Balmoral by J R Brandon

Balmoral

I had pressed the thistle between pages of my English dictionary, it fell from the words ‘hitch’, ‘hoar’, and ‘hoity-toity’ onto my purple skirt a few months after I’d got back: dancing at a ghillie in my long dress, the morning frost felt on our way to the laundry room, a common phrase for ‘refined’.

 

Traditional Scottish supper

I had expected a tightly packed drum of mush, a taut balloon of innards, black pudding dumpling; but it was minced, the same consistency of mash without the potato, tasted of thick, rich gravy. Friday was still Fish day, full English Breakfasts, Afternoon Tea at four, Roast Dinner on a Sunday (after church), but I tasted the border once.

John

Staring down at Garden cottage from the high road, I squinted trying to imagine where his statue would have stood, proud as a cairn and as heartfelt in its place. All I saw were the empty spaces where it wasn’t. Some had seen it in the woods, but it is never found only stumbled across.

 Earlier shadowed by birch and pine I knelt next to a Fly Agaric, its red the first of primary colours, fat white spots like hard pinches, legged by a stubby trunk and outspoken in its damp-stink. It looked so like the pictures in my storybooks as to not seem real at all. (I feared Elsie and Frances had visited Deeside to plant Cottingly fairy-stools.)

 You can’t touch it.

You can’t look at it and feel the ground.

As I stood I saw a man, he froze – iron. Cast The earth was uneven making him seem ready to shift his weight onto the other foot. His gaze fixed on the mushroom. How many men worked a Saturday to move him so far from the castle’s sight?

His name is still legible

on the plaque.  

The bed

Queen size, black iron frame, gold motif at the head, springs like tumbled curls, the mattress patterned like a stay, porcelain blue vertical stripes, yellowing and blotchy, holey, bitten, torn, left to mourn. In her favourite picnic cottage on the second floor all the bric n’ brac of a past reign frittering in still dust. I thought it should have been put behind glass, up lighted and seen but I suppose that isn’t proper, nor could it be used in its present state by gentry visitors so it sulks here in unstately disuse, perhaps that is what she requested.

The linen room

I

Soap powder air masks the clinging smell of the dining room that we bring in with us after breakfast. One sits at the press, two set up ironing boards, two more perch on stools unpicking and another folds and stores, the room is as warm as a duvet just before you wake until last-night-talk cold-showers our quiet routine.

II

There is a strong Creole spoken here: habit, deftness, local words and technical ones embroidered on the tongue after days of shared company. ‘R’s’ are broadly trilled in the roll of a napkin, the guttural press in the gathering of damp sheets, the burr of the old washing machine, the thsiss of the iron when all is quiet.

 

III

Mondays and Thursdays we are let out early for dance practice. Pipe major’s bagpipes thrum through the chatter, maids and kilted squaddies line up and partner, they know the broad steps from their marching, arms lifted gracefully from saluting. We know how to meet in the middle from partnering sheet corners, reels familiar from folds and tucks, pulling taught to end the first, lean in to start the next, steps move you from one to another, spins are a flourish. They steam their sporrans, comb them like manes, we press towels and linen to wear them like gowns.

 

Duty

I

Hold in your mind that image we all share of a Victorian maid (not French): thick black folds unallowed to cause encumbrance, permitted only to enhance the starched prim of the servant-state, the white apron that never dirties yet absorbs a household-worth of taints, the frilled pocket full of useful bits: pins and string. Perhaps a little white cap filled with curls or a tight bun. Their chores are quaint – buckets of water carried to and fro, dusting mahogany, washing floors, sweeping, leaning over a scrub tub, beating carpets with a big wicker fan. Hold it.

I imagined a Royal servant the same.

II

In the afternoons we would all scramble to work the pink corridor, it was where the Castle met the servant’s quarters. One door windowed with frosted glass was the greatest provocateur. Beyond it you could hear the scuff of Royal feet, the yap of corgi’s, the thickness of carpet. Brassing was a way beyond the door: polishing door handles, light switches and name plates with obscene and unrelenting care. Both sides of the plumy door had to be done – for the sake of symmetry. We would take turns to toe across that line.

III

Lift lid, squirt, wipe, lift seat, squirt, wipe – swirl blue or new tropical orange, plunge brush once, twice, just twice, swish, swish, flush and lift lid, squirt, wipe, lift seat, squirt, wipe – swirl blue or new tropical orange, plunge brush once, twice, just twice, swish, swish, flush and lift lid, squirt, wipe, lift seat, squirt, wipe – swirl blue or new tropical orange, plunge brush once, twice, just twice, swish, swish, flush and lift lid, squirt, wipe, lift seat, squirt, wipe – swirl blue or new tropical orange, plunge brush once, twice, just twice, swish, swish, flush.

 IV

He always plays for the Queen at breakfast except for that time year after last (post Ghillie) he was too hashed to hunch over a toilet bowl and his second piped in. After breakfast he practices for hours in the servant’s bar, to an English ear it is the same discord on a loop until the cold and early hours pass insightful melody, and then even your absentmindness is haunted by the constancy of his music.

The Breamar games

I saw a big man flip a very big stick, I saw other big men compete, I thought if I got a bit closer I’d see beyond their enormity but there were too many others in front. Over their heads I saw the big men put down their big sticks and bend their heads as Elizabeth drove in.

 

 

 

 

River Dee

I would waddle out to my fringing boulder in the cold river and sit with my skirt wrapped just above the knee, perch then tickle the water with my toe and pretend I understood being alone. I watched the water rise unaware that it would change a thing but when I went to say goodbye to my little island Dee and the bright pebbles I had piled up there I found it sunk, all my make believe tumbled under a clean sheet of water - ready for another unmade curtsey.

Flight

I was not as nervous as I had expected to be. My ears popped as they said they would, I was served smoked salmon which they had not said. A tired Canadian businessman said this was his gap flight after a twelve-hour haul and another to go (I felt provincial again). We landed smoothly – as I had hoped. I was flustered at baggage claim, as I had foreseen. I gushed to see my family again, which was . . . Airports make me tired. I have confirmed this since (on my second flight).