The Final Curtsey (2 page)

Since 1991 I had been a Woman of the Bedchamber to my aunt, a mix of Lady-in-Waiting and companion, and in her final weeks I went to Royal Lodge every day, usually around 11 or 12, and had lunch
with her, the meal being set on a card table in the drawing room. I tried to amuse her with snippets of news that might interest her. It was difficult to get her to eat much. About all she could
usually manage was a cup of soup, although her Chef, her Page, and I spent a lot of time trying to think of dishes that might tempt her. But it was wonderful to see her every day, and I would take
her little bunches of early daffodils and primroses; any flower that was really sweet smelling. I loved her so much, and I like to think that she regarded me as her third daughter, once paying me
the compliment of introducing me as such to a visiting Scandinavian monarch.

The days passed in this fashion until that telephone call. As I arrived at Royal Lodge I saw that the Queen’s car was there. I went straight to my aunt’s bedroom and found her
sitting in her armchair. The Queen was beside her, wearing riding clothes. She had been alerted while riding in the Park; her groom always carrying a radio link to the castle. The nurse from the
local surgery and my aunt’s Dresser — or Royal Household speak for Ladies’ Maid — were also there. My aunt’s eyes were shut and thereafter she did not open them or
speak another word. The doctors came and went, but the nurse, the Dresser and I stayed throughout. John Ovenden, the Parish Priest of the Royal Chapel, Windsor Great Park, arrived and went straight
into Queen Elizabeth’s bedroom. He knelt by my aunt’s chair, holding her hand and praying quietly. He also recited a Highland lament: ‘I am going now into the sleep . . .’
He later told me that he was sure she knew what was happening, because she squeezed his hand. She was 101 – such a very great age. She had arrived in the time of horse-drawn carriages and was
leaving it having seen men walking on the moon.

After a while I was persuaded to take a break and went for a walk in the garden. When I came back she had been put to bed. She looked so peaceful. At her bedside was the Queen, accompanied by
Princess Margaret’s children, David Linley and Sarah Chatto. John Ovenden also came back, and we all stood round the bed when he said the prayer: ‘Now lettest thou thy servant depart in
peace.’ We all had tears in our eyes and to this day I cannot hear that being said without wanting to cry. Queen Elizabeth died at 3.15 in the afternoon on 30 March 2002. She just slipped
away and her death certificate said that the cause of death was ‘extreme old age’. I returned home soon after, thinking that it was strangely significant that she had died on Easter
Saturday, the day before the Resurrection. It had been a long and emotionally exhausting day, and I was so touched when David Linley telephoned to say that the Queen would like me to spend the
night at the castle.

That evening passed in rather a blur. We had dinner and talked about more or less normal things. We went to bed quite early and next morning we attended communion in the Castle chapel. Later I
went to Matins in the Park chapel, and then drove over to Royal Lodge, to make sure all was well with the staff. The Dresser asked me if I would like to see my aunt. She looked lovely and almost
younger, death having wiped the lines away. I knelt by her bed and said a prayer for her.

Then I stood up and gave her my final curtsey.

Later, I was deputed to register my aunt’s death at the Windsor Registrar’s office. I was shown into the room of a rather fierce-looking lady and we went through
the formalities while she ticked the relevant boxes.

At a certain point, she fixed me with a beady eye and asked, ‘Right, what was the husband’s occupation?’ It seemed a superfluous question; however, after a second’s
hesitation, I answered, ‘King’. I think Queen Elizabeth might have found that almost amusing.

CHAPTER TWO

It seems strange that I once lived in what would turn out to be the last days of a long lost world of seemingly unassailable privilege. Although when it is happening it all
seems perfectly normal — especially to a small child as I was. The First World War signalled the threatening clouds and the death throes had done their deed by the end of the Second World
War. In the year of my birth — 1925 — the Charleston hit town, and twelve months later the General Strike generated a class war that almost split Britain. The TUC had called out the
workers, but the impact did not reach the middle of Scotland. My mother was still receiving the cook every morning to discuss the day’s menus. The staff ate in two separate dining rooms, one
for the senior members such as the butler, housekeeper, ladies’ maid and the head housemaid. If there were visiting valets or ladies’ maids, they were included. All the other staff ate
together in another room, as in the television series ‘Downton Abbey’. Before the war, in many grand houses, lady guests would be expected to change clothes three times a day, from
morning dress to afternoon dress, and finally long evening dress, with decorations and tiaras. The housemaids had to conform as well, wearing some sort of white overall outfit in the mornings, when
all the heavy cleaning was done, and black dresses with little white aprons, rather like the uniform once worn by the waitresses in Lyons Corner Houses — they were called
‘Nippies’ — in the afternoon and evening.

When Queen Mary came to stay with my family, I was given strict instructions by my mother on the required protocol. This entailed kissing her on the cheek, followed by kissing her hand and then
curtseying. Of course, I muddled it up, getting it all in the wrong order, finally rising from my obeisance to biff Her Majesty under the chin with the top of my head, as her face lent forward to
receive a kiss, which I had forgotten. Luckily this misadventure did not ruffle the calm of the grand old lady. Later in the same year King George II of Greece arrived and I curtseyed deeply to his
imposing equerry and shook hands firmly with the King. How was I to know which was which.

Silly games were often played by the grown-ups and enjoyed by spectators, such as
‘Are you there Moriarty?’
Two people, blindfolded, lie on the ground with
cushions, trying to hit each other when they answer.

There were many other, more light-hearted family occasions, when my aunt, the Duchess of York and her husband, with the two Princesses, visited us. They played some pretty odd and boisterous
games, with distinguished visitors rolling round on the ground being beaten round the head with cushions or with newspapers which had been folded into batons, playing the game known as ‘Are
you there, Moriarty?’ We three girls were surprised at the curious goings on of the grown-ups.

Cocooned in the nursery I, of course, knew nothing about the social convulsions gripping the country, and neither did my first cousin, Princess Elizabeth, who was born a year after I was in
1926, that tumultuous strike year, just thirteen days before the mass walk outs started. I learned very much later that her father, then Duke of York, and after the abdication of King Edward VIII,
King George VI, was intensely worried about the crisis, and frustrated because his position prevented him from offering any advice, despite his knowledge of industrial affairs and his deep interest
in the welfare of working men and women. He was President of the Industrial Welfare Society, and, when asked whether he wanted to take the job on, typically said: ‘I’ll do it provided
there’s no damned red carpet about it’.

My father, the 16th Lord Elphinstone

May, my mother – gardening as usual

His personal contribution to breaking down social barriers was through his camps, at which thousands of boys aged between seventeen and nineteen, from widely differing
backgrounds, mixed, worked, and played together. He came to be known as ‘the Industrial Prince’ and, sometimes less kindly by his brothers as ‘the Foreman’.

My father, the 16th Lord Elphinstone, was born in 1869. For some odd reason I was rather proud that he had come into the world exactly halfway through Queen Victoria’s long reign. I love
facts that telescope history. For instance my father’s sister had a Godmother who was married to one of Napoleon’s ADCs, the Comte de Flahaut, who was the illegitimate son of that great
survivor of revolutions, Talleyrand, bishop and turncoat aristocrat, who somehow dodged the guillotine and always managed to end up on the winning side. I have quite lately discovered what I think
is a fascinating historical fact. When the Queen visited Normandy recently, she was met with cries of ‘Vive le Duc’, as if she were the living embodiment of the Duke who invaded us in
1066.

My father had been destined for the diplomatic service and was in attendance at the court of the last Tsar of Russia, Nicholas II, in St Petersburg at the turn of the nineteenth century. I have
always been fascinated that I had this tiny, tenuous link with Russia before the revolution, and I remember as a child my father telling me about the opulence of the Russian Imperial court, the
Fabergé style brilliance of St Petersburg’s high society, and his glimpses of the Imperial family who, despite the formal grandeur of their official position, in private lived very
simply, the children being brought up in a very English, austere way, as befitting the great grandchildren of Queen Victoria.

Of course they were all brutally murdered by the Bolsheviks in July 1918, but years later I was told that during their imprisonment they displayed striking courage in the face of the tragedy of
their situation, and the letters, diaries and memoirs of those who were in contact with them during the last year and a half of their incarceration unanimously attest to this. The Emperor Nicholas
at first hoped that his family would be able to leave Russia for exile in Britain, but his cousin King George V was advised by his ministers that there was strong opposition to this proposal among
his people, and the offer of a refuge with their British relatives was withdrawn. The best motives of kings and queens are often constrained by
realpolitik
, but George V continued to seek
assurances through the British ambassador in St Petersburg concerning the safety of the Imperial family, and always hoped that they would find safety. He was devastated by their cruel deaths, and
in his diary wrote: ‘May [Queen Mary] and I attended a Service at the Russian Church in Welbeck Street in memory of dear Nicky who I fear was shot last month by the Bolsheviks. We can get no
details, it was a foul murder, I was devoted to Nicky, who was the kindest of men, a thorough gentleman, who loved his Country and his people’. A photograph of the Emperor, signed
‘Nicky’ is displayed on a side table at Sandringham.

In the spring of 1919 the King sent the Royal Navy cruiser
Marlborough
to the Crimea to rescue the Romanov survivors. There were only a few, and among them was the Tsar’s sister,
the Grand Duchess Xenia, who spent forty years in exile in Britain and who Queen Elizabeth liked. I encountered the Grand Duchess in 1940, when she was staying at Craigowan, a house on the Balmoral
estate, often used by the Royal Family for short private visits to avoid opening up the castle.