Ottilie nodded at the string for Mrs Tomber to put her finger on the middle so that she could tie a tight knot around the parcel she was making.
‘As a matter of fact, Mrs Tomber,’ she told the housekeeper, ‘I think you’re wrong. This place will be quite the same without me.’ She looked round, giving the suite where she had grown up a last brave glance before she picked up both her brown paper parcels and placed the string round her neck so that they hung on either side of her shoulders. ‘As a matter of fact I think you will find that this whole place, without any doubt at all, will be much better off without me.’
Mrs Tomber shook her head in disbelief, yet Ottilie could see that part of her disbelief was based on Ottilie’s determined expression. Mrs Tomber could see from the look on Ottilie’s face that not only did she now feel no regret at leaving, but nothing would stop her from going.
‘Let’s face it, Mrs Tomber, lately the Grand hasn’t had much of an atmosphere – at least, not a happy one, not for me these last eighteen months, with no-one speaking to me, and all that sort of thing. Just think what a strain it must have been for them all, for all the staff, to shut up as soon as they saw me. Now they will be able to talk nineteen to the dozen as much as they like. No-one here really likes me, you know, I realize that now. Not really, not like a real friend. I can see now that all these years they just pretended, because I was young and because I was meant to be the daughter of the Cartarets, but they can’t have really liked me or they wouldn’t have sent me to Coventry for so long, would they?’
‘Don’t say that, Miss Ottilie, that’s not true. Everyone liked you.’
‘No, Mrs Tomber, I’m afraid they didn’t,’ Ottilie told her firmly. ‘Take this last year. No-one’s bothered to speak to me, no-one even gave me a card at Christmas. I pretended I didn’t mind, but in the end you do, you know. I know it was wrong of me not to open that letter from my father saying that Edith had had a heart attack, of course it was, but I would have come back had I known Edith was ill, I really would.’
Mrs Tomber put out a hand, either to touch her arm or pat her back, Ottilie could not have said which, because she promptly stepped back, away from the housekeeper. She did not want sympathy any more, not Mrs Tomber’s, not anyone’s, she just wanted to get out of the hotel, through the old-fashioned glass doors and down the green sward in front of the hotel, and out onto the road, and away, for ever.
‘Edith would not have wanted you to come back from abroad, Miss Ottilie, not if she was dying. She liked the idea of you being in Paris and dancing and having fun. Edith wanted you to have the life she never had. She wanted you to have gentlemen friends, and beautiful clothes and dancing and restaurants, and she told me so more than once, I can tell you. She thought it was wonderful, you being in Paris. It was only Mr and Mrs Cartaret who wanted you home, but not because of Edith, Miss Ottilie, because they missed you helping me run the place and because Mrs C was jealous of that Roseanna who stood in for you, thinking all the time that Mr Cartaret was giving her the eye, if you know what I mean, the way older women always do.’
Ottilie nodded. She did know what Mrs Tomber meant, but in the event it did not really matter. The fact was that she knew she was leaving the Grand for good, and the moment had come. She would once more be quite alone, just as she had been after Ma’s funeral when Lorcan had told her that he was passing her on to the Cartarets, and she was lucky, and must not cry.
Ottilie put out her hand. Speaking in a formal voice such as she might use to someone whom they had just hired for the season, she said, ‘Thank you very much, Mrs Tomber, for helping me pack, and for being the only person to talk to me these few months. If I had not had you to talk to I think I really might have killed myself—’
‘Young people don’t kill themselves, Miss Ottilie.’
‘Oh but they do, Mrs Tomber. Anyway, your kindness saved me from doing anything too drastic all during these last dreary sad months,’ she added, and she smiled.
Mrs Tomber seemed at first stunned by her honesty, and then uncertain as to what to do, but after a second she too put out her hand and slowly shook Ottilie’s, pumping it up and down without saying anything, obviously afraid to speak in case she became tearful. Ottilie understood this and shook her hand one extra time before letting it go.
‘It will be all right,’ she reassured the housekeeper. ‘You’ll see. In the end everything usually turns out all right, I find, if only because it stops.’
She headed for the front stairs, and right down the middle of them too, because this time she was not going to sneak out the back way and down the fire escape as she had a few hours earlier. She bumped and pushed her suitcases past all those same flower arrangements, down to the ground floor where she eventually passed Blackie who was up early as usual but still intent on ignoring Ottilie.
Ottilie struggled across the reception area, past his avoiding eyes as he bolted into his cubby hole with his plate of cakes and mug of tea, leaving her to bump her way, bit by wretched bit, suitcases in both hands, brown paper parcels hanging round her neck on a string, towards the glass doors which overlooked the green sward at the front of the hotel.
Poor old Blackie, Ottilie thought, as she puffed and panted towards the old-fashioned gold-decorated glass doors, and then she stopped, and pushed her suitcases through the doors into the clean, fresh air outside. Then she turned back into the hotel and trod swiftly back across the old-fashioned red carpet, beneath the large Edwardian glass chandelier, to where Blackie was reading his Daily Mirror in his cubby hole beside the lifts.
‘Goodbye, Blackie. I’ve come to say goodbye to you. I’m leaving here after twelve years,’ she said, curious as to what he might or might not deign to say to her. Whether after all these weeks of contemptuous silence he would now break his unyielding attitude and speak to her.
But Blackie said nothing, merely holding the newspaper in front of his face, pretending to read, as if she had not spoken, or mentioned that she was leaving. Ottilie waited a few long seconds and then reaching forward she pulled the wretched newspaper from his hands, holding it behind her back as she confronted him.
‘Get to your feet!’ she commanded, and now it was her eyes that were filled with fury. He stared at her in amazement. ‘Get to your feet,’ she said again. ‘At once!’ Being Blackie he did no such thing, of course, but Ottilie saw with some satisfaction that he was starting to pale under the impact of her rage. ‘I have had quite enough of you and your nasty ways, you contemptible old bastard. All these years when I was growing up, what did you ever do for me? Nothing. And what did I do for you? Everything. All those times I covered for you when I was a little girl and you were round the corner ringing up to put a bet on when you should have been in your place, when I risked being beaten by my mother because I lied for you. And when my father wanted to sack you last year—’
‘He never, Miss Ottilie—’
‘Oh yes he did, he wanted to sack you all right. All that loyal service down the drain, Blackie. Imagine? He said you were too old. And too fat too, for front of hotel duties. But I put in a good word for you, Blackie, in fact I put in several good words for you, and that’s why you’re still here, putting on bets – and stealing cakes from the hotel kitchen,’ Ottilie added with a look at the pile of Chef’s home-made macaroons and madeleines that Blackie was in the middle of consuming. ‘Well, it’s the last time I ever do anything for you, Blackie, do you understand? The very last time, because you have not been thrown out this time, but I have, so from now on you won’t have anyone to plead for you. No, nor cover up for you. From now on you’re on your own, and here’s a really good bet you should make, Blackie. The bet is – the bet is I bet you two to one on that without me to cover for you and make up for everything you don’t do that you should, you’ll be out of here by the end of the month. Want to take it, Blackie? Come on, take it – because it’s a dead cert, I promise you.’
‘You’ll give me a co-ron-arary if you go on, Miss Ottilie!’
Blackie gasped, putting a dramatic hand to his bulging chest.
‘I won’t, Blackie. You will.’
With that Ottilie turned and walked quickly back down the long red stretch of hotel carpet out into the air again. She carefully placed the parcel string round her neck and then, picking up her suitcases, she proceeded to struggle down the front steps until finally she was out into the road, where she paused, panting in the cool of the still early morning summer air, to rest and consider her future.
She had very little money, hardly more than thirty pounds in her bank account, thanks to having to work for her parents in return for her board and lodging and the use of her second-hand car. The car, of course! She still had the car that had been her seventeenth birthday present, that at least was a start. She could drive into St Elcombe, and although it was now the height of the season she felt sure she would be able to find work in one of the boarding houses, or in a pub on the edge of town somewhere. But first she must find lodgings.
It was white, it was neat, it was clean, and although there was no bath the basement flat she saw on that bright summer Sunday morning did at least have a basin and a lavatory en suite, and Ottilie reckoned that by standing in a washing-up bowl she could have a good scrub down, and no-one would be any the wiser.
‘Well, there it is,’ said the landlady, a tall respectable woman in a mock silk patterned dressing gown and pink feathered slippers. She looked Ottilie up and down, and perhaps since Ottilie had come looking for somewhere to stay at such an oddly early hour of the Lord’s ordained day of rest, she added quickly, ‘No gentlemen callers, no use of the telephone. Call box is on the corner of the street. No business to be conducted from the room at any time.’
‘I understand.’
‘Twenty pounds advance rent for the month,’ she added and held out a hand for the money, but Ottilie only smiled at its lined palm and then looked up at her. ‘I haven’t had time to go to the bank, but if I may I will leave my things here, and go for some breakfast at the café by the station. On Monday I will go to the bank. Until then I can only give you five pounds on deposit, if that’s all right with you?’
It obviously was not all right with her, but since the basement was obviously not something that everyone would want to rent the landlady finally nodded and turned on her heel. She closed the door behind her, and Ottilie listened attentively to the sound of her nylon slippers slip-slopping up the lino stairs to her own ground-floor rooms above.
‘What a dreadful woman,’ she told her suitcases as she humped them one by one into the bedroom area, which was behind a piece of cheap curtaining in the opposite corner of the room to where the basin and the lavatory stood. ‘And how expensive!’
She sat down suddenly on the edge of the old iron bedstead. It was lucky she was slim and light because the mattress beneath her was as thin as she was. For a few seconds she leaned forward and rested her head in her hands, just to gain a bit of time, to pull herself together, to bat away the feeling of sudden despair that threatened to engulf her. After all, it was only a few hours earlier that she had been dancing in her beautiful dress with Philip at Tredegar, and now here she was, quite alone in the world, and seated on the edge of an old iron bedstead of the kind that most people throw out or drive to a rubbish dump.
For want of something to do, and because she knew that nothing except the pubs and the Station Café opened in St Elcombe on a Sunday, she started to unpack her teddy bear and her dressing gown from the brown paper packages that she and Mrs Tomber had so carefully parcelled up only a half hour before.
Ma had bought her the bear before they left Notting Hill. By coincidence he had been named ‘Phil’, his name coyly printed on one of those round pink and blue labels with which manufacturers sometimes decide to market their cuddly toys. Phil. Ottilie hugged him to her for a second, and then quickly put him down.
‘My God. Phil.’ Philip the man rather than Philip the bear was meant to be picking her up from the Grand and taking her out for a picnic lunch.
Ottilie pushed her suitcases under the bed and quickly washed her face, brushed her hair, and freshened herself generally. Then, leaping up the area steps two at a time, she started to bolt towards the telephone box on the corner. Luckily she had known Tredegar’s telephone number off by heart since she was young and a privileged visitor. Unluckily, after the telephone had rung for some time, it was not Philip who answered it but Constantia.
As the money dropped, Ottilie knew at once that the last thing Constantia would want would be to pass on any message that she might wish to leave. In fact she was being so coldly polite it was quite obvious to both of them that she now hated Ottilie.
Unfortunately for Constantia, her manner was so chilling it served only to confirm what Ottilie had hoped but not been certain of until now, and that was that Philip really must be as much in love with her as Ottilie was with him. If that were not so Constantia would not be bothering to be so frigid and stand-offish. Consoling as this thought might be, it did not, on the other hand, help Ottilie to find Philip and tell him what had happened to her. She could not leave a message for him at the hotel either, unless she could get a message to Mrs Tomber by pretending to be her sister?
‘Maureen – this is Joy.’
It was a passable imitation of Mrs Tomber’s own voice and for a few seconds Ottilie could hear Mrs Tomber being taken in.
‘How’s the ’flu, love?’
‘Mrs Tomber – actually, this is not Joy,’ Ottilie quickly returned to her own voice, ‘it’s Ottilie. I wonder if you could do me one last favour. Could you get a message to Mr Philip Granville when he calls for me? Tell him I’ll meet him at the Station Café at midday, if you don’t mind?’
‘I see. Yes. I see.’
She could hear Mrs Tomber’s voice, nervous now, worried that just listening to Ottilie might get her the sack.
‘You’re feeling better, are you, love? Good. Well, bye-bye, Joy. See you next Saturday, love. ’Bye.’
The telephone box smelt of old cigarettes and there was torn newspaper wedged in the door, newspaper that caught at the heels of her shoes. Ottilie walked quickly back to the basement flat, to the view of the pavement and the start of the long wait until midday when she would hope to see Philip and tell him what had happened as a result of staying on the island too long, of finding out how much they liked kissing and touching each other, as a result of all of which Ottilie was now homeless.
‘That is such an awful word,’ Ottilie thought as she looked around her dismal surroundings. ‘Homeless. I am homeless. I have no family. I have no-one now, no friends, nothing, except perhaps Philip, and I doubt if he will turn up because Mrs Tomber will be too frightened to hang around the hotel lobby when he is expected. Too frightened that if she is seen talking to him she will be spotted and everyone at the hotel will know that she is passing on a message from me and she will either be sacked or sent to Coventry. With only two years to go before she retires with full pension, that will be just what she doesn’t want.’
Even so, on the off chance, she changed her clothes and brushed out her long dark hair and, feeling more than a little hopeless, set out for the Station Café to wait for Philip.
After all, what else was there to do? Until Monday morning came and she could go in search of a job, there was nothing.
As she entered the dismal café Ottilie found herself glancing up at the old mahogany-encased clock behind the glass counter wherein was displayed the most unappetizing food with which any traveller could be confronted. As she sat down with a cup of pale grey coffee poured to too near the top of the cup, Ottilie imagined Philip on any other Sunday strolling back from Tredegar’s church in the grounds of his house, already, in his imagination, smelling the roast beef and Yorkshire pudding that, whatever the weather, their cook would have well under way because like so many men Philip only really liked a Sunday roast. He would stop and look down the wide path that led back to the little country road off which Tredegar was placed,
and then he would turn happily back to his dogs and his lunch, already anticipating the crisp roast potatoes, the garden peas, and the blackberry and apple crumble and Cornish cream that would follow.
Philip still walked about Tredegar the way he had when he was a small boy, happy and confident because he belonged there. Tredegar was part of him the way the Grand had until a few hours ago been part of Ottilie. Yet unlike Ottilie, Philip could look up at Tredegar’s inside walls and be reassured by the sight of his ancestors staring down at him. Men and women who three or four hundred years before had already become powerful and committed to the welfare of Cornwall. In time, after Army service, Philip would return to Tredegar and become Lord Lieutenant of the county and walk in a red and gold uniform behind the Queen when she came to Cornwall on a visit . . .
Ottilie stared at the pool of coffee on the table in front of her. Since it was Sunday there would be no-one in the café empowered to wipe the table clean until the following morning, so that everyone who came in after her would have to face that same spill of coffee that she was facing. What a dreary thought. She looked up once more at the wooden-encased clock with its old-fashioned numerals. Five past twelve. She could not face pretending to drink another cup of coffee. She would wait until the hand reached seven minutes after the hour and then she would leave, walking as slowly as she could, her heart sinking at the prospect of waiting alone in her dingy basement room until dreary Monday morning came round and she could set out to look for work.
Grand Affair Page 23
