Elena Poniatowska - Leonora

‘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.

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.’

TO 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.