The Collected Connoisseur

by Valentine, Mark

  ‘He had been appointed, for the months of summer only, the steward of this otherwise uninhabited island, which boasted only a little white bothy, a couple of freshwater wells, a withy pool, and the rounded hill, with its earthen banks. In return for the rudimentary shelter of the bothy and a weekly delivery of decent provender, he was to undertake some light duties: a certain amount of maintenance of the tiny estate, showing round the few day visitors and taking their landing fees, and keeping an oil light glowing in the window that faced the shore—not, as he added, for the benefit of any shipping, since it was too weak for that, but simply because it was the owner’s fancy.

  ‘ “As you will see, however,” Kesteven went on, “I have also appointed myself the Postmaster of Barlocco, and designed a few stamps for the island. The fisherman takes them off when he delivers my weekly supply.” He added that the owner was a very game old doyenne who occupied a run-down castle on the mainland and who was styled—he thought I would like to know—not as the Lady, nor even the Laird, of the place, but as the Regent: The Regent of Barlocco. Kesteven went on: “She makes rather a game of it, but when I asked her, Regent for whom?, she became somewhat coy and merely said ‘For the Prince, of course,’ and would not be pressed to say any more. I think,”—he went on—“you should intrude yourself up here—I shall bespeak you—and see if you can’t draw her out a little. Quite apart from all else, you will be greatly taken by her minor castle, an early nineteenth-century jeu d’esprit of some bizarrely ugly beauty. And furthermore I need company, for there is something about the gloaming of this place that makes one overly thoughtful. So if you can rough it for a few days in my cottage Post Office, so much the better.”

  ‘This was just like Kesteven. I was glad to see that he was evidently in good spirits, because the last I had heard from him he was moping about his inability to make a living from his illustrating. I wondered a little how long his delight in this singular hermitage would last, but at least in the meantime he seemed contented.’

  The Connoisseur paused and took another taste of the glistening scarlet decoction at his elbow. ‘I was glad of the chance to see Kesteven again, of course, but you can probably guess what else drew me up there: the scent of the Old Cause. The mention of an absent Prince suggested to me some relic of Jacobite folklore, which would be unusual, but by no means improbable, so far south in the Scottish realm. I therefore arranged matters here so that I could be absent for a while, wrote to Kesteven to expect me, and made my way up.

  ‘The journey from the serene old harbour town of Kirkcudbright to Castle Barlocco—for it bore the same name as the islet—took me through very bare country indeed. At last, however, on the blind corner of a very narrow road I caught sight of the little Castle and was immediately taken aback, despite Kesteven’s forewarning. You have heard some Rhine-land castles described, no doubt, as having “pepper-pot turrets”? Well, Barlocco had those all right, but it also had all the rest of the condiment set. There were towers like tapering salt cellars, lantern-like vinegar bottle affairs, and rounded plump mustard-pot extrusions. A wild profusion of corbie-steps jutted from many gables. Vanes and finials and several naked flagpoles stood starkly against the sky. Windows were rounded, lozenge-shaped, ogee-arched, fish-eye, lancet, anything but square. And it was all done in that dusty musk-rose of the region, a stone that for all its bright hue always seems to be brooding, somehow.

  ‘ “Welcome to the Pink Elephant!” a clear, soft-tongued, feyishly genteel voice greeted me as I walked up the rhododendron-encumbered path towards the slightly zig-zag steps leading drunkenly to the broad, hooded doorway. I turned, rather startled. Kesteven had made no mention of anyone other than the ancient Regent, and in my mind’s eye I had imagined her tended by some equally elderly companion. Yet it was a young woman who came into view from behind a clump of bushes and regarded my approach. She was tall, tawny-haired, and a little awkward in her comportment, but what struck me most as I drew nearer was a very wry, quizzical smile and her pale, pale harebell-blue eyes. Taking my case, she leapt lightly up the steps, at ease with their quirky gradients, and flung open the thick and gnarled door, beckoning me in with a half-bow of pleasing courtesy.

  ‘But she flung open the door upon emptiness, an emptiness that seemed to reach out and enter one. I don’t just mean that the entrance hall was nearly all bereft of furnishings, though it was, nor that it seemed hollow and cavernous, which it did. There was, in addition to these physical absences, another absence which I felt strike me as soon as I entered in. She felt it too, I know, for something of the liveliness with which she had greeted me subsided once she was inside.

  ‘ “You will find us rather spartan, I’m afraid,” she observed, in a low murmur. “The place is outlandish enough without festooning it inside as well.” I relished the musicality with which this phrase left her lips, garnished as it was with the long vowels and soft sibilance of the region and, so that I could hear her speak again, I said how grateful I was for the invitation to stay: but this remark was evidently too lame to warrant a response other than a little acknowledging tilt of the head.

  ‘She ushered me into a room leading off the hall, which was altogether more comfortable, but still somewhat bare. As I entered, there rose from a straight-backed chair a lofty elderly lady topped with a great bun of hair in which fine silver and the faded gold of the brocade of old tapestries were admingled. A very decided nose, long ears, and eyes as of slightly dimmed blue topaz added to the distinction of her bearing. She was simply dressed in rustling umber bombazine, but wore at her collar a brooch of many-hued and softly subdued Scottish agate, like a rose-window of stained glass seen at twilight.

  ‘I said how pleased I was to meet her, to which the young lady replied, “My Aunt,” so I added, somewhat confused, that I was, no, truly. Then it emerged that this aged beldame, whom I liked immediately, was “Rosemary —for remembrance, so you will remember won’t you? Just Rosemary, not Miss this or that, and certainly not Her Excellency the Regent, as that foolish boy Edward insists—Rosemary Wriothesley. Trips off the tongue rather, does it not? And this is my great-niece, Grace, I don’t suppose she told you that, she is rather bashful, who is all I have left in the world, or at any rate as far as we know, certainly in this world, anyway …”, the which peroration was delivered in a great rush of tumbling melody rather like a waterfall in spate.

  ‘I soon discovered that this was the Regent’s—for I could not in fact think of her as anything else, so aptly did she seem to suit the title—habitual mode of address, and I was glad of it, for I was a little afflicted by the sense of forlornness which pervaded the place, and Grace too seemed sparing of tongue, much to my regret, except (I observed) when on occasion the talk turned again to my friend Kesteven. After we had taken a simple supper, augmented by some gifts of heather honey, Abernethy biscuits, and creamy, unduly ripened Galloway Blue cheese that I had brought from Kirkcudbright, Miss Wriothesley and I returned to the parlour to discuss my visit, while Grace went about her own way.

  ‘I learned that Barlocco, the headland, the shoreline and the island, had been in her family for many generations, sometimes through the male and sometimes the distaff line, but at any rate with a kind of continuity as far back as anyone could reasonably tell. The estate had once spread itself over much of the neighbouring moorland and pasture-land, but that had now all gone, sold off, as—this was no more than genteelly hinted at, but I divined enough for myself— the fortunes of the house had been in decline for many a year, since the last War. There was a little income from a few outlying cottages, but she did not think it fair to charge very much for these as they were all in a state of some disrepair; and some field-rents, and some fishing rights, but they did not amount to very much and probably had not changed since her father had the place so long ago now, as it seemed, and of course there was no Factor now, nor the reason to need one, but she had decided, she had most certainly made her mind up, that a steward on the island was only right and proper, i
f only she could find someone willing to take it on, and then a friend of Grace’s from college had told this Mr Edward Kesteven about it and he had been most amusingly keen and so it had worked out very well, but whether he would really want to stay there all that time she hardly liked to think, but she was glad that he had a visitor as that might help him see it through. And as for these postage stamps for the island, all done by hand in very neat black and white, why, well, it was a charming idea. Very whimsical. Just like Barlocco the castle itself, which had been put up mostly by an antecedent who for some reason had become completely obsessed with fairy-tales, was convinced by some wild theory that Barlocco was the scene of some of them, and so not unnaturally decided he must build a fairy-tale castle there, during the days of the landscaping craze: but perhaps had been somewhat over-zealous in this regard.

  ‘As she said this, I had an idea about how Kesteven’s designs might help bring in some more money for the place, but I kept it to myself for the moment. I turned instead to the other subject of my visit—as well as meeting up with my friend again—and said that despite her disclaimers I should really like to know how it was that she came to be called the Regent of Barlocco. At this, she slanted her great head to one side, looked down her long nose at me, and fingered the agate brooch at her throat. Then she began a cautiously expressed tale in a careful diction unlike her previous tumult of words:

  ‘ “Edward said you would be interested in this, so I see I shall have to tell you what little I know. Bear in mind that I did not live here for most of my life—I taught History, you know, at Durham, and before that I was away at school. I only came back after my retirement and when all the rest had passed on. Well, I dare say there are a good many explanations. But I was always led to believe it was just a piece of rustic fun. A castle such as this seems rather to call for it, does it not?

  ‘ “My father, who was not a man of much imagination, always said it was simple. Every year one of the farm men would be deputed to go and tend to the island, where in those days there were sheep, a goat or so, and some fowl. They chose him by a kind of lot-taking from among the men without family. Whoever it was would be alone on the island for the summer months—always from the first young moon of May to the day before the last old moon of October, as I distinctly remember being told. And so because he was the sole inhabitant, the monarch of all he surveyed, so to speak, he was given the jocular name of the Prince of Barlocco and sent off with all due mock-ceremony, accompanied, I have no doubt, with plenty of drinking of the ale. It followed that upon his return, during the months when the island was uninhabited, there was no Prince: and so in his stead the domain must needs have a Regent. What do you think?” she concluded, somewhat artlessly, as if asking my opinion of something she had just made up.’

  The Connoisseur rose from his chair and gazed out of the arched windows again.

  ‘I said of course that it might very well be so. Or it might be that this explanation was what place-name authorities call a “back-formation”, a retrospective way of accounting for a curious old name, which sounds convincing but is in fact wrong.

  ‘The evening had worn on by now and the shadows clustered around the room. She had told me that the first chance I should get to go across to Edward would be the day after next, since the fisherman who did the crossings was away until then, for his mother, who lived over by Muraghty, was not so well: but in the meantime I should feel free to wander the grounds—“such as they are, now”—or to look in any of the lumber rooms—“for I am afraid that is all we can call them now, as all they hold is what we could not, or would not, sell: our dearest and our daftest things, that is what is left. And that is not such a very bad thing to have, after all”—this with a bittersweet smile whose echo I had seen, as I remembered quite well, on the fair face of Grace, her great-niece, when she had welcomed me.’ The Connoisseur sighed, and resumed his seat, inhaling absently at the almost empty glass of rowanberry essence.

  ‘I slept that night in a room which had once been painted in a rich cinnamon tint but had now faded to the colour of old blood. It was embellished by cornices of extravagant swaggery in which wings, bows and vines seemed to play a riotous part. The whole effect was very curious, and I was frankly restless to do some delving into my pet theory about the missing Prince—for I had not been convinced by the possibility vouchsafed by the Regent—so all in all I did not sleep well. But even that, I think, could not account for a feeling of desolation that afflicted me as I lay awake, a sense that some inner spirit in the house had been withdrawn, leaving it a mere empty theatrical prop.

  ‘After breakfast, Grace gave me a quick tour of the house, opening and shutting doors swiftly to give me just a glimpse inside, as if she were a little abashed by the hugger-mugger of things that were more stored than placed in each room. She also gave me a sealed lavender envelope to take over to Kesteven, with a rather elliptical look in her eyes as she did so: and she asked me some seemingly casual questions about my friend, which I was glad to answer for the sake of hearing her finely inflected voice again. Then, she said she had to be away doing some book-keeping for the estate, and I asked her if the old account-books of past Factors were still kept and where I might see them, taking the Regent at her word about my license to rummage anywhere. She told me where she thought they might be, in a sort of muniments room in the stout mustard-pot tower, and I made my way there.

  ‘It was a dry old business in that dank, bare room, with its unsteady table, hard wooden chair and shelves of green leather volumes, but after squinting at the manuscript entries of successions of Factors, I at last found what I was looking for. Or, to be more precise, I did not find what I did not expect to find. There were no entries whatever denoting wages paid to a farm hand to tend the island of Barlocco, only occasional inscriptions about repairs to the bothy or the purchase of items for the bothy, including oil lamps, a camping stove and a rainwater barrel. And there were just a few entries which led to a tentative conclusion of my own. For example, one said “Master Alexander asked if he might have a brass spyglass to take with him to the island, and the Regent approving this, it was sent for, four guineas paid to Thos. Tompkins & Co.” and another, “After a delay, the steward of the island was found, who is a cousin-german of the Regent, young Mr Anson Gair, and the Regent made his own private arrangements with him, as is usual, but required me also to find a new pallet for the bed,” and then an indecipherable sum. A few other such remarks, scattered here and there, took me the best part of the morning and early afternoon to track down, and I rose up, reasonably well-satisfied, but feeling cramped and musty-headed, and decided I needed a walk.

  ‘The garden of the castle was narrow and not at all extensive, and moreover was highly overgrown, so I strolled down the rutted road which petered out into a thin shore of tawny sand. There was a small wooden jetty. The bay opened out before me and I gazed with keen pleasure at the three Fleet islands lying out within easy distance, as it seemed: the grey crag of St Elen; green-domed Barlocco with its ridged turf banks, scattering of trees, and the white cottage just visible; and the Fleet Isle itself, with its lighthouse, farmhouse and ruined priory. Islands always seem to put a spell upon the eye of the mainlander and I watched them in a reverie for a while, refreshed by the slight sea breeze. At last, I pulled myself away and returned to the Castle. Then I began my search in earnest amongst all the bric-a-brac and heirlooms of the many rooms, all at odd angles and up unexpected flights of stairs. The Regent kept mostly to her parlour, one of the few places that had any semblance of accustomed habitation to it, but she did at times emerge to observe my careful scrutiny of various objects, with that wry smile upon her lips which seemed a family trait.

  ‘Later that evening I returned to her with, I confess, a tinge of triumph about me. I told her of my conclusion, from the Factor’s books, that the tale of the farmworker “Prince” was unlikely to be the true explanation, and of my inference, a hesitant one, but sustained by a few comments here and there,
that in fact it was usually members of the family who went over to Barlocco isle and stayed there over the summer months: and at this she tried not quite successfully to conceal a flicker of anxiety across her long, watchful face. Then I told her of four things I had found which led me to believe I could identify the Prince for whom she was Regent, and her expression became even more guarded. “Go on,” she urged, “I did say you might explore where you would, and I am glad you have found what you were looking for.”

  ‘The four things were: an engraved glass bowl with a white rose carved in its base; a walking-stick in white ash with a handle in the shape of a hound, though oddly someone had tinted its ears red; an oil-painting, gashed in one corner, of a grave bearded elder solemnly shaking the hand of a younger man, probably his son, but with his left hand; and a piece of withered dry purple heather in a locket with an indistinct inscription that had evidently been worn away by frequent touching. “A pretty collection,” the old lady observed, “I wondered where that locket had got to. Where did you find it?” I told her it was in a box, beneath an array of keys and other oddments, where I had been searching for the key to a clockcase. “Well, then, what do you conclude?” she asked me, a little banteringly, adding, “Though I think I can guess.”

  ‘I told her that I thought all of these were Jacobite relics. The white rose and the white hound were emblems of the Cause; the portrait depicted MacMurdo, the last man to shake the hand of the Young Chevalier on Scottish soil, who never again used that hand to greet anyone, not even his son; and the locket contained heather from Skye and would probably have been inscribed with the royal sigil. In short, I said, it seemed to me likely that the Prince of Barlocco was Prince Charles Edward Stuart, and she and all her forebears were Regents for his return or for the return, more symbolically, of his heirs and his Cause.