Invisible

While I’m thinking of it, I think your French phrase is esprit de l’escalier.

And what of life at the Oak? I’m still rattling around in it like one of the last biscuits in the barrel, yet Mr Caldecott, the manager, seems to be permanently on duty: he was at the desk when I first arrived, when I went downstairs to dinner in the evening and when Charlotte picked me up yesterday morning, and he was still around when I came back. I went for a wander in the garden before breakfast this morning and lo! – he’s there again. I can’t imagine what’s keeping him busy. Perhaps an inundation of coach parties is imminent, but I rather doubt it. We had a talk, the manager and I, after Charlotte had deposited me back here. A brief but pleasant chat, out in the garden, from which I learned that Mr Caldecott is a divorced hotelier with a preference for the rural life. I like him. His jib is a pleasing jib, you might say. I have also conversed, in a desultory fashion, with a member of Mr Caldecott’s staff. Her name is Eloni, she’s from northern Greece and that’s about all I know. She’s not the most voluble character, which is a pity because she has a fine voice: low and laryngitic, like a 100-a-day smoker.

No time for Leopardi yesterday, but I feel that work will go well today. Your message has gingered me up for a long stretch at the desk. Speak soon?

He adds the phone number of the Oak, and as soon as his reply has gone he resumes the translation of Leopardi. At four o’clock he rings reception to ask if he might order a plate of sandwiches and a pot of lemon tea. It is the manager himself who takes the call and who ten minutes later brings the tray, and places it on a table to the side of the bureau, and then departs, having made his presence as unobtrusive as possible.

Back in his office, Malcolm continues to leaf through the bills and memoranda and other ephemera from the time of Croombe’s ownership: receipts for quantities of insulating cork, bolts of damask, crates of Bordeaux wine, chairs to be supplied by Maple & Company of Tottenham Court Road. Annotations by Croombe appear in the margins of advertisements and brochures issued by fine hotels in Paris, in German spas, in Swiss resorts, in New York. ‘Flowers in every room, replaced daily,’ he has written beneath a view of the river frontage of the Savoy; ‘140 rooms!’ he exclaims on the back of a print depicting the Baur-en-Ville in Zürich; the single word ‘Cost?’ appears above an engraving of Stockholm’s Grand Hotel, connected by a loop of faded ink to a line announcing M. Cadier’s installation of steam-powered lifts. But the most charismatic of these items are the notebooks, small black leather notebooks with marbled endpapers and finely lined pages that have become as fragile as dead leaves, in which Croombe records his impressions of the building site on the Boulevard des Capucines, his introduction to the ‘captivating and capricious’ Sandrine Koechlin and, in 1872, the week that he and Sandrine spent at the Hôtel Splendide. Every meal that he and his wife ate in the hotel is recorded in detail, with observations on the appointments of their suite and the dining room, and then, halfway through the week, there is a conversation with the maître d’hôtel, a young Swiss by the name of César Ritz. ‘In equal proportion he possesses both ambition and discretion, and he displays a purposefulness that is quite remarkable in –’ he is reading when the phone rings and a woman’s voice says, ‘It’s me.’

They have not spoken to each other for months, but she speaks as if continuing an argument that had been interrupted earlier that day. ‘Hello, Kate,’ he replies. ‘How are you?’

‘What’s this all about, Malcolm?’

‘What’s what all about?’

‘You know perfectly well. This letter to Stephanie,’ she says crisply. ‘What do you think you’re playing at? Going behind my back.’

‘I was not going behind your back.’

‘You didn’t tell me. I’d say that’s going behind my back.’

‘Kate, I was not going behind your back.’

‘So why didn’t you tell me?’

‘Because she asked me not to.’

‘She asked you.’

‘Yes, she asked me not to tell you yet, so I didn’t.’

‘So why do you think she asked you to do that?’

‘Because she didn’t want you to know yet, clearly.’

‘And you think that’s OK? She says “Let’s not tell Mum, eh?” and you just go along with it.’

‘No, I don’t just go along with it. Why don’t you ask her to read you what I wrote –’

‘I’ve read what you wrote.’

‘I see.’

‘Meaning what?’

‘That I’m surprised you open her mail.’

‘I found it in her room.’

‘Addressed to Stephanie.’

‘That’s not the point. The point is –’

‘The point is that you read it.’

‘Yes, I read it. I’m not going to apologise for finding out what you wrote to our daughter.’

‘And you think that’s permissible? Reading something addressed to her, a private correspondence.’

‘The point is, Malcolm, that I have a right to know about this. I have a right to know what’s going on.’

‘Well, that was my point exactly. As you know, having read my letter.’

Her breathing becomes quieter, as if she is holding the phone away from her mouth, and then she resumes, at the same pitch as her first words, ‘So she wrote to you? Out of the blue, just like that, she wrote to you?’

‘Yes.’

‘You didn’t start it?’

‘No, Kate, I didn’t start it. I’ve thought about it, I’ve wanted to do it, I don’t think any court would have convicted me if I had done it, but no, I didn’t.’

‘One day, after all these years, she gets it into her head to write to you.’

‘Apparently.’

‘This is a girl who hasn’t mentioned your name since God knows when. So why does she suddenly get this notion to send you a letter?’

‘Ask her, Kate. I don’t know. I was as surprised as you. You’ll have to talk to her.’

‘I will, don’t worry,’ she says.

In the pause he hears a tapping, perhaps of a pen on a table-top. ‘Kate?’ he asks. ‘Why are you so agitated about this?’

‘I’m not agitated,’ she retorts. ‘I’m livid. Absolutely bloody livid.’

‘But why?’

‘That’s a really dim question.’

‘Then tell me. I know this is confusing. It’s confusing for both of us. But why are you so angry that Stephanie wants to see me?’

‘What I’m angry about is you two scheming behind my back.’

‘We’re not scheming. I’ve explained.’

‘Malcolm, even if you’re not scheming, she is.’

‘That’s not how I’d put it.’