The Final Curtsey (5 page)

Fishing on the Findhorn at Glenmazeran

My parents were both gardening mad, and I remember my mother as being almost permanently in an old Tweed coat tied round the waist with a piece of string and gumboots and bent double over
something in the garden. On grand occasions, however, she could look wonderfully glamorous in a dignified way. She was middle aged when I was a child, but from photographs it was obvious to me that
she had been a beautiful young woman.

Every year, in August, we migrated to what I regard as the proper Scotland, to Glenmazeran, a shooting lodge in Inverness-shire bought by my father when my brothers were old enough to handle
guns. When we were in London the journey north was by train. And I can still conjure up the marvellous sensation of boarding the night express for the far north at smoke filled Kings Cross and
waking early in my berth after we had crossed the border, pulling up the window blind and seeing the purple hills and fast running burns, the scrubby birches and the dark pines. Lowering the window
I could breathe in great gusts of heather-scented air. Sometimes we travelled by car with two regular stopovers, one at Welbeck Abbey, the home of the Duke of Portland to whom my mother was
distantly related. The old Duchess was rather frightening and very deaf. She had an ear trumpet down which one had to shout. I remember being told that in a period of economy she gave up the
Tatler
and travelled by buses round London asking the conductors, whom she confused with chauffeurs, to deposit her at the precise number of her Grosvenor Square address. The other halt was
equally ducal, Alnwick Castle, the seat of the Duke of Northumberland who was a family friend.

Gannochy August 1938. My brother John is fourth from the right in the back row and I am seated at the front. My father is third from the right standing, my brother Andrew is
third from the left in the back row and my mother is seated second in from the left. His Majesty The King is fourth from the left, standing, and Her Majesty The Queen is seated in the middle of the
front row

As I grew older I was introduced to stalking. I shot my first stag with a clean shot when I was fifteen and became hooked on the pursuit, only giving up when I was seventy-two. Deer have an
incredibly sensitive sense of smell as well as sharp vision. To get near enough to shoot, one often had to crawl flat on one’s stomach for hundreds of yards gauging the direction of the wind,
and watching for the sentinel hind, ears pricked and eyes scanning every inch of heather. The natural habitat can only support a certain number of deer and once the grass and heather off which they
feed is exhausted, they then die a slow and horrible death from starvation, which is why they have to be culled annually. Others have a view about the morality of field sports, and, of course, they
are entitled to their opinion. The Glenmazeran terrain was also populated by buzzards, peregrine falcons, badgers and large wild cats, brown furred with long black ringed tails. My sister Elizabeth
had a coat made from their skins.

The shooting season was one of the highlights of the Scottish social calendar and in the last few years of my childhood my parents were asked to act as host and hostess for their friend, the
fabulously rich American banking, railroad and steel magnate John ‘Jack’ Pierpont Morgan Jnr, who each year between 1934 and 1939 rented the Gannochy estate from the Earl and Countess
of Dalhousie for the grouse season.

Gannochy was tremendous fun although, regrettably, I was too young really to appreciate it. There was an endless stream of visitors, all my parents’ friends included, and I can still
remember the magnificent breakfasts. The hot plate had an enormous row of dishes: fried, scrambled and poached eggs, bacon, sausages, Finnan haddock or kedgeree, cold ham and grouse. Then there was
the shooting lunch, another enormous meal which was eaten sitting out in the heather, with the butler and a footman, kitted out in tweed plus-fours, to wait on the guests. That was something not
even the Royal Family did. A similar scene of aristocratic plenitude was depicted in the film
Gosford Park
, although we never had any murders! Looking back it seems unbelievable that people
lived on such a grand scale, although at the time it never seemed remotely grand. The only comparison I can draw with the present day is the lavish lifestyle of so called celebrities, although
their junkets are now much less inhibited.

Sometimes I would stay at Glamis, the ancestral home of my maternal grandparents, the Earl and Countess of Strathmore. It is reputed to be the most haunted castle in Scotland and has a turbulent
history. Shakespeare set the scene there of King Duncan’s murder in
Macbeth
and King Malcolm was also murdered within its precincts in 1034. There is the wraith known as the Grey Lady,
an unhappy Lady Glamis, who my mother told me in all honesty she had seen on the Castle’s twisting old stone staircase. She de-manifested herself as she turned a corner and left my mother,
who initially thought she was a housemaid, feeling a shiver down her spine. I grew up with the story that there was a hidden room in the Castle, in which some sort of ‘monster’ had been
hidden – a tale told to a long ago heir on his twenty-first birthday – causing him never to smile again! The story was given emphasis when my mother’s generation, young and,
believing the story, went round placing white towels out of each window – and there always remained one towel-less window. I am reminded of Noel Coward’s anthem to the impoverished
aristocracy, ‘The Stately Homes of England’, the lyrics of which speculated about the fate of ‘an extremely rowdy nun, who was bricked up in 1491’ and meeting the Queen of
Scots ‘in a hand-embroidered shroud’. It helps, of course, to have an over-vivid imagination.

The Elphinstone family on the steps of Glamis

My maternal grandmother was heavenly. She brought her children up without frills and they worshipped her. She had an unstuffy Christian faith and instilled in all her children her strong
reliance on the Almighty, together with an equally strong sense of social duty. She was a brilliant amateur pianist and had a gift for gardening and a capacity for making friends. She made life at
Glamis fun. The author of Peter Pan, Sir James Barrie, who lived nearby at Kirriemuir, would come to tea, and once on her birthday he was seated next to Princess Margaret, who was about five years
old. Listening to her child-like attempts at conversation he promised to include some of her utterances in his next play, and would pay her a penny in royalties every time it was performed. A mock
contract was drawn up, but the play
The Boy David
was not an overwhelming success despite containing some of Barrie’s finest writing.

Princess Margaret, however, received her royalties, delivered in a bag to Buckingham Palace by the author’s secretary, Cynthia Asquith. In 1997, when the Princess opened the re-landscaped
site of the Peter Pan statue in Kensington Gardens she was presented with a replica bag of pennies, which my sister, Jean, who was in attendance for the occasion took charge of, as
Ladies-in-Waiting do on these occasions. It was a blazingly hot day and the elaborate confectionery prepared for the tea party which followed the opening ceremony, due to be served in a marquee,
melted before they could be eaten.

I seemed then to live in a very safe world. As a small child I was taught to say my prayers every evening with my mother and we all regularly attended church. On the reverse side of the coin we
were prone to cracking disgusting lavatorial jokes, but never, ever those of a sexual nature. The facts of life were a closed subject and I was entirely innocent and genuinely wondered where babies
came from. Perhaps we children were cushioned from harsh reality, although I knew poverty and disease were rampant in the slums of Edinburgh which was not so far away. But a good deal of charity
work was undertaken by those more fortunate and my mother was pivotal in this, having adopted one of the worst areas in the city, called Niddrie. My father also undertook public works: my
generation grew up to be obedient, respectful, and also tough.

We were raised to believe that it was positively immoral to stay indoors regardless of the weather. One had to get outside and do something useful: chop wood, make a bonfire, pull out ivy, weed
the garden or go for a bracing walk. The children of a nearby family who lolled around all day reading magazines and novels were cited as examples of degeneracy. To this day I feel guilty if I
remain inside for any length of time. Good manners were high on the agenda and my brothers were taught to raise their caps to any woman they met, be she Duchess or the under gardener’s wife.
And Carberry, despite its size and the servants, was a touch Spartan. There was no central heating and the water in the bowl on my washstand in my bedroom would sometimes freeze over in the winter.
I never heard my parents swear and I remember my eldest brother being roundly reprimanded for taking the name of his Maker in vain.

My brothers went away to school. John was sent to a prep school at Broadstairs on the coast of Kent, and tried to run away, boarding a ship as a stowaway. He was luckily caught before he
disappeared over the horizon. He eventually went to Eton and Christ Church, Oxford. Andrew went to Eton too and then New College, Oxford. But school, or in fact any form of serious education, was
never actually suggested for my sisters or me. I had a French governess called Sita Rivoir, who came from an obscure region called the Vallee Vaudoise where her father was a Protestant pastor. She
was very small and deeply religious. I became pretty hot stuff at the Collects and the Epistles and much less hot stuff at arithmetic which Mademoiselle had never managed to master herself. I did
however of course learn French.