Elena Poniatowska - Leonora

‘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.