Laurie Graham - Gone With the Windsors

Jane Habberley is now sucking up to me, asking my advice about watercolor painting—feeling pangs of guilt about my tango record, I hope.

I now know everything there is to know about shooting parties. The guns come in at five and talk of nothing but the day’s bag. More than sixty birds were taken today, which means we shall be eating them till kingdom come, but at least it will make a change from fish. The guns also dash away after one whiskey, help themselves to all the hot water, then commandeer the conversation at dinner. Weather prospects, heather bugs, gamekeepers droller than Beatrice Lillie, dogs smarter than Alfred Einstein.

Next year, I shall summer with my own kind of people. The raspberries here are delicious, however.

Weather close and thundery. Poor Ena Spain is suffering. She perspires even on a cold day. Her age, I suppose. She’ll be moving on to Balmoral on Tuesday, to visit with Their Majesties. George Lightfoot says Balmoral is like Drumcanna with extra tartan. “Home from home,” Ena calls it. She’s been there just about every summer of her life.

She said, “Well, no one ever dared question it. Grandmama loved Balmoral, and wherever she went we followed. She never let Mama out of her sight. Even visited her on her honeymoon! But Mama doesn’t come anymore. She had her fill of it, and she doesn’t care for travel. She prefers to stay put.”

Ena’s mother is Princess Baby, still going strong, with an apartment at Kensington Palace and a house on the Isle of Wight.

Violet said, “And is she still beavering away at her diaries?”

Ena said, “She is. Almost finished, I think.”

I told her I keep a diary.

“Well,” she said, “these aren’t Mama’s own diaries. They’re Grandmama’s.”

Princess Baby is apparently going through Queen Victoria’s diaries, taking out anything that might cause offense and rewriting them in fresh notebooks. It’s called editing.

I said, “No one had better change my diaries after I’m gone. I’ll be very cross.”

Violet said, “Maybell, rest assured, nobody will be interested in your diary.”

Rain beating against the windows all night, heavy snoring from Anstruther-Brodie, who is in the room below mine, and then, just as I’d dropped off to sleep, doors banging as the early birds went down to breakfast. When the party breaks up on Tuesday, I may try the room Jane Habberley’s been occupying. She claims she sleeps like the dead when she’s at Drumcanna, and I believe I can live with wall-to-wall tartan—for a few nights, at any rate.

An extraordinary question from Penelope. Have I managed to enjoy a little romance while I’ve been here? Romance!

I said, “I already told you what I think of Tommy Minskip.”

“Well, not Minskip, obviously,” she said. “But Habberley perhaps, or Lightfoot? You seem quite ‘in’ with him.”

Well, Ralph Habberley has bad breath, not to mention a wife. George Lightfoot is certainly the best of the bunch, but a little too young for me. He never brushes his hair and he will sit sideways, swinging his long, gangling legs over the arm of the chair. If I were in a hurry to find a beau, which I am not, I’d be looking for a man with a little silver at his temples.

I said, “No. I haven’t had a romance. Have you?”

“No,” she said. “I put it down to the quality of the shooting. Last year they were coming in with very small bags, and I found Anstruther-Brodie quite in the mood for an adventure. But this year, not a nibble. Maybe I’ll make a play for Lightfoot this evening, if you’re sure I won’t be trespassing.”

How desperate and how dangerous. A person could so easily fall and break their neck, tiptoeing up and down those turret stairs in a state of ardor.

Penelope winked at me over the kedgeree, signaling she made a conquest last night.

She said, “Maybell, why don’t I stay and keep you company when Violet and Melhuish go to Birkhall? Fergus won’t mind going on to Glendochrie without me.”

I thanked her but pointed out that everyone else is moving on today. Including George Lightfoot. More winks. Then a lot of giggling in the morning room while she had me guess who she’s seduced. Not Lightfoot, because he played billiards all evening and didn’t tango with her once. Not Anstruther-Brodie, because that would be like reading yesterday’s newspaper. And not Ralph Habberley, because he’s a drip and the last man on earth. So who? Angus.

I said, “Who is Angus?”

“Shh,” she said. “One of the housemaids is his sister. He’s the underghillie. Isn’t it a lark?”

An underghillie! That’s nothing more than a junior fishing assistant. It would be like having an assignation with a boot boy.

She says she found him in the rod room.

Ena Spain, George Lightfoot, the Anstruther-Brodies, and Doopie, whom the Majesties appear to dote on, just left for Balmoral. The Blythes and the Habberleys are meant to be going south to Perthshire to another shooting party, but a major row blew up between Penelope and Fergus as to whether she should remain here instead. I’m afraid she got no support from me.

She said, “Oh but Maybell, what about Minskip? What if he makes a play for you? Shouldn’t you like a chaperone?”

But Minskip is on his way home and anyway, I believe I’d have been safe in his company. The only way to get Tommy Minskip’s attention is to disarrange his cavalry. And as for Penelope, I want nothing of her complications. I think a little of Penelope Blythe goes a long way.

Violet, Melhuish, and Ulick have gone to stay with Bertie and Elizabeth York for three days at Birkhall, on the Balmoral estate. Which leaves me in charge at Drumcanna.

I’ve explained to the help how to make French toast, and it will now be served instead of oatmeal in the morning. Rory requested sausages for dinner, and Flora has asked for “gake with lots of jam” and varnish on her stubby little fingernails. It’s so easy to make them happy. They’re now skipping up and down the gravel sweep, crying “Hurrah! Hurrah!”

A wire from Fishbone and Strong. They have people from Kentucky keen to take Sweet Air but they’d want it by October. Can I have it ready so soon? I most certainly can. As soon as ever I’m released from duties as Favorite Aunt, I shall go to London and book my passage.

A little girl called Ellen MacNab, daughter of the head-keeper, overcame her shyness and ventured up the drive to play with Flora. They are much of an age. We’ve had great fun, dancing tangos and reels and strathspeys, all without the benefit of phonograph music.

Rory asked to speak to me privately when it was time for Ellen to leave.

He said, “Should I walk her home?”

I said, “Would you like to?”

“Oh yes,” he said, “but it’s rather tricky. Daddy says one should always take care of ladies, but MacNab works for us, and Daddy also says one should be mindful of familiarity with servants.”

I said, “We could get one of the maids to take her.”

But he did it himself, with Flora tagging along.

He said, “I think it was the right thing, Aunt Maybell. I was very mindful.”

Violet returned from Birkhall, bringing with her Duchess Bertie York and her elder daughter. They stayed to tea. Princess Lilibet is two years younger than Flora, but very pink-and-white and refined. She sat neatly beside her mother for the entire visit and ate her scone without dropping a crumb. Flora, wearing Rory’s kilt and an ecru lace runner from the dining-room sideboard, and for whose benefit I’m sure the call was made, glowered at her little playmate and then hid behind a curtain. The Duchess and Violet are great friends and I can see why. They’re both so homely.