The Balmoral Incident (6 page)

Olivia’s decision to stay with us was mostly influenced I thought by her anxiety to watch over Faith. We could continue to have meals provided by the castle kitchens, a splendid idea initially but there were complications. Even moving dishes very swiftly across the short distance, food tended to be lukewarm by the time it reached the table. As neither Mabel nor I were enthusiastic cooks, we were coping with that quite well but Olivia decided that she would prefer we made our own meals.

‘Faith can be difficult about food, she doesn’t like meat and has other fads, like all little girls.’ Olivia paused and smiled at me encouragingly for support that I could not give her. Meg had been brought up from her first days in Solomon’s Tower to eat the same meals as we did. This was something Jack insisted on. He had no time or patience for faddy eaters.

Olivia’s other reason was that she adored cooking and confessed that she read recipe books like other women of her acquaintance read romantic novels. ‘I never get the chance at St James where everything is provided by a very efficient kitchen staff,’ she sighed. ‘So this is such an opportunity.’

We couldn’t deny her that and Mabel for one was very pleased and offered to help. Living alone, she said, was so dreary where meals were concerned and Lily, we gathered, was not particularly accomplished in that area either. I occasionally lent a hand, although the two ladies provided a surprisingly excellent cuisine which also met with Faith and Meg’s approval.

So a daily routine was established. Provisions such as vegetables would come via the kitchen gardens, meat (mostly venison) and fish (mostly salmon) from the larders. The two maids we had met on arrival, Jessie and Yolande, whose exotic name and dark good looks hinted at more romantic forbears than Royal Deeside, would look in each morning, sweep floors and light fires when appropriate, as indicated by the weather. They would also carry off our not inconsiderable laundry, thanks to the addition of another female and a small girl to our regular change of linen.

We had no facilities for washing clothes at the cottage, not even the sight of a drying line. A mass of underwear conspicuously blowing in the wind would, I fear, have lowered the tone of the estate and have been distinctly frowned upon by ‘higher’ authority.

It was decided that we should all go to Ballater, not only to pick up some special ingredients for Faith’s diet
but also several crucial necessities her mother had omitted through their hasty departure.

Vince reassured her that as Ballater shops were used to coping not only with tourists but also with the castle itself she would find all she needed. In an aside to me, he whispered: ‘Typical. Livvy’s not used to travelling alone. She needs me at her elbow saying “have you remembered so-and-so, be sure to pack this and that”.’

Mabel, overhearing, nodded in agreement and said to Olivia: ‘It is so essential to have one’s personal maid and a comprehensive list on even the shortest stays away from home, my dear.’

Olivia laughed. ‘Not I, Mabel. And I do not need a personal maid. I can manage perfectly without one. Besides I am frequently on my own these days with Vince up here in royal attendance.’

Mabel sighed. ‘All those children too.’ (As if there were thirteen, not three.) ‘No wonder you prefer to remain at home.’

As we prepared to leave, she said: ‘Lily will be coming with you. She will be needed to carry all our purchases.’

By which ‘our’ not ‘your’ indicated that Mabel intended availing herself of the opportunity of some personal shopping.

‘Surely you intend coming with us?’ Olivia said.

Mabel shook her head, insisting that she would be quite content to remain with the two girls, especially as she had notes to add to her speech of thanks to dear Emmeline and dear Christabel at the Aberdeen meeting, adding sternly, ‘While you are pouring over your shopping lists,’ making that particular activity sound
very frivolous, like an admonishment, although on further questioning Lily was to be sent in search of lace and wool for Mabel’s embroidery, which we had yet to see in evidence.

Olivia was charmed by Ballater and the shops, most of which carried By Royal Appointment signs. Lily received polite directions from shopkeepers where her mistress’s requirements could be obtained and an hour later Olivia and I adjourned with our shopping to the nearest hotel for afternoon tea.

As we waited to be served, we realised that this was the first time we had been on our own together and I was curious to learn how she had reacted to this meeting with her old school friend. I asked: ‘How do you find Mabel?’

Olivia thought for a moment before replying. ‘She isn’t at all what I expected from her letters. I know that does happen quite often and a person can change over the years from the one you imagined you knew so well, and quite a stranger emerges.’

Pausing she sighed. ‘It’s as if we have to get to know each other all over again and there are certain limits to conversations about schooldays. So remote and far away, now like part of another world, especially as we both seem to remember happenings that were so important at the time, that the other has forgotten completely.’

‘What about her suffrage involvement?’ I asked.

Olivia shook her head. ‘It was barely mentioned in her letters. Most were about the books we were both reading, and in her case, about her travels.’ She frowned and added, ‘Strange, she doesn’t seem at all as I remembered
her from our schooldays. Quite mannish, somehow.’ Then apologetically, ‘Not in appearance, of course, but that rather aggressive manner.’

As I listened, I felt that Olivia was disappointed in this long anticipated reunion when she added: ‘I do hate having to confess this, Rose. It does seem disloyal. I feel mean, especially when she has come so far, all this long way just so that we could meet again.’ She sighed. ‘And she seems to have a genuine fondness for me.’ A depth of feeling I gathered that Olivia was finding it difficult to reciprocate.

It was time to pay the bill. We had asked the driver Dave to draw up outside the hotel. I looked across the square and saw Lily. She was talking to someone taller than herself, the shadow of a man I couldn’t see distinctly, a shadowy figure hidden by the trees. But there was an urgency in their conversation; he put a hand on her arm as he walked away, as if he sought to detain her.

‘Ready?’ said Olivia. Dave had arrived, standing alongside the motor car which had drawn some interested attention and comments from passers-by.

As he saw us seated on board, I looked across the square but Lily had disappeared.

I asked Dave had he seen her but he shook his head and said slyly: ‘Seems she had a chap to meet, madam. Saw them walking away while I was taking a breather half an hour ago.’

‘Someone you knew?’ I asked eagerly since logically this must have been a local man.

He shook his head. ‘Seen him around the stables.’

I was taken aback. So the ever-silent Lily had hidden
depths and had got to know some lad when she had her meals there.

I said to Olivia, ‘I wonder if it’s the same fellow we saw her talking to outside Crathie Church.’

She shook her head. ‘Whoever it was, Mabel will not be pleased.’ Then laughing, she added, ‘Well, good luck to her. It’s not much of a life for a young girl being lady’s maid to Mabel.’ But looking around, her frown indicated that she should not have kept us waiting.

Curiosity aroused, I said to Dave: ‘What was he like, this fellow?’

Dave looked at me, also curious that I should be interested in a mere maid’s fancy.

He shrugged. ‘Tall, thin, dark, youngish – maybe a ghillie or one of those gipsies we have about here,’ he added darkly. ‘She should be careful, they’re a rum lot.’ He paused. ‘Do we leave without her, madam?’

Olivia and I exchanged glances. This was a quandary and what were we to say to Mabel? However, at that moment, Lily appeared hurrying towards us, mumbling apologetically about having problems matching madam’s wool.

That was a lie and I wasn’t listening. I gave her a hard look, as she sat eyes downcast, clutching the small packages. As we moved off towards the Balmoral road, I was unable to shake off a growing chilly feeling of unease, certain that I had recognised the description of her male companion.

A ghillie? Dave’s description also fitted the traveller on the train to Ballater, the man in the gipsy camp who had taken such an interest in our passing. But what was the
connection, what was his interest in the ever-silent Lily? I had to find out!

Another thought, almost incredible. Could he be her lover? Was he in fact the gardener I had glimpsed at Penby who had followed her all the way to Scotland? Was she the reason for his presence, keeping an eye on her? I found that difficult to convince myself, even my flights of imagination failed to reach such heights, although I had often heard from clients with unfaithful husbands that it was often the maid, ‘the quiet plain unobtrusive maid’, who had fatally attracted them.

And our journey over, watching her trailing towards the cottage, remembering the somewhat sad and pathetic figure who regularly trailed a few steps behind Mabel’s regal figure, I thought, surely not Lily.

Vince had been busy in our absence. We were to take the girls to Braemar Castle on the neighbouring estate, home of the once powerful and still extremely rich Farquharson clan. Vince wanted the girls to see a ‘real’ old castle and they were very excited at the prospect.

The present laird’s younger brother had been at Edinburgh University with him and was in residence at the castle meantime, with his wife and two little girls.

‘Is there a ghost?’ Meg demanded eagerly.

Vince laughed. ‘Not that I know of.’

Meg looked disappointed. In her opinion no castle was worthy of the name unless it had a bloody history and a ghost roaming the battlements or disappearing through the bedroom wall.

I smiled, feeling sure she felt let down by her own home in Solomon’s Tower whose ancient history, long
lost, belonged to a Scotland once described as ‘theology tempered by murder’, a time when a permanent building for domestic use and peace was not encouraged among wild Highlanders raised from their earliest years on hot tempers and cold steel.

We had our own strange history full of unsolved mysteries. One day when she was older Jack and I would show her the ‘secret room’ and tell her how we had discovered it.

When I mentioned that to Jack, he said to wait – he didn’t want her having nightmares. I thought that for all its doubtless violent past, the Tower felt safe enough with the comfortable reassurance that had there been any spirits lurking, then Thane would have let us know. He would have been aware of them and reacted as all animals did to supernatural presences.

The approach to Braemar Castle was all that visitors could wish for and certainly a more romantic prospect at first sight than Balmoral. It was almost miniature by comparison but much more ancient, dating from the seventeenth century and replacing the original eleventh-century Kindrochit Castle, stronghold of the Clan Farquharson when castles were built for defence. Indications of its past turbulent history lay in the grim gun loops still visible on the walls. The once protective moat had long since disappeared, but inside the castle remained the grim bottle dungeon which had awaited luckless prisoners.

The girls were shy with their new companions but that soon wore off as we heard their trills of laughter, being escorted round the dark corners and scampering up the spiral staircase.

Persuaded to stay for supper, since the four were now quite devoted companions and the grown-ups were getting along splendidly, we travelled back in the glowing twilight when all the trees seemed asleep, according to Meg, who had been placated in her appeal for ghosts. There was a spectral piper and a clash of steel could sometimes be heard on the battlements, as well as a baby crying.

As the girls had explored the castle with their new-found friends our hosts had given us a guided tour at a more leisurely pace. Suddenly I was face to face with the portrait of a young man in eighteenth-century dress. That black hair and white skin I found so attractive, a compelling rather than merely handsome face, full-lipped with a quizzical almost familiar smile, oddly like the ghillie I had seen at Balmoral.

Our hostess saw me looking at him. ‘A sad story, his bride is one of our ghosts. A younger son, they had not long returned from honeymoon and she woke up – alone. She couldn’t find him anywhere in the castle and, certain that he had abandoned her – it was well known that he had a mistress pre-marriage – she believed that he had returned to her. Well, the silly girl, broken-hearted, feeling betrayed, committed suicide. Of course, he was distraught when he did return home, not guilty on this occasion – perhaps. But he soon married again, an heiress this time.’ She smiled. ‘We are lucky to live now. Marriages were not for love in those days, it was a matter of dynasty, providing an heir,’ she laughed, looking out of the window at her own daughters playing a noisy game together.

After the castle the cottage seemed remote and unassuming. Thane greeted us wildly as if we had been
absent for days rather than hours. He seemed relieved at our presence as Mabel, seated by the fire, informed us that she had returned some time ago.

‘Returned from where?’ I asked, as she had declined the invitation to accompany us for afternoon tea, claiming she had one of her rare headaches and needed extra rest to be fit for the Aberdeen meeting. The malady which had apparently been shadowing her for several days certainly accounted for her odd reclusive behaviour.

‘In your absence I decided to attend that informal suffrage meeting in Ballater after all.’

This was the first I had heard about any meeting and felt somewhat slighted. She might have mentioned it, knowing that I would have wanted to be there too. She must have seen my look of disappointment and added hastily: ‘The local ladies were simply anxious to set the stage, so to speak, for the meeting with the Pankhursts. As a matter of fact, they approached me some time ago, when they knew I intended coming to Scotland. They wished me to be included, as a special friend of dear Emmeline and Christabel.’

She sighed and eyeing me almost apologetically, added, ‘It would appear they believed that the expertise of an English lady would keep them on the right lines.’

So that was, according to her, how they had expressed it as she went on: ‘I must confess that I had dismissed the time as inconvenient and it was a last-minute decision to go. I decided on the pony trap, my favourite means of travel from childhood days, known then as a governess cart.’ Pausing, she smiled. ‘I was, of course, offered a carriage when I approached the stable boys with my request.’

I was wondering about that headache so suddenly relieved, as she continued: ‘I assured them that was out of the question. I had no desire to appear “grand”, so to speak, arriving by carriage. I wished my attendance to be as simple as possible and wished to put the good ladies at their ease right from the start.’

She added: ‘I made sure That Dog was carefully secured in the cottage and decided to take Lily with me, that she might be of some use on the journey.’

Doing what? I wondered, failing completely to see her in the role of an ideal travelling companion. I was curious to know how she had responded to making the long drive, twice in one day, doubtless left outside to sit in the pony trap until her mistress re-emerged.

Mabel stared at me when I asked her. ‘Oh, she didn’t come after all, complaining about a sore stomach, something she had eaten over at the stables. I wasn’t very sympathetic, I’m afraid, and just left her here.’

Poor Lily. ‘How is she now?’

Mabel shrugged. ‘I have no idea. I needed a new petticoat trimmed with the lace she brought back from Ballater. When she’d finished that, I expect she was well enough to wander over to the stables, ungrateful girl.’ She sounded bitter.

I was not to be put off. Remembering the Ballater encounter I said: ‘Has she got a young man over there?’

Mabel’s expression of amazement suggested had I asked if she had grown wings. She laughed shortly. ‘I have absolutely no idea about her personal life, nor have I the slightest interest in her comings and goings. She is merely a servant and as long as she attends to her duties
efficiently that is all that concerns me.’ The look she gave me suggested that she found my interest in Lily quite extraordinary.

‘Will you be well enough to go to Aberdeen?’ A blunt ‘yes’ was the response to Olivia’s question and her anxious attempts to offer Mabel advice and medicaments for the headache were ignored.

Olivia always roused the best in everyone but when later I asked Mabel if she was feeling better, she shook her head, sighed deeply and seemed at pains to distance herself from our chatter. Perhaps because that headache which she had dismissed had returned. I observed that she seemed particularly on edge.

My curiosity about the day’s events went unappeased. I had expected an enthusiastic account of the informal meeting, but apart from the hour we were to meet the ladies, she replied to our polite questions with a mere yes or no.

But I was certain that something had happened in our absence at Braemar to upset her.