Grand Affair

by Charlotte Bingham

  He shrugged and laughed, waved his hand in an elegant gesture, and, turning towards the corridor from which Ottilie had so suddenly appeared in her bath towel, he disappeared towards his own suite of rooms, singing all too appropriately, it seemed to his admiring audience of one, ‘La Vie en Rose’.

  Ottilie closed her bedroom door and lay against it the way she had once seen Ingrid Bergman doing in a very old film to which Edith had taken her at the St Elcombe fleapit. She was on her own in a stylish apartment in Paris with a Frenchman with an American accent who was far too attractive for his own good. How Mrs Le Martine would laugh if she told her and say, ‘Whatever next, Miss Ottilie!’

  After that first encounter with Monsieur, by which name his lodger always thought of him, there was added electricity in the Parisian air for Ottilie, and she could not help recognizing it. Every morning when she slipped out of bed – making sure not to run her bath in what she now realized was his bathroom, but to use the shower room next to her own – she chose her clothes with ever greater care. And every afternoon when her cooking lessons finished, leaving her new set of American friends at the cooking school to discover the Louvre on their own, unable to help herself, Ottilie returned to the apartment, somehow drawn back to that electricity that an attractive man can create around him, that feeling that any minute now something would happen, although quite what she hardly knew.

  ‘Monsieur’ might be how Ottilie thought of him, and yet she had not so much as glimpsed him again since that first meeting when she had only been in a bath towel, and somehow she thought if she did meet him again she would never dare to ask him what she really wanted to know, which was if he was Monsieur, where was Madame?

  Where was the beautiful woman in all the paintings and drawings around the flat? Where was the mother of his son, seen posing so elegantly with her new baby in her arms? Where was the smiling young woman in the drawing that Ottilie thought was so beautiful? A slender beautiful young woman having her hair brushed by a little dark-haired boy dressed in a Tyrolean suit?

  In other words, where was the love of Monsieur’s life?

  Without realizing it, and in between enjoying the riot of the new intake of more good-natured and gloriously carefree ladies from Texas and Ohio, all intent on having themselves what they called ‘a ball’ at the Parisian School of Cookery, Ottilie began to fantasize about her ‘Monsieur’.

  This was yet another legacy of growing up at the Grand Hotel, St Elcombe. Ottilie was almost physically incapable of meeting someone and not compulsively making up some story around them. A childhood and early adolescence spent watching new arrivals and wondering about them, wondering why they were coming to the hotel, what they would be doing while they were there, and what their lives were like at home, meant that with each new face came a new story waiting to be invented.

  But fantasize as Ottilie might about the man who was allowing her to reside in his beautiful apartment, after that first evening Ottilie never did encounter Monsieur again, and wilfully the last days of her last fortnight in Paris raced by, each day seeming determined to increase its speed to such an extent that Ottilie started to dread waking in the mornings, hating to see daylight once more, because each new autumn morning meant one day less, and one day less meant that soon she would be back to everyday life at St Elcombe, and nothing would ever be the same again.

  I would be charm if you would come to dinner with me on your last night.

  The plain card with the French-style rick-rack border was pushed under her bedroom door.

  Monsieur wanted her to dine with him!

  But how did he know that she had only one night left in Paris, and why did he want to take her out to dinner when he hardly knew her? Not that Ottilie really cared in the least to know the answer to these two questions, or indeed any others.

  That morning she chose to wear her navy blue travelling outfit with the stiff white collar, and so dressed, stylishly and impeccably in a suit that had once belonged to her mother, which Edith had altered especially for Paris, Ottilie left a note on the hall table for Monsieur.

  J’aime bien diner avec vous, Monsieur, ce soir.

  She did not think this was at all the correct French for a formal acceptance, although she did know enough to put ‘vous’. At the same time she signed herself not ‘Mile Cartaret’ but, after some deliberation, ‘Ottilie Cartaret’, and then she skipped off towards the cookery school, running past the concierge’s little house and calling ‘bonjour, madame!’ and feeling in a fury of excitement at the idea of having dinner with Monsieur despite its being her last night in Paris.

  It was also her last day at the cookery school. And at half past two o’clock it was time to walk for what she knew had to be the last time under the little archway wreathed in vines, and onto the narrow street outside with a feeling of must remember this, a feeling of don’t ever forget, a feeling of whatever happens no-one can ever take these four weeks away from you, not ever.

  ‘Are you feeling as sad as I am, honey?’

  One of the American ladies squeezed Ottilie’s hand as together they looked back at the archway that led to the little courtyard filled with tables and chairs where they had all dutifully eaten their way through each other’s cooking.

  ‘Yes.’

  Ottilie was feeling sad. She had to admit to that. What she could not, however, also admit to was a feeling of intense excitement, as if something wonderful was going to happen to her that evening, as if her whole world was suddenly going to change, which indeed it was, although it would be some years before she discovered why, or just how completely.

  Monsieur stared at Ottilie in amazement and seemed just about to smile, or even laugh, but then he appeared to check himself and think better of it, and instead he put his head to one side and made an ‘ah!’ sound with a flat ‘a’ not an ‘aaah’. So it was not exactly, Ottilie quickly noted, an appreciative sound but rather an abrupt ‘Let’s think again’ sound, the kind of sound a person makes when they have suddenly thought of something they had not thought of before, or changed their minds about something completely.

  If Ottilie could have seen what he was actually thinking she thought perhaps she might not like it at all, but happily for her she could not, so she waited in the doorway, looking at him where he stood by the collection of drinks at the further end of the salon, shyly wondering why it was that when a Frenchman looked at you, any Frenchman anywhere, on the Métro, by the bus stop, if you were English you always had the feeling that he was smiling at you rather than with you.

  ‘Mademoiselle Cartaret – Ottilie – if I may? Yes, ’ow can I tell you? We are going to Tour d’Argent for dinner, yes? So. You must look wunnerful becoz there will be many wunnerfully chic women there, le tout Paris, enfin! I cannot – I cannot take you to Tour d’Argent dress as an armchair!’

  Ottilie looked down at her flowered cotton summer evening dress. It was an ‘Edith special’, cut down from one of Melanie’s dresses long ago. Ottilie had worn it many times in the hotel restaurant and for staff birthdays. It was meant to be a classic, or what Edith always called a ‘classic’.

  ‘I am afraid I will have to go dressed as an armchair, Monsieur, or not at all, because I only have this dress,’ Ottilie explained haughtily, determinedly resolute on the exterior, head held high, while inside she melted at the very idea of how terrible a flower-printed dress with a ribbon under the bust must look to a rich, chic, Frenchman who had silk mills and a historic factory which, Mrs Le Martine had told her in impressed tones, produced some of the finest and most beautiful fabrics for the top Italian and French designers.

  ‘May I dress you, please?’

  Ottilie thought ‘Why not?’ for she was not so naive as not to notice that his eyes had already undressed her.

  ‘But of course,’ Ottilie readily agreed, as always suddenly feeling liberated in his company. ‘I do look terrible, don’t I?’ she confided to him, suddenly unable to keep up her haughty façade, and yet wide-eyed at this im
mediate intimacy that they had achieved.

  ‘Awful!’ he agreed, walking ahead of her and indicating for her to follow him. ‘So Ingleesh, so awful!’ he told her, turning back. ‘This dress, you poor darling – my Ghad, she is so badly made! Perhaps all right for an old couch, n’est-ce pas? But you don’t want people at Tour d’Argent to sit on you, ma petite, enfin, do you? Look at you, but not sit on you, I think!’

  At this Ottilie completely lost the remains of her assumed hauteur and started to laugh, and the more she laughed the more Monsieur did too, until they were both quite helpless.

  ‘This is my mother’s, cut down,’ Ottilie explained eventually, wiping her eyes, her sides aching, while at the same time she marvelled at this sense of being quite at ease, in a way that she had never felt with anyone else.

  ‘My Ghad, Ottilie! Promise me. Never ever wear Ingleesh clothes again, will you? You are too petite, too fine, you know? You must always wear European clothes, and sometime maybe some of the new American younger designers, but not Ingleesh. You are not tall enough, although you ’ave a good little figure and that is great.’

  Monsieur’s Americanized French was entrancing, giving everything he said a dashing appeal, each sentence reminiscent of some sort of stylish beefburger, but served with a sauce béarnaise on the side.

  ‘Come with me. My factory ‘as made some beautiful silks for many beautiful couturiers, and when they are finished they often send me back something, an original for my museum of costume near Lyon. Sometime I like, sometime I do not and I give it to a woman friend, but yesterday something very new and beautiful arrive. It is not quite original enough for my museum, but it is ravissant, and I hope you will be ravished by it.’

  He looked down at her thoughtfully for a second, and Ottilie smiled. It was her last night and frankly she could not wait to be ravished by his choice of dress and to hell with the conventions, if there were any.

  She followed him down a long dark corridor into an unoccupied but obviously once very feminine room. Going to a great dark oak cupboard, he opened it and took the dress, with reverential and minutely artistic care, from underneath its cocoon of cotton covers, unwrapping it piece by piece, many, many times, because such is the fear of daylight, he explained to Ottilie, that when an original and beautiful garment is finished it must be wrapped over and over in only the best cotton for fear of sunlight harming it.

  Finally there it was, the dress he had chosen to unveil for her, and he stood back, holding it up against her. They both viewed what could be about to be a fine result in the long looking glasses that decorated the end wall of the elegant, old-fashioned boudoir in which they stood.

  ‘Mademoiselle Ottilie, I do not wish to embarrass you, but do you ’ave any underpinnings for such a dress?’

  At this remark, which seemed to shatter the awestruck silence that had fallen as they both looked at Ottilie and the dress in the mirrors, Ottilie blushed, because, she suddenly realized, no man had ever spoken to her about her underwear before.

  ‘Only a little!’

  ‘A little is great, a little is all you must wear with such a dress, Mademoiselle Ottilie, you know? And when you step in, let me tell you not to worry yourself because you will find it is all built in, n’est-ce pas? All very tight. It will embrace you inside, n’est-ce pas? And just some sheer on the legs, mmm, stockin’ very sheer, yes? Much smoother. And shoes, let me see?’

  He went to a cupboard and opened a door. Inside Ottilie could see literally dozens of pairs of shoes, most of them hardly worn.

  ‘All samples, you know? We are sent samples of so much, my Gahd! And zen I send zem to my nieces, to their friends, to the charities for the ladies’ causes, you know? ’Ere, these will be very pretty, ravishing. I think I have your size quite right. I have the eye, you know, for the female size. I have many, many sisters, and I the only boy.’

  Ottilie tried on one tiny sandal, so little leather, but the heels so incredibly high that even she could see that it made the length of the dress seem quite conventional.

  ‘I not only have many sisters, I have great taste, n’est-ce pas?’

  Monsieur nodded at his reflection in the mirror almost affectionately. As for Ottilie, she could hardly wait to tear off the dress she was wearing, which she too now thought of as an old chair cover, and throw it out of the window down to the place where the concierge kept the dustbins, because that was where it quite obviously belonged.

  Bedroom door firmly locked, she struggled into the dress which Monsieur had chosen for her. All the time she was struggling out of the chintz dress and into the model dress she did not dare to look at herself in her mirror, because just seeing the beauty of the dress and how it was made filled her with dread that she was not going to look very nice in this ravishing garment, that beautiful though it was it was not going to suit her, or she it. But when she turned to face herself in the wall mirror she saw how very wrong she was.

  She saw what now seemed to be a much taller and more slender dark-haired girl, a girl with a solemn awestruck expression, a girl who looked as if she was always meant to grow into someone out of the ordinary, someone she would not have known from a few minutes before. Could just a dress make such a difference to her? It was as if she had never seen herself before, as if with the putting on of just one dress she was a butterfly finally emerged from the chrysalis of childhood.

  Off the dress had certainly looked lovely, but on it seemed to her that the dress was almost too beautiful. Made of gold iridescent silk with a high Medici collar that framed her face behind her head, it had a pleated train and skin-tight sleeves. It was not only a beautiful dress now, Ottilie realized, it was a dress for all time, fashion at its most haut and couture at its most arresting, but at the same time owing everything to yesterday.

  The collar that framed the face, the train, the skin-tight sleeves, everything about it said ‘the past is present in me’. And because Monsieur had cleverly chosen such high-heeled shoes for Ottilie’s small, slender feet, when she walked up and down she found the length of the dress seemed quite perfect, and that her slim, not quite seventeen-year-old figure was also perfect for its exaggeratedly tight figure-hugging lines.

  Ottilie unlocked her bedroom door. As she walked slowly down the corridor towards the double doors of the salon she found her greatest difficulty was not to smile. Outside the room, within which she knew Monsieur would now be waiting for her with some impatience, one eye on the great gold clock, she tried to assume her most serious expression. She tried to think of cold, blue, sad, bad things, and having done so she put her hand over the old handle of one half of the double doors and turned it.

  Because she had been at such pains not to smile foolishly, like some sort of stupid naive girl wearing her first real evening dress, she put her hand up to her face and bit on her thumb.

  ‘My Gahd, that is beautiFOOL, but please remove your finger from your mouth, Ottilie. You are not a girl scoot, enfin, you are a beautiFOOL girl. BeautiFOOL girls do not mangent leur doigts!’

  Monsieur frowned and walked towards Ottilie, one hand by his side, the other poised to adjust whatever he thought needed adjusting. The collar – twitch. The skirt – twitch. The tiny train – he spread it out a little before standing back and then walking all round her. Finally he stretched out his hands and pulled back her long dark hair in a manner that was as detached and disinterested as a hairdresser’s.

  Ottilie stood quite still as he did so, for this was the first time a man she hardly knew had touched her hair.

  ‘I think you must knot it into your neck. You know what I mean by that? A knot? Brush under and then knot, very tight, it will set off ze collar much better.’

  Back once more to her bedroom, and having done as he instructed with the aid of a few fine hairpins, Ottilie once more reappeared in front of Monsieur and received a nod of approval.

  ‘Good.’

  He smiled suddenly and picked up his beautiful, red-silk-lined evening coat and nodded for h
er to precede him. For a second, as he handed her an evening cloak and helped her put it round her shoulders, Ottilie felt terrified. How would she survive all evening with an older man, walking ahead of him into hotels or restaurants? Then, remembering Melanie making her nightly descent down the steps of the gold staircase at the Grand, she pretended that she was doing the same. Staring straight ahead of her, head held high, hips slightly forward, eyes blank, lips smiling just slightly, she started to walk elegantly forward, and it was in this way that she entered what seemed to her to be the great arena of the Tour d’Argent.

  On their way to the restaurant in his chauffeur-driven Citroën Monsieur had appeared to suddenly bow to a whim and stop off at the Georges Cinq to ‘show you off to my old American friends there. My Gahd! Why should the Tour d’Argent ’ave all the fun?’

  Ottilie was solemnly introduced, as prearranged with her, and by agreement, as ‘my English goddaughter’.

  All the eyes on her in her figure-hugging dress said ‘Oh yes?’ but in truth all the time she was sipping her grenadine through a straw, and he was sipping his dry martini – without a straw – Monsieur treated her with such courtly detachment, and yet looked so proud of her appearance – head held high, dark hair caught into the nape of her neck, no make-up except for a little touch of lipstick – that after only a few minutes not only had he convinced his acquaintances of his godfatherly status, he had somehow managed to convince Ottilie that she was indeed his goddaughter.

  At the Tour d’Argent it was quite different. Here the waiters looked her up and down with outward appreciation, but, as they pulled her chair back for her and spread her heavy linen napkin over the precious dress, Ottilie had the feeling that the expression in their eyes definitely said ‘cocotte’. And she herself felt that Monsieur had, for many evenings, long ago, or perhaps even just recently, brought the beautiful woman from the paintings and drawings to this very table, but she was too discreet, too well trained from her childhood at the Grand, to ask him anything, or indeed to do more than look forward to listening to him, to lighting his cigar, and look as decorative and sophisticated as it was possible to be when you are still only sixteen and dining in perhaps the greatest restaurant in Europe.