Elena Poniatowska - Leonora

‘What tale will you tell us tonight?’

Love stories are her passion: the one about the three golden apples whose celestial music carries on the wind, or the tale of Caer, the young woman spied transforming into a swan by Aengus Mac Og on the shore of the lake

She also relates how Noah forbade the hyena from entering the Ark because it ate carrion and howled in mimicry of man’s laughter. Yet after the Great Flood, the wolf and the panther cross-bred and the hyena was reborn. Leonora is obsessed by the hyena. Certain medieval accounts tell of how hyenas have two stones for eyes, and if whoever kills one removes the stones and places them under his tongue, he will be able to tell the future.

‘You are a Celt, and so as stubborn a hothead as I am. Perhaps you also have something Saxon about you, which could make you calculating as well,’ her grandmother tells her.

Pat invites over two friends as wild as he, sons of the Reverend Prince, who lash Leonora to a tree, and shoot arrows at her as if she were Saint Sebastian.

Their father attends the club with other gentlemen who smoke and chat about which prospective members to accept, while consuming their one whisky of the day before dining at home; their mother both receives and makes her calls. She departs the house saying: ‘Be good, I am off to a charity sale. If I get back in time, I’ll come up and say goodnight to you.’

The girl enters her father’s library without knocking. No-one else dares open the door to this room with its narrow windows running up to the roof, ebony furniture, and Persian carpets, which muffle the sound of footsteps.

‘Everyone hates me for being a girl. While I have my lessons, my brothers are out playing.’

‘You’re not going out to play boys’ games,’ replies Harold Carrington.

‘My brothers and their horrible friends say that girls can’t do what boys do and it’s not true because I can do everything they can. I can hit as hard as Gerard, and I can draw horses, dragons, crocodiles and bats better than Pat.’

‘Who are these friends of theirs?’

‘The sons of the Reverend Prince who tell the most disgusting jokes I’ve ever heard.’

‘If you wish, you can come and play curling with me,’ he responds, admiring his daughter’s strength of character.

‘I dislike both the flat stones and the long brooms for curling. You must listen to me. I’ve three brothers who do as they want because they’re boys. When I grow up, I want to shave my head and daub my face with hair oil to grow a beard. Pat has a moustache and at Stonyhurst they call him ‘Mickey Moustache’. Once, when I called him that, he hit me.’

‘Then I shall punish him.’

‘Let me finish, Papa. I am the only one who has to practise piano for hours on end, wash myself and change my clothes every day, and keep saying thank you for everything.’

‘Leonora, a woman’s education is very different to a man’s. You require training in how to please.’

‘I don’t want to please! I don’t want to serve tea! The only thing I do want in life is to be a horse!’

‘That’s impossible … you could not even be a mare. You can only be yourself.’

‘Mummy says I have such a bad temper that I’ll turn into a witch before I’m twenty.’

‘Your mother may be mistaken. You have character and in that you resemble me.’

‘Papa, I don’t care if I get wrinkles before I’m twenty. What I do care about is going down to the pond when I feel like it, to talk with the big fish, and climbing trees like a man.’

Harold Carrington studies her from his high-backed chair behind the desk. ‘She’s a true daughter of mine. Carrington from the top of her head to the tips of her toes,’ he thinks.

When coffee is served at the end of the meal, Mlle. Varenne informs him that his daughter’s energy is three times that of her three brothers, yet that she is the one Carrington who is difficult to control. So it is that Harold Carrington looks up from reading The Times and replies that his daughter will need to expend her excess energy horse-riding.

Black Bess, her Shetland pony, always refuses to canter. She barely even breaks into a trot, but now, when Leonora yells, ‘Gee up, Bessie!’ suddenly Black Bess launches into a gallop. That night she dreams that Black Bess wins the Grand National, despite her plumpness. Imagining her sweet-natured, overweight pony could come in ahead of Flying Fox is sheer delight, because her grandfather’s horse has never yet lost a race.

‘Go on, Papa, please give me another horse. I’m old enough now and Black Bess will never gallop like I want her to.’

Her new mare is called Winkie. Leonora learns how to make her clear jumps. One morning Winkie refuses a jump, Leonora comes off and the mare rolls over on her.

‘All right, so nothing happened to you this time, but it could still be that Winkie is not the best mount for you.’

‘But Papa, I adore Winkie.’

The groom doesn’t let Maurie know that her daughter takes the horse out of the stable at all hours and rides out on her bareback. To start with, she clung on to the mane, but not any longer.

‘We two are one,’ she tells her mother. When she’s tired of cantering, she leans back and rests her head and shoulders on the horse’s rump and stares at the sky. Her mother accompanies her, riding side-saddle. Mother and daughter are out together and at this point in time Leonora loves her mother like a colt does hers.

‘Keep your heels down,’ Maurie tells her, ‘don’t shift your seat in the saddle.’ Mother and daughter move to a canter and, without another word, Leonora spurs Winkie on and rides her into the lake. Her mother pulls up, stupefied. Leonora and mare emerge on the opposite shore with a loud sound of splashing water.

‘Why on earth did you do that? You’re soaking.’

‘Winkie enjoys swimming and I enjoy watching how she uses her hooves to swim.’

‘The wild filly is you, not her. Why do you do such crazy things?’

‘It’s not crazy, it’s an experiment. Have you never conducted an experiment, Mummy?’

Leonora is the rebel of the four children. It’s both in her nature, and because riding gives her the freedom of a bird. Winkie is the one who understands her, her confidante and her accomplice. Hardly has she started to gallop than, just as with her morning porridge, she’s in at the centre. The mare has long limbs like Leonora’s, her coat shines like the hair on Leonora’s head, and Winkie frees her from her dread of the adults who always demand so much of her.

‘I am a horse, I am a mare,’ Leonora tells anyone who will listen.

Gerard understands her: ‘You are a night mare. At night I hear your hooves on the floor and I see you gallop out through the window, but it’s good it’s not for real, because if you did go it would be forever.’

Leonora comes to the table late. ‘Do excuse me, I was detained by a horse who wished to take me to see his treasure.’

‘Horses don’t speak,’ states Harold Carrington.

‘They speak to Leonora,’ Gerard springs to her defence. ‘I have seen them nuzzle her shoulder with their lips, enquiring how she is.’

‘That’s quite enough nonsense!’ and Harold drops his fork.

In the hunting season, the foxhounds become restless in the kennels. Desperate to get out, they bark, scratch and roll their golden eyes imploringly. Later, they return all damp, their tongues hanging out, panting and leaving white trails of saliva along the floor. Their great euphoria cheers the household while the kennelman returns to lock them in again. If the horses have their groom, the hounds have their kennelman, but who will have the answers to all Leonora’s questions? ‘What do they eat? How do they sleep? When will the pups be born? How do you rid them of fleas?’ The hounds surround her like the huntsmen surround Carrington, who offers them sherry or whisky, making them wag their tails and bark with laughter.