Grand Affair

by Charlotte Bingham

  ‘Very well. What happened was this,’ she said slowly and her words sounded thick and slurred, as if it was someone else speaking. ‘As I remember it, I was given away, by you, to this couple who ran a hotel, and that is where I grew up, not as Ottilie O’Flaherty but as Ottilie Cartaret, and Mrs Cartaret, my mother, used to beat me. Not often, mostly she was kind in her own way, but when she was drunk or had a hangover, she beat me. And I didn’t like it. And so after that I told her lies, all sorts of lies, but I went on doing what she told me because I didn’t want to be beaten and one day she told me to run out of the hotel and throw away these diamond earrings she had, but I couldn’t, I don’t know why. Each time I came to a drain I looked up and Edith would be looking at me, and when I went back to the hotel I was too frightened to even throw them down the basin because the police were—’ Ottilie stopped and despite every effort she started to cry again. Eventually she continued. ‘I think it was because the police were there, and ever since Ma was arrested I have such a fear of them, of the police, and so I jumped out of the window and I ran to find you, but you weren’t there, there was just Joseph and he took the earrings because he thought they were just worth a few pounds, but when he realized they were worth at least a thousand pounds and that Mrs Cartaret was doing away with them so she could get the insurance, he ran off with them, and never came back.’

  Lorcan’s eyes said, ‘Ah, I see now, so that’s how Joseph could afford to go to America,’ but his mouth said, ‘Go on, I’m listening.’

  ‘After that, well, you know about after that.’ Ottilie stopped, raising her swollen eyes to Lorcan’s face. ‘I grew up and went to Paris and – well, you also know about the drawing being found and all that, and how I came to be here and how happy I have been here, because of you. But now this.’ She stopped again and stared down at her dress. ‘I think this happened because of something else. I mean I think he did this to me because – because Edith – oh God, Lorcan – I didn’t want anyone to know but Edith only went and left me a fortune, and I mean a real fortune, and you see her lawyer was staying in the next-door suite to Joseph and when Joseph heard just how rich I was he became contorted with jealousy—’

  Lorcan put his hand over Ottilie’s as she broke down once more, her shoulders shaking, the tears seeming to be scorching, but Lorcan’s hand was the hand of a priest, cool and consoling.

  ‘Was there any way that you could have led him on, my child? Was there any way that you could honestly say that without realizing it you encouraged him to go too far in a way that may have made him go out of control? Think seriously. I mean – your dress is very attractive, although it has long sleeves and its hem reaches to the knee; and it is quite low cut. That could be, wouldn’t you think, deemed quite provocative to the men present, both of whom obviously already had drink taken?’

  ‘For Christ’s sake!’ Ottilie jumped to her feet, the tears gone, anger exploding inside her. ‘For Christ’s sake, Lorcan, this is a bloody designer dress. Look at me. It’s in perfect taste and you know it. Don’t try that kind of “Oh but you must have led him on would he not have been better if you had have been wearing a twinset and pearls” rubbish with me. I’m not one of your dumbo parishioners to be brought to their knees sobbing with guilt over someone else’s crime. Face it, Lorcan, I’m not like this because of my dress, or the colour of my hair, or my shoes, or my twenty-two-inch waist, or the mole on my cheek, I’m like this because of your brother, my brother. How can you drivel on about dresses when I have been raped! Have some bloody compassion—’

  ‘Sit down, my child, sit down, and try to stay calm.’

  ‘I don’t want to be calm, I want to kill myself.’

  Lorcan stood up and taking Ottilie’s shaking hands he led her to Mrs East’s chair.

  ‘Sit there while I make you some hot milk.’

  ‘I don’t want hot milk.’

  ‘Just sit—’

  ‘You won’t know where anything is.’

  ‘I’ll soon find everything, you’d be surprised. After the number of parishes I’ve been in I can find my way round most kitchens nowadays.’

  He took off his vestment, kissed it and put it away and then moving quietly and methodically while Ottilie swung to and fro in Mrs East’s chair he found milk, and sugar, and brandy, and put them on to boil.

  ‘Now,’ he said, turning from the stove back to Ottilie. ‘First, you know very well I am not your brother, and nor is the man you think molested you tonight. He is not your brother. He is Joseph O’Flaherty, but he is not your brother. We were brought up as your brothers, and we think of you as a sister, but we are not related by blood. Ma must have told you all about how you were born, but I’ll tell you again. Wait, I’ll just get the milk into the mug and then I’ll tell you again for you have undoubtedly become confused with the shock of it all, you have been shredded into confusion.’

  Ottilie took the mug and sipped at the milk and brandy as Lorcan drew up a chair near her and started to talk to her as if she was a small child again, as if he was in charge of reading to her to put her to sleep.

  ‘You were born at Number Four Porchester Terrace,’ he said in a low, measured voice, ‘but not in our flat, you were born in the flat above us. I remember your mother, she lived in two rooms above us, a slip of a girl, not unlike yourself with long hair and a pretty little face, coming in and out of the main doors of the block, but of course being that I was only a gossoon I never took much notice. Eventually it seems, nine months after she came to Porchester Terrace, you were born, but your poor mother died, alone, giving birth, for want of someone attending her, afraid to tell anyone of her state, I think. Anyway, the local midwife was a friend of Ma’s – well, everyone was a friend of Ma’s, weren’t they? And she came and gave Ma the baby, just to look after at first, you understand, but Ma fell in love with you – Da was well gone by then, and she longed I think for more children, and along came you. And of course you were a girl after all us boys, you were a longed-for girl. So – well, I don’t know how they managed it because I doubt there was anything official happened, but you came to stay and be our longed-for little sister, and of course Ma always told me and the boys that if anyone asked we were merely to tell them that you were brought and left at the door by the Little People. Remember that? You were brought by the Little People – we always joked with you about that, didn’t we? I always thought Ma had told you, I swear to God all the time you were growing – I always thought Ma told you. She did, didn’t she?’

  ‘Ma never said anything, Lorcan, you know Ma. I always thought that my having been brought by the Little People was just a joke, because of Da being away, and everything . . .’ Ottilie said, but her own voice seemed so terribly far away, it was as if she was being spoken for, and all the time trying to understand everything Lorcan had just told her through the throbbing of her head. ‘I thought it was just a joke when everyone said that. I always thought you were my family, and the Cartarets were in place of you, because of Ma dying.’

  ‘Dear God, Ottie, I thought – we all thought – that you knew. It never occurred to me to think otherwise. You poor creature, and now – to have to find out now, at this late date. I never thought for a second that Ma hadn’t told you.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me when you gave me away? It would have made it much easier. All that time I thought you were my real brother and you weren’t. I could have made more sense of it all if I’d known then. It makes so much sense, if we’re not related. It would have – stopped some of the pain, for Christ’s sakes, the awfulness of thinking that none of you wanted anything to do with your sister any more!’

  Lorcan was silent for a minute, then he said, ‘Do you not think that I would not have given anything, anything at all, to have kept you with us? That was the worst of Ma’s going like that, more than anything else, even the suddenness of her death, it was having suddenly to find a home for you because out of all of us you were the one who couldn’t be left. If you could have seen yourself,
you looked so pathetic, going off with your little cardboard box filled with your rag books and your teddies and wearing Ma’s old black Mass veil, and you were so brave.’ Lorcan shook his head. ‘I remember it as if it was yesterday. Ah, but you had such a way with you when you were little, Ottilie. Always standing on chairs making speeches, or saying to Ma “Let me dance for you” or “Wait there till I make you laugh.” One day, I’ll never forget it, one day I got back from the building site and there you were in your best dress, what a thing, and dancing away for her, and of course Ma – it was one of her bad days, you know? She was passed out on the floor, flutered poor thing, but you’d just gone on dancing away to some old seventy-eight record, waiting for her to wake up and laugh with you. That’s why Joseph was always so jealous, d’you see? It’s not this money you speak of, that wouldn’t have affected him so much, no, it’s because it’s you who was the apple of Ma’s eye, her golden girl. That’s why she joked so often that the Little People had sent you to her. She just thought of you as her little miracle sent by them. Maybe in her confusion she even came to believe it, who knows? Perhaps that’s why she delayed telling you that you weren’t really hers?’

  He stopped, sighing, a deep down sigh at the memories, suddenly not a priest at all but just a boy, a son.

  ‘But to get back to the story. Who your real mother was we’ll never know, you know? All we do know is that we came here, to Cornwall, because the poor girl had these pictures of Cornwall stuck on the walls of her poor auld room. And when the midwife gave them to Ma, well, Ma, she thought it looked like Kerry a bit, where she came from in Ireland. So down we all came, after Da sent her the pay-off money. And that’s all we know. Except of course the bracelet, which I gave you, on your tenth birthday, I think it was.’

  Ottilie thought, What does it matter if it was my eleventh, twelfth or twentieth, Lorcan, when you know very well what you’re really telling me is that we have spent all this time caring for each other quite needlessly. Even my guilt over you being sent away by Melanie from that wretched party, that was all needless.

  ‘God, I remember what a complete gombeen I felt in my thorn-proof coming to that party with all those smart people there. But you would have it that I must come. Anyway, the bracelet that I brought you that day, that was said to have belonged to your own poor mother. Ma always said it had belonged to the poor girl. But that’s all we do know of her, that she lived at Number Four and that it was hers – the bracelet. So d’you see now what I meant when I said the man you think molested you was not your brother, it was mine?’

  ‘What is done, is done,’ Ottilie said on a tired sigh, her eyes still closed because the hot milk with the brandy seemed to be getting through to her, soothing her and making her feel suddenly spent, without any fight or interest left in her, what with the rocking of the chair and Lorcan talking and talking. ‘But brother or no brother, when he did what he did I thought he was still my brother and maybe even he was thinking it too, and that’s as bad, isn’t it?’ She opened her eyes and stared at Lorcan as her voice rose on a suddenly sarcastic note. ‘After all, Lorcan, you’re a priest, isn’t intention meant to be everything?’

  ‘I still can’t believe that either of those two men – least of all Joseph.’

  Lorcan started to walk around the kitchen clasping and unclasping his hands as Ottilie closed her eyes again.

  ‘Can’t you, Lorcan?’ she heard herself saying in a tired voice as the rocking chair went backwards and forwards. ‘I think you can. Joseph was always the bad one, Ma said. She used to say to me, “Out of the three I wouldn’t mind throwing out the middle one, too like his father for my liking.” She was always saying that on our walks together. She wasn’t that doting a mother, you know, and because I was so young, and a girl, she talked to me all the time about you, about all of you.’

  ‘Did she, Ottie? Did she really?’

  Ottilie opened her eyes again and standing up she carefully put the empty mug on the kitchen table. She was now barely able to think, yet somehow she must get herself to bed and in the morning the staff would come, life would start up again, and she could begin to not care too much about what had happened. Just get on with life, not care.

  ‘Oh yes,’ she told Lorcan slowly, because he was obviously hungering after what Ma had said. ‘She talked about you all the time. It was always Lorcan this and Joseph that, and little Sean the other. She never stopped talking about you all on our walks, and of her dreams for you. She wanted so much for you all, for us all. The French say women divide into two – wife/mother or wife/mistress. Ma was all mother.’

  ‘In that case, can you tell me, could you tell me what did she say about me?’

  ‘About you?’ she said, and her tone softened as she saw the anxiety in Lorcan’s eyes. ‘She said you were a saint, Lorcan. She said that after Da left she could never have got through a minute of her life without you.’

  At which Lorcan stopped pacing and put his head in his hands and started to cry like a child, and Ottilie walked slowly over to him and stroked his head.

  ‘Poor Lorcan,’ she said. ‘So much to bear, poor Lorcan.’

  Twenty

  Ottilie stared in the mirror. Although she was pale, she was up at last, and when she drew her navy blue curtains winter sunshine was transforming the courtyard outside, and she could see departing guests moving about, carefully crossing the old cobblestone in overcoats and hats, waiting for each other to leave, their luggage piled high by the doors of their suites. Mrs East suddenly appeared by the back door of the kitchen, shook out one of the old fashioned mops to which she was so devoted, and then disappeared again to be followed, shortly, by Nantwick who picked up some of the waiting suitcases, piled them expertly under his arm, and set off down the courtyard to the front to help put them into waiting cars. Ottilie watched all this seeming mundanity at first dutifully, finally with interest. Life was still going on down there, and from now on she must make herself part of it.

  She turned from the window and going to her cupboard she picked out her most cheerful winter dress. A red dress with a high collar, close fitted and with a circular skirt, the many folds of which showed off her slim figure, making a feature of her sudden loss of weight.

  ‘Sea air. You must get out in the air,’ Veronica had kept murmuring, arriving in her room every day with papers to sign, and in the evenings a glass of champagne, which she encouraged Ottilie to drink, always saying, ‘There’s nothing like champagne to restore the human spirit. Believe me, I know.’

  At first, dreary day after dreary day Ottilie hated seeing even Veronica and for some reason she especially hated the champagne, but to please her secretary and because she could see how worried she looked, she sipped at it, and after a while, some few weeks, she found she had started to look forward to its evening arrival, and to seeing Veronica and hearing about what was happening downstairs where life still went on, and things still mattered.

  Veronica was too mature not to realize that something terrible had happened to Ottilie, but also, thankfully, too sensitive to say more than ‘drink your champagne’ or ‘sign here, Miss O’Flaherty’.

  One day – Ottilie could not and did not care to remember which day it was – she said to her suddenly, ‘Don’t call me that any more. I know you don’t like first-naming, but if you don’t mind, from now on please call me “Miss Cartaret”.’

  Veronica had merely nodded, not seeming to take much notice, but after that Ottilie did indeed become ‘Miss Cartaret’ again, not just to Veronica, but to the rest of the staff who telephoned to her room. The change made a difference to her somehow. As if the other person, Ottilie O’Flaherty, had died the night of Joseph’s farewell party.

  Once she had satisfied herself that her dress was up to the neck, and the hem of it fashionably long and sufficiently demure – nearly to her ankle – Ottilie brushed back her thick dark hair and pulled it tightly into a large black velvet bow at her neck. She stared at herself in the dressing mirror behind th
e door. She was far too thin – keeping weight on always being a problem for her – she was still pale, and there were shadows under her eyes, but she was up at last, and she was about, and she was alive, and more than that, incredibly, and in time for her recovery, Philip was about to arrive home.

  Constantia had telephoned the great news. Her patrician tones seemed suddenly healing to Ottilie, and, like Veronica, her tactful ability to not say too much a balm. After that night with Lorcan she was sure that she absolutely did not want anyone saying anything emotional to her ever again. She had spent weeks feeling bereft of everything that had once seemed to matter. Her family, her brothers, who were not her brothers, everything appeared to have been taken from her in a matter of a few hours. For weeks her belief in life had hovered between the blackest despair and inability to see any point in living, and a gradual awareness that there was still something to live for, the boy she had known and loved since she was ten.

  It was staring at Philip’s photograph, remembering him as he had been their last day in St Elcombe, that had pulled her through. After all, he had laughed at the story of the nude drawing, teased her about her effortless ability to get herself into hot water. Of all people Philip would understand she was sure, and although his words kept coming back to her, You will be good until I get back, won’t you, Ottilie? and she remembered how she had worried that they would both change, for ever, that nothing ever stayed the same (and so it had proved), nevertheless even if she had been changed, perhaps – and in this she saw her salvation – perhaps he would not and so on seeing him she would change back again, and everything could be as it had been before, and he would still be the boy with the hare.

  ‘Of course I would love to come and see Philip the moment he gets back, but only after you have had your own welcoming party,’ Ottilie told Constantia. ‘Really. I would love to see him, but you must come first, you and everyone at Tredegar.’