Elena Poniatowska - Leonora

Thanks to the intervention of the Roman Catholic Bishop of Lancaster, who takes tea with the Carrington family, Leonora is admitted to a second convent school, that of St. Mary’s, Ascot. There, too, the nuns prove to be addicted to the crown of thorns.

After the black veils, blood stains.

Maurie insists upon a single room for her daughter and in so doing unwittingly separates her from the other girls.

The teacher points at a desk at the back of the classroom and interrogates the new pupil from her podium:

‘What are you doing, Carrington?’

‘Drawing horses.’

She is immediately moved to the front row, where a strict eye is kept on her.

‘Why do you insist upon being different?’ the Mother Superior reprimands her.

‘It’s just that I am different.’

The teacher complains: ‘She forgets everything and is distracted by anything, as much at play as at work. She’ll suddenly absent herself and nothing whatever can bring her back to earth.’

‘It’s her Irish blood. Ireland is home to idiots and lunatics,’ replies the Mother Superior.

Patricia Paterson, Leonora’s cousin and fellow pupil at St. Mary’s, prefers her to her other friends.

‘I am opposed to all forms of discipline,’ she tells Leonora. ‘And if you don’t want to get boxed in, things would go better for you if you did like me: just obey.’ When Leonora listens to music, her face looks at peace, the sounds of the chapel organ envelop her and she forgets all else. She plays the piano well and the nuns attempt to encourage her musical abilities, and to persuade her to join the choir.

Leonora responds by obtaining a saw from which she extracts a painful noise. ‘It’s my violin,’ she explains to the choir mistress, who refuses to let her give the concert she longs to. ‘I feel a part of this music. Or else just give me some paints and brushes and leave me alone.’ Her black eyes flash daggers in self-defence.

‘You are possessed,’ declares her teacher.

Leonora disobeys every order and continues to write backwards with her left hand.

She carries on smoking deep inside the fake grotto to Our Lady of Lourdes, until she stands accused by one of the novices.

‘So you indulge in this particular vice,’ says the Mother Superior, corroborating the evidence.

‘Yes, since I was young.’

‘Does your family know about it?’

‘Nanny does. She told me that if I went on like this, it’d be impossible for a chimney sweep to get down my throat without turning black.’

‘Where do you obtain the cigarettes?’

‘My father has a cigarette box full of them.’

Before the school year was out, she was expelled once more. Patricia Paterson accompanied her to the grille in the front door. ‘It was playing the saw that finally did it.’

Leonora is ten years old when the Carringtons, together with Nanny, decamp lock, stock and barrel to Hazelwood, a less opulent house than Crookhey Hall, and within reach of the salty sea breeze. It has fewer dark corridors and poky passages than Crookhey, making it impossible to play ghosts with Gerard, but the scent of the sea makes up for everything. Crookhey Hall’s drawing room was impressive and a spinning wheel in one corner attracted unfailing attention. There was a quantity of mirrors and lances, but what attracted most attention were the suits of armour once again standing guard in the new living room at Hazelwood. There was even one occasion when Leonora and Gerard clambered onto the roof at Crookhey and viewed the whole of Great Britain. In Hazelwood, all they can do is ponder on the meaning of three dark, grand arches leading nowhere.

THIS TIME THE BISHOP OF LANCASTER declined to assist: ‘Not only did she take up smoking,’ Maurie explains to Harold, ‘your daughter accused the Reverend Mother of having a wart sprouting two white hairs on her chin.’

‘Doesn’t she?’ enquired Harold Carrington.

‘Yes, but it is more polite to exercise discretion.’

‘What are we going to do with you?’ Maurie regards her daughter with apprehension. ‘Your father is so livid he had one of his turns at the Club.’

‘All I want to do is paint.’

‘You are not in a position to decide your future life at the age of fifteen.’ Harold Carrington is becoming annoyed. ‘Before your presentation at Court, we are going to send you to Florence so that Miss Penrose can teach you some proper manners.’

That evening, Leonora goes into her father’s library.

‘Papa, will you please allow me to ask you a question?’

‘Yes, go ahead.’

‘Do you believe in God?’

Taken by surprise, Harold Carrington looks his daughter in the eye: ‘I have never seen Him.’

Her father is an intelligent man, no doubt about it. So why on earth had he sent her to those convent schools? Why is he so hard on her? ‘A proper preparation for marriage is a woman’s salvation,’ she overheard him say one evening.

Her mother stands by her and encourages her. She presents her with a box full of oil paints and brushes.

Leonora believes in apparitions, not like the Blessed Virgin at Lourdes, but those beings who suddenly appear from around a corner to either assault or take you by the hand. From the age of two onwards, from the time she woke up she talked about the visions she’d had in her sleep. Without thinking further back than yesterday, she had spied a figure walking slowly along the roof of Hazelwood, and who continued walking beyond the edge of the roof. He must surely have killed himself when he fell. Leonora hurried out to search for him, but couldn’t find anyone there.

‘It’s a ghost,’ Nanny confirmed to her. ‘You are possessed of the gift of second sight, but this is something best not discussed, least of all with your father.’

Leonora is different, and nobody understands her, with the exception of her accomplices, Nanny and Gerard.

‘It is high time you left off playing with Tartar, you’re too old still to be playing with him, he’s a child’s toy,’ the head of the family cautions her.

Leonora bawls her protest.

‘It’s for your own good, I’ve already told you that. Furthermore, that rocking horse is so old it’s only good for burning in the fireplace. You’ve got all the use you can out of him.’

‘No, Papa, no! Not that! Not Tartar! Do anything else you want, only not Tartar!’

‘Tartar is for little children. I shall burn him myself until there’s nothing at all left of him. You need to grow up, you are far too old for a toy like him.’

‘He’s not a toy. Tartar is me. ’

Leonora howls. Her teeth chatter. Harold Carrington covers his ears and orders the rocking horse to be burnt.

‘Bring her a cup of tea,’ Carrington orders, and departs with his head held low. Where on earth did this girl come from? However could he get her to understand? How does one raise a wild mare? How is it possible for a wooden horse to so disturb a young girl in this manner?

‘Shame on you, Leonora.’ The girl whinnies, paws the ground, kicks out and froths at the mouth.

At midnight, thin and ridden with shivers, she is racing to look for Gerard.

‘I heard some terrible neighing, I’m sure it was Tartar, they are dismembering him!’

‘Yes, I saw how Father sneaked upstairs carrying your rocking horse in his arms. He is clearly set on inflicting the vilest tortures.’

‘Do something, Gerard!’

‘The deed is already done! The head of Tartar has already fallen!’

‘I shall neither eat nor drink again.’

Gerard consoles her. ‘What goes on in your head, Prim, seems like waves of electricity suddenly being short-circuited.’

The school for aristocrats in Florence’s Piazza Donatello is a manual of good behaviour and savoir faire . The teachers, headed up by Miss Penrose, instruct their charges in how to behave in society; how to be an efficient lady of the house, seating her guests according to rank at the dinner table; how to introduce and maintain an informed and intelligent conversation with the person on one’s right, and then on one’s left; how to suppress a sob or a giggle; how to behave exactly like everyone else; how to treat poor relations with compassion, assuming they fall into poverty through their inability to manage their lives better; how to train dogs and clean up their mess, and how to avoid stepping on the cat’s tail. In addition, her education was to be complemented by training in the sports of horse-riding and fencing. Leonora, who in addition to English already speaks French, now acquires Italian and amazes herself by this mission of self-discovery.