First Impressions
Charlotte was so busy enjoying the lovely view from her room and listening to the far roll of the waves that she nearly forgot to go down to the Conservatory and meet Mrs Parker. There was so much to see from her window – the seagulls scanning the sky, the sea stretching endlessly into the mist that hid the coast of France, the famous sandy beach to which Sanditon owed its name, the estuary of the river that entered the Channel on the other side of the town, the greens of the golf court leading down to the woodlands around Sanditon House, and beyond that the gentle hills of the South Downs rolling towards the horizon, dotted with farms, churches and villages.
Standing at the windows of that tiny apartment, Charlotte felt as if she was the winner of a lottery, and if that win was connected to a whole lot of work in the hotel, she did not mind. There were plenty of hours in the day, and if nothing else, she would always find time to stand by her window and enjoy the view. She took pictures of the room and the sea and sent them to her family, then remembered her appointment with her new employers, quickly washed her hands, straightened the collar of her blouse and combed her hair.
She decided not to use the elevator (she slightly distrusted its mechanics, even if they had been renewed since 1868) but the grand staircase leading down five flights to the lobby. The landing of the first floor was dominated by the life-size painting of a Regency gentleman.
Standing in front of what was clearly a view of old Sanditon, he was wearing a tight-fitting brown jacket, equally tight-fitting cream-coloured pantaloons and black boots. His right hand was placed inside his jacket and on top of his heart as if he were Napoleon, and his left hand held a cane at an angle that suggested he was going to twirl it around any second. His large blue eyes gazed out into a distance – or a future – only visible to himself. This must be the first Mr Parker, the great projector, the visionary who more than two-hundred years ago had instigated Sanditon's development as a seaside resort.
The painting was only the beginning of a family gallery covering the wall down to the ground floor. Charlotte regarded generation after generation of Parker faces, Victorian gentlemen sporting long and bushy beards, tight-waisted ladies wearing corsets and crinolines, moving on to the sleeker style of the Edwardian area. She saw a photograph of the hotel under the flag of the Red Cross (she had read that it had served as a hospital and recovery home during both wars), and further down the stairs, the ladies' skirts and hair grew shorter, arriving in the roaring Twenties. As hairstyles and dress-codes changed during the last century and black-and-white photographs turned into colour, one thing remained unaltered in most pictures: the white silhouette of the Sanditon Grand Hotel in the background.
The gallery ended close to the bottom of the stairs with a family photograph of the Parkers she had just met. But hanging above it was another one that drew Charlotte's attention. She had to stretch her head to take it in: It was an A3-sized shot of a dark-haired man in his late twenties, leaning against the polished engine cowling of a vintage car, his arms crossed, his expression a mix of defiance and self-confidence. Charlotte could not help but stare at him. I would love to meet this man, she thought, and then she scolded herself for thinking such nonsense.
"I think they put him here only to make sure that female guests stay on in the hope of meeting a good-looking man," someone said next to her. She turned her head and saw Esther, the haughty head receptionist, standing behind her on the stairs and regarding the photograph as well. "That's Sidney. The successful Parker brother. Tom Parker is a monomaniac who is going to ruin us all, and Arthur is a buffoon, as no doubt you are about to find out, but Sidney…" She let the name trail away, then shook her head. "Very unsteady and unreliable. I advise you to be on your guard."
"Thank you," Charlotte said, feeling sheepish. How to react to such a disparagement of her new employer by one of her future colleagues? And how to spend a day on the beach with the children and an uncle that looked like a film-star?
"All in all," Esther said, returning to her place behind the reception desk, "I think you may come to regret ever setting foot in Sanditon. Why didn't you choose a fancy boutique hotel in a place like London?"
"I've never really been to London," Charlotte admitted. "And I liked the idea of spending a summer by the sea."
Esther rolled her eyes, then glanced out of the panorama windows towards the Channel. "Sea. Sky. Isn't it all unutterably dreary?"
No, it is not, Charlotte was about to say when Mrs Parker came into the lobby. "Charlotte! There you are! Come and join me in the Conservatory. – Esther, Sidney just sent a last-minute-booking for a couple of friends. Tom has forwarded the email to you, can you please check? They are to have an upgrade and adjoining rooms."
"Sure," Esther said, not even pretending to be enthusiastic about the task.
Charlotte followed Mrs Parker to the Conservatory Tea Room that was a winter garden with an adjoining terrace on the southern side of the hotel, facing the sea. Several tables were occupied by hotel guests, golfers and day-trippers, and as it was a sunny day, the doors to the terrace were open, letting in a fresh sea breeze. Mr Parker was sitting at a table at the back of the room. That is, as his mobile phone started ringing before his wife and Charlotte had reached him, he jumped up, grabbed his phone and started running about like a tiger in a cage while talking to an invisible someone about the Spring Ball and the necessity of bringing friends from London and the importance of it all.
Mrs Parker, shrugging her shoulders, offered Charlotte a seat and poured her tea. "My husband has two wives," she said. "Myself and the hotel – and I'd hesitate to say which of us he cares for most. Marrying into an old family business is very much about making allowances. You never want to be the generation that ruined two-hundred years of tradition." She laughed softly. "At least life here at the hotel is never dull."
"We must attract people of fashion, of influence…," Mr Parker cried, and after a pause: "I depend on you, Sidney!" Charlotte flinched. So that was him on the other end, the unreliable, unsteady film-star-lookalike-brother. Why did it bother her? He wasn't even her type. Her experience was anything but vast, but she could safely say that she preferred blond men with a sunny smile and a friendly disposition.
"Do try a Strawberry Secret, Charlotte," Mrs Parker suggested, handing her a plate of delicious-looking tartlets. "My brother-in-law, Arthur, bakes them after his own secret recipe. He's our pâtissier."
"Oh," Charlotte said, and then she said nothing for a while, for the tartlets were really the most delicious ones she had ever tasted, the strawberries melting in her mouth with lightly scented vanilla cream and a thin layer of chocolate to add a sweet crunch. By the time Mr Parker finished his phone call, Charlotte was in love not only with the view and the Parker children but with Arthur Parker as well.
"Ah, Miss Heywood. I'm sorry for seeming distracted, but I see you are being taken care of," Mr Parker said, folding his long body into the chair opposite Charlotte while his wife poured him a cup of tea. "That was my brother Sidney. Last-minute preparations for the Spring Ball, you see."
"But he will bring his friends from London?" Mrs Parker asked.
"He promised. And you know he always keeps his promises, my dear. – He's the only one of us Parker siblings who hasn't tied his destiny to the hotel," Mr Parker went on to explain to Charlotte. "He's living in London, working in the financial sector."
"I see," she said out of courtesy. Financial sector: now that explained the expensive vintage car in his photograph. She added "superficial" to her growing list of Sidney Parker's characteristics: self-confident, unreliable, unsteady, ambitious, very good-looking (and well aware of it).
"But we are not here to discuss Sidney," her new employer concluded. "We are here to talk about you, Miss Heywood." – and that's what they finally did. She was going to support Mr Parker in all operative areas, but mainly in the hotel's administration. That used to be his wife's part, but with the girls, little Henry and baby Jamie to look after Mrs Parker barely ever had a minute to spare to open the accounting folders. Apart from administrative tasks, Charlotte would lend a hand whenever and wherever needed – and this being a hotel business moving towards the high season, helping hands would soon be in high demand. She had expected nothing different. It was just as Mrs Parker had said: life in the hotel was never dull.
The next great function was, of course, the famous Spring Ball on Saturday night. Mr Parker told her that the tradition of balls in Sanditon dated back to Regency times when they were held practically every week to draw the crowds from London. These days, there was only the Spring Ball in May left, plus the Midsummer Ball in June, the End-of-Season-Ball in September and finally the highlight of the year, the Annual Sanditon Christmas Ball on Boxing Day.
"And from May to September, there is at least one wedding every weekend," Mr Parker said. "So you see, we always have a reason to celebrate. – Ha!" He tapped on his phone and dictated: "Sanditon: Always a reason to celebrate. - You're quite inspiring when it comes to slogans, Miss Heywood."
"I assume I'll support the service crew during the ball?" Charlotte asked.
"I see you think ahead. Excellent! Yes, we'll need any help we can get. Clara will take care of your uniform. Clara is our housekeeper. I hope you have brought a comfortable pair of shoes?"
"I have," Charlotte said with a smile. "I have worked in catering before."
"Splendid." Mr Parker said with a satisfied smile. "I think we'll get along very well, Miss Heywood. Very well indeed."
Charlotte, returning his smile, was thinking exactly the same.
The next morning, Charlotte was awoken at the ungodly hour of half-past four by the gentle buzzing of her phone. It was a message from her father, who usually rose at this time. Probably he had been to bed already the night before when she had sent her family more enthusiastic texts and pictures from her first evening walk along the beach.
Just be careful, her father wrote in his usual monosyllabic style.
Careful of what, Daddy? she asked with a smiley.
Everything! he replied within seconds.
Charlotte shook her head. She dearly loved her father, but his assumption that everywhere beyond a five-mile boundary around Willingden was dangerous territory, potentially inhabited by manipulating, disingenuous people, was a bit embarrassing. They had had exactly the same dialogue when she had moved to Bristol three years ago to start her studies, and when she had gone abroad for the first time.
She put the phone aside and climbed out of bed. Now that she was awake, she could as well have a cup of tea and watch the sun rise above the sea.
It was a long sunrise. And she did not only watch the sunrise and its reflection on the sea, but also a small flotilla of fishing boats leaving Sanditon's tiny port, and a group of early shell seekers combing the flotsam, and a large herring gull balancing along the gutter in front of her window. Its head plumage was slightly damaged, and it spied in on Charlotte with wise yellow eyes.
After a quick breakfast, she went down to the lobby to meet Mrs Parker. She took the stairs again, turning her head away when she passed Sidney Parker's picture. He was of no interest to her at all. The reception desk was not staffed by Esther, but by a young blond girl that could barely be out of school. Mrs Parker presented her as "Julia, one of the Beaufort sisters". Julia seemed to be much more fascinated by the messages on her phone than by Charlotte.
After a quick tour around Reception – there was the back office, and Mr Parker's office behind it – Mrs Parker took her new employee to meet the housekeeper. Clara was a delicate blonde beauty, a little older than Charlotte, friendly and communicative and obviously well prepared, for she had Charlotte's black service uniform ready. "I can add a few stitches if you need anything changed," she said, but the fitting went well, and with her uniform and a potential friend, Charlotte felt even more at home.
Mrs Parker proceeded to show her around the hotel: After the housekeeping staff, she met the service staff in the Conservatory where breakfast still in progress. In the adjoining kitchen it was hot and busy as usual – and especially now at breakfast time, when every guest asked for bacon and eggs and sausages and grilled tomatoes and baked beans – but in one quiet corner, Charlotte met the youngest Parker brother: Arthur the pâtissier, a stout, dark-haired man with a healthy colour in his face who seemed to be enjoying his own tasty tartlets a little too often and a little too much. Right now he was busy decorating delicate petit fours, a task he took to very carefully and attentively. He finished a tiny chocolate arc on one before he looked up.
"Good morning, Arthur," his sister-in-law said. "I want you to meet Charlotte Heywood, Tom's new trainee."
"Miss Heywood." Arthur Parker beamed at Charlotte in a way that made it impossible for her not to beam back. "I heard you have tried one of my Strawberry Secrets already?"
"I did, and it was wonderful."
"I shall call on you whenever I need someone to sample a new creation," he suggested.
"And I'll be glad to help," she replied.
"He's a real artist," Mrs Parker said when they were leaving the kitchen. "You should see the cakes he makes for the children's birthdays. Unicorns and pink elephants and such things."
The tour of the house continued down to the maintenance department and store rooms in the basement and again up to the function rooms on the first floor. In the largest one, they startled Manoel, the F&B manager, who was preparing the room for Saturday's big event. Mrs Parker introduced Charlotte and then quickly explained that the Sanditon Grand Hotel's ballroom was actually a replica of Sanditon's Regency assembly rooms that had been lost during a fire, and then they let Manoel do his work.
After looking at several hotel rooms, their last stop was the gym and wellness area on the ground floor. It was managed by Mr Parker's only sister, Diana, a talkative and cheerful person in her thirties who gave Charlotte good advice about how to prevent blisters and an aching back during her service duty on the evening of the ball. Charlotte thought that even without knowing the mysterious Sidney, she had never met three siblings so different in their looks and so equal in their commitment to their work. Their love for their family's hotel seemed to be an affliction, and a highly contagious one when it came to Charlotte.
They continued their tour outside. By that stage, Mrs Parker had insisted in not being Mrs Parker to Charlotte, but Mary, and Mary showed Charlotte her husband's current project: an extension called Regency Row which consisted of apartments for families and guests preferring self-catering. The apartment buildings were erected strictly in Regency style and in a half-moon around an open lawn offering a wide view down the cliff slope and towards the town. "This is beautiful!" Charlotte cried. "It's like travelling back in time!"
Mary smiled proudly. "It is, isn't it? Tom is so excited about it. It's not yet finished, but we hope to sell the first units with the beginning of the holiday season after the Midsummer Ball." Charlotte peeped through the windows, but there was not much to see yet apart from scaffolding.
"Was that Mr Parker's idea?"
"Yes. He's always bursting with plans and enthusiasm. Sometimes I fear he will tear down the whole hotel and build a new one, just for the excitement of it."
"Surely it's a protected monument?"
"It is, fortunately. – Now, Charlotte, let's walk down to the golf course and make you meet England's most noble golf instructor."
England's most noble golf instructor, as it turned out, was called Edward Denham, nephew of the great Lady Denham, patroness of the town and of Tom Parker's business ventures. He was a tall and well-built young man with a head full of carefully coiffed blond curls. Yet, despite Charlotte's marked preference for fair men, there was something about him that made her recoil from him. Maybe it was the too exaggerated ardour with which he professed his joy about meeting her, or just the way he let his eyes travel up and down her body as if working out where best to touch her. She could very well imagine him complimenting elderly single ladies on their tee-off, but she could not imagine watching the sunset with him.
"He's Sir Edward Denham," Mary explained on their way back to the hotel. "And when his aunt dies, he'll be a rich man."
"I'll rather have a good man than a rich man," Charlotte said without thinking, remembering Edward's creepy eyes again.
"Oh, I'm sorry," Mary said. "I didn't mean to matchmake. Besides, the girl who's taking on Edward Denham will have to deal with all his family, too."
"Are there so many Denhams?" Charlotte was not afraid of large families, coming from one herself.
"Apart from Lady Denham, who is a self-professed dragon, there is his step-sister, our charming Esther…"
"Esther? Really?"
"… and our housekeeper, Clara. They are cousins, somehow, I think. Two-hundred years ago they would have been allowed to spend their lives in idleness and ennui, but these days, they have to work like all mortals. Lady Denham regularly threats to leave her money not to them, but to the local animal shelter, and then they start working a little harder for a while."
"You're kidding!"
"No, I'm not. She is a dragon, Lady Denham – probably the last one in all of Britain."
"Then I'm looking forward to meeting her," Charlotte proclaimed optimistically. Who would have thought that in a small town like Sanditon, there were so many interesting people to meet?
Notes:
The next chapter's title is "Piles and Prejudices". It's the one in which Tom Parker creates a mess (again), Charlotte contemplates love, and someone returns to Sanditon.
