Grand Affair

by Charlotte Bingham

  What will happen when we go back to the apartment? This thought would keep recurring. The trouble was, Ottilie had never had to think ahead for herself because at the Grand there was always someone she could talk to, or someone to whom she could turn. From the moment she stepped out of her bed to the moment she went back to it at night she was never alone, and although nowadays Alfred looked permanently worried, and Melanie rarely left her suite except on Saturday nights, nevertheless everything that happened was taken care of by them and the staff, and all that was required of Ottilie was that she should be what they always called of use.

  It was very different now that she was alone in a restaurant with an older sophisticated man, and for a few seconds, as she contemplated this thought that ‘something might happen’ when they returned to the apartment, it seemed to her that she really should begin to learn to think ahead a little. Yet even though she was indeed afraid of that thought, even though she felt a sense of foreboding, the truth was that dangerous though her situation was, or might be, she still somehow could not find it in herself to care so much that she would allow it to dominate the evening. From the moment that she had seen Monsieur looking exactly as she had always wanted an older man to look, tall, tanned, dark hair greying at the sides, slim, elegant, and displaying a very evident enjoyment in her youth and beauty, she had only wanted to continue to live from minute to minute, as she had been doing for the past four weeks, because that, it seemed to her, was what real happiness was all about.

  It was all about now, catching hold of the moment and not letting it slip away. Now was the colour of the coral-pink lobster against the plate, now was the woman dressed in black at another table with a violet-coloured sash and a little evening hat with a veil in the same colour.

  ‘You really love couleur, do you not, Ottilie?’

  Ottilie smiled and she herself coloured a little as she realized that perhaps a too-long silence had elapsed while she had selfishly allowed herself too much time to look, however surreptitiously, around at the other diners, at the other women, at the evening, at the darkened skies and the stars beyond the windows, at everything except Monsieur who was after all her host, her godfather for the evening.

  He seemed to understand though, because he smiled and nodded at her as if he had always known her, as if he could appreciate and share her fascination with other people.

  ‘I too love couleur. That is why – my Gahd, that is why I am so fortunate in my business. Silk is all about couleur. And you know, when they unroll those couleurs in front of my eyes, sometime, sometime I think I am the luckiest man on zis earth. To be living and working with what to me is sacred – to be living and working with couleur, well, you can appreciate, Ottilie, it is so sensual. You know? So – ’ow can I say? – well yes, if you will forgive the vulgarity, it is sexy!’

  There, it was out, and it lay between them as if he had spilt some wine on the tablecloth. SEXY. In Ottilie’s mind it was capitalized, it was emphasized, it was neon-lit.

  ‘Ah, now I see I have shocked you a little bit, Ottilie! But you know, my muzzer she was americaine so I am partly a little New World, and also I was at Harvard for three years, so I am allowed these petites libertés from the New World, no?’

  ‘No, no, at least yes, no, not at all, I quite understand. As a matter of fact I think you’re right, as a matter of fact. It is sexy, colour is sexy, it is just that I never thought of it like that before, and that is pretty strange when you come to think of it, considering I live by the sea and the sea is all about changing colour, and in a hotel, and people are all about colour, and so yes, of course it is sexy, and that other word – sensual. And you’re right, I am in love with colour.’

  The words had tumbled over themselves – Ottilie even spoke what little French she had managed to master too quickly – but now they were out and lying about the table, and Monsieur seemed to like them, because he appeared to be picking over them before replying.

  ‘I will advise you in your life tonight, my little Ottilie.’

  She was his now, and she did not care in the least.

  ‘You are a beautiful young girl, and now I will help you because that is what an older man is for. But first I will begin with the best advice in the world.’

  He hesitated, and so Ottilie leaned forward and asked, ‘Which is?’

  ‘Never eat cheese at night!’

  If Monsieur knew everything about dining and wining, if he knew on which side of which hill a grape had been grown, if every waiter in the room appeared to know him, and more than that, if everyone in the restaurant did too, and stopped by their table to talk and smile, and appreciate the sight of this handsome older man dining in company with his English goddaughter, and if the men murmured their appreciation of Ottilie’s beauty to Monsieur, and if he seemed to want to share their pleasure in her appearance, in her youth, in the delight of the evening, the glamour of the occasion, Ottilie at least knew how to make people talk.

  People were what growing up at the Grand had been all about, and not just old or lonely people without friends but all people, and so it was, without realizing it, that Ottilie had mastered the ability to watch people when they were not talking, and listen to them when they were silent.

  So now, as they were served coffee and Monsieur rolled a cigar between his fingers and then held it out for Ottilie to light, she remembered the expression in his eyes that first evening when he had arrived in the apartment, when he had stood looking at her, wrapped only in one of his own chic navy blue bath towels with the dull purple edge.

  ‘How did you actually meet Mrs Le Martine, Monsieur?’

  The cigar smoke smelt delicious and the shape the smoke was making seemed to curl its way around Ottilie’s words.

  ‘Ha! You may well ask that question, Ottilie. How did I meet ’er? I met ’er because long after the war, because my parents have this so great respect for ’er. She has come over here from England under cover many, many times. Mrs Le Martine she go straight ahead and she volunteer for this work, because she know all these people because her husband had a French fazzer. That is why she is so good for the undercover work, not just that she speaks French without any accent, but her name is French, enfin! If the Gestapo shout “Arrêtez, Le Martine!” and you do not turn, in those day you are dead, mort, believe me. You have two second, maybe less, you can imagine, n’est-ce pas? You have two, maybe three second and then bang, you are dead because everyone only turn, comme ça’ – he snapped his fingers – ‘when they hear their name shouted if it is their name. She was “Le Martine” already ten years, so – no problems for her.

  ‘You know, every time I see un général, no matter who he is, with all these médailles – medals – I think of those days. It was Mrs Le Martine, and she has no medals, it was small people like her who had the courage. Fifteen times she was dropped into France. Once she walk into an ’otel and she put something quite small into the pocket of this Gestapo general, and it was a revolving door where she pass him, nice smile, beautiful clothes, you know? So he smile and he follow her into this revolving door thinking of making a “pick-up” for himself. This man – c’est un diable – he was famous for hanging children, you understand? So. She walk off, the door she jam, the explosion happen, and no-one think this young woman with her beautiful clothes has put an explosive in his pocket and jam the door. All they see is this woman, very pretty, very nice, and she walk off, slowly, slowly round the corner, then the general blow up and no-one understand how it happen!’

  Ottilie always loved stories, but she particularly loved stories that were true – growing up at the Grand she had heard so many from the old ladies and the gentlemen. It was not difficult for her to imagine a younger Mrs Le Martine, always so well dressed, even during the war, her slender figure swaying on slightly too high a heel in front of the Gestapo general, her smile, even her entrancing laugh, and how she would walk ahead, and how he would follow her not realizing what she had slipped into his greatcoat pocket, not r
ealizing that she was his angel of death, sent perhaps by the little children he had murdered to do to him what they could not do to him themselves.

  ‘She is a wonderful woman, Mrs Le Martine. I would do anything for her, you know?’

  ‘Yes, even have an English girl to stay in your flat?’

  ‘Yes, even that. But you know – merci, oui, encore un café!’ as the waiter leaned over to offer them more coffee. ‘I tell you ’ow many times that woman come to France? So many times, and after so many times she must have become more frightened. My Gahd, you know how it is, you do something once’ – Monsieur shrugged his elegant shoulders – ‘and it is all right, you do it twice, a little bit more frightened, n’est-ce pas? You do it three, four, fourteen times, you must know terror! Always thinking this time it must be the last, but always with Mrs Le Martine, she is always thinking, she told me, “Just one more time, one more time to kill someone who has killed so many innocents, to stop him killing more.”’

  ‘How did she know so many French people, though?’

  Ottilie frowned. Up until that moment she had not thought of Mrs Le Martine, despite her name, as having had so many international relations that she could slip in and out of wartime France with such confidence, knowing that she would always know someone.

  Monsieur looked round the restaurant, at the diners, at the waiters, at the chic and beautiful women, the immaculately dressed gentlemen.

  ‘My dear Ottilie, if you think that le tout Paris – le gratin as we call it in France – if you think that we know many, many people I do assure you that we do not. We are as nothing compared to the waiters, the chefs, the concierges. The people who know everyone are the people who work in these places, the restaurants, the hotels.

  ‘They know us, of course, but they also know each other, so they know double what we know, what you and I know. Mrs Le Martine she had been first a waitress at the Georges Cinq ’otel, and then she was a lady’s maid to the Comtesse de la Chard de Corbonne. A beautiFOOL woman! A woman who everyone has love. And she has love everyone! Many, many men, but all her secrets they are with Mrs Le Martine. No-one but Mrs Le Martine know who has loved her mistress. She is discreet, always, Mrs Le Martine, but she know everyone. The lovers they all have valets and lady’s maids, and they ’ave ’usbands and wives, and so—’ Monsieur shrugged his shoulders. ‘And so Mrs Le Martine she is someone who know everyone!’

  Ottilie was amazed, yet somehow unsurprised as well, because after all everything Monsieur had just said made sense of everything that Mrs Le Martine was, and everything that she was quite definitely not. Her adoration of everything that was fine and beautifully made from clothes to furnishings. Her ability to cheer Ottilie and pull her out of her occasional adolescent self-pity, her staunch support of her young friend over the years, from the dreadful night when she had left the Grand in such a furious hurry once she learned of Ottilie’s having been beaten by her mother. Everything made sense, given her previous occupation of a lady’s maid. Now she thought about it Ottilie realized that Mrs Le Martine was too carefully elegant to be real, too insistent on standards to be like Philip and Constantia Granville. Everything about her was really rather too much the Countess, and too little the maid.

  Seeing that her large eyes had never left his face, and Ottilie had remained quite silent, Monsieur obviously felt it was safe to continue his story without fear of boring his young companion.

  ‘And so, most sadly, the poor young Countess she died young, of something that young girls still die from in those days before we have penicillin, huh? But in her maid, in Mrs Le Martine, she made sure that she lived on because – Mrs Le Martine became her!’ Ottilie’s eyes widened as Monsieur went on to explain. ‘Everything, everything we think of as our Mrs Le Martine, every strong characteristic – that is not her originally, originally that is the Comtesse de la Chard de Corbonne come to life. I know this because I have spoke with many, many people, and they are old friends of this famous young woman, and they all say when they have met Mrs Le Martine with me, but it is Marie-Thérèse to the life! The laugh, the walk, the clothes – everything is her mistress come to life. Of course that is why she became so good for this work against the Gestapo, when she become this beautiful woman in place of the maid, you know? She become la Comtesse. She is a – how you can say, a doppelgänger? Of course it happen many times, you know, the secretary become like her boss, the valet become like his master, but maybe never quite so well, I am told, as Mrs Le Martine and the beautiful Comtesse de la Chard de Corbonne. Here, I will show you.’

  Monsieur took an old crocodile-skin wallet from his evening jacket and from the side, after removing many small photos, he produced one now faded to a sepia tint.

  ‘This is her, no? This is the woman who rescued my fazzer and my muzzer and me – yes?’

  Ottilie took the photograph and stared at it. It was indeed Mrs Le Martine. There was her mysterious smile, there her elegance, there her beautiful clothes, the scarf knotted just so, everything perfect, the angle of the hat, the long elegant legs.

  ‘But you see, Ottilie, this is not Mrs Le Martine. This is the Countess.’

  Ottilie gave Monsieur back the photograph. She could not say so to this man, but quite a large part of her was now suffering a sense of disappointment, of being let down. If Mrs Le Martine was only a replica of someone else long dead, if she was most definitely not herself, if she was only a maid imitating a Countess, she seemed somehow a little lessened in Ottilie’s eyes. She suddenly felt as if she had been tricked. Perhaps Monsieur sensed what Ottilie was thinking because he said, ‘Of course, you know, it does not matter if she is a maid or a Countess, she is a great woman, and a very brave woman,’ and he replaced the photograph in his wallet. ‘I like to think of you, Ottilie, as always having a friend such as her. So. Alas, now this beautiful evening must end, I must return to Lyon, you must go back to England. I hope you will always remember what I have said to you, all the wise advice I have given you, yes? Please repeat to me like a good pupil.’

  Ottilie repeated obediently in an approximation of his accent, ‘Never salt the meat before cooking. Scent yourself before you dress, but most of all never eat cheese at night!’

  There. It was all over. The glorious evening was over, and to Ottilie the realization was like a bucket of cold water, because all of a sudden, without more than a few minutes’ warning, he was leaving the restaurant and she was walking in front of him. He was handing her into the chauffeur-driven car and all her worries about what was going to happen when they returned to the flat were over, and although Ottilie knew that she should feel relieved for some strange reason all she was actually feeling was disappointment. So much so that when they arrived at the station where he was to take his train and Monsieur leaned across and gave her a large envelope with her name on it, she even forgot to thank him.

  ‘Au revoir, Ottilie, and don’t forget this little advice I give you—’

  ‘How could I? Never eat cheese at night!’

  They both laughed and then he was gone, walking quickly away, a small expensive suitcase in one hand, towards the train, towards the manufacturing of his beautiful silks, towards his colours, his other life about which Ottilie knew nothing, and now did not want to know any more. It did not matter that he was too old and Ottilie too young, all that mattered was that tonight, this one evening, they had shared something that perhaps neither of them would ever forget, something which added to and did not subtract from the beauty of the city, like the light rain on the road glittering in the car’s headlights, the few people loitering around the station waiting perhaps for their lovers, or their friends.

  The night outside the car window was as smooth and dark and as beautiful as any night in Paris, and along the black and wondrous waters of the river bateaux mouches made their leisurely coloured way, great barges of inviting pleasure set about with joyous little lights of different hues.

  ‘Thank you,’ she called to the chauffeur. ‘Thank you,’ sh
e called to the concierge. ‘Thank you,’ she called to the stars, and it was only when she tripped up the stairs and back into the arms, the warm dark embrace, of the apartment that she thought to open the large brown envelope carefully inset with cardboard which Monsieur had handed her so quickly at the station. And although, happily for her, it would be some months before Monsieur’s gift to her brought about misery as great as the happiness she had recently known, the impact on her of first seeing Monsieur’s surprise gift was very far from miserable.

  She stared at it, and first she laughed out loud in amazement, and then she leaned back against her bedroom door and sighed at the inscription on the back – Don’t ever lose that innocent expression, ma petite!

  Part Four

  ‘It isn’t a quite dead garden,’ she cried out

  softly to herself. ‘Even if the roses are

  dead, there are other things alive.’

  Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden

  Ten

  It was the dull, grey, leaden atmosphere that Ottilie walked into that late afternoon of her return from Paris that warned her she should have read the letter Mr Cartaret had sent to her. It was the way the staff, from the reception desk onwards, smiled at first with delight at her, and then quickly looked away, as if suddenly remembering that they should not be doing so, as if they knew that just by smiling they might invite trouble. It was the way that Blackie, the old hall porter, walked by her with his old nose in the air, as if he now despised her, as if they had never been friends.

  Ottilie was in trouble. She knew it. They all knew it.

  On the way up the stairs to the Cartarets’ suite Ottilie had to stop and remind herself that no-one could now beat her. She was too old. She could run way. No-one could lock her in a cupboard. No-one could make her go and sell their clothes to guests for them, or throw away their jewellery to help pay their debts. That part of her life was over and done with and they could no longer force her to do things that she did not want.