To the Ends of the Earth

It could be an eerie landscape, especially on a wet day, with all the scattered bones gleaming against the dun-colored cliffs and the wind scraping against the heather. It surprised me that I was happy in a place where there were so few trees—there were none at all here. It was not picturesque and it was practically unphotographable. It was stunningly empty. It looked like a corner of another planet, and at times it seemed diabolical. But I liked it for all these reasons. And more important than these, my chief reason for being happy was that I felt safe here. The landscape was like a fierce-looking monster that offered me protection; being in Cape Wrath was like having a pet dragon.

Royal Visit

I TRIED TO HITCHHIKE IN ORDER TO GET TO ANSTRUTHER IN time to see the Queen, but no one picked me up. I fell in with a farm laborer on the road. He was coming from St. Andrews. He had gone there for the Royal Visit.

“I saw the Queen,” he said, and he winced, remembering.

“How did she look?”

He winced again. His name was Dougie. He wore rubber boots. He said, “She were deep in thought.”

Dougie had seen something no one else had.

“She were preoccupied. Her face were gray. She weren’t happy.”

I said, “I thought she was happy about her new grandson.”

Dougie disagreed. “I think she were worried about something. They do worry, you know. Aye, it’s a terrible job.”

He began to walk slowly, as if in sympathy for the hard-pressed Queen.

I said, “Being Queen of England has its compensations.”

“Some compensations and some disadvantages,” Dougie said. “I say it’s half a dream world and half a nightmare. It’s a goldfish bowl. No privacy! She can’t pick her nose without someone seeing her.”

Dougie said this in an anguished way, and I thought it was curious, though I did not say so, that he was pained because the monarch could not pick her nose without being observed.

He then began to talk about television programs. He said his favorite program was “The Dukes of Hazzard,” which concerned high jinks in a town in the American South. This Scottish farm laborer in Fifeshire said that he liked it because of the way the character Roscoe talked to his boss. That was very funny. American humor was hard to understand at times, he said, but every farm laborer in Scotland would find Roscoe funny for his attitude.

At last a bus came. I flagged it down. It was empty. I said I wanted to go to Anstruther to see the Queen.

“Aye. She’s having lunch there,” the driver said.

I wondered where.

The driver knew. “At the Craw’s Nest. It’s a small hotel on the Pittenweem Road.”

He dropped me farther along and I followed the bunting into Anstruther, sensing that same vibrant glow that I had felt at St. Andrews—the royal buzz. It was a holiday atmosphere. The schools were out. The shops were closed. The pubs were open. Some men were wearing kilts. People were talking in groups, seeming to remind one another of what had just happened—the Queen had already gone by, to the Craw’s Nest.

I cut across the harbor sands and went up the road to what seemed a very ordinary hotel—but freshly painted and draped in lines of plastic Union Jacks. There were more men in kilts here—they had such wonderfully upright posture, the men in kilts: they never slouched and hardly ever sat down.

“She’s just left,” one said. His name was Hector Hay McKaye.

But there was something of her still here, like perfume that is strongest when a woman leaves suddenly. In the Queen’s case it was like something overhead—still up there, an echo.

Mr. McKaye turned to his friends and said, “They had two detectives in the kitchen—”

It seemed to me that if the Queen and Prince Philip had eaten here, the food might be good. I seldom had a good meal in my traveling, not that it mattered much: food was one of the dullest subjects. I decided to stay the night at the Craw’s Nest. And this hotel, which had just received the blessing of a Royal Visit, was a great deal cheaper than any hotel in Aberdeen.

“She never had a starter,” the waitress Eira said. “She had the fish course, haddock Mornay. Then roast beef, broccoli, and carrots. And fresh strawberries and cream for dessert. Our own chef did it. It was a simple meal—it was good. The menu was printed and had bits of gold foil around it.”

Much was made of the good plain food. It was English food—a fish course, a roast, two boiled vegetables, and fruit for the dessert course. The middle-class families in Anstruther—and everywhere else—had that every Sunday for lunch. She’s just like us, people said of the Queen; of course, she works a jolly sight harder!