A Year in the World (40 page)

Her reply—“He will become a man of business when he marries me”—reveals a gritty determination. In 1828, when she was thirty-eight and her uncle safely dead, she married the risky Onesiphorus and paid off his debts. She must have quickly whipped him into shape because he became a community pillar and an ardent restorer of the royal palace, which the Bruce family owned. He took her surname onto his own. There’s no statue of Margaret, but reading about her, I suspect there should be. I wonder what happened to her mother.

We manage to load the trunks of the two cars with supplies. Kate spots a tearoom that looks properly dowdy. We pause for tea and crumpets doused in thick cream. Susan is in heaven; we’re not far behind.

After
siestas, in the late afternoon, Kate, Robin, Susan, and I take baskets down to the garden. Lettuces, tiny radishes, zucchini, beets, and new onions shine in their beds. I want to come back alone later. The walled garden seems like the perfect metaphor for the solitude of the mind. I pick out the fruit tree I will sit under. All of us have vegetable gardens (though Kate only grows Cabernet grapes on her land), but none has a poetic garden like this, and we are enchanted. The air is sweet and cool, not hot or cold, just deeply fresh. Underfoot the loamy earth sinks. Robin finds dill, and I pick a handful of parsley and thyme. Last we gather ripe, ripe strawberries.

For dinner Cole grills salmon—Scottish, of course—on the terrace. Susan concocts a prawn sauce with fresh dill, and rice with diced peppers. I roast beets in the slower Aga oven and slice them right into the most heavenly salad imaginable. The crisp greens right out of the garden—incomparable. Susan, by now totally into her English mode, creates her mother’s summer pudding. Candlelight, a pitcher full of blue hydrangeas and white roses, the table laid—we’re living here.

“This seems like something you read about—house parties where people are tipping down the halls to other rooms in the middle of the night,” Ed says.

“Or
Upstairs, Downstairs
—only there’s no downstairs.” Kate pushes back the draperies for more of the late light.

“There is Violet. She was here this morning. Didn’t you notice all the wineglasses got washed? She’s the housekeeper and will come later in the week. John and I were the only ones up.”

We retire after dinner into what we’re calling the drawing room. Cole and Robin play a Brahms waltz for four hands. Then they launch into Methodist hymns and Scottish ballads from a book Cole brought over,
Seventy Scottish Songs for Low Voices
, printed in 1905. I’m hoping no one takes it upon themselves to read Robert Burns’s “best-laid schemes o’ mice’ an’ men gang aft agley,” or, God forbid, sing “Auld Lang Syne.” Robin, I realize, loves to work with her hands. She gardens, does needlepoint, plays the piano, hand-marbles paper, and sets type from dozens of boxes of minuscule lead letters. She started her own letterpress publishing house when I first met her. I marveled at her patience in setting every little comma and putting all those space bars just so. Her first effort was to publish my first book of poetry, and she since has published several collections of Ed’s poems and a fine edition of another book of mine, as well as
Marbling at the Heyeck Press
and many other books cherished by readers of poetry and collectors. Her books are in many rare book rooms in the great libraries. Right now she’s banging out “I Come to the Garden Alone,” and since I know all the words, I can’t resist singing along.

Cole teaches piano at home and gives private concerts. In the past he used to play in jazz clubs in Paris and Southern California. “How many times have I been asked to play ‘Misty,’ ” he muses, launching into it only for a moment.

“Can you play
our
song?” Ed asks. “‘A Whiter Shade of Pale.’ ”

“
That’s
your song? Procol Harum? I don’t know—how does it go?”

“You don’t pick your song, you all. It picks you. This was playing in all the romantic moments when we first met,” I say.

Susan and I try to sing the melody. The words are hard to remember. What makes the song memorable is the quirky voice of Gary Brooker. I’m astounded as Cole gradually pieces it together from our wavery rendition. He tries chord after chord and then is playing as if he’d always known all the notes. “It’s Bach,” he says, “‘Air on a G-string’ and a bit of one of the cantatas, ‘Sleepers Awake.’ ”

“Well, that redeems us,” Ed, my bonny laddie, laughs.

Before we go to bed, I get out my notebook and copy Susan’s recipe.

S
USAN
’
S
M
OTHER
’
S
S
UMMER
P
UDDING

1 pound raspberries, strawberries

1⁄4 pound red or black currants

(or any mixture of above fruits)

1⁄2 cup sugar

day-old white bread, sliced as for sandwiches, crusts removed

2 teaspoons cherry brandy or blackberry ratafia (optional)

Wash fruit and place about one cup of it in a saucepan with the sugar and liqueur, and cook lightly for three minutes. Cool.

Line a pudding basin with the bread, leaving no gaps. Gently spoon in the uncooked fruit interlaced with spoonfuls of the cooked fruit, pressing the fruit down gently with the back of a spoon. Place a “hat” of bread on top when the basin is full, cutting bread to fit inside the surrounding bread.

Puddle remaining juice in center of the hat. Cover entire basin top with a piece of waxed paper or plastic wrap, and place a small plate on top so it fits inside the basin. Place a weight (such as a can of tomatoes) on top to hold it down. Refrigerate for 12 to 24 hours.

To serve
: Remove saucer and waxed paper. Place serving platter over basin and invert. Your summer pudding should be quite pink. Use extra berry syrup to cover any white spots. Serve with ice cream.

Note:
Ours rested only a few hours and was fine. We served it with good Scottish cream, rather divine.

The green countryside and quick little burns with lush grassy banks invite us to walk in the early morning and evening. The house is surrounded by pastures with paths that lead to oak copses and vistas of lochs. The shaggy cows amble to the fence to greet us. Ed and I are out early. Over a rise we see a wooden cross, about thirty feet tall, with dangling leather straps hanging from the crux. This is not a piece of sculpture.

At breakfast Ed tells everyone about the cross on the hill. Then he discovers that he does not have his cell phone. When Kate comes downstairs, she’s holding a pad. “I counted eighty-six Jesuses and Marys.
Also
, just so you know, there are a hundred and twenty-nine paintings and prints on the walls. The downstairs bathroom is separate—ninety items on the walls. Not to mention that fake fish that sings ‘Take me to the river, drop me in the water’ when you sit down on the toilet.”

“I wish we could invite the owners for dinner,” I say. “They must be fun.” We feel half acquainted with them and their four children through the distinct personality of the house.

Everyone searches each room for the cell phone. It’s command central for our restoration-in-progress in Italy. The number of all the technicians and workers involved, and they are legion, are on that phone. We are in daily contact with the work going on. Ed has called so many times that the numbers have worn off the buttons. He goes out and retraces our walk. We call the phone; no response. He searches the car. “I’m sure I had it this morning because I meant to call Fulvio.” Lost.

Today
we’re driving over to Kinross. We’re finding gardens we want to see, fine walks, and plenty to do nearby but nothing compelling, so we linger over coffee, catching up. Cole’s music drifts through the rooms. We don’t care if we get a late start. We brake for bakeries. We circle towns to look at mossy churches and prim houses enlivened by masses of hollyhocks.

Kinross, a stately, austere Georgian house dating from 1693, stands inside a ten-acre walled garden that slopes down to Loch Leven. The present owners descend from the proprietor who took it over in 1902, after eighty years of neglect, and restored the original garden. They can look out their windows every morning and see that the ruined castle on a tiny island in Loch Leven is not at all the fairy-tale illusion it seems to be. Kinross’s main garden axis lies from the front door of the house, down the gradually lowering garden, out the gate, and across the water straight to the castle. Famous for imprisoning Mary, star-crossed queen, the castle always was the focal point and orientation of Kinross and provides a thrilling prospect.

Mary tried several escapes during her ten months of confinement. One plan was to jump from the tower into a boat below. This made no sense until I learned that the water used to lap the castle before the loch was lowered in the nineteenth century. Mary endured, with the help of her cook, doctor, and two ladies-in-waiting. She loved falconry; I wonder if she was allowed out at all. Just before she was taken to Loch Leven Castle, she had given birth to stillborn twins and felt extremely weak from loss of blood. Her life rivals Job’s, beginning with the death of her father when she was one week old. She finally did escape, when a servant grabbed the keys during a banquet and let her out. The daring episode did little good; she fled south to seek help from Queen Elizabeth, but the two had old issues, and her cousin promptly put her under lock and key again.

The gate, which frames the castle from Kinross, has an arched door. Over it there’s a carved stone basket full of the seven types of fish of the lake: salmon, blackhead, pike, perch, speckled trout, char, gray trout. When the loch was lowered, the char died out, and the salmon could no longer reach the loch.

Robin remarks on the variegated sage as a border. The soft gray-green with some leaves edged with pink, some purple, frames the beds delicately. Four stone arches parallel a path in the garden at the side of the house, two with sculptures underneath. The arches are not to walk through; they serve as architectural points in the rectangular garden. Susan identifies a plant I don’t know as fleabane. We’re all charmed with the informality of the formal rose garden—a big mix of colors, all vying for attention. Clumps of catnip throw off a lavender haze. John is snapping millions of photographs. I take one note: plant variegated sage along the top of a wall at Bramasole.

Lochiehead—head of the lake?—is the name of our house. I wish one of us could buy it so we could come back often. Christmas would be ideal. July is
perfetto
too—no rain, balmy days. Cole goes fishing. Susan reads in the living room, and everyone else goes for a walk. Ed launches into making
ragù
for dinner. The downstairs fills with aromas of sautéeing carrots, celery, and onion. Soon a big pot will be simmering on the Aga. I take a book down to the secret garden. A little bell chime rings in a tree somewhere on the land. There is no wind; who is ringing it? I envision a hidden stone church under immense trees. A robed monk tolling the hours, forgetting the hour and just ringing the bell for the pure tone settling over the countryside. The serene landscape has moved into me, and I feel sleepy all the time. I want to curl up under the potting table in the greenhouse, fall deeply into the sofa cushions, tune out as we hurtle along the wrong side of the road toward a tearoom or a castle where the docent will go on forever with cute anecdotes about the earl. At the castles I want to throw myself onto the earl’s bearskin by the fireplace and snooze. I’m walking through the gardens like a somnambulist. The light swaying of the massed delphiniums puts me into a trance. The nearby river walks only make me want to lie down in the shallow water and drift. Can it be that I am finally relaxed?

Kate, our house sleuth, solves the mystery of the cross on the hill. She’s read a framed article in the downstairs powder room, the one with ninety separate objects on the walls, and discovered that the house’s owners put on a play every year and people come from miles around to see the reenactment of the crucifixion. “Hence the donkey,” she says. We all rush to the bathroom. She points out, too, a faded photo of the walled garden. Only ten years ago the space was derelict. We read other articles—a miraculous sighting of the Virgin in now-ex-Yugoslavia, a prize at a dog show. Is that our Trumpet, the Scottie, in the picture? I gaze at the derelict secret garden. The owners have performed their own miracle.

Violet
arrives early, bearing a ginger cake with toffee sauce. We fall upon it for breakfast and ask her for the recipe. She has wiry curls and a fresh Scottish complexion. She tells us how terrible traffic will be if we go to Glamis Castle. She does not say
Glahmiss
, as we do. She says
Glams
.

V
IOLET
’
S
H
OT
T
OFFEE
S
AUCE FOR
G
INGERBREAD

6 ounces soft brown sugar

4 ounces butter

1⁄4 pint double cream

Heat in a pan until sugar dissolves and butter melts. Bring quickly to a boil, then switch off.

She serves this also on waffles. At home we don’t get the same kind of double cream that blesses the British desserts. Heavy cream, perhaps thickened with a little crème fraîche, would substitute.

We do drive to Glamis, a castle fit for Sleeping Beauty. We’re Californians—what could Violet know about traffic? Almost no cars are on the roads. Glamis was the childhood home of the late Queen Mother. They must have longed for a cozy apartment in Edinburgh during the winters. Most rooms are small, probably the better to heat them, and chilly even in summer. Nothing opulent, all rather rigorous. The picturesque conical towers are, on the inside, spiral stairways of stone.
Whence camest thou, worthy Thane? From Fife, great King.
We could meet someone carrying a bloodied head but instead meet day-trippers like ourselves. The captivating room is the playroom, furnished with doll beds, small stove, high chairs, and stuffed toys. Odd to imagine a tiny Queen Mother there, rocking her bear.