Ottilie’s carefully penned letter had taken her hours. She had handwritten it most meticulously, calculating that it would have far more effect if she wrote it herself in what Edith used to call ‘a rather fine hand’ rather than have Miss Little, the hotel secretary, type it for her. People like Sir Harold were only ever presented with typewritten letters.
As she put the finishing touches to her self-designed uniform of navy dress and jacket and fastened her long brown hair into a big black velvet bow at the nape of her neck, Ottilie felt so nervous she set herself to breathe in and out very slowly and deeply several times. She knew she had to win Sir Harold over, and she knew that if she showed she was in the slightest degree nervous she would alienate him and make herself seem to be what Philip always called ‘a cracking amateur’.
The night before, in an effort to quell her nerves, she had sat on the edge of her bed lecturing herself.
If you show you’re nervous it will make him nervous, and if you make him nervous he will feel nervous about what you have to say, and if he’s nervous about what you have to say he won’t feel like investing in you, so grit your teeth and just pretend as hard as you can, as hard as when you used to be beaten and you had to pretend you didn’t care, that’s how hard you have to pretend.
Downstairs in the hall, Nantwick the hotel boots, barman, and man-of-all-work was up, already waiting for her orders for the day. At the Grand it had always been Ottilie who tried to make it a point to be up and about long before anyone else, thereby fixing her imprint on the running of the place. She had to hand it to Nantwick. So far he had beaten her to it for every one of the twenty-eight days since she had taken over the management of the Angel.
This morning, however, she was actually grateful for the sight of him padding about, busying himself with the hall fire. Deciding on how best to present her case to Sir Harold had been agonizing. She knew that if she dressed the place up too much for his coming he would not see the need to give them any money. On the other hand, if it was presented in such a way that it looked too dingy, he wouldn’t think it promising enough to warrant any more money’s being spent on it.
Finally she compromised, and Ottilie, Miss Little, Nantwick and Jean the maid-of-all-work, as she jokingly referred to herself, had repainted and rearranged just one of the main rooms, making it look as nearly as possible how Ottilie would ultimately like the whole inn to look, and then left the rest exactly as it was. This too was a risk.
The risk was that Sir Harold might love the current post-war Station Hotel dingy look that the Angel affected. Or he might be one of those men who simply did not notice anything except the quality of the beer, or the precision with which Nantwick could mix a dry martini.
Drink, however, was not the real problem. The list of Sir Harold’s favourite foods discreetly acquired by Miss Little was a much greater one, not least because his preferences seemed to Ottilie to embrace so many foods that she disliked. Oysters, jellied consommés, lobsters, very small game birds, cream sauces on all the vegetables, and a large choice of nursery puddings including ‘Queen of Puddings’.
The problem was not that she and Cook – they did not run to ‘chefs’ at the Angel Inn – were unable to produce these dishes, nor that they did not enjoy the challenge of producing them from the very finest ingredients and the best-written of the classic cookbooks. No, the problem was that Sir Harold was not the only person who would be required to eat them. Ottilie would be too.
Afterwards, long afterwards, Ottilie would wonder at the audacity she showed that morning and tremble for her younger self, but now as the famous flying lady on Sir Harold’s pre-war Rolls-Royce pushed her nose past the kitchens and came to a halt where once the coaches would pull up with cries of ‘Ostler!’ there was only Ottilie, trim and tidy in her navy blue skirt and jacket and dark stockings, her long dark hair tied back in a black velvet bow.
When she had sat down to write to him with her request for him to visit them at the Angel Ottilie had not stopped to consider the character of the man to whom she was writing, or why he had earned for himself such a fearsome reputation. All she could see was what she wanted to do to the inn, and how much money she needed to do it. Nothing else seemed to matter, until she saw him.
As soon as she clapped eyes on him it came to her why his name had seemed to have such a familiar ring to it. She had supposed it was because he was chairman of the Clover House Group and she must have read about him in the business section of The Times or the Telegraph, or because she had seen his photograph in one of the magazines escorting some beautiful divorcee to a ball, but as soon as she saw him now walking towards her, and she said, ‘Good morning, Sir Harold,’ it came to Ottilie why it was that she knew the man.
Sir Harold had once been a regular at the Grand at St Elcombe in the days when it was fashionable. He had been handsome in a florid sort of way, dark finger-waved hair, a fresh complexion, and an affable presence, but now he was grey-haired, fat, and red-faced with broken veins running from his nose, a large handkerchief flopping too far out of his expensive suit and his handshake as ‘wet as a rector’s’.
‘What shall I say, Miss O’Flaherty?’ he asked with a sigh, looking round at the dirty cream walls of the reception hall, his plump square-fingered hand indicating the door. ‘Probably nothing would be best.’
Ottilie’s returning smile was far too wide but there was nothing she could do about it. It was the relief. He obviously had not recognized her. She surrendered a short prayer of thanks for Lorcan, since it was he who had advised her to change her name back from Cartaret to O’Flaherty so that there could be no possible confusion with herself and ‘the folks back at the Grand’.
Having walked ahead of her into the lounge and seen the dreariness of the interior, the grease on the walls, the dingy furniture, he now turned round and asked, ‘Miss O’Flaherty, where can we sit and have a drink where we will not be in some kind of danger to our health?’
‘Practically nowhere,’ Ottilie told him ingenuously.
There was a short pause and then Sir Harold looked at Ottilie and started to shake with the kind of laughter that in such a large man made Ottilie nervous he might do himself damage. ‘My dear Miss O’Flaherty,’ he said finally, ‘in all my tours of these wretched old inns, that is one of the few honest things anyone has ever said to me.’ He spread the handkerchief with which he had mopped his face over the seat of an armchair and sat down quite suddenly.
It was then that he looked up at Ottilie, waiting, expecting the next move, and Ottilie knew at once that her professional trial had begun.
‘Sir Harold, might we offer you something to drink?’
‘You might indeed, Miss O’Flaherty.’
For a second Sir Harold’s eyes, so full of anxiety and unease, narrowed as he tilted back his head, lit a cigarette and waited as Ottilie again prayed, silently and passionately, that Sir Harold’s secretary, whom Miss Little had telephoned to know of his preferences, would not have betrayed them by giving them the wrong information.
‘I can offer you an anise, a Pernod, or a pink gin made with Bombay gin?’
At the mention of those three drinks, Sir Harold let out a sigh of relief, a sigh which seemed to run down his large, closely tailored and amply upholstered body in ripples, as if the sigh was a brook and his body some sort of embankment through which the brook was sinuously threading its way.
‘Miss O’Flaherty, I can see that despite the greasy spoon decor and the much used seating I am going to be in safe hands.’
‘I hope so, Sir Harold.’
‘Bombay gin. Imagine. Normally only Laurie at the Ritz offers me Bombay.’
Ottilie did not like to tell him that she had sent to Fortnum and Mason’s in London for it and that the gin and all the other specialities that she had laid on for him had cost her as much as Nantwick was likely to take in a whole two weeks at their bar. If the expenditure did not pay off Ottilie was not at all sure whether she would be able to balance the boo
ks ever again.
The luncheon table was set in the one freshly decorated room, and on Ottilie’s orders in the French manner, white linen cloth, heavy white napkins – all bought secondhand for the occasion from the thrift shop by Ottilie – not to mention the flowers which she had fled to the early morning markets to purchase so that the scent of the white hyacinths was discernible as they walked into the splendidly inviting room decorated with many bunches of daffodils upon whose pale trumpets little drops of dew were still visible.
‘Ah, oysters.’ Sir Harold breathed in appreciatively as if he could smell their freshness before he sat down, and he stubbed out his cigarette in one of Miss Little’s ashtrays that she had brought from home for the occasion.
‘Ugh, oysters,’ is what Ottilie would have liked to have said, but instead she sat composedly looking down the length of the table at her illustrious guest, unpicked her starched napkin with assumed verve and smiled with equally assumed cheerfulness before facing the agony of squeezing the lemon on each one and then tipping them down her throat, all the time being watched approvingly and then matched, oyster for oyster, by Sir Harold himself.
He evidently approved heartily of a young woman who could eat as many oysters as himself and even lifted his head slightly, his mouth falling open just a little as he watched Ottilie tilting her own head back to swallow them, one after wretched one, only to feel the awful slither as she gave the large gulp necessary to down the wretched thing.
Ottilie would never forget the horror of that first course, the awful feeling of something which was technically alive slipping down her throat, and then the worse feeling that they were actually alive inside her. After the oysters came a confection of lobster and crevettes served with a mayonnaise and thin brown bread.
Possibly because she was only barely holding on to the first course the second did not appeal to her either, and this despite the fact that she had made the mayonnaise herself, drip by little drip. Normally she was happy to eat shrimps and lobsters but at that particular moment they appealed to Ottilie as a wondrous part of God’s creation, living and beautiful, not dead and edible, and the matchless pink of the lobster seemed heartbreaking in its purity, not deserving to disappear for ever down Sir Harold and herself. Yet she ate on, asking questions and making conversational replies which carefully concealed anything about herself and showed only interest in Sir Harold and his career.
Next came the médaillons of beef on softly fried rounds of toast and accompanied by a béarnaise sauce which again Ottilie had taken care to make herself. They were served with tiny early carrots and small French fries and were, she had to admit, pretty perfect. After that came a salad, a very good olive oil found abandoned in a cellar, vinegar from the Loire, and finally cheese presented in the French manner to finish up the red wine. With the pudding she served a really very delicate white dessert wine.
‘My dear.’ Sir Harold pushed his chair back from the table and lit a cigar so big that for one awful moment Ottilie was sure that it was going to be too big for him to manage. ‘My dear, what a perfect luncheon. You are to be congratulated, Miss O’Flaherty. I haven’t had such a delicious lunch since last week at the Savoy, and even then I am not sure that the freshness of the ingredients quite matched up to yours, by any means.’
Sir Harold smiled and then slowly pulled on his cigar.
‘Now tell me, why on earth should I give you money for your enterprise here?’
‘Because,’ Ottilie said slowly, ‘if you look round this place it needs it, and if I can impress you with a good luncheon then you know I can do it for others. I know I can make this place really successful.’
‘But Miss O’Flaherty, don’t you realize you have done quite the wrong thing?’ Sir Harold’s eyes seemed to be full of mocking pity. ‘I mean how can you possibly lay on a lunch like this for me and then expect me to give you money?’
Ottilie felt her blood running cold. She had done something terribly wrong and she knew it before she had even begun to reply. She knew it from the expression in his eyes, and yet for the life of her she could not imagine what it could be. The food had been as near to perfection as was surely possible, and the wines had not lagged far behind, although admittedly she had been rather restricted by cost in that area. Even so, she thought, her mind racing, where had she gone wrong? Why was she about to be refused what she so desperately needed to make a success of the Angel?
‘Tell me, is this the sort of lunch you are hoping to give your guests, Miss O’Flaherty? Is this the sort of menu you think might be suitable for these parts?’
‘Good heavens no.’
Quick as a flash Ottilie had seen what was coming.
‘No? Are these not your standards then, Miss O’Flaherty?’
‘No, not at all.’ Ottilie gave him a measured look. ‘These are your standards, as I understand them. In a place like this I would never be able to afford to produce a menu like that for anyone but Sir Harold Ropner. No, our menus here at the Angel are quite different, just as our ambience will be quite different. Luncheon a choice of hot or cold home-made soup and rolls, all made on the premises. Also a large selection of every sort of salad – rice, potato, tomato – with a choice of home-made pork pies and sausages, and of course a large home-cooked ham. Puddings will be perfect but homely, treacle tart, lemon meringue, proper trifle made with home-made cake and Cornish cream, a choice of cheeses to follow, and coffee, also properly made, of course.’
There was a long pause as Sir Harold’s eyes narrowed again, but this time because of his own cigar smoke.
‘You must include your Queen of Puddings. That was one of the best I have ever tasted.’
‘Certainly,’ Ottilie said, and she smiled although she still felt as sick as a dog. Not purely on account of the oysters, but because she surmised that she had just been within seconds of losing everything.
‘What is it you are going to try to achieve here?’
Ottilie folded her napkin and stood up. Sir Harold remained seated. Ottilie waited, pointedly. Sir Harold at length rose from his chair and replaced his own napkin on the tablecloth.
‘Is it time for the Loyal Toast?’ he asked ironically.
‘No, it’s time for the historic tour,’ Ottilie told him. ‘You asked the twenty-thousand-dollar question, Sir Harold, and I am now going to try to answer it for you. If you will follow me?’
‘With some difficulty after that luncheon, Miss O’Flaherty,’ came the suddenly good-natured reply.
Equally suddenly Ottilie took a step or two towards him and held out her arm which, after a second, Sir Harold took.
‘I will take the shortest route.’
‘Short cuts are some of the longest ways round, didn’t Mrs O’Flaherty tell you?’
‘Oh, Ma, yes, she told me that. And—’ Ottilie stopped as Sir Harold’s hand seemed to be growing heavier and heavier on her arm.
‘And?’
‘And to be thankful for the day and never look further.’
Sir Harold snorted. ‘Not a philosophy that will take you very far, Miss O’Flaherty. What a good thing you learned to make mayonnaise and sauce béarnaise and arrange flowers.’
They were out in the stableyard once more, and Sir Harold seemed to be benefiting from the cold fresh spring air. The hand on her arm grew lighter as he became caught up in Ottilie’s imaginings of how the stableyard could be converted, of just how the style and feeling of the place could be preserved, of how she wanted to make all the colours, quite against the current fashion for bright oranges and dark browns, soft, pale and old-fashioned in feeling. She told him of the fountain that she wanted to put at the top of the courtyard, of the fresh-cut flowers that she wanted to grow in a greenhouse and of the new cypher she planned, the ‘A’ of the Angel Inn woven around a cherub-like angel.
She had been talking non-stop when of a sudden she fell silent, realizing that Sir Harold was no longer taking in what she was saying and was staring not at the old courtyard but at Ottili
e herself.
‘Well, well, well, what a positive person you are, Miss O’Flaherty. Do you know, your enthusiasm and excitement about your subject even convert me.’ He stopped, throwing away his cigar butt into a flower bed. ‘But do you know something? With all your ideas, all your energy, it seems to me that you are not in the least suited to this place. No, my dear, with your breadth of vision, in my view you would be far better suited managing that rundown old palace, the Grand.’
At which remark Ottilie tried to smile, but failed.
Days passed and turned into a fortnight, and still Ottilie had heard nothing from Sir Harold, just a formal note from his secretary thanking her for luncheon and saying that he would be writing to her personally in the near future. It wasn’t long before Ottilie came to realize that it was quite possible she would never hear anything again from her distinguished guest. To guard against the hurt that his rejection would bring she started making up her mind to accept defeat long before her letter of dismissal arrived. It was better, she told Miss Little, to accept that she had not only failed personally to impress Sir Harold, but undoubtedly failed to impress on him why what she had wanted in terms of warmth and style would suit an establishment such as the Angel.
‘I mean you always think you can get other people to see things your way, but you can’t, can you?’
Miss Little, who was thirty, slim and dark, pale, anxious and conscientious to a fault, smiled nervously as she looked up from changing the ribbon on her old-fashioned sit-up-and-beg typewriter.
‘I wish I wasn’t so pig-headed,’ Ottilie went on, trying to find a new ribbon for her in the old office desk that was being propped up by a telephone book of about the same vintage as the typewriter. ‘But you see I am so convinced that this is the way for these sorts of places to go. Stop them being down and dirty pubs and transform them instead into the old-fashioned, medium-priced, warmly welcoming old-style inn, just like in Dickens’ time when the fires would be roaring and the pies home-made and everyone jumping about to make you welcome. Here in the land that invented Myne Hoste we would be fulfilling a need, wouldn’t we? God, do you realize this telephone still says “St Elcombe 234”!’
Grand Affair Page 27
