The Final Curtsey Read Online Free PDF Page A

left. His Majesty The King is fourth from the left, standing, and Her Majesty The Queen is seated in the middle of the
front row
    Glenmazeran was special. I caught my first salmon in the Findhorn river and my first trout in the Mazeran burn. I subsequently became a keen fisherwoman and skilful angler and a stretch of the
    river is still named after me: Miss Margaret’s Pool. There were eagles galore, and I once saw three sitting in the same birch tree. In those days they were classed as vermin and on a grouse
    shooting estate had to be controlled. I was allowed to use a 20-bore shotgun belonging to one of my brothers. Out one day walking in a fir wood, something flopped out of a tree. I went bang and
    to my surprise the ‘something’ fell to the ground. It was an eagle and I proudly carried my trophy home slung over my shoulders. I was immensely proud of myself and received the
    plaudits of the family. The downside was to be infested with ticks and lice.
    As I grew older I was introduced to stalking. I shot my first stag with a clean shot when I was fifteen and became hooked on the pursuit, only giving up when I was seventy-two. Deer have an
incredibly sensitive sense of smell as well as sharp vision. To get near enough to shoot, one often had to crawl flat on one’s stomach for hundreds of yards gauging the direction of the wind,
and watching for the sentinel hind, ears pricked and eyes scanning every inch of heather. The natural habitat can only support a certain number of deer and once the grass and heather off which they
feed is exhausted, they then die a slow and horrible death from starvation, which is why they have to be culled annually. Others have a view about the morality of field sports, and, of course, they
are entitled to their opinion. The Glenmazeran terrain was also populated by buzzards, peregrine falcons, badgers and large wild cats, brown furred with long black ringed tails. My sister Elizabeth
had a coat made from their skins.
    The shooting season was one of the highlights of the Scottish social calendar and in the last few years of my childhood my parents were asked to act as host and hostess for their friend, the
fabulously rich American banking, railroad and steel magnate John ‘Jack’ Pierpont Morgan Jnr, who each year between 1934 and 1939 rented the Gannochy estate from the Earl and Countess
of Dalhousie for the grouse season.
    Gannochy was tremendous fun although, regrettably, I was too young really to appreciate it. There was an endless stream of visitors, all my parents’ friends included, and I can still
remember the magnificent breakfasts. The hot plate had an enormous row of dishes: fried, scrambled and poached eggs, bacon, sausages, Finnan haddock or kedgeree, cold ham and grouse. Then there was
the shooting lunch, another enormous meal which was eaten sitting out in the heather, with the butler and a footman, kitted out in tweed plus-fours, to wait on the guests. That was something not
even the Royal Family did. A similar scene of aristocratic plenitude was depicted in the film Gosford Park , although we never had any murders! Looking back it seems unbelievable that people
lived on such a grand scale, although at the time it never seemed remotely grand. The only comparison I can draw with the present day is the lavish lifestyle of so called celebrities, although
their junkets are now much less inhibited.
    Sometimes I would stay at Glamis, the ancestral home of my maternal grandparents, the Earl and Countess of Strathmore. It is reputed to be the most haunted castle in Scotland and has a turbulent
history. Shakespeare set the scene there of King Duncan’s murder in Macbeth and King Malcolm was also murdered within its precincts in 1034. There is the wraith known as the Grey Lady,
an unhappy Lady Glamis, who my mother told me in all honesty she had seen on the Castle’s twisting old stone staircase. She de-manifested herself as she turned a corner and left my mother,
who