Leonora (5 page)

‘This painter has an overwhelming imagination. He is a genius!'

‘He is abnormal.'

‘Then I too would like to be abnormal, just like him.'

During the winter holidays of 1932, Leonora goes to Switzerland with her parents, staying near to the Jungfrau glacier. Her mother ice-skates and her father devotes himself to his beloved curling. Leonora goes skiing but takes a fall, something that provokes several spectators to rush to her rescue. Abashed, she informs them that her sport is riding, which she knows how to do well. A group of young people invite her to descend from the snowy peaks in their sleigh, then to go out dancing in the evening. They share a
fondue
and they are captivated by her, then annoyed because she prefers the company of two St. Bernards who follow her all the way home to her bedroom with a mountain of snow on each paw.

‘Miss Carrington, this is forbidden. Dogs must be kept outside.'

‘Miss Carrington, animals must not be brought into the dining room.'

So Leonora takes off for the whole day with the dogs, and Harold Carrington is annoyed in his turn. Why can't his only daughter behave like other girls? Leonora sees horses made of ice between the trees, the slightest sound reminds her of cantering horses, she finds the imprint of hooves in the snow, and the blinding whiteness of the snowflakes form the back of an immense mare covering the earth.

A telegram arrives in Switzerland from Florence. Miss Penrose informs her that her room-mate, Elizabeth Apple, has caught an infectious disease: scarlet fever.

Immediately, Leonora is doubled over. A searing pain paralyses her right leg.

‘It's an attack of appendicitis,' the hotel doctor diagnoses, more accustomed to attending to broken bones. ‘She needs to be taken at once to hospital in Berne.'

When she awakens, the first thing Leonora sees is her mother's face:

‘It is beyond doubt that riding so much has led to your intestines getting tied into knots.'

‘How can you say something so stupid?' she overhears her father saying.

So he is here in the hospital. His dark voice, in stark contrast to the surrounding whiteness, is worrying.

When she is allowed to get up, her father helps her walk.

‘At Hazelwood you'll convalesce more rapidly.'

A fortnight later, Leonora enters his library and asks him:

‘There must be an awful lot of schools for young ladies in Paris, mustn't there?'

Harold and Maurie Carrington agree with her, her mother positively enthusiastic.

‘It is very easy to get to Paris, and I'll come and see you there after the next charity auction in Islington.'

5

THE SCENT OF CHESTNUT TREES

S
PEAKING FRENCH SINCE CHILDHOOD
is an asset, since it permits Leonora to walk fearlessly about Paris. Streets exercise far stronger powers of seduction than school for her.

‘Where are you going to, Leonora?'

‘Out into the street.'

‘But you have a class in French literature.'

‘I learn more out of doors. The whole history of France lies in its paving stones. And I'm intrigued by how men's trousers protrude from under the
pissoirs.
'

‘If you persist in breaking the rules, we shall be obliged to expel you.'

‘Nothing would give me greater pleasure.'

They expel her again. Why is it so hard to change her ways? Her monthly allowance will have to be cut, in order to tame her by imposing restrictions. Her irate father moves her to a school with a harsher reputation: Miss Sampson's Paris establishment. There her tiny room has a view over the cemetery. ‘I refuse to remain in this prison, it brings bad luck.' She escapes and seeks out a Professor of Fine Arts known to her parents, Simon, who, on seeing how firmly her mind is made up, opens his door to her. The ferocity of this young girl in some way resembles that of the early Knights Templar or the Illuminati. It is difficult to reject her and yes, Leonora is more at ease because Simon allows her to spend all day in front of the
Mona Lisa
in the Louvre, go up the Rue des Beaux Arts and walk at dusk along the Seine, which she observes from the Pont Neuf, chatting with whomever attracts her attention. Simon even accompanies her along the
quais,
seeking out books on alchemy on the bookstalls, and sharing a coffee with her in cafés on Saint-Germain-des-Prés. His sole stipulation is that she returns by ten-thirty at night.

Whenever she runs out of money, she goes to the Ritz, where her father keeps a permanent suite and Jules the porter is mortified by the state of her shoes.

‘It's because I walk around so much.'

‘Please don't concern yourself. Here, take these francs, and I'll put them on your father's account. If you stay in Paris long enough, you'll learn how to recognise the scent of the chestnut trees.'

Her mother rescues her, arriving in Paris with train tickets to travel wherever they choose.

‘They say that if you miss out on a romantic date or a trip to Paris, you die without knowing that you have lived,' Maurie happily explains. She is a keen traveller and knows that her daughter is an incomparable companion, whenever she chooses to be so.

Maurie can see Harold's character traits reflected in Leonora; they exercise the same power over other people. The head of Imperial Chemical Industries rules the world and Leonora faces up to him: where on earth does she find the gall to do this?

‘Your father does not understand your behaviour, all he looks forward to is your presentation at Court, hoping that there at least you'll find your head.'

Visiting museums in Italy and France with Leonora is like going on two journeys at the same time: a traditional one and the magical one her daughter is always embarked on.

‘Look Mummy, this is a Brueghel. Let me see the wall caption, but I am certain that it is really him.'

Maurie is filled with pride that her daughter recognises each artist by their paintings.

‘I would like to go to Germany to see the Brueghels there. And Heironymus Bosch, Grünewald and Cranach. I would also like to see Hans Baldung's
The Knight, the Young Maiden and Death
and Caspar David Friedrich's series on
The Ruins of Eldena Abbey
.'

Leonora spends long hours in front of each painting, observing it with reverence, taking out her notebook, making rapid sketches. She departs the museum only reluctantly, and sits contemplatively on the edge of the fountain while her mother consults the Baedeker, and decides what they'll go and visit the next day.

Leonora has an appetite for every type of food, tasting aubergines and risotto, ordering the house wine. She smiles and flirts with the bell boy, the porter, the hotel manager, the key manager, and the man with a moustache and beard at the adjacent table. Not to mention the handsome young man who invites her to dance.

Every guest leaves their shoes outside their room door for them to be polished, and Leonora swaps them around the corridor. At night, as they fall asleep, mother and daughter reprise their accounts of the day, and their vivid commentaries surpass the lived experience. To Maurie, all is transformed into a fiesta. How delightful it would be to always live like that! Despite the fact that to Leonora it is wholly incomprehensible that any woman would wish to be married to Harold Carrington, Maurie's life had at least been made easy.

‘Your father is a highly attractive man.'

‘I hardly think so.'

‘He's a man of character.'

‘That I'm well aware of it, as I suffer from it.'

‘He is endowed with a superior intelligence.'

‘In this respect I agree with you.'

‘What we are we owe to your father.'

‘I do not owe him a thing,' Leonora replies with irritation.

Ever since she left Ireland at the age of eighteen, Maurie Moorhead had lived life as a vertiginous round of entertainment. Games of croquet (ugh, how Leonora loathed them); hunting in red jackets on red horses with red foxhounds after a red fox; charity sales; bridge parties; massages booked with Madame Pomeroy at Piccadilly Circus; hair salons; beauty treatments; fittings for the latest garments at top couture houses: the fact that Maurie creates the latest fashion without ever being
in
fashion is just part of her charm. According to Leonora, their mother-and-daughter partnership unfailingly arrives either early or late to every occasion.

‘The catwalks displaying the latest in French haute couture,' says Maurie, ‘they are the starting point of fashion worldwide.'

‘Just like at the horse races?' asks Leonora, enchanted by the insane creativity of Schiaparelli in the Place Vendôme.

‘Let's go to Lanvin, we can call in at Poiret, even if we end up in Au Printemps.'

Maurie is disappointed at being unable to find coffee-coloured satin knickers. She is also obsessed with procuring leather buttons for a tweed bag she has, and none of the ones she finds are quite to her taste.

‘We might as well be in London,' she tells Leonora, ‘and I could find the same ones in Regent Street and at half the price…'

‘One doesn't come to Paris to purchase buttons.'

‘So what do we come here for?'

‘To buy a Van Gogh.'

Maurie selects a sailor's cap which suits her very poorly. Leonora is amused to discover a nightclub on the Rue de Boissy d'Anglas called The Ox on the Roof and asks the maître d' there – who looks like he could well be a member of the French Academy – where the place got its name. He replies: ‘In honour of Jean Cocteau, who comes here from time to time. I think tonight may in fact be his night.'

Maurie flatly refuses to go to any cabaret until she has found her satin knickers.

‘No – let's instead go for tea at Rumpelmayer.'

While Maurie takes her nap, Leonora goes to the Café de Flore without her purse. In France, it's so easy to drink a glass – or two – and pay up an hour – or two – later. By then her mother will have woken up. She orders a cocoa.

‘There is no cocoa,' answers the waiter.
‘Café au lait,
herb tea, black tea, hot chocolate, wine, beer if you will, but no cocoa.'

‘
Thé, alors
.'

At the next table is a young man who won't stop staring at her.

‘I assume you are English, since you have ordered tea. I have been to London, and found the Thames very pretty. Then I stayed on in Southampton, which was very green.'

‘Yes, I suppose it would be green. The green of Ireland is of a shade that makes it look as if there were a fire under the ground beneath it.'

Thus an hour went by and the young man, Paul Aspel, requested that she join him for dinner, Leonora suddenly comes to her senses.

‘I need to go and collect my mother. I'll be back in a minute.'

Back at the hotel, Maurie warns her daughter not to talk to strangers. ‘It is badly looked upon for a young woman to sit down alone in a café.'

‘Why?'

‘Because you attract far too much attention, and it appears you are looking for clients.'

‘I don't understand what you mean, Mama. The nuns never told me about any of this.'

In her turn, Maurie weaves a web of restrictions and abstinence around her daughter, which causes Leonora to look daggers at her. Maurie intends to drown her in an ocean of rules. It is unthinkable to infringe them because her Carrington parents have educated her to exalt their name, their ancestry, their good reputation and the family glory.

‘Mama, living according to the rules of others is an illness.'

‘You are a part of Society, your heritage …'

‘Everything you're saying is nonsense. All these taboos … to me the only taboo I recognise is using face powder.'

‘No, Leonora. They are nothing more than counsels for you to live in harmony with your own nature, with your own family history, and with the grandeur of your home nation. You
are
your nation. You are Great Britain.'

‘I am Leonora,
not
the British Empire.'

‘Don't dismiss your forebears: you are your ancestors, too.

Oscar Wilde is in your neurons, he is the reason you are as you are – rebellious, unattainable, and – just like him – you don't measure the consequences of your actions.'

Leonora alleges, as she did before in Crookhey, that none of this heraldry has the least effect on her; on the contrary, instead of inflating the importance of her past, she minimises it with her impish smile. ‘My mother is a snob,' she mutters under her breath. In many families, the zeal for a glorious past is irresistible, rooted in human nature as it is, to such an extent that hotel owners, car salesmen, perfume and tobacco sellers all seek to acquire a heraldic shield or a family coat of arms for their business, their brandy or their wine.

‘Receiving the benefits of merchandise you have not made yourself does not appear to me aristocratic. That reduces it to the level of a trade.' They also discuss the question of good taste, because Maurie is forever striving to divide things into matters of good or poor taste.

‘All that is entirely relative,' avers Leonora. ‘What you like might repel me and vice versa.'

‘No, Leonora, you have been educated in good taste, and if you overlook this first principle, you cut yourself off from your class.'

The
maitre d'hôtel
murmurs the year and vintage of every wine into the ear of each guest as he pours from the bottle. When he utters ‘
Grand vin de Château Latour 1905
' Leonora is in no doubt that she is tasting something extraordinary, something old and wise while at the same time so fresh and cheerful that it could have been made yesterday. She sips it as if it were Communion wine.

‘It is their wine that renders the French a race apart,' she informs Maurie, ‘they owe their genius to this wine.'

Within a month, she has learnt to recognise and return a corked wine, one whose colour looks deadened and whose taste is wooden, as against another
bouchonné
, whose cork has rotted to powder.

‘I would like to be as rich and sparkling and free as a Veuve Cliquot or Pol Roger.'

‘You have your own lineage in Lancashire.'

‘I am not going to shackle myself to that place, or shrivel to a corpse like Mary Edgeworth. I don't want to become asphyxiated by skeletons; I am my own mother and my own father. I am a one-off phenomenon.'

Maurie turns her head aside so that Leonora can't see her tears welling up. Leonora is her mortification: a strange creature who has emerged from the fold where her brothers still peaceably graze.

They arrive at the Hôtel du Palais in Biarritz in the midst of a February snowstorm. Maurie takes it as a personal insult that snow should fall on the eve of spring, and is convinced that the world is turning off its orbit.

‘It's obvious why Biarritz is empty. Next year we shall go to Torquay. Not only is it cheaper, but the climate is better there, too.'

Skiing in St. Moritz, summering in Eden Roc are fixed items in their annual agenda; moving around from place to place in a Bentley or a Rolls Royce is a part of their everyday life.

As soon as they arrive in Monte Carlo, Maurie shuts herself away in the casino.

‘Is this your spiritual retreat?' enquires Leonora.

Ever greedy, Maurie always wishes to dine punctually, and the next day she delights in the memory of what she has eaten, whereas Leonora never remembers.

‘Mama, you're just like the Cheshire Cat, licking your whiskers over and over.'

Leonora observes every last gesture of her fellow diners. She flirts with the employee of a travel agency who sells them tickets to visit Taormina, and from there to continue on through Sicily. The Italians observe the way she walks and comment aloud on her
culino.
In Taormina, the head waiter Dante is her new romance. He sells them a cut-price Fra Angelico which turns out to be a forgery.