The Balmoral Incident

by Alanna Knight

  ‘Sorry about that, Vince,’ I murmured.

  ‘Don’t be silly. Not your fault.’ But it was.

  ‘Oh, there you are. What on earth happened to you?’ Mabel demanded. ‘I thought we’d lost you. In all this great mob, one should take care not to be separated.’

  Explanations were made. ‘What is the delay?’ I asked, having expected a carriage to meet us.

  ‘After coming all this way,’ grumbled Mabel. ‘This is too bad.’

  Vince agreed. ‘Tiresome. Typical of HM, I’m afraid. Gather he had a six-pointer in his sights.’

  Meg looked puzzled. ‘A stag,’ I whispered, as Vince went on: ‘And of course, every spare carriage would be needed at the hunt.’

  It was the usual procedure, one rare quality that the King shared with his formidable mother. Ladies also accompanied the hunt, and although they were not expected to carry guns and shoot at anything, it was an excellent excuse for a picnic and more robust liquid refreshment for the hunters.

  Vince remarked to me later: ‘HM is a little unreliable as regards keeping appointments. One thing at a time on his mind, that’s his rule. Everything and everyone else must await his pleasure.’

  We were not the only impatient guests. Yapping pet dogs, growling and barking, strained at their leads to get at one another. As for Thane, no need for means of restraint. He simply walked at Vince’s side and it wasn’t his reactions to all these dogs that intrigued me, but theirs to him. They looked up at him, most of them being only half his size, yet not a bark out of any of them. If dogs could bow in reverence, that was how their behaviour might best be described.

  I was amused and amazed and yet I should not have been for I had seen this reaction from other animals, even the wild white Border cattle. Whatever it was in Thane that we didn’t – couldn’t – recognise, it was obvious to the animal kingdom.

  At last the sound of carriages approaching, a long line strung out with a few motor cars. And one was for Dr Laurie and party. A very large, handsome Rolls thoughtfully provided, behind the driver, seats to accommodate four passengers. And Thane.

  There was only room for our hand luggage much to Mabel’s distress. She had to accept the reassurance that hers and the rest of ours would be collected by cart and arrive later. She looked with considerable disfavour on my bicycle which was being strapped onto the back of the Rolls and edged away as far as possible from Lily sitting next to her.

  ‘We’ll be seeing the castle at last, Mam,’ said Meg, seizing my hand in excitement. ‘Oh, isn’t it wonderful?’

  I smiled encouragingly, hoping that neither she nor the rest of us were in for a disappointment. Well, surprises are always welcome and there were plenty in store that only the very unimaginative would have classed under the heading of disappointment.

  As we were moving off, Vince said: ‘Well done, so he caught it after all.’

  I looked across as he pointed to a man who had pushed forward as if to be first in the queue for the carriages. The one who had rushed along the station platform at Waverley as the train was moving off.

  Now I had a better look at him. Tall, thin, dark hair that obstinately fell over his forehead, I felt a sudden chill, a flash of recognition. As we moved away and we lost him, I told myself this couldn’t be the same man I had glimpsed outside Penby House. I must be mistaken.

  Was it merely because any man with a fleeting resemblance to Danny could have this strange effect on me? This longing to return to a past life and a love that was gone for ever.

  Feeling guilty and disloyal, I thought of Jack and the weeks ahead without him. I was used to short periods of absence in Edinburgh when necessity led him in pursuit of criminals or as witness in a homicide, but on rare holidays we had always been together.

  I would miss him and so would Meg. We could only hope for a couple of days at most where he might make a brief visit when matters at the Central Office were on hold and his absence allowed. I was to realise Meg felt the same when she was to ask with daily frequency: why can’t Pa ever be with us? or I wish we could hear how Pa is.

  ‘Shall I send him a letter, Mam?’

  I encouraged her to do so, not expecting any reply since he was a poor letter writer, but I was in for a surprise. I had forgotten the bond of parenthood. There were shrill cries of delight at a constant supply of postcards from her pa. Indeed, so often she watched for the postman each day.

  I was pleased, although I had never experienced this kind of devoted attention. It was yet another strand in the man I had married, and in all truth, I was content with what I had and happy to leave some areas of his character unexplored. Confident of his love, I was grateful and yet guilty that I could never return it with equal passion, for I had been deeply in love only once in my life and I could never, I believed, recapture that experience.

  The fact that a glimpsed stranger could vibrate some chord of forgotten delight was a fatal warning, but it was not until our paths crossed again that I knew, too late, not only unsettling emotions, but also dangerous areas best left unexplored.

  CHAPTER SIX

  ‘Wild and yet not desolate’. As the road twisted its way out of Ballater into the mountainous countryside, the late Queen’s words in her journal described the scene most aptly. She had loved to draw it, as I did now, as we progressed west along the road with far below us tantalising glimpses of a gleaming river.

  At our exclamations of delight, Vince as passenger instead of driver took the opportunity of waxing lyrical and knowledgeable, giving for Meg’s benefit a short school lesson in geography:

  ‘This particular quality of Deeside is to combine great heights around the river’s source and a gentle broadening in its middle life. And therein lies its enchantment. The Dee falls rapidly from its spring in the Cairngorms, among wildness and desolation, to become the famous salmon river descending amid forests to the fertile lands of the lower Strath; indeed, the area through which it travels to join the sea sixty miles distant at the city of Aberdeen is both Highland, sea coast and plain.’

  Pausing to point out a track winding downwards, he continued:

  ‘This no doubt originated as one of the drove roads. The only means of transport from the Highlands, the main road in fact, the only possible link carrying great herds of cattle when they moved down from the north to trysts in the more populated areas.’

  ‘That must have taken a very long time,’ said Meg and Vince nodded.

  ‘The herdsmen travelled about twelve miles a day and camped as they could. Many landowners welcomed the beasts for the manure they left behind them. Folk around Balmoral would be well accustomed to these autumnal migrants. Look, some of them are over there.’

  To our right, a group of caravans and horses were huddled together in a vacant space, the smoke of their fires rising to greet us.

  Vince laughed. ‘Gipsies, Meg. The descendants of the herdsman,’ and I thought of their less illustrious descendants, the tinkers with their bad reputations who skulked about the outskirts of Edinburgh, as he continued: ‘The folk will be watching their own property just as eagerly as they did when the herdsmen were passing by. In the old days it was cattle thieving, a well-established sport of the Highlands and regarded as a natural way to increase their often meagre herds. They were poor men and likely to acquire good appetites as they tramped so it was as well to keep an eye on the poultry too.’

  Meg looked back over her shoulder, waving to the little group fast vanishing, some having rushed over to take a look at the motor car speeding past.

  ‘I like gipsies, Uncle Vince,’ she said wistfully. ‘There is something very exciting about travelling the countryside in a caravan.’

  ‘So speaks the city-dweller!’ Vince laughed and took a swig from whatever rich liquid filled his silver hip flask. ‘You wouldn’t say that if you had to live in it in all weathers.’

  ‘Can I have some of that, please, Uncle Vince?’ Meg pointed to the flask.

  ‘No, my dear, not until perhaps when yo
u are a grown-up young lady,’ he said, polishing it on his sleeve. ‘This contains one of the local products. There is a long tradition of illicit distilling in our glens, a few wily practitioners who escape the net cast by excise officers. However, there is popular local support for the million gallons of whisky – usquebaugh – distilled without licence.’

  ‘Even here?’ Meg looked round as if expecting to see evidence of the illegal trade.

  ‘Indeed, my dear, it is unlikely that so remote a district as Upper Deeside, with its high reputation for turning the sparkling water of its burns into something stronger and more invigorating should have been reduced to a wholly meek and law-abiding lifestyle.’

  And pointing again. ‘Especially as the district is well equipped with those convenient drove roads. Think of it, Meg. In the old days, not so very long ago really, where motor omnibuses now grind to the Devil’s Elbow and the Spittal of Glenshee with their tourists, there used to be moonlight flittings, ponies carrying a great convoy of whisky kegs, escorted by Highlanders armed with useful cudgels and the like. And not afraid to use them either—’

  As if in timely illustration of Vince’s tale, our road was barred not by men with cudgels but by the sudden appearance of a herd of sheep from a well-used farm road. A few bolder than the rest were heading directly in front of us. Our driver leant on the horn with little avail and the farmer’s collie dog’s retrieving attempts made the sheep even more frantic.

  While we waited, not quite patiently, for some sort of order to be restored, the disturbance caused on that normally quiet road had made us the object of some entertainment from the gipsy encampment on the lower reaches of the hill, presumably remnants of those we had encountered earlier.

  Now children rushed down to scramble onto the crumbling wall and stare at us, adults followed shouting at them – and at us. I expected all gipsies to be dark and swarthy-looking, like the women who came by the Tower selling clothes pegs and wanting to tell my fortune – ‘Ye have a lucky face, dearie’ – which I firmly resisted. Now a closer look revealed that although some of the older men were very Spanish-looking with their weathered faces, some of the young women were quite exotic, and many of the children beneath the grime were fair-skinned, sandy-haired like Meg.

  One of the men pushed forward to seize a small child who had stumbled and was crying. Tall, thin, with a wayward lock of dark hair tumbling over his forehead. He was at my side of the car nearest the stone wall, gazing down at me.

  The man who almost missed the train? My heart jolted as I saw him at close quarters. Would I never be free of men who reminded me of my lost beloved Danny, who in his dying breath had made Jack promise to take care of me? And Jack had done more than that, he had married me. I was his wife now, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer. And I thought of the rewards. Of Meg, the darling of both our hearts.

  The sheep were gone and we were moving on. The man shouted something at Dave, our driver – a gesture which included the motor car and us. The driver shouted back; it sounded like an insult although the exchange had been in Gaelic, I thought.

  ‘Bloody Irish,’ muttered Dave as we pulled away.

  ‘Language, driver, ladies present,’ Vince reminded him sternly.

  ‘Gipsies, I like gipsies,’ said Meg again, looking over her shoulder for a last, fleeting glimpse. She sighed. ‘And I’m not scared of bad weather, like Uncle Vince says. You would come with me and live in a caravan, wouldn’t you, Mam?’

  ‘Of course I would. But what about Pa – you wouldn’t want to leave him behind would you?’

  She began to protest that he would come too, of course. But I wasn’t listening. My mind was still on the gipsy, shaken by the turmoil of emotions his resemblance had conjured up.

  Meg sensed there was something wrong. She took my hand. ‘Are you all right, Mam, did the sheep coming at us like that give you a scare?’

  ‘Of course not, darling.’ I put my arm around her.

  ‘Patience everyone,’ Vince announced: ‘Only a couple of miles now.’

  The journey was almost over and there was Crathie Church nestling close by a bridge over a tumbling river and we were at the gates to the castle. As we drove through Vince said: ‘There are minor estate roads closer to the cottage. Mere tracks for a horseman and not for the likes of us, our Rolls would be seriously offended by potholes and so forth.’

  A long drive almost at an end, full of twists and turns past well-manicured lawns and tall trees, so ordered and regulated to suggest the vanguard of an army watching over us. An occasional distant glimpsed cottage.

  ‘Is that ours?’ asked Meg.

  But it never was until, at last, we glimpsed the turrets of the castle and in the foreground the massive structure of the stables, where Vince informed us some of the former coach houses were being turned into garages, the final destination of our motor car.

  ‘Here we are.’ A small cottage close by.

  And that was the first surprise.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Facing us, the usual cottage exterior, supported by a rustic porch, a window on either side and two dormer windows above it, presumably bedrooms.

  ‘It is very small,’ whispered Mabel anxiously. Handing her down, Vince merely smiled as he opened the door.

  That was the second surprise: the tiny rustic cottage vanished as before us a stretch of tartan-carpeted hallway led the way into the two rooms facing each other. Vince opened the one on the left and Mabel sighed with relief.

  ‘Why, it is very much larger than it appeared from outside,’ she said as we walked into the handsome dining room with a well-polished mahogany table ready to seat eight people, overseen by a cavernous sideboard stretching the length of one wall and overlooked by what could only be rather obscure family portraits.

  Vince opened the door opposite, leading the way into what would have been once designated as the parlour, opened only for special occasions, weddings, christenings and funerals. Its transformation was an elegant drawing room with plush sofas, armchairs, pretty, small tables and a lingering smell of those expensive cigars.

  ‘Not a country cottage at all, Vince,’ I murmured. ‘More like a gentleman’s hunting lodge.’

  Vince looked pleased. ‘And there is even provision for dogs,’ he said.

  ‘So our landlord knows we have Thane with us.’

  ‘Indeed.’ Vince pointed. ‘Through the kitchen there, although I believe HM usually keeps his pets at his bedside.’

  With a grin, he led us further down the hallway of what was the much-extended interior of a cottage deceptively small from the outside.

  At the sight of a well-appointed kitchen, Meg ran towards the sink, turning on its shining taps.

  ‘Running water, Mam, like we have at home.’

  ‘That’s a blessed relief,’ said Mabel. ‘I must confess, I am most impressed, so much … grander and more comfortable than I expected.’ She smiled at Vince. ‘You have done us proud.’

  Vince bowed and I learnt later that the alterations had been HM’s idea once he became king. He wanted to have a small private place which passers-by would dismiss without a second glance, a mere estate cottage. Only a closer inspection would reveal that as an illusion and that it was three times its original length, embellished with pieces that suggested distinguished origins in Abergeldie Castle.

  There were more delights as we went up a handsome staircase, more to be associated with a Georgian house than a narrow set of steep wooden stairs.

  Meg was rushing ahead, opening doors. Two bedrooms overlooking the front and with an uninterrupted direct view towards the castle.

  ‘A thoughtful piece of planning,’ Vince told me later, ‘so that the occupant could have plenty of warning of any approaching.’

  I was making several guesses what kind of warning that might be when Vince decided that Meg and I should share this bedroom with its splendid view, not only of the castle but a good prospect of the surrounding country. What Meg thought was a cupbo
ard was, in fact, a small dressing room containing, of all things, a water closet.

  ‘Isn’t this perfectly lovely, Mam?’ said Meg. ‘And such a lovely bed, too.’ And bouncing up and down, ‘Plenty of room – you could sleep a whole family here.’ Watching her gave me an uneasy feeling of lese-majesty, considering that the bed must have frequently sheltered an occupant not just alone for peace and quiet away from the watchful household and an equally watchful spouse.

  Mabel was to have the other bedroom where she indicated that Lily could occupy one of the two attic rooms, invisible from the front and accessible by a ladder, presumably installed for guests’ servants and valets.

  Vince had his own quarters in the castle assigned to members of the household. In addition they contained his surgery for daily consultations and dispensing medicine for minor ailments. He was also used to being on call if needed by sick tenants on the estate.

  Even as he was seeing us installed, two maids were hurrying across from the royal kitchens with food provided after our long journey. Silently they moved into the kitchen and in due course we were served with soup, venison stew and steamed pudding after which they cleared the table and as silently departed back with the debris of our meal.

  ‘What about Thane?’ Meg demanded anxiously.

  ‘Not to worry,’ said Vince beaming on us over his cigar smoke, the inevitable and satisfying end to every meal. ‘The kennels are across there in the stable block and food will be brought to him. He’ll get his share, don’t worry, the dogs are particularly well fed.’

  A consoling prospect, although the groom was alarmed at Thane’s size. ‘Like feeding one of the ponies, madam,’ he said, looking at the contents of the bowl.

  I assured him that would do very well. Thane had quite a small appetite for such a large animal. He was used to sharing our meals at home, but I often wondered if he added to it by other things; I said ‘things’, trying not to identify them as wild creatures he caught and ate on Arthur’s Seat, especially when Mabel put it all into words.