Leonora (6 page)

Back in Paris once more, Leonora goes riding in the morning, attends a polo match at noon, and dances all night. To be young, beautiful and rich is no bad hand to have been dealt in life. Maurie shares in her daughter's success because going anywhere with her, entering a room and seeing how they all pause to stare at her, is – to say the least – gratifying. Every café seems to greet them with open arms, and they enjoy their
apéritif
in one and their meal in the next, while Maurie is advised on how her daughter is at least as marvellous as the
Soles Meunières
that both mother and daughter allow to deliquesce in their mouths. Leonora takes charge of ordering the wine, she knows all there is to know about Pouilly-Fuissé, and goes so far as to indulge herself in returning inferior bottles. Her mother watches her in astonishment. They have all the time in the world, for the whole of life lies ahead of them.

‘What other tasty morsels are waiting to be crushed between our fine white teeth?' enquires Leonora. ‘We are like harpies.'

Morning porridge in Lancashire seems a very long way away. Leonora now recognises every vintage of wine poured into her glass.

‘As happy as May Queens,' her mother agrees.

Leonora raises her arms, tosses her splendidly flowing locks over her shoulders and laughs aloud, showing all her teeth.

‘Leonora, people are staring at you.'

‘No, Mama. The person they're looking at is you.'

Mistinguette dances for them in the Folies Bergères and Maurie declares:

‘These naked women bore me. The Greeks did the exact same thing centuries ago.'

She is still preoccupied by the lack of coffee-coloured satin knickers. In the Bal Tabarin, Leonora dances with an Armenian who calls on her at the hotel the next morning. Maurie hastily purchases tickets to leave Paris before the Armenian can turn up to sell them an icon.

‘Respectability is the most boring thing in the world. Not to Venice, please not, Mama. All the English go there.'

‘I've said we're going to Venice.'

To Leonora, Venice is Thomas Mann's Von Aschenbach, a hallucination in the mists, a lagoon of seawater on the point of dying, just like the lake into which she galloped her mare as a young girl. Everything is decaying, the detritus accumulates in the heavy blood of moribund Venice, but Maurie's relish for life turns back the black tide of mortality. ‘Lord Byron came here,' she insists. In the Lido, Leonora fails to recognise the sun-soaked beach on which Von Aschenbach first saw Tadzio's divine aspect, entering his being as the filthy water now invades Venice. Maurie goes crazy for the gondoliers; not so Leonora, to whom the
gondolieri
seem false and theatrical. She rejects a return to a Venetian past in these stagnant waters, in which to fall is to meet death by poisoning.

‘Prince Umberto Corti wishes to invite us to his villa, which everyone says is magnificent.'

‘I refuse to visit one more marbled apartment …'

In Rome they cross the St Peter's Square and enter the basilica, where Leonora refuses to kiss the foot of Michelangelo's
Pietà
, crumbling to bits from so much kissing.

‘I would prefer to kiss the wounds of Saint Francis. At least he loved animals.'

An old man offers them a lift in his carriage, which is being pulled by two plumed horses.

‘I can take you to visit the catacombs.'

‘Mama, would you prefer to be cremated?' asks Leonora, after the visit.

‘I don't like to think about death,' replies Maurie.

‘Yes, that's best – I won't be there beside you when you die.'

6

THE DEBUTANTE

T
O LEONORA, NOW BACK AT HAZELWOOD
, the account of the journey as delivered by Maurie to Harold seems as interminable as the Venetian canals.

She attempts to persuade her mother to allow her to study art in London.

‘A silly and pointless fancy. You should await your future at home.'

‘Await?'

‘There's nothing wrong with painting,' she tells her, ‘After all, I paint the boxes for my charity sales. Your own Aunt Edgeworth wrote novels and was a friend of Sir Walter Scott, but she would never have dreamed of calling herself an “artist”, it would have been poorly regarded. Artists are immoral, form illicit unions and are obliged to inhabit attics. You would never get used to living in servants' quarters after leading the life that you have. Now you dance beneath chandeliers; are you really going to go and sweep floors? In any case, what's to prevent you from painting here? Our garden has plenty of nooks where you can go and paint.'

‘I want to paint nudes, and I don't see any models here.'

‘Why not?' Maurie answers. ‘Anyone can take their clothes off and be a model.'

Leonora chews her fingernails. Her only escape is to go riding.

‘It is high time you were ready for Buckingham Palace and your presentation at the Court of George V,' her father tells her.

Maurie's diamond tiara is set to grace the head of young Leonora for the occasion.

‘I'm not going to wear that crown, it looks ridiculous.'

‘Your dress is very beautiful and it will complement the gown perfectly, you need to display the family jewels.'

‘It weighs too much and I don't want to wear it. Why don't you buy me a gorilla suit or a donkey hide? I'd go willingly dressed like that.'

Maurie shows signs of irritation. Leonora quivers with rage.

Her father attempts to soothe her: ‘You should learn a little gratitude, Leonora. If you were ugly and ungainly, we would not be thinking of presenting you at Court.'

‘If only I were!'

‘You don't know what you're talking about.'

‘Put a paper bag on my head and I'll go to the Palace like that. All I want to do is to paint.'

‘Leonora, they'll only regard you as a woman, not as the artist you purport to be. That really doesn't count at all.'

‘And what I want to be doesn't count for anything, Papa?' Leonora demands of her father. Harold Carrington exudes authority.

‘If I were a hyena, would I have to go to the ball?'

‘Even if you were, I would still present you at Court,' says her father, closing the conversation.

‘I wish I could turn into a hyena. Then I could growl, salivate, change sex and laugh aloud right in front of the Queen as a hyena would.'

Being presented at Court is an honour, a public confirmation of high birth, a certificate of the purity of one's bloodline, a sign of belonging to the elite. Young women lean on their family trees; few bear the weight. Relatives are carefully screened and rules of admission are rigorously strict. An invitation to the Palace is an important milestone in life.

The debutantes await the arrival of the King, the Queen and the princes at the foot of the dais, standing at ground level. Above them, the entire Court looks down on them with firm benevolence. The moment the King and Queen make their entrance, all the debs in the full flower of their youth bend double in a deep bow, rehearsed days in advance. There was to be no chance of a fat young lady, fan in hand, crashing to the floor like a giant cauliflower.

As each name is called, a debutante mounts the dais. Dressed like her mother in white satin, albeit a few stone lighter, Leonora rises, closes her fan, and walks towards the podium, performs a reverentially deep curtsey to the King, another only slightly less so to the Queen, and yet another more fleetingly to the rest of the Court. She returns to her seat with her head held high, although the tiara weighs heavily upon it. She feels a steely stare scorching the back of her neck, and turns her head to see her father sitting behind her.

‘So much preparation just for this, Mama?'

Waiters, with the Hapsburg jaw of Spanish grandees, serve them beneath a white marquee.

‘What do you mean? Don't you realise you have just been presented to the royal family at Court?'

‘The sandwiches are second-rate.'

‘Your attitude is appalling. I had intended to give you the tiara, but you might as well forget about that now. What you have just now lived through is an historic moment in your life and in ours. The King and Queen are your monarchs, there for your protection: this is your country, your nation and history.'

Her parents offer her a debutantes' ball at the Ritz, for which the many dances she had attended in Paris had prepared her: those of the Count Etienne de Beaumont, of the Countess Greffühle, the Rothschilds, the Polignacs, the Viscount Charles de Noailles, who hangs paintings by Goya and Titian in his ballroom, which also functions as a theatre. The crystal candelabra tinkle their gold leaves as if they were alive, and every time a new guest arrives, he or she would be announced from the head of the staircase: ‘
Lord
.' ‘
Duchess.
' ‘
Lady.
' ‘
Marquess
.' ‘
Count
.' ‘
Earl.
' ‘
Prince.
' ‘
Baroness.
'

All eyes pursue the new arrival making her entrance. Nothing could weigh more heavily than those stares.

‘I want to be a hyena,' Leonora says, flinging her clothes on the bed as soon as she returns home from the ball.

‘Not that again? Did you have a good time?'

‘Ugh! On top of turning up, you want me to enjoy myself there? The male guests are obsessed with nothing except protocol, and the women with nothing except who has on the most ostentatious dress.'

Her mother regards her tearfully:

‘At least I was happy, you were the most beautiful one there, as all my friends confirmed.'

‘Your friends?'

‘Well, my acquaintances. I don't understand why you always need to contradict whatever I say, nor why you have to dismiss every opinion I hold dear.'

After her debut, Leonora is invited to an entire season of balls, all just as mired in protocol. Nobody performs the slightest action beyond those prescribed by the rules of etiquette. Young and desirable females are careful not to laugh or speak too loudly. They do not remove their gloves even to dance. No conversation exceeds the boundaries of discussing the weather, fox-hunting, or the best place to holiday this summer. Cecil Beaton takes Leonora's photograph and her mother dreams of her marrying royalty, whispering to her in French: ‘
Tu dois faire un grand mariage. Ton père et moi
…' Leonora dislikes her mother addressing her in French, for her pronunciation is execrable.

‘You talk French like a Dutch cow, Mama.'

‘Show a little more respect, if you please.'

‘It's not a lack of respect, it's the truth. And it's also true that you've put on weight.'

Taking tea inside a white marquee in the gardens of Buckingham Palace seems the height of absurdity. Guests perambulate, cup of tea in hand, and introduce one to another. Leonora extends her hand to be kissed, or else gently inclines her head towards one group before passing on to the next. When a young man approaches her to strike up a conversation, she ceases paying attention within a minute and, still smiling like the Mona Lisa, gives him to understand that the space she can accord him on the green lawns at the Garden Party is rapidly dwindling. Not one of those present at the dances and the five o'clock teas captures her interest. By contrast, she herself attracts every gaze, followed up by the murmur that she is not only beautiful but wealthy. ‘What a catch!' ‘Have you noticed how she walks, she looks, how disdainful she is?' ‘She's frighteningly beautiful, and totally unapproachable!'

Maurie busies herself with managing her daughter's wardrobe, rushing her to the hotel to change three times a day. Leonora has hardly enough time to remove her morning outfit and replace it with her afternoon wear before she has to return and garb herself in the evening dress spread out on her bed beside her dancing shoes. Impossible to wear the same garment twice: no debutante would commit such a faux pas. Still less could she put on her three strings of pearls or the signet ring
chevalière
with the family escutcheon upon it again! Maurie lets her know the expense of such a
trousseau
, of how exemplary and generous a father Harold Carrington is. Leonora thinks just the opposite. ‘My father scares me and when he doesn't scare me, he bores me.' Among all her attire, her favourite is the well-cut suit she wears to the Ascot races; its blue-grey colour reminds her of clouds just before the rain. A silk blouse complements it well, as its high collar doesn't get crumpled and always looks good on her. Nonetheless, Leonora continues to defy her mother: ‘I don't enjoy dressing up. What I enjoy is undressing.'

Leonora, the distinguished guest, has her own chair in the royal box at Ascot.

‘I want to place a bet.'

‘You cannot. Up there in the royal box, you're right on public view, if you get up – or make any move – everyone will notice. Have you not observed that the royals never sneeze?'

‘Then I want to go to the paddock and take a look at the horses.'

‘That will not be permitted. If you have been invited to the royal box, it is because you have demonstrated that you know how to conduct yourself.'

‘Then, Mama, why have they invited me at all if I can never do anything?'

Leonora brings a book with her to the follow-up invitation to the royal box. The duke, a princess. When a count asks her: ‘What are you reading?' the answer comes back: ‘
Eyeless in Gaza
by Aldous Huxley.' She does not raise her eyes from its pages, which she continues turning while no-one dares to interrupt this strange creature who in some way appears to despise them. In the box, nobody is aware that Huxley is the author of
Brave New World.

‘Did you have a good time?' Maurie asks her.

‘I've nearly finished my book.'

‘There's no dealing with you, you do it simply to annoy us.'

Leonora persists in the process of her mother's mortification. Now Maurie really does believe that Harold is right when he tells her: ‘You have an impossible daughter.' Sadly disappointed, Maurie no longer wishes to be her friend, for Leonora has betrayed them both.

In society families there persists a custom of informing each child which jewels they will inherit.

‘You were going to receive the emerald ring but your deplorable behaviour has now forfeited the chance of inheriting it.'

Back at Hazelwood, her mother shuts herself away in her rooms and her father refuses to speak to her at table. What a disaster! Leonora goes riding with the son of Sir John Taylor, the owner of a neighbouring castle, the family lawyer and a close friend of Harold Carrington, quite as rich as he, intelligent and powerful as he is. The Carringtons think: ‘At least a wedding to him would save us from yet further disappointment.'

‘A great many young men would have proposed marriage to you if you would only have let them anywhere near you. I saw them and heard what they were saying, people told me as much; but you threw it all away,' Maurie complains to her.

‘I don't have the faintest intention of letting you sell me to the highest bidder, nor do I wish to enter the marriage market. What I want to do is enrol at an art school.'

‘Those who dedicate their lives to art are either poor or homosexual. No child of mine could be so foolish as to think that painting could serve any useful purpose.' Harold seems to have recovered the use of his voice.

‘Papa, this is about something deep inside me, something stronger than I am, something that I know I can't betray,' Leonora stares at him in desperation.

Her father attempts to mollify her:

‘Before getting married to Cedric Taylor, you could devote yourself to training the fox terriers and keep your painting for your spare time.'

‘Marry Cedric Taylor? Training the fox terriers? Why ever would I?'

‘Because you love animals and it is something you can get involved in, without running into problems.'

‘But I don't love Cedric Taylor, Papa.'

‘You go out riding with him.'

‘That's not the same thing at all.'

‘He is an outstanding candidate. You really have no idea what's good for you.' Leonora is disturbed by the sharpness of her father's stare. ‘You are my daughter.'

He starts every sentence with
you are my daughter.
He emphasises the
my
. Leonora belongs to him, she is the apple of his eye, and yet he can't manage to hold on to her.

‘Papa, don't take away what matters most to me.'

‘Oh no? And what would that be?'