‘You’re going to look fantastic in that.’

But was Veronica going to be proved right? Ottilie sat down and pulled on her evening shoes, or rather stepped into them, for they were very high heeled. There was little point in wondering what Pierre would think of her. If the recent past had taught Ottilie one thing it was that anxiety and above all guilt were a destructive waste, just so many dead leaves that had to be burnt.

Ottilie stood back in front of the mirror. Jean, who had come in to help her put her hair up, hovered anxiously behind her. Now the shoes were on they could both really assess the dress, and Ottilie saw at once that Veronica was quite right, the dress was very clinging indeed. It showed every contour of her body.

‘Not many girls could wear a dress like that, Miss Cartaret, and you are one of the few,’ Jean murmured and she gave a satisfied sigh as if she had just finished a glass of champagne. ‘Colour’s wonderful on you, with your dark hair, couldn’t be better.’

Jean was right about the colour, it was a beautiful shining deep brown and what with the dress having such a high collar with its long sleeves, and its skirt cut to fall in graceful folds, the waistline emphasized by a thick gold chain belt, it couldn’t have been a better choice. Even so, Ottilie turned away saying, ‘I don’t know, maybe I can’t carry it off.’

Seeing how nervous she was, and probably knowing why, Jean clucked maternally. ‘Course you can. Sit down while Jean does your hair for you. You’ve got yourself in a right tizz, haven’t you? Course you can wear it. Not many could, but you can. Now you let me see.’

Swiftly she pinned up Ottilie’s still damp hair, and with the hair dryer on high she started to dry it. The drying process had necessarily to be done fast and furiously, leaving neither of them time to talk, because Ottilie hated her hair to frizz. Jean ended by pinning up the thick fall on top of her mistress’s head, while allowing a few small strands to wisp at the back.

‘You look what my dad would call “peachy”, you really do, Miss Cartaret, and don’t forget your bracelet.’

She handed Ottilie the bracelet that Lorcan had brought to her tenth birthday party. Realizing the time Ottilie snatched at it and started to hurry towards the door, but then abruptly she turned back.

‘Thank you, but I think I will just stay here – just a moment. On my own. I think perhaps I need a little quiet, if you don’t mind?’

Jean gave her a worried little look but she left her saying, ‘You look like a film star, really you do, Miss Cartaret, a real star.’

Once Jean had left Ottilie started to pace about her room. She knew that Jean was right, she did look like a film star, her mirror told her that, but inside her, right inside her, Ottilie still felt that she was in Philip’s phrase ‘damaged goods’ and consequently in her own eyes she was ugly. Ottilie had told herself, and she had meant it, that what was over was over, but now that she was wearing this beautiful dress, her hair put up, her make-up immaculate, in contrast to her appearance those awful feelings of self-disgust were returning and no matter how she tried to stem them they were coming back, threatening to be a tidal wave which would prevent her going out of the door, dressed as a beautiful woman, looking to be loved.

She turned in desperation, near to despair, looking round her room for reassurance, something to which she could cling, something that would send those feelings away. Finally, she found herself going to her old toy chest, filled as it was with all her childhood souvenirs which she never really looked at, but which were too infinitely precious to throw away. In among the treasures, where she always kept it, a little hidden, lay the beautiful hand-marbled folder in which she kept Monsieur’s drawing that she so loved.

There it was, or rather there she was, herself before the awful event of Joseph’s party. There she was without a stitch on but glowing with health, happy and innocent. She pressed the drawing to her, willing it to send away the revulsion, the feelings of disgust, the ugliness that she felt was still inside her.

As she held it to her she remembered the happiness she had enjoyed in Paris, she remembered that evening as she came out of the bathroom, the turban of towelling on her head, the larger towel caught up around her, and how they had both spontaneously delighted in the moment, and all the subsequent wonder of those days and weeks, and she shed everything that had happened since, so that by the time she replaced the drawing, opened her door and started to climb the stairs towards the top suite, where she knew Pierre was waiting, it seemed to her that although it was evening the sun was shining, and she could hear the laughter and the slight pause in conversation as she had made her way through the crowded restaurant.

‘Courage, Ottilie!’ Monsieur would have said. ‘Courage!’

Outside the newly renamed Blue Suite Ottilie stopped and caught her breath. She must not rush in and talk too much. She must not become flushed with excitement. She put up her hands to her face and happily they were ice cold from nerves and they cooled not just her face but the whole of her, as if the cold was reaching down to her very centre. Next she breathed in and out a few times, but still she could not bring herself to put her hand on the door knob. Come on, she urged herself, it’s just an evening for heaven’s sakes! She breathed in once more and then, head held high, turned the handle of the suite.

As promised there was a tape stretched across the door and Pierre was in the middle of the room waiting for her, himself in immaculate evening dress, but carrying a large pair of kitchen scissors. He turned as he saw the door opening and as soon as he saw her he walked towards her with one hand stretched out and Ottilie knew straight away that everything was going to be all right because there was that wonderful smile of his lighting up his eyes.

‘Stay there, stay there, you have to make a speech and cut the tape.’

‘No glasses?’ she asked as she took the scissors, the tape dividing them, their eyes uniting them.

‘I sat on them, would you believe? Just as we all had everything in place, I stepped back and sat down in that lovely armoire over there. At least for once I knew exactly where my spectacles were.’

The newly hired hotel waiters standing behind him in the candle-filled room all laughed and clapped after Ottilie announced in clear royal tones ‘I declare this suite open’ and cut the tape.

Pierre bowed deeply from the waist. ‘Welcome to the Blue Suite, Miss Cartaret, ma’am.’

Ottilie stepped into the room, into this place that she knew so well, and yet was unrecognizable, so changed had it become. What Pierre’s artistry had wrought was not a transformation so much as a miracle.

The place embraced you as you came in, and without being in the least bit nautical its whole ambience directed your senses towards the sea beyond the French windows, for the room was indeed blue, as Pierre had promised, but like the waves seemed to be reflecting the colour of the sky for although it was blue to the eye it was in actuality a French grey which is a grey with much blue in it yet subtly suggests blue not grey. And the white, like the cliffs on either side of the bay, a bone white, but there were many gradations of both, so that each when present in either curtains or upholstery, like the presentation of one colour in a painting presented not one colour but many. Pierre took her round explaining the provenance of each piece of furniture, and how he had brought back, from one of his many treasure hunts, a set of 1930 reproduction eighteenth-century furniture.

‘Very well made and can be adapted without a tremor,’ he had joked when he had first shown them to her, but now they too had been repainted a French grey and they looked charming, not pretending to be antiques in any way at all, but graceful none the less, and as Pierre said, very well made.

Outside the long windows there was a beautiful sunset such as sometimes happens in Cornwall even after the rainiest day. As Ottilie took a glass of champagne and moved around the room it seemed to her that the glow that was lighting up the skyline reflected itself in every corner of the room.

‘There’s always been something about this suite that I just can’t explain, as if I knew that one day it would mean a great deal to me,’ she confessed to Pierre but couldn’t say any more because the waiters were hovering and there was more champagne to be drunk and finally dinner to be eaten.

After the waiters left, wheeling the old mahogany trolleys towards the newly mended lifts, Pierre closed the doors and holding out his arms and smiling he said, ‘All alone at last,’ and Ottilie ran into them and they started to dance to the record he had just put on but only for a minute or so, for what with the moon outside standing still and small dark clouds starting to run across it and the rain starting to fall once again, and above all the sound of the sea outside the windows, kissing and making love became a matter of what was both best and beautiful.

The following morning so early that not even Nantwick was up and about they crept down to Ottilie’s suite wearing only the newly arrived white towelling hotel dressing gowns. Pierre was unshaven and Ottilie’s hair was around her shoulders. They held hands, creeping like children, both of them longing for the coffee that Ottilie kept in her suite, made in a secondhand cafetière brought back from a shop on the Left Bank. Coffee made, they drank it and watched the sun rising over the sea from the safe warmth of her sitting room. There was much to talk about between coffee and kissing. Their future plans and present problems, and how Ottilie came to be left enough money to buy the Grand, and how the Cartarets had thrown her out, but not why.

‘I know I am the only child of indulgent parents, but I simply can’t understand what you could have done for the Cartarets to have treated you that way. I mean we are in the so-called Swinging Sixties.’

Pierre shook his head, but Ottilie only said, ‘We won’t speak about the past any more.’ She looked up at Pierre. ‘Last night you made me a whole person again, this morning I know that even if you leave tomorrow I will still be a whole person. And how can I ever thank you enough for that?’

‘I’m not leaving tomorrow unless you intend to fire me.’

‘Yes but one of these days you will be leaving, and I have to understand that, the hotel will be finished, the ball we are planning will be over – literally – and you won’t want to be here any more. St Elcombe is a small place and you are too cosmopolitan to want to stay.’

‘Where do you get your ideas from?’ Pierre asked, shaking his head in mock wonder.

‘Living here all this time, seeing things that I have seen, I know only too well what happens to people. Life is transient, made up of a few memorable moments. To cling to even one second of what has been perfect would be to destroy it.’

‘So how come my parents were happily married for years and until the day he died last year my father lived only to see my mother again? Even when she was gone he still spoke to her every day, spoke to her photographs, to the paintings he had done of her. He died still living for her. These are not transient emotions. Of course not, they live on for ever, in my heart, in all hearts that knew them, as everyone who has truly loved always will, you must understand that, you little pagan.’

After a small pause Ottilie said, ‘Pantheist actually, not pagan. I worship nature. As a child just imagining the life beneath the sea used to fill me with a sort of religious wonder.’

‘You fill me with wonder, but you do know that you are going to have to fire me to get rid of me? Now that really will be a transient moment.’

Ottilie frowned and stared out at the sea. She didn’t really know how to say what she knew she had to say as she saw Pierre sinking dramatically to his knees in front of her, his chin still unshaven, but she knew, no matter what, that nevertheless it had to be said, for both their sakes. Making love was one thing but by no means everything.

‘Will you marry me, Miss Cartaret?’

Ottilie stared down at him on his knees. ‘You look like a pirate, I don’t want to marry a pirate,’ she said, running a finger round his chin.

‘Ottilie, if you don’t say yes you know what will happen to you, don’t you?’

‘Yes.’ Ottilie was laughing and moving away from him when Pierre caught her hand and started to pull her towards the bedroom. ‘Yes, yes, I do know, thank goodness.’

Later she laughed a great deal more as she watched Pierre bathing in her swan-shaped bath. A more incongruous sight she thought she had never seen than six foot of Pierre sitting with still unshaven chin in a child’s bath.

‘How will you do these rooms for – us?’

‘How will I “do” them? I will “do” them as you call it in a way that will make it habitable for both sexes, in other words I will give the place a classical calm. I have great ideas for the bed. I was thinking about it, I shall design it myself. A fourposter, but a modern fourposter, extra large, because once all the clutter is removed this is actually a very large set of rooms. We will twist cloth around the newel posts, round and round, plain linen – and the top of the canopy will be a great roll of cloth descending towards the front, but caught up finally, before it drops, by two great leather buckles.’

‘Sounds – interesting.’

Pierre looked at her over the top of the swan. ‘You are being cheeky, aren’t you?’

‘No, no, it does, it sounds very – interesting.’

‘Just an idea,’ he said shooting her a look from under his surprisingly long black eyelashes.

‘What about the floors?’ Ottilie wanted to know as Pierre stood up and climbed out of the bath, grabbing a towel and drying himself with great speed and vigour.

‘Follow me,’ he commanded, and without a stitch on but with the towel hung around his neck as if it was a scarf he strode through to the main room and started to indicate how he thought he could draw the whole suite together using natural linens and basket weaves, again so that the eye would inevitably be drawn, as in the top suite, back out to the scene beyond the windows but this time to the sand and the rocks.

‘And what about paintings and things?’ Ottilie wanted to know.

‘I hadn’t really thought. Beach scenes perhaps, nudes – but only if they are modern, none of those slab-like figures, although a Picasso might be nice,’ he joked.

But Pierre wasn’t really listening, he was concentrating on what he might do and what he might not do, and so Ottilie went to her old toy chest, and once more opened the precious marbled folder and took out the drawing that Monsieur had done of her.

‘I have something that might do, something that I love so much. But if I show it to you, you mustn’t get ideas because I did not pose for this, although my parents did not believe me when I said as much. The artist did it from his imagination and then he gave it to me as a present, my last night in Paris.’

Pierre was standing over by the window, murmuring, ‘The light bright sand of the coves around here, that is what we will have in here. Linen blinds, everything uncluttered. And what is this?’

‘I was just telling you.’ Ottilie pushed the marbled folder towards him. ‘It’s one of my treasures. A drawing of me, but I did not pose for it, the artist did it from his imagination.’

Pierre stared at it, completely silenced, and after a moment he said, ‘But it’s beautiful. And it’s just like you. May I ask you something, none of my business, but did you love this man?’

Ottilie stared at him in astonishment and then started to laugh.

‘I do not find this a laughing matter, I do assure you,’ Pierre said coldly. ‘Not at all. Please tell the truth. Did you love this man?’

‘Love him? Good heavens, I hardly knew him! It was just that Mrs Le Martine knew him – “Monsieur” is what we nicknamed him and she somehow talked him into letting me stay in his Paris flat for a month. And well, I think he thought I was a bit lonely, and so on my last night in Paris he took me out to dinner and gave me this drawing as he left to go back to Lyon. I mean I think it’s brilliant because he really did do it from his imagination, from just meeting me once. He was obviously very clever.’

‘Very clever,’ Pierre agreed. ‘Very clever indeed. In fact I should say from looking at this that he was a man after my own heart, which was just as well, since he was my father.’

‘Le Bonnier is my father’s name,’ Pierre continued, much later for as always with lovers the interval between the discovery of something new and astonishing and continuation with their conversation had been delightfully filled.

‘Justin was my mother’s maiden name. But you know how it is in France, you take both the names of your parents. Mine are Le Bonnier Justin, which is too much of a mouthful for anyone, so when my mother died so suddenly I took her name shortened, in her memory, for professional use. When I joined Nancy, my partner, we called the company Justin and Gordon. My full names are Jean-Pierre Le Bonnier Justin, but I sidetrack.’

‘No, no, please, I like detours.’

‘At the end of last year when my father died I returned to France from America not just for the funeral, but to pack up everything, and to sort through his personal effects with a view to giving as much as was possible to his so-devoted friends and staff, and of course his servants on his estate. It was while I was going through his things that I found the same drawing as you have, except in mine – or rather in his – you are actually wearing a towel, exactly, I suppose, as you were that evening when you and he first met. He must have done two drawings, because the one that he gave you, you know how he loved to tease – it seems he has removed the towel!’

They were walking down the beach hand in hand. Back at the hotel breakfast would be being served but Ottilie did not care if the croissants were too brown and the toast stiffening, all she could think about was her evening with Pierre’s father and how when she had met his son she had indeed had the strangest feeling that they had somehow met before.

‘As soon as I saw that drawing,, in grief as I was, I knew that I had to meet this girl that my father had drawn with such obvious delight. But I did not know who the girl was, can you imagine anything so irritating? I knew from his friends and servants that there had been no young mistress in his life, so who was the model for this so joyous drawing? Who had so captured his imagination that he had been able to go away and draw her with such tenderness, whom had he known, whom had he seen, that had such an innocent look to her? And then Mrs Le Martine came to the funeral and we talked, and she came back to our family home and I showed her the drawing and she laughed so much – she knew you straight away, and that is why when she heard that you were looking for a designer she sent me hotfoot down here on her recommendation, because she knew I longed to meet you.’

‘That’s why you were so nervous that morning. You must have been in dread of my being a disappointment, and let’s face it – I was.’

‘No, you were no disappointment, but you were a shock. I could see that something terrible had happened to you. You were so thin, and you had the haunted look of someone who appeared to have been very ill and was only now getting better.’

‘I had been ill. And now I am better.’

‘So now we know everything that there is to know about each other, will you marry me? Preferably by special licence, tomorrow?’

Ottilie shook her head. ‘I can’t marry you, Pierre, at least not yet, not until I’ve found out who I really am. Coming back here to the Grand, seeing everything again, but through such different eyes, I know now that I have to know who I am before I go any further, or make any more changes in my life.’

‘But I thought – you just said earlier that the past didn’t matter!’

‘No, not my past,’ Ottilie agreed. ‘But their past. The people who made me. I must know where I came from, why I’m here at all.’

Pierre looked down at her and carefully brushing back the hair that was blowing across her face he sighed and warned her, ‘Be very careful of the past, Ottilie, anyone’s past. It can sometimes prove to be more hurting than your own.’

But Ottilie had hardly heard his last words before springing back and putting her hand across her mouth as she remembered. ‘Oh my God, oh my God, Blue Lady is due tonight, I must have everything ready for her. It’s so important that she likes the way you’ve done the suite, everything must be perfect for her.’

She turned. ‘Jean is in dread because Mrs Ballantyne’s so set in her ways and since she came back – before you, as it were, sent the troops in to pull the suite all apart – Blue Lady’s been going dottier than ever. We warned her the suite would be changed, when she came back, but you never know how much she takes in.’

Ottilie started to run back towards the hotel, Pierre following her and calling, ‘But I thought she’d left?’

‘She has, for her time in Devon. It’s difficult to – too difficult to explain now.’

Pierre shook his head, but he refused to follow Ottilie any further, and realizing that their time together was temporarily at an end he turned back to the beach to continue their walk alone, although calling back with an attempt at humour, ‘I could learn to hate this woman, Blue Lady, and really quite quickly too. And Ottilie, don’t forget we’re invited to the mighty Granvilles for lunch today. Or as they said in Jane Austen’s day, to Tredegar we are invited, Miss Cartaret.’

Who could forget it, Ottilie thought, as she jumped back up the steps of the hotel, realizing that because of all the love-making and the wonder of last night and this morning she had nevertheless nearly forgotten Mrs Ballantyne’s all-important return.

Yet she doubted very much that she could possibly have forgotten that they were invited to Tredegar since it was after all Ottilie who had found Philip and Constantia wandering round the hotel. Happily the knowledge that she owned the place in which they stood meant that when she bumped into them she felt quite able to stand tall and look both of them in the face, and it was they who looked away, dropping their eyes as dogs do, knowing that they might well be, indeed were, not just caught in the act of snooping round the hotel, but highly unwanted by its new owner.

‘We just had to come and look, we heard so-o much about what you were up to, Ot-ti-lie dear,’ Constantia drawled, puffing a little too hard on her cigarette.

Ottilie could see Veronica hovering protectively some yards away. She would know immediately that the Granvilles were snooping and would be waiting to see if Ottilie wanted them shown the door.

Constantia smiled at Ottilie, mouth only, eyes as hard as ever, her thoughts reflected in the hardened expression and it wasn’t difficult to read at least one of them. ‘Who would have thought you would have done so well for yourself, Ottilie Cartaret?’

‘Thank you, Veronica,’ Ottilie said smoothly, turning and pulling a gargoyle’s face at her behind the Granvilles’ backs.

As Veronica bit her lip and hurried off Ottilie turned back to the Granvilles.

‘Now how can I help you?’ she drawled in a fair imitation of Constantia herself.

Philip, realizing what she was doing, reddened, but Ottilie stared at him stonefaced. She was determined to show him that she had changed completely. The damaged goods were now whole again. And yet, proud of her professionalism as she was, Ottilie would not deny them access to her hotel, for to do so would be to give them far too much importance. Constantia and Philip might be the Granvilles of Tredegar, but they were only human beings, and as such she had found them wanting in both kindness and tolerance, believing in rumours, rather than the person they had once known so well and, in Philip’s case, even loved.

The hotel, because its structure was so sound, because all the doors were good thick polished Edwardian mahogany made from wonderful, aged wood, must now seem like a palace to the Granvilles compared to how it had been recently during its bad sad days. Pierre had hardly even begun but the little he had accomplished nevertheless was already reflecting his determination to bring about an atmosphere of, as he called it, ‘being aboard a luxurious liner before the war’. And, although working to a self-imposed tight budget, he had actually wrought miracles with the paintings and furniture that he had already bought on Ottilie’s behalf, not to mention the ubiquitous Ming vases.

Nevertheless, proud as she was of Pierre’s achievements in such a short time, all the while Ottilie was proudly showing the now rather effectively silenced Granvilles the just completed new dining room, she kept praying that Pierre would not bump into them.

It wasn’t that Ottilie was ashamed of having once imagined that she was in love with her old childhood friend, or that she was not proud of Pierre, it was just that she had every idea that Pierre would loathe the Granvilles and their haughty ways, and wonder how she ever came to be friends with them in the first place, and nowadays that was something which Ottilie herself found difficult to explain. Thankfully by the time the tour ended Pierre had yet to be seen and Ottilie had every hope of sending the Granvilles on their way.

Until Constantia – and she would – doubled back to the dining room saying, ‘I just must see that marvellous Fowler pink that your designer has used. Just the same colour as Roberts Animal Ointment, I always think.’

And suddenly there was Pierre in the middle of the dining room talking to Alanna and staring at some china that had newly arrived and as always on seeing him Ottilie immediately felt immensely glad despite not wanting him to meet the Granvilles. She couldn’t help being glad because every time she set eyes on Pierre anew, it seemed like both a wonderful surprise and a reaffirmation, and yet at that particular moment she wished him a million miles away.

Pierre himself had seemed benignly oblivious of the Granvilles’ patronizing attitudes, waving a swatch of silk and saying, ‘Look, Ottilie, that stupid old Knightsbridge fruit has come good at last.’

‘This is your designer, is it? We must be allowed to meet him, surely?’ Constantia immediately insisted as she saw Pierre, his spectacles on his nose, Alanna hovering with her clipboard, as always her hair scraped back, face scrubbed and generally shining with devotion.

Of course as soon as Philip saw Pierre walking towards Ottilie with his face lit up he knew. And as soon as Pierre saw Ottilie with Philip he knew that Ottilie had once thought herself in love with Philip, and that being so as they shook hands Pierre removed his glasses and put them on top of his head, as if he did not want to appear disadvantaged by them. And Philip having engaged Pierre in conversation kept referring to his occupation in thinly veiled sarcastic terms, using the words ‘interior design’ and ‘interior designer’ with a lightly sarcastic emphasis that was nevertheless unmistakable in its meaning. So much so that had Pierre not frowned a warning at her Ottilie would have felt tempted to say something, but that was before Constantia knocked one of the Ming vases ‘by mistake’ to the floor and it broke into several pieces.

‘Oh I am sorry!’

She leaned down to pick up some of the pieces while essaying to look remorseful.

There was a small silence as Ottilie stared at the pieces, and then at Constantia, knowing that what she had just done had been far from a mistake. Philip at least had the grace to look embarrassed for the first time, before Pierre said, stooping down to help Ottilie pick up the pieces, ‘Don’t be sorry, Miss Granville. Ottilie certainly won’t be. She hates these vases, as soon as I bought them I could see they set her teeth on edge. Besides, they’re actually worthless, one of them having a crack in it. Not only that but they’re fakes – all so-called Ming is fake as you know. As it happened these were rather good fakes, but fakes none the less. As I am sure you will appreciate one would never dream of putting out the real thing in a hotel.’

There was nothing but good humour in Pierre’s eyes as he said all that, whereas Ottilie had the feeling that there was a look of something near to defeat in Constantia’s, and she suddenly remembered seeing Constantia, when they were much younger, scratching a mark with a red Biro down the back of a friend’s new cream winter coat simply because it was new and pretty and did not belong to Constantia.

At long last, feeling embarrassed by his sister’s obvious lack of grace, Philip had quickly diverted the conversation and asked Ottilie and Pierre to lunch the following Sunday. ‘We must at least try to make it up to you both,’ he said with a gracious smile, as if Pierre and Ottilie were badly in need of a hot meal.

‘Don’t let’s go,’ Ottilie had begged, but not nearly hard enough she realized as Pierre drove them both towards Tredegar, and anyway it was useless, because Pierre was avid to see such a famous old house, particularly since it was still in private hands.

Soon they were standing outside the old oak doors that were so familiar to Ottilie and he was saying, ‘This is a pretty perfect example of Elizabethan domestic architecture.’

‘Hi.’ Constantia opened the door herself, although there was a maid hovering in the background.

She smiled, which for Constantia was quite something, except that it had to be faced that Constantia’s smile was a little like that of an alligator, one third on the top, two thirds concealed. Right from the start she addressed herself solely to the man, ignoring Ottilie, which Ottilie had noticed some women have the habit of doing, and which she, at the hotel, was most careful not to do. Not that Constantia’s lapse of manners was important. After all they were not going to be staying at Tredegar, just having to suffer a meal there.

Compared to Pierre’s work on the Grand, Tredegar with its too-crowded walls and dark wood, while undoubtedly beautiful, appealed to Ottilie as being gloomy and claustrophobic, so she was glad to follow Pierre and Constantia quietly round, all the while feeling doubly glad that she did not live there.

‘I expect Ottilie told you that we invited you especially early knowing that you would probably enjoy a quiet ride with Philip before luncheon while Ottilie and I catch up with our gossip?’

Constantia turned as they returned once more to the Great Hall, and before Ottilie could say ‘You never mentioned riding when you phoned to confirm, Constantia’ she beckoned Pierre to follow her upstairs.

‘No riding clothes,’ Pierre told his hostess, as Ottilie reflected that there was nothing she cared for less than what Constantia called a ‘quiet gossip’.

‘Borrow some of Philip’s riding clothes, no problem. Ottilie doesn’t ride, I know, but Philip has plenty that will fit you, and we have a whole family of riding boots,’ she went on, glancing at Pierre’s elegant feet. ‘But perhaps you don’t, ride I mean, perhaps you can’t?’

‘Of course I can. Sure I ride. I spent much of the American half of my childhood riding on a horse farm.’

Ottilie knew that this would appeal to Constantia as being boastful, and she could imagine only too well Constantia, after they had left, mimicking Pierre to Philip using words like ‘horse farm’ and ‘sure’ in a mocking way.

‘Oh I don’t think Pierre wants to ride,’ Ottilie put in quickly, because she knew very well from way back that one of Constantia’s more savage houseparty jokes was to put inexperienced riders up on unrideable hacks, usually hirelings brought in for the weekend, and then watch in glee while they fell off them. This practice had ended rather abruptly when one of the many unfortunates had broken a collar bone.

Pierre frowned a warning at Ottilie, a frown meant only for her, before turning back to Constantia. His voice immediately changed to a higher register, and he flapped his hand at his hostess as he said, ‘It’s ages since I had a ride, darling, do please let me, please!’

In her turn Ottilie pleaded with him with her eyes ‘Please don’t!’ because he just didn’t know the kind of horse that the Granvilles would lend people, he had no idea what he was letting himself in for. But Pierre turned away from her appearing not to notice either her grimace or the pleading look in her eyes.

No sooner had Pierre changed into a pair of Philip’s jodhpurs and some boots than Constantia glanced out of the window and sighed. ‘Oh dear, look, it’s started to rain, would you believe? And not just rain, hail too. That will be no fun to ride in for either of you.’ Ottilie heaved an inward sigh of relief. ‘No, no fun at all,’ Constantia said, smiling up at Pierre. ‘Tell you what, how about some jumping in the indoor school? In view of the weather, eh? You jump, don’t you?’

‘Jump?’ Pierre said. ‘No, I don’t jump, Miss Granville, I soar.’

‘Oh, I shouldn’t—’

But Pierre removed Ottilie’s hand from his sleeve, giving it a warning squeeze.

‘I just love jumping, really.’

With that they all set off with umbrellas in the pouring rain across the fields at the back in the direction of a large barn, Pierre, outwardly anyway, as cheerful as ever, and Constantia looking like a cat who has just caught a large mouse and is going to have great fun playing with it before killing it.

The horse that the girl groom led towards them as they entered the barn was a large bay, but it had short ears and plenty of white to its eye. Ottilie knew nothing about horses but it seemed to her the moment she saw Pierre’s mount that it looked mean and bad-tempered. She wanted to dive at the wretched creature and lead it back out of the great barn that acted as a covered school for the Granvilles and their employees.

Pierre on the other hand seemed blissfully impervious to the obvious imperfections of his proffered mount, merely removing his glasses and giving them to Ottilie while smiling and chatting with Constantia. The groom lowered the leathers and pulled down the stirrups for Pierre to mount, but he turned to her as she led the horse up and said, ‘Oh no, thank you. No saddle, thank you. I always ride bareback.’

The groom looked more than astonished and for once even Constantia seemed silenced, not even making her little ‘oh’ sound, like breaking glass.

‘No saddle?’ she asked, an eye on the distant figure of Philip on a thoroughbred making perfect transitions from trot to canter and back again, while hardly disturbing the sawdust as he rode in perfect unison.

‘Oh you know us Americans,’ Pierre joked. ‘We actually prefer frontier conditions. Plenty of sawdust here,’ he went on, indicating the heaped sawdust on the floor of the barn, ‘all we need now is the saloon and a barman and two fingers of redeye.’

‘You’re going to ride bareback?’ Constantia persisted in asking him.

‘Not ride bareback,’ Pierre called gaily as the groom gave him a leg up and he promptly swung forward clasping his arms around his mount’s neck thereby setting it off at a fast trot, ‘heck no, nothing like that. Jump bareback, much more fun. If you’ll excuse me, ma’am.’ At which he appeared to nearly fall from the horse, leaning and swaying and exclaiming, ‘Oh my, oh my, it’s years since I did this, oh my, oh my. Maybe if I call to it it will stop,’ he shouted, bolting off in the direction of the jumps as Ottilie closed her eyes.

He was going to be killed. Ottilie was quite sure that he was going to be killed and her life would be at an end.