Grand Affair

by Charlotte Bingham

  ‘You want to what?’

  Mr Cartaret stared at Ottilie over the top of his half-moon glasses, his eyes round and melancholy. His gaze did not upset Ottilie in the least. If it had been his wife staring at her it would have been different, because what with the pills and the gin and the onset of late middle age Mrs Cartaret’s expression had become more and more sour, and the look in her eyes more coldly indifferent, more filled with dislike for herself, for everyone, most of all, it sometimes seemed to her adopted daughter, for Ottilie.

  ‘I want to go to Paris, to a cooking school there, just for a few weeks, just for a month.’

  ‘I don’t think it’s possible.’

  Ottilie knew that this was Mr Cartaret’s way of saying that he could not afford to send her. She also knew that he was worrying as to who would take Ottilie’s place helping out at the hotel, if only for a few weeks, that, although he never said so, he was all too aware that she dusted and cleaned and stood in for just about everyone on every floor, and that Mrs Tomber might well crumple into a heap of exhaustion at the very idea of managing without her.

  ‘I know it’s difficult. I wonder – I wonder if you could listen to my plan?’

  ‘I am listening, Ottilie.’

  ‘Mrs Tomber and I have arranged to take on two temporaries, young girls, Spanish, very nice, and they will do my work—’

  ‘You’re too young to go abroad on your own, and besides, I don’t like Spanish staff, you know that. It’s never been successful for us to have Spanish staff.’

  ‘No, listen, really, please!’

  Ottilie always spoke in an over-cheerful manner to her father as if she was talking to someone who was not very well. She wanted to cheer him up, make everything all right for him, bring back the old days with lots of visitors coming to the hotel instead of just poor Blue Lady for her one month every year, but otherwise none of the old guard, none of the old courteous couples with their hired chauffeurs and their pathetic pretences that their personal maids were ‘unfortunately unwell’ rather than long dead.

  ‘No, listen, Pappa. This Spanish girl is coming with her cousin, and they don’t mind in the least working hard, they’re really very used to it because they’ve been working at the Angel Inn these last weeks, and since the Clover House group took them over—’

  ‘They slave them there, I do know that.’

  ‘Exactly. And as for the rest . . .’ Ottilie knew the bit about the money was going to be awkward, but she pressed on with her usual over-hurried way of talking, the words falling over themselves. ‘Well, you see, Mrs Le Martine sent me a cheque and I’ve saved and saved. Actually, it was her idea. She thinks I should. She thinks I would be of more use to you if I went to cooking school and learned a bit of French so that I could be more of a help instead of running around after everyone all day.’

  ‘Mrs Le Martine should mind her own business. You know your mother has no time for that woman. And besides, I don’t approve of you taking money from her. She’s no relation of yours.’

  ‘She might be.’

  Nowadays Ottilie made a joke of her adoption by the Cartarets, she found it best. Alfred looked up at her and started to say something, but then seeing the logic in her reply he stopped, hesitated, began to say something else instead, thought better of that too, and finally said, ‘Well, as a matter of fact, she might. Could well be a relative of the O’Flahertys, couldn’t she? By the way – how are all those brothers of yours?’

  Because she was asking something of Alfred, because her father knew he was going to have to answer her directly rather than go in for his usual evasions, Ottilie had steeled herself for this question, or one like it. She had already anticipated that he would be sure to ask her something calculated to delay the moment when he would have to respond. Alfred always did find some remark to make her feel suddenly vulnerable, stupid or lacking in some way (sometimes if she had just washed her hair he would murmur ‘Our cat has got a long tail’ as he passed her in the corridor, or on another day if she was trying to justify something he would say ‘Oh, clever clicks, they are a plague’). Ottilie knew that fond as he might be of her (and she thought he was quite) nevertheless now that she was grown up his overriding wish seemed to be to make her feel uncomfortable for some reason. In this instance he knew, all too well, that ‘all those brothers’ of hers had long ago left St Elcombe, and with the exception of Lorcan she never heard from them, not even a card at Christmas, nothing.

  As soon after he had left school as was possible, Sean had gone to Australia on an assisted passage, and Joseph – well, they all tried never to give a thought to Joseph now, it was too painful. As for Lorcan, he was training for the priesthood, which although surprising was not that extraordinary considering what a wonderful father he had been to them all when they were growing up.

  ‘Oh, please, Pappa,’ Ottilie continued, ignoring as she always did Alfred’s ability to refer to her roots at the most inopportune times, his funny little waspish streak that always seemed so anxious to remind her of her brothers’ defection. ‘Please let me go. It’s only for a few weeks, and I’m to stay in the business apartment of the family of one of Mrs Le Martine’s old friends on the Left Bank, and there’s a cooking school there called the Parisian School of Cookery—’

  ‘Original name—’

  ‘And I will come back with new ideas and be much more of a help in the kitchens and everywhere, I promise. Mrs Le Martine has even arranged for someone to take me round the kitchens in the Paris Ritz. Another old friend of hers works there, it seems. I will come back much better, really I will.’ Even as she pleaded with Alfred, the words bumper to bumper, trying to make him see just how much a few weeks in Paris would mean to her, Ottilie was utterly certain that it could only happen if her mother did not hear about it until it was a fait accompli, as Mrs Le Martine would call it, and Ottilie was gone.

  ‘Very well, but on one condition. You are not to tell your mother.’

  Now it was Ottilie who tried not to look astonished.

  It was the first time she had ever heard her father suggest that she should deceive, or admit publicly that he was capable of even suggesting deceit. ‘Nowadays your mother gets very upset about all sorts of things, and Mrs Le Martine is one of them. You know Mrs Le Martine never came back here after that dreadful night six years ago? She stays at the Angel Inn of all places?’ Of course Ottilie knew, she looked forward to her old friend’s visit all year. ‘Your mother has never forgiven her for her dreadful outburst that night in front of all the staff and so many of the guests, Ottilie. It was most uncalled for, I must say.’

  Ottilie did not like to say so, nor would she, but she knew all about this, because from the moment that Mrs Le Martine had left that night in such a blind fury at what had happened to Ottilie they had kept in touch. Ottilie had written to her at fortnightly intervals, via Edith’s home address.

  First she had, naturally, written to thank her for the money she had left in the envelope that day, and then she had written to her about what had happened at the hotel, and about saving for Lorcan’s fishing rod, and how the money Mrs Le Martine had left meant that she did not have to save for it at all, and how there was still some left and that she was saving that to buy Mrs Le Martine a Christmas present. And how Melanie had gone back to being nice to her. And not to worry because Edith had said that her mother was taking pills and going through a ‘trying time’. After that the writing of the letters, the sometimes rather one-sided correspondence (Mrs Le Martine was not a natural letter writer) had become a habit for Ottilie, something to which she looked forward, as if the act of writing the letter was a form of meeting Mrs Le Martine for tea in her suite, the way they had always done in previous years.

  Thank heavens Mrs Le Martine was not like a mother to her (Ottilie realized that she had already had too many mother figures in her life) yet Ottilie had become a little like a niece, or perhaps a goddaughter to her, and she thought that this was perhaps because Mrs Le Martine ha
d no other young people in her life, in spite of knowing so many people.

  Ottilie knew that Mrs Le Martine hated her having to be what she called ‘an unpaid servant’ at the Grand, that she wanted something better for her and that was why she was always trying to think of ways to help her, and why she sent her clothes and money via Edith. She knew, as well, that Edith liked her role of ‘safe house’ for all this postal love and attention, and that Edith too, like Mrs Le Martine, wanted Ottilie to be a lady and grow up to have a better life than she had ever had.

  ‘You don’t want to be like me, Miss Ottilie, really you don’t. Just dancing attendance on your mother all your life, and when she goes, which she will very soon believe me, left with nothing but your memories and too old for marriage.’

  Much as she loved her, Ottilie found that she could only agree with Edith. She did not want to grow up like her, but life was difficult like that, particularly at the moment, particularly at the Grand.

  As with a woman who wants to hide her age, it was her hands that had given Ottilie away. For when, on the first day of her annual visit to St Elcombe – but now in summer, and to the Angel Inn – Mrs Le Martine had taken them in her own, she had recoiled as if they had given her an electric shock.

  ‘Miss Ottilie! What have you been doing? Scrubbing floors and baths without gloves! Your palms are becoming like pumice stone, not at all attractive, really not at all. Oh my dear, you will never marry a gentleman, really you won’t, not if this goes on.’

  Although their relationship had changed so profoundly over the years, and although Ottilie was no longer able to make her heroine laugh quite so readily as she once had because Mrs Le Martine knew now about everything, and her wonderful old brown eyes now looked at Ottilie with compassion and pity where once they had sparkled with amusement at Ottilie’s cheek, there was one aspect in which Ottilie was quite certain Mrs Le Martine would never change, namely in her determination that when she grew up Ottilie should become a lady.

  She had been the first person to assess Ottilie’s maturing looks for her.

  ‘You have nice hair, very nice hair, thick and brown. You have beautiful eyes, large and expressive, you are very well made, your hands and feet are excellent, and provided you stay slim all should be well. However, your profile is not all that we would wish because your nose is too heavy, but your chin is small and your voice undoubtedly an asset. All this means that, if you take care to work hard on yourself, you will sweep men off their feet and break great numbers of hearts. Personally I will be most disappointed if you do not make a very great marriage indeed.’

  Ottilie did not dare to tell her guiding light – the person to whom she could always turn for advice, the only person to whom she could really talk or write about her feelings – she could not tell her the perfectly dreadful truth about herself, something not even Edith knew about her and to which Ottilie could never admit.

  Ottilie did not want to marry.

  Paris had changed. Ottilie knew this because Mrs Le Martine had told her so, often and often. Although this did not stop her wanting Ottilie to go there for a ‘little polish’, she nevertheless spent a great deal of time moaning to Ottilie about the way Paris had changed so dreadfully, and, naturally, for the worse, not at all like when she had known it in the early Fifties.

  Ottilie did not mind hearing that Paris had changed so much. It did not prevent her from longing to get to know this much worse Paris for herself, if only for a few weeks. As a matter of fact Ottilie was so used to being warned that life was about to be a disappointment, something to which she should undoubtedly inure herself, that she really hardly noticed how frequently Mrs Le Martine reminded her of the destruction of the old Paris, its loss of elegance, the decline of its restaurants, the lack of money to run the great private houses, or ‘hôtels’ as they were called there.

  Everyone Ottilie had ever known at the hotel, every older guest who had ever stayed had always said to her about everything – even sometimes about the Grand itself – ‘Oh, but it’s not at all like it used to be’.

  This phrase had been said so often to her that Ottilie found she had developed a form of double vision, so that she could never pause to admire anything, not a sparkling sea, not a beautiful bowl of fruit, not a tree in blossom outside the window, without also reminding herself some few seconds later that it could not of course be quite as beautiful as she thought it. No apple was really as crisp, no dress really as pretty, no-one as beautiful or as kind as ‘before the war’, because she had been told this so often by so many of the older guests at the hotel that she had actually come to believe it.

  But then came Paris.

  And as she stepped off the train at the Gare St Lazare, as the crowds hurried around her, as she picked up both her suitcases and determined on taking the Métro or the autobus, and the smell of abroad swam towards her, and the excitement of being alone and unknown in a great city washed over her, together with the knowledge that she was free for the first time in her life to do as she wished when she wished and that not even Edith knew where she was, Ottilie realized that she simply did not care if Paris was not like it used to be. She did not care how it had been, nor what she was missing from that time of ‘used to be’. For the first time in her life all she cared about was now, and here, and already within a minute of her arrival she knew deep down in her deepest heart that now was wonderful, and magical, and to hell with how it used to be. First she needed somewhere to stay.

  As she had told Alfred quite truthfully Mrs Le Martine had arranged for her to lodge, free of charge, in the business apartment of an old family friend. Having taken a taxi cab and proudly worked out the correct fare and a generous tip, Ottilie now faced the great broad steps running up to the door, but she could only see them, not reach them, for there were two great locked wrought-iron gates in front of her, while beside her the large red face of someone whom she at once took to be the concierge peered at her with more than a little interest.

  ‘Ah, MADEMOISELLE!’

  From now on Ottilie would have to get used to the extreme enthusiasm of the Gallic race, their inability to wash out a cardigan, buy a potato, or walk their dogs to a lamppost without reacting in the kind of way that not even the rescue of a drowning man off St Elcombe Point would have evoked in someone English.

  ‘Mais ENFIN! Vous êtes attendue, VOUS! Mais vouz avez voyagé LOIN, enfin!’

  Ottilie did not understand a word of the concierge’s welcome, but she very well understood the gates opening to allow her into the prettiest courtyard garden set about with statuary, and the beaming smile of the fat concierge, whose offer to carry one of her suitcases certainly did not go amiss.

  The apartment door eased itself open, and Ottilie edged her way into a front hall set about with large, dark oak chests, a marble bust and a vast vase of dried flowers. She looked with some admiration at everything, knowing all at once that she was standing in a hall that had been decorated by a man. The choice of dark red Pompeiian walls, and navy checked rugs, and the smell of expensive cigarettes long extinguished but greatly enjoyed, had nothing to do with the feminine sex.

  As it happened she had not bothered to ask Mrs Le Martine anything about the friend to whom the apartment belonged. She had merely accepted her offer with embarrassing eagerness, persuaded her father to let her off from being the unpaid under-housekeeper at the hotel, and bolted onto a boat heading for France so fast that by the time Alfred Cartaret had turned round, Ottilie was gone. And what was even better about her timing was that her mother, back from staying with a friend in Switzerland, had missed her opportunity to cancel Ottilie’s plans and tell her father that the hotel could not go on for a minute without her. She had missed having to make it her painful duty to tell Ottilie that she did not deserve any sort of rest from her life at the Grand, because nowadays she should be paying them back for everything they had done for her, and would do for her, not least giving Ottilie their name.

  And now it was too late. Ottil
ie was gone and not even Melanie could bring her back. Edith had packed her suitcases for her so beautifully that Ottilie feared she might feel homesick when she saw just how starched and fresh Edith had made all her old clothes look, because there was no question of Ottilie being able to go abroad dressed in the latest fashions, no Jackie Kennedy-style coats and dresses for her, just old shirtwaisters and flat little ballet-style pumps, and her dark brown hair worn daily either in a pony tail or loose about her shoulders in a page-boy hairstyle held back by an Alice band of black velvet.

  Not that madame la concierge in her flowered dress and with her steely little hair curlers still nestling under an old cotton scarf seemed to mind, because she carried on beaming at Ottilie despite the steep flight of stairs up to the apartment door and despite the suitcase with which she was intent on helping Ottilie.

  ‘Vous avez les clefs, ENFIN! Voilà, Mademoiselle, voilà! Vous allez apprendre la cuisine française? Mais c’est merveilLEUSE, ça! C’est MAGNIFIQUE! A plus tard, Mademoiselle!’ she cried, having unlocked the apartment door with a series of keys and handed Ottilie her own set.

  The concierge was gone, and for a second Ottilie stood alone and quite still in the chicly decorated hall listening to the sound of her footsteps retreating down the stone staircase to the lower floors until eventually she reached the courtyard outside. Ottilie watched her from above, waddling across the cobbled stones of the central part of the courtyard garden until she reached the little door in the wall from where she doubtless observed the rest of the world coming and going and probably not realizing that pretty soon their business would be her business.

  Once she had seen the concierge retreat to her little house in the wall Ottilie felt it was all right to explore the apartment. If she had not been so used to the strangeness of rooms just left, or rooms about to be occupied, she might have felt intrusive, but as it was she felt perfectly at liberty to open and shut those doors that had been left unlocked for her use, and peer into cupboards or look for a coffee maker in the kitchen without feeling that she was in some way trespassing.