Читать книгу Gone With the Windsors - Laurie Graham - Страница 76

I now know everything there is to know about shooting parties. The guns come in at five and talk of nothing but the day’s bag. More than sixty birds were taken today, which means we shall be eating them till kingdom come, but at least it will make a change from fish. The guns also dash away after one whiskey, help themselves to all the hot water, then commandeer the conversation at dinner. Weather prospects, heather bugs, gamekeepers droller than Beatrice Lillie, dogs smarter than Alfred Einstein.

Next year, I shall summer with my own kind of people. The raspberries here are delicious, however.

Weather close and thundery. Poor Ena Spain is suffering. She perspires even on a cold day. Her age, I suppose. She’ll be moving on to Balmoral on Tuesday, to visit with Their Majesties. George Lightfoot says Balmoral is like Drumcanna with extra tartan. “Home from home,” Ena calls it. She’s been there just about every summer of her life.

She said, “Well, no one ever dared question it. Grandmama loved Balmoral, and wherever she went we followed. She never let Mama out of her sight. Even visited her on her honeymoon! But Mama doesn’t come anymore. She had her fill of it, and she doesn’t care for travel. She prefers to stay put.”

Ena’s mother is Princess Baby, still going strong, with an apartment at Kensington Palace and a house on the Isle of Wight.

Violet said, “And is she still beavering away at her diaries?”

Ena said, “She is. Almost finished, I think.”

I told her I keep a diary.

“Well,” she said, “these aren’t Mama’s own diaries. They’re Grandmama’s.”

Princess Baby is apparently going through Queen Victoria’s diaries, taking out anything that might cause offense and rewriting them in fresh notebooks. It’s called editing.

I said, “No one had better change my diaries after I’m gone. I’ll be very cross.”

Violet said, “Maybell, rest assured, nobody will be interested in your diary.”