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Tears from Flora. She fled from the table, Doopie followed her, and Rory followed Doopie.
Penelope said, “Oh Maybell, don’t go. I rather thought we might be chums. You’ll find things much livelier after the summer. Balls, parties. Do stay. Violet has room for you.”
But I didn’t say I was going back for good. Not at all. I’ll simply settle my affairs, let it be known to provincialites like Nora Sedley Cordle that Maybell Brumby has gone international, and then return. And Violet’s having room or not won’t enter into it, because I shall take a house anyway. Somewhere I can have my bath run as deep and as hot as I please. And I won’t have to lose sleep over the price of a good rib roast.
I’ll be one of the Baltimore belles who are making their mark on London.
11th August 1932
A boot boy has gone by bicycle down to Aboyne with a wire to Fishbone and Strong. I’ve instructed them to find a good tenant for Sweet Air. Flora is happy. She’s been dancing up and down the Long Gallery, singing, “Aunt Bayba’s staying forever!”
Penelope seems very pleased, too. She says there’s a house that may be coming up across from them in Cadogan Square. I don’t know. I’ll have to see if it’s my kind of neighborhood.
The Anstruther-Brodies have arrived, which signals the start of the shooting party.
The quarry is a small bird called grice.
12th August 1932
The guns went out early, Ailsa Anstruther-Brodie among them. It was all too obvious at dinner last night that Melhuish is very smitten. He kept gushing about her being a first-rate shot, and bounding across the room to light her cigarette. It all seems to sail over Violet’s head.
Everything now revolves around the shooting, even luncheon, so one has the choice of piling into motors and joining the guns, or going hungry. Even Viscount Minskip has been forced to reschedule his daily battle. Two long tables had been taken up to the moor and set with china and flatware kept especially for these occasions. Shooting lunches, they’re called. The whole thing must be an enormous strain on Violet’s struggling staff, and it would be altogether simpler if sandwiches were sent up in a shooting brake and the rest of us were left in peace, but no. Ladies, children, and Minskip at one table; men, loaders, beaters, and Ailsa Anstruther-Brodie at the other. Stag pie and salad and a cake decorated with flaked almonds, which Rory calls Toenail Cake.
Jane Habberley is now sucking up to me, asking my advice about watercolor painting—feeling pangs of guilt about my tango record, I hope.
13th August 1932
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.”
14th August 1932
Rain beating against the windows all night, heavy snoring from Anstruther-Brodie, who is in the room below mine, and then, just as I’d dropped off to sleep, doors banging as the early birds went down to breakfast. When the party breaks up on Tuesday, I may try the room Jane Habberley’s been occupying. She claims she sleeps like the dead when she’s at Drumcanna, and I believe I can live with wall-to-wall tartan—for a few nights, at any rate.
An extraordinary question from Penelope. Have I managed to enjoy a little romance while I’ve been here? Romance!
I said, “I already told you what I think of Tommy Minskip.”
“Well, not Minskip, obviously,” she said. “But Habberley perhaps, or Lightfoot? You seem quite ‘in’ with him.”
Well, Ralph Habberley has bad breath, not to mention a wife. George Lightfoot is certainly the best of the bunch, but a little too young for me. He never brushes his hair and he will sit sideways, swinging his long, gangling legs over the arm of the chair. If I were in a hurry to find a beau, which I am not, I’d be looking for a man with a little silver at his temples.
I said, “No. I haven’t had a romance. Have you?”
“No,” she said. “I put it down to the quality of the shooting. Last year they were coming in with very small bags, and I found Anstruther-Brodie quite in the mood for an adventure. But this year, not a nibble. Maybe I’ll make a play for Lightfoot this evening, if you’re sure I won’t be trespassing.”
How desperate and how dangerous. A person could so easily fall and break their neck, tiptoeing up and down those turret stairs in a state of ardor.
16th August 1932
Penelope winked at me over the kedgeree, signaling she made a conquest last night.
She said, “Maybell, why don’t I stay and keep you company when Violet and Melhuish go to Birkhall? Fergus won’t mind going on to Glendochrie without me.”
I thanked her but pointed out that everyone else is moving on today. Including George Lightfoot. More winks. Then a lot of giggling in the morning room while she had me guess who she’s seduced. Not Lightfoot, because he played billiards all evening and didn’t tango with her once. Not Anstruther-Brodie, because that would be like reading yesterday’s newspaper. And not Ralph Habberley, because he’s a drip and the last man on earth. So who? Angus.
I said, “Who is Angus?”
“Shh,” she said. “One of the housemaids is his sister. He’s the underghillie. Isn’t it a lark?”
An underghillie! That’s nothing more than a junior fishing assistant. It would be like having an assignation with a boot boy.
She says she found him in the rod room.
Ena Spain, George Lightfoot, the Anstruther-Brodies, and Doopie, whom the Majesties appear to dote on, just left for Balmoral. The Blythes and the Habberleys are meant to be going south to Perthshire to another shooting party, but a major row blew up between Penelope and Fergus as to whether she should remain here instead. I’m afraid she got no support from me.
She said, “Oh but Maybell, what about Minskip? What if he makes a play for you? Shouldn’t you like a chaperone?”
But Minskip is on his way home and anyway, I believe I’d have been safe in his company. The only way to get Tommy Minskip’s attention is to disarrange his cavalry. And as for Penelope, I want nothing of her complications. I think a little of Penelope Blythe goes a long way.
17th August 1932
Violet, Melhuish, and Ulick have gone to stay with Bertie and Elizabeth York for three days at Birkhall, on the Balmoral estate. Which leaves me in charge at Drumcanna.
I’ve explained to the help how to make French toast, and it will now be served instead of oatmeal in the morning. Rory requested sausages for dinner, and Flora has asked for “gake with lots of jam” and varnish on her stubby little fingernails. It’s so easy to make them happy. They’re now skipping up and down the gravel sweep, crying “Hurrah! Hurrah!”
A wire from Fishbone and Strong. They have people from Kentucky keen to take Sweet Air but they’d want it by October. Can I have it ready so soon? I most certainly can. As soon as ever I’m released from duties as Favorite Aunt, I shall go to London and book my passage.
18th August 1932
A little girl called Ellen MacNab, daughter of the head-keeper, overcame her shyness and ventured up the drive to play with Flora. They are much of an age. We’ve had great fun, dancing tangos and reels and strathspeys, all without the benefit of phonograph music.
Rory asked to speak to me privately when it was time for Ellen to leave.
He said, “Should I walk her home?”
I said, “Would you like to?”
“Oh yes,” he said, “but it’s rather tricky. Daddy says one should always take care of ladies, but MacNab works for us, and Daddy also says one should be mindful of familiarity with servants.”
I said, “We could get one of the maids to take her.”
But he did it himself, with Flora tagging along.
He said, “I think it was the right thing, Aunt Maybell. I was very mindful.”
20th August 1932
Violet returned from Birkhall, bringing with her Duchess Bertie York and her elder daughter. They stayed to tea. Princess Lilibet is two years younger than Flora, but very pink-and-white and refined. She sat neatly beside her mother for the entire visit and ate her scone without dropping a crumb. Flora, wearing Rory’s kilt and an ecru lace runner from the dining-room sideboard, and for whose benefit I’m sure the call was made, glowered at her little playmate and then hid behind a curtain. The Duchess and Violet are great friends and I can see why. They’re both so homely.
21st August 1932
Tomorrow to London and a midge-free suite at Claridge’s. Violet is raising objections right and left. Why the haste? Why spend money on accommodations when I could wait only two more weeks and travel back with her to Carlton Gardens? Isn’t it a rash move, giving up my home and plunging into the unknown?
It says everything about the differences between us. She clings to her lists and timetables and routines, whereas I’m not afraid to seize the moment. Why the haste? Because prospective tenants with good references and no children don’t grow on trees, and the Lancastria sails on August 30th. And a rash move? Well, a two-year lease hardly amounts to burning my boats, and Belgravia isn’t exactly darkest Africa.
I’ve reminded her it was her idea I should come to London in the first place. Gay diversions and eligible beaux were the inducements, as I remember it, neither of which Violet is in any position to provide, I now realize. She thought I’d be one of those wallflower widows, eager to meet a titled simpleton, grateful to be squeezed into Lady Desborough’s guest attic. Now she knows better. I shall have my own coterie before Violet can say “agenda.”
“Well, if you’re absolutely sure it’s what you want, Maybell,” she keeps saying.
I am.
25th August 1932, Claridge’s Hotel, London
Violet was right about one thing. London is dead. I woke a realtor from his August slumbers and have appointments to view three houses tomorrow, one of them catty-corner from Penelope and Fergus Blythe. What a surprise Pips and Wally are going to get when they come back and find me with my own establishment.
26th August 1932
I am taking a house on Wilton Place. It’s light and very prettily done out in the palest greens and blues. More important, the owners are Americans, so it has a good, efficient furnace and a Kelvinator icebox. I didn’t like the aspect of the Cadogan Square property. It was convenient for Harrold’s department store, but the drawing room was full west, which can be very bothersome on summer evenings, and the house in Eaton Mews was too close for comfort to Melhuish’s sister Elspeth and her husband. The last thing I need is her training the Rear-Admiral’s telescope on my front door.
Wilton Place is exactly right for me. Pips and I will be neighbors almost, and when Doopie and Flora tire of feeding the ducks in St. James’s Park, they can come and visit Hyde Park instead.
2nd September 1932, RMS Lancastria
The ocean is as calm as a soup dish, and I have unexpected company. Judson and Hattie Erlanger came on board at the very last moment. I bumped into Hattie as I was taking a turn on deck this morning. She had a friend with her, Daisy Fellowes, and they were on their way to the gymnasium. They begged me to join them, but I preferred to sit with a cup of bouillon and my own thoughts. They said they were going to bicycle all the way to New York, and went off shrieking with laughter. It seemed too early in the day for them to be tight.
3rd September 1932
Judson tells me Hattie’s friend Daisy Fellowes is immensely rich. From what I saw of her at dinner last evening, she’s certainly made inroads into the world’s supply of pink diamonds. He’s in a nice, gossipy mood. He thinks Wally must have stampeded Ernest into marriage, because he has the look of a man who’s not quite sure where he is or what he’s doing there.
I said, “I think the appeal of Ernest was he was effectively a free ticket to London and a fresh start.”
He said, “Yes, that makes sense. She’d fouled the nest too much to stay in Baltimore.”
Judson does rather go on about what a great girl Hattie is. I wonder if he feels under some kind of obligation to try making love to me again? I pray not. Our paths diverged in 1917, and if he has made a happy match with Hattie, I can only be pleased for him. Personally, I find her gratingly tall.
8th September 1932, Sweet Air, Baltimore
Sweet Air was bathed in sunlight as I arrived, and it feels so roomy and bright after those London houses with their rooms stacked higgledy-piggledy four and five floors high. I almost picked up the telephone and told Fishbone to call everything off. But it is too big for me in my present circumstances. Too big, too quiet, too remote from invigorating company. I’ve grown accustomed to nightlife and the rattle of London trams. Also, Missie says Junior’s wife stops her car outside every day and peers through the gates up to my pleasure porch. If I stayed, she and Junior would surely rob me of my peace of mind and destroy my health.
19th September 1932
The last of my boxes has gone, and the ticker-tape machine has been removed, my final reminder of Brumby. Whatever Junior may say, we were contented. I didn’t bother him and he didn’t bother me, at least not in recent times.
I’ve put Nora Sedley Cordle out of her misery. She’s been making hay in my absence, hosting musical soirees and raising funds for the veterans’ hospital, and must have been anxious about my returning home, worried I’d confiscate her new little empire. By a great stroke of luck, she arrived at Klein’s just as my furs were being loaded into the car. A face like an anaemic chipmunk.
I said, “Hello Nora and good-bye. You know, I find Baltimore so narrow now I live in London. I wonder if we shall ever meet again.”
I’ve always made good exits, though I do say so myself.
24th September 1932, RMS Rex
Junior and that grasping creature he calls a wife had the nerve to send a basket of fruit to my stateroom. All poisoned, I’m sure. I’ve donated it to the stewards’ mess.
A squall is forecast for tonight.
25th September 1932
More than a squall. The girl from the infirmary ministered to me like an angel, but there are no hair appointments until tomorrow afternoon.
26th September 1932
Thelma Furness’s sister Connie is on board. She claimed me in the Palm Court as I was trying to regain my sea legs. We shared a pot of tea, and when she heard of my difficulties, she made a call and immediately, miraculously, a hair appointment opened up. She told me Thelma and her Prince have been summering secretly at Biarritz. No wonder he didn’t put in an appearance at Balmoral.
A wire from Violet. Melhuish is sending his car to meet me when we dock, and she insists on my going to Carlton Gardens until my own house is aired. How kind everyone is.
30th September 1932, Carlton Gardens, London
Ulick and Rory have returned to their schools, and the pace of London life is quickening again. Violet already has a number of invitations on her mantel. I predict that by this time next year, mine will make hers look sadly bare.
She said, “Well, now you’re here, what do you plan to do?”
My feet have hardly touched dry land. I said, “I’m going to make telephone calls, to see who’s back in town, and tomorrow night I’m going to Ciro’s with Pips and Freddie and the Whitlow Trillings.”
“No,” she said, “I mean what are you going to do? There are more important things in life than going to niteries.”
She underestimates me. I’m perfectly aware I have to hire a cook and a driver. I also have to pick out new drapes for my dining room, something more confident than pastel stripes, something that says “Maybell Brumby lives here now.” But one can’t be slaving every hour of the day. Lunch with Ida.
