Grand Affair

by Charlotte Bingham

  The very idea of Melanie appearing in rags was quite impossible to imagine, and certainly Madame’s clothes, Madame’s nightly descent of the semicircular staircase, Madame’s grand sweep into the dining room past openly admiring diners did give the hotel a certain class and glamour, no-one could deny that, and no-one did deny it. Melanie was not only a feature of the hotel, she was its centre, a personality in a way that her husband could never be, but as Ottilie was about to discover, it was at a price.

  ‘Ottilie,’ Melanie said, sighing a little as if she was about to tell her about someone else other than herself, ‘Ottilie, darling. I have to tell you the most annoying thing I have ever heard.’

  Ottilie waited. She had a feeling that she was going to be told something she did not want to hear because of the way Melanie was fiddling about with her cigarette lighter, turning the smart gold object over and over, over and over, over and over, again and again. There was something about her doing that and her way of smoking in rapid inhalations that was making Ottilie uneasy, as if she was seeing a side of Mamma that she had never seen before.

  ‘Yes,’ Melanie continued. ‘The most annoying thing I ever heard,’ she repeated. ‘I don’t know how it is, but it surely is, and that is that I am more than certainly in trouble with my bank manager. I cannot tell Dad – I cannot tell Pappa, as you want to call him, because he already gives me what he thinks is such a large allowance for my clothes and things, and he just doesn’t realize that I can hardly manage, if I am to look presentable at all, on what he does give me, the little that he does give me – even though it might seem quite large to him. If you understand me?’

  Ottilie did not quite understand in the first instance, but then it took only a glance round Melanie’s bedroom with its miles of cupboards for Ottilie to understand that it might be perfectly possible, however rich you were, not to have enough money to pay for all the clothes presently illuminated in Madame’s cupboards.

  ‘Now,’ Melanie continued, having stubbed out one cigarette and begun another immediately which she lit once more with the gold lighter. ‘You’re such friends with Mrs Le Martine, are you not? I wonder if you could just find out for me, that’s all you have to do, just find out, in a roundabout sort of way, if she would like to buy any of my clothes? You can tell her that I am having a grand clear-out. Make it seem as if you haven’t talked to me about it though, and then we can see if we cannot sell her some things, mmm? She loves clothes – all those trunks just for a month, and we are the same size, if not the same height.’

  Ottilie blushed scarlet. In fact her cheeks became so red that she thought if she held her hands in front of them they would become as warm as hot crumpets. What an agony of embarrassment for her to be asked to deceive her greatest friend in order to take money from her. What on earth would Mrs Le Martine say?

  ‘And Mrs Ballantyne, the woman you call Blue Lady? You could do the same thing with her, could you not? I could easily arrange for you to take up her tea one afternoon instead of Mary. I mean it’s only fun. Women love buying things that they think are a bargain, and after all, Ottilie, most of my clothes are scarcely worn. And they’re all beautifully cut, you know. I mean they’ll probably end up baying for bargains from you, but just don’t tell them I know you’re trying to hook them. Just drop a hint, a light mention, that’s all, and wait for them to take you up on it, make a bite. That’s always the best way.’

  Melanie had resumed her pacing of her large bedroom.

  ‘You could even say that I don’t want to sell anyone in the hotel anything because I don’t like people being seen in the same things as me, which is quite true. You can tell them that my clothes normally go away to be sold secondhand in Knightsbridge, which they all do, normally – except the place for some reason closed down at the end of last year. I mean, usually they are falling over themselves to buy my hardly worn clothes at secondhand prices, which leaves me with quite enough left over to settle with the wretched bank, but not now.’

  Ottilie’s colour had subsided and she had just started to think that what Melanie was asking of her was not so very terrible after all, that it would not be so difficult to drop a hint here, a hint there to Mrs Le Martine or Blue Lady – and what was more, she thought, with a sudden growing sense of excitement, she would now have every excuse to make friends with Blue Lady – when Mrs Cartaret raised a new issue.

  ‘And there’s something else, Ottilie. I want you to take these, and once you have, remember – I haven’t seen you, and I don’t know anything more about them.’

  Melanie stopped her pacing suddenly and dropped a pair of something small and heavy into Ottilie’s hand. She did it so casually and with such a lack of any sort of ceremony that the small items could have been something that she had just picked up off the carpet and wanted Ottilie to throw away. As it happened they were something that she wanted Ottilie to throw away, as she explained, but when Ottilie opened her hand and saw what the small but surprisingly heavy objects were, she knew that Melanie certainly could not have picked a pair of diamond earrings up from the carpet.

  ‘When we have finished talking, as soon as you can, I want you to go for a long walk with Edith and throw them away. Down a drain is a good place, any old drain in the town. Just let Edith go on ahead and then drop them down the drain, Ottilie. This will help me. This will really help your mamma a great deal, and after all I have done for you, Ottilie, you do want to help me, don’t you?’

  Melanie turned her eyes outlined with her favourite bright blue shadow on Ottilie, and very suddenly, indeed without hesitation, Ottilie knew, as always, that of course she wanted to help her.

  What else could Ottilie say? The woman standing in front of her had adopted her, changed her life, given her a hotel that was just like a palace to live in, everything. Ottilie put the earrings in her pocket. She did so swiftly, and without saying a word, as if she had done just such a thing before, and she saw that for once Melanie was surprised by her silence, and by the grave look on her face.

  ‘They are worth over a thousand pounds on the last valuation,’ Melanie went on, talking quickly. ‘I can settle my debts with that. But to keep the wretched bank manager happy until the insurance company pays out, I must have some small sum to float at him, anything, just anything, or your father will be furious. That’s why you have to sell some of my clothes to the guests if you can, Ottilie. It is vital, you do realize? In my position I simply cannot do such a thing.’

  There was a short silence during which Ottilie stared up at Melanie wondering, as always at these moments, what sort of person she was, and why she would not just go and ask her husband for the money and that would be that.

  ‘If you don’t,’ Melanie said, staring down at Ottilie so that her beautiful dark eyes seemed to her adopted daughter to be intent on burning into her own grey ones as she spoke, ‘if you don’t do everything I ask I will not just punish you the way you most hate, but something terrible will happen to you, Ottilie, something really terrible. Don’t forget that.’

  She walked over to the drinks tray and poured herself a gin and tonic.

  ‘You know I don’t like punishing you, but it has to be done sometimes, we both know that.’

  Ottilie’s heart sank and panic filled her eyes and her ears until she thought her body was melting. For the next hours all she could think of was that word ‘punish’.

  She never knew whether it was the earrings themselves or the knowledge that they were worth so much money that weighed more heavily as she walked beside Edith to the shops that afternoon. Certainly the implications of the worth of the earrings were quite terrifying, but the act of throwing away such valuable objects was awful, more awful even than what had happened to Ma that afternoon when she was found to have the tea and the biscuits in her carrier bag.

  ‘You look a bit sick, Miss Ottilie. You feeling all right?’

  Edith bent down and stared at Ottilie, her face at its most concerned.

  ‘I am all right, thank y
ou, Edith. But thank you for being sententious about me, all the same.’

  ‘Sententious? Whatever will you come out with next!’ Edith breathed in the ozone on the sea breeze and her blue eyes narrowed with amusement.

  With her gloved right hand around the diamond earrings in the bottom of her pocket Ottilie could not help suddenly thinking that was particularly funny. If Edith knew just what Ottilie had come out with she would die from the shock of it. But such moments were only a few seconds of relief in the overall tension that was overshadowing their normally boring and uneventful walk.

  Telling someone to throw away your earrings was one thing, but doing it was quite another. It was not in the least bit easy to throw away the earrings without anyone seeing. Everywhere, even so early in the summer season, there were people, people, people. People walking and looking, drifting and hesitating, crossing roads, stopping by traffic lights. To throw away even two such small objects as earrings would take the greatest ingenuity and suddenly it seemed to Ottilie that she might not be in possession of such powers.

  Apart from anything else, Edith would keep looking down at her every few seconds, checking on her, remarking every now and then that she was ‘definitely looking a bit peaky’ while all the time, as always, holding Ottilie’s hand as if she was afraid that someone might suddenly come along and kidnap her charge, or her charge might herself suddenly run off never to be seen again.

  As they walked determinedly on, a wind sprang up from nowhere and whipped round the corner of the cliffs, tearing round the sides and bursting into the safety of the bay into which St Elcombe fitted so neatly. Edith bent her head against its force, holding on to her hat with her gloved hand. Ottilie did the same, knowing with a sinking heart that any minute now Edith would turn for home, and they would be returning along the front and up into the hotel once more, with the earrings still lying a ghastly secret in the bottom of Ottilie’s coat pocket.

  ‘Oh, look. How awful, Edith, look . . .’ In a desperate attempt to gain some time Ottilie allowed one of her gloves to be carried off on the wind, and then watched in a sort of detached fascination Edith running after it, down the steps of the hotel out towards the pink road that led to the iron gates and so once more to the sea front and the palm trees of St Elcombe. As the poor woman dashed after her white glove Ottilie looked round in desperation for a drain, anything into which she could drop the two earrings, but there was nothing, and then Edith was back, laughing and smiling, carrying the glove, holding her own hat in place, and generally continuing to be the worst kind of companion for the criminal Ottilie now knew that she was. More even than Ma when she was her whole life, the centre of everything that was wonderful at Number Four, Edith appeared at that second to Ottilie to be a shining saint compared to her own awfulness.

  ‘Skippety skippety up to tea we go,’ Edith chanted, as she always did, and she took Ottilie’s left hand once more as they walked together up the broad steps towards the welcoming bustle of the Grand, only to find Mamma waiting for them in reception.

  She took Edith aside at once.

  ‘The most ghastly thing has happened, Edith,’ she murmured, ignoring Ottilie completely. ‘My diamond earrings have been stolen. The police are here. They are insured, of course, but let’s face it, they’ve been in the family for so long, no-one can make up for that. No money can compensate for the sentimental value.’

  Police. Edith’s face became chalk white – after all, if something went missing all the staff felt implicated, under a cloud. ‘Diamond earrings. How terrible, Madame, how perfectly terrible for you.’

  ‘It is terrible, Edith, it is too terrible for words. More terrible than I can tell you, and I am afraid that I have to ask you to go to the staff sitting room where the police will interview you.’

  Ottilie watched as Edith, now more green with fright than white or grey, removed her poor macintosh and hat in a hurried sort of way. She patted and reassured Ottilie and then went off towards the staff sitting room to confront her worst of all nightmares, a policeman in a uniform.

  ‘Ottilie, you can go to your room. This is all most unpleasant, and I want you kept out of it.’ Again Melanie’s blue-shadowed eyes seemed to be burning into Ottilie’s own, saying, ‘Behave yourself, do as you’re told, or you will be punished, remember?’

  Nevertheless, remembering only too well how Ma had cried at the police station that day, for once Ottilie defied Melanie’s burning glance and ran after Edith. Reaching up to her, she kissed her cheek and hugged her.

  ‘It’s all right, Edith, really it is. Everyone knows no-one here took them, really they do.’

  Edith nodded, but her blue eyes were full of fear. With the earrings still in the bottom of her pocket, Ottilie knew just how she felt, just how her knees must have gone to complete water, her heart be throbbing in her throat, her hands running with sweat.

  ‘To your suite, Ottilie, please. Until this matter is cleared up, to your suite, please.’

  Melanie nodded sharply at Ottilie and she turned and headed for the staircase, her mind in a turmoil of childlike anxiety.

  Ottilie stared out at the early evening. The earrings were still in her Hayward’s coat, still lying heavy in the pocket of that coat that was now hanging in the pretty hand-painted cupboard next door to her own private sitting toom. Supposing the police came into her room and searched her cupboard? Supposing she threw them out of the window? They might search the garden and find her finger prints on them.

  Supposing she put them down the plughole in the bathroom? That would be easy, except once when an old guest dropped his gold tooth down the plumber came right back up with it. Apparently they were searching all the staff rooms, looking through all their clothes, supposing they searched the drains? That day at the police station Ottilie had seen a young boy, just her age now, and he was being what Lorcan had called ‘had up’ and he was later found, ‘poor gossoon, hanging from his belt in the police cell’.

  Lorcan. Of course. He would know what to do. To run back home to the cottage would be the answer to everything. No-one at the hotel would miss her at this hour, and she could tell Lorcan everything, and maybe he would think of something, or maybe he would throw the earrings away for her somewhere where no-one would ever think of throwing them, somewhere where they could never be found, not ever. Whatever happened, Lorcan would surely tell her what to do, or Joseph, or Sean. Someone at the cottage would tell her what to do.

  Ottilie would never forget jumping out of that window and the feel of the soft earth as it seemed to rise and meet the bottom of her sandals. It didn’t matter now that she had dirtied her always immaculate white socks, that she had fallen once or twice as she escaped from the back of the hotel and out towards the straggle of cottages that lay behind it, and onto the hard, high-hedged but winding road that led up, up and away into the countryside, where lay, not the enclosed fascinations of hotel life, but fields and cows and wild birds and flowers, and a breeze that sprang up from over the top of the tall hedges, a breeze which seemed to be less salty, more mellow.

  All the time Ottilie was running and running towards the cottage she had forgotten that Ma would not be there when she arrived. She knew she was dead, of course, but even so she did not expect her not to be there when she eventually arrived. Her rich laugh, her long thick red plait of hair, her lively voice overlaid with the soft Irish tone, everything that was Ma was what Ottilie was really running towards. The smell of her lavender scent, the early morning tea rituals, that was what she was racing towards, the pure love of Ma who had made Ottilie the centre of her life, her own little star, whom Ottilie loved more than anyone else in the world.

  There at last was the door, but behind it was not the smell of lavender, nor the sound of the rich, gurgling laugh, nor the glimpse of the flowery frocks that she wore, but the sound of a tinny transistor radio playing, and as Ottilie burst into the cottage there was not the smell of polish, and tea on the stove, the brown pot ready to be filled with bubbling water
beside the blue patterned mugs, but the strong smell of old boots flung across the door and tobacco, strong cigarette tobacco, not the kind that Mum smoked in her sitting room at the hotel, but another kind, acrid and unpleasantly real, and Lorcan was not sitting studying at the kitchen table, as she had somehow thought that he might be going to be, and Sean was not there doing his homework. Only Joseph was there, smoking a tipless cigarette, a dull look to his already mature gaze, his hair longer than it had used to be, and a tattoo on his arm.

  ‘Ottie!’ Joseph seemed unpleasantly surprised to see her, as if he had been expecting someone else, as if she was the very last person he wanted to see. ‘Aren’t you meant to be at the hotel?’ he went on, frowning, and already walking her back towards the cottage front door.

  ‘Where’s Lorcan?’ Ottilie managed to get out, even though she had a stitch in her side from running, and could hardly breathe.

  Joseph looked down at the unusual sight of Ottilie’s muddied white socks, dirty shoes, and her coat which was now edged with mud.

  ‘What have you been doing, Ottie? What have you been up to? Coming bursting into the place like this, whatever are you doing back here? You don’t belong here now, you know, you belong to the hotel now, you know that. Do they know you’re here, Ottie? Have you done something wrong?’ he added at last, noticing the tension in her young face.

  Ottilie looked up at Joseph.

  ‘Yes,’ she heard herself say. ‘I’ve done something terribly wrong, and now the police are there, and I don’t know what will happen if I don’t get rid of these like I said I would, but there’s always someone, so I can’t. I have to get rid of these earrings the way Mamma wanted but I can’t because Edith’s always there and now the police are there I can’t because someone will see me, and they might search the whole countryside and find them, but I must throw them away or something terrible will happen to me. Oh, and I so hate it when she punishes me.’