The Forget-Me-Not Sonata

by Santa Montefiore

  Alicia put her arm around her sister and led her inside. The older girls stared at her with curiosity and fascination while the younger ones bit their bottom lips and tried not to be drawn into her misery. They too missed their parents and wanted to cry. Leonora watched them all with dread through vision blurred with tears. The house was bustling with children, echoing with laughter and yet Leonora had never felt so alone in her life. It was like a nightmare but she was awake and her mother was now far away. She wanted to curl into a tight ball like a hedgehog and prick anyone who came close. Alicia was trying to console her but words couldn’t bring her mother back, nor could they soothe the deep sense of rejection that stung like a fresh wound. She followed Alicia up the stairs like a sleepwalker and clung onto her hand afraid that if she let go Alicia too would disappear and then she really would be alone; a lamb in a field full of lions.

  When they arrived in Milne a large group of girls awaited them beside Leonora’s bed. They fell silent the moment the twins entered and even Alicia’s heart stalled at that point. Because they had come straight into the second year all the girls of their age knew each other. Leonora and Alicia shuddered, anticipating hostility. But to their surprise the girls smiled and rushed at them with faces creasing with sympathy. Miss Reid had explained that Alicia and Leonora had come from a country very far away and that they must be looked after. So like rare creatures from another world the girls devoured them with wide eyes and questions and because Leonora was small and trembling the elder ones took her from her sister and mothered her. Alicia was only too pleased and disappeared next door with great purpose. A long-faced, freckly girl sat Leonora down on her bed and put her arm around her shoulders. ‘I’m Toadie Martin, Victoria really, but everyone calls me Toadie,’ she said. ‘I’m your shadow and am only in the dorm down the corridor called Byron. So if you’re worried about anything you can come and find me. I’m in the year above you.’ She watched Leonora snivel and patted her on the back. ‘Poor old you. We all felt like this the first time but it does get better. Every day will be a little easier than the one before and you’re not alone because we’re all here and we’re going to look after you.’ Leonora sniffed and dried her tears on Saggy Rabbit’s soft fur. Tentatively she began to feel a little better.

  Alicia returned from Dickens carrying a large pot, grinning broadly. ‘Who would like a spoonful of dulce de leche?’

  Because it was dark and the journey home was long and because she felt so unhappy, Audrey confided in Cicely. ‘I fought Cecil over this,’ she explained. Out of loyalty and duty she had never spoken to anyone of her resentment towards her husband, not even to her mother or Aunt Edna who would have understood. But now Cecil was far away and she had witnessed the reality of boarding school she felt that loyalty waver like a weakened oak tree in a ferocious wind. ‘Alicia was expelled from her school because the teachers couldn’t cope with her exuberance. It was nothing too serious, there are other good schools in Buenos Aires. Leonora loved it there, she was so happy. Then Cecil suddenly dreamed up this idea of sending them to be educated over here. I nearly died. You can imagine. What have I got to go home to?’

  ‘Your husband,’ Cicely replied firmly. ‘You can’t let this defeat you, Audrey. You can’t give your life to your children because one day they’ll be married with children of their own and where will that leave you?’

  ‘A grandmother,’ she stated simply.

  ‘That’s not what I mean.’

  ‘I barely have a relationship with him any more. How can I love someone so insensitive and cruel? He has robbed me of my children.’

  ‘It’s not like that,’ said Cicely in her brother’s defence. ‘It’s hard for you to understand because you weren’t brought up here. But we English really do believe boarding school to be the highest form of education in the world. It’s built into the culture so one doesn’t even question it. I missed my parents the first day, of course, just like Leonora. But after that I adored it and rarely thought of them at all. Cecil was at Eton and I doubt he suffered a moment of homesickness. He’s thinking of his daughters and believes, I’m sure, that he’s giving them the best start in life.’

  ‘He can’t love them like I do.’ Audrey looked across at Cicely’s profile and knew that she was sensitive enough to see the situation from both sides.

  ‘Cecil is very English,’ she said after a pause. ‘He’s upright and correct like Papa. He wasn’t brought up to show his emotions. But that doesn’t mean he is incapable of love. I’ll bet you he loves his daughters just as much as you. He’s willing to sacrifice his joy for their future. Don’t you see? He’s an Englishman and always will be.’

  ‘And Louis? Is he an Englishman too?’

  Cicely’s mouth twitched as she stared out at the road ahead. ‘He’s in a cultural limbo,’ she replied and chuckled.

  ‘So if he had children . . .’

  ‘He’ll never have children,’ she interrupted tightly. ‘Darling Louis will never settle down and start a family. He’s a creature of nature like the trees and the wind. Tempestuous, impulsive, irrational. One doesn’t know what he’s going to do next and one never has. If Cecil is too cold then Louis is too hot, but that is like comparing . . .’ she floundered trying to think up an adequate analogy. ‘I don’t know, a horse and a donkey.’

  ‘How can you even think to categorize Louis like that?’ Audrey gasped in astonishment. ‘He’s ten times more talented than Cecil,’ she blurted in a passionate voice. Now it was Cicely’s turn to gasp. Audrey checked herself and added swiftly, ‘Cecil can’t play a note and besides he’s much more elegant than a horse. He’s more like a Great Dane.’ It was an inadequate attempt to redress the balance in her husband’s favour but Cicely wasn’t a fool. She continued to stare out at the road ahead.

  ‘I don’t know where Louis got that gift from, but it’s not a place on earth,’ she said, hoping Audrey’s fervour to be on behalf of her dead sister. Then she stretched her hand across the gearbox and touched Audrey’s. ‘Don’t hold this against Cecil, Audrey. He’s giving the twins a future. Your future is with him, don’t forget that.’

  Audrey stared bleakly out in front of her and pictured Cecil’s face growing old. Suddenly life seemed a painfully long time with little respite. She thought of her daughters going to bed in that creaky house and her stomach twisted inside her.

  Why was it that everyone she loved was taken from her? First Isla, then Louis and now her daughters. She felt alone and adrift and powerless to change the course of her own destiny.

  Chapter 18

  Leonora lay in the darkness with Saggy Rabbit listening to the coughing and rustling of the seven other children who shared her dormitory. The sounds were a comfort for they reminded her that, as solitary as she felt, she wasn’t alone. She had had supper at one of the long tables in the grand hall which resembled a scene from a medieval banquet, except there were no pigs roasting on spits in the fireplace, just a large display of dried flowers that sat collecting dust. She had placed herself next to Caroline Stainton-Hughes who announced that she’d like to be known by her nickname, which was Cazzie. Then she had turned to Leonora and told her that she had to have a nickname too. So everyone had called her Leo, like Alicia did, and they had eaten macaroni cheese and thick slices of white bread with butter in an attempt to fill the emptiness inside. One of the matrons called Sally had brought some of Miss Reid’s dogs around to comfort the new girls and she had sat on the floor with Cazzie and a couple of the other children who were particularly homesick stroking them and drying their tears on their fur. But then it had been time to shower and prepare for bed. She had hung her wash bag up on the peg next to dozens of others and had suffered a sudden twisting of the gut when the name tape on her bath cap, so lovingly sewn on by her mother, had flashed at her as she expanded the elastic to put it on. Now she lay in a ball in her bed. In spite of the heavy blanket she felt cold. The mattress was hard and the springs squeaked each time she moved. She heard the head matr
on’s footsteps followed by the light tap-tapping of her black Labrador as he followed her down the narrow corridors. She stopped at each room to shine her torch onto the beds to check that each child was where she should be then continued, the rubber soles of her comfortable shoes squelching on the wooden floorboards.

  Leonora must have drifted off to sleep because she awoke in the early hours of the morning with a desperate need to use the lavatory. She lay there deliberating whether she had the courage to go by herself. The light was on in the corridor and all she had to do was creep through Dickens, across the landing to the bathrooms. She was aware that the floors groaned underfoot and was afraid that she would wake everyone up. Then it occurred to her that perhaps one of the other girls was in the same predicament. ‘Is anyone awake?’ she whispered loudly. Her voice sounded strange as it hissed into the silence. She tried again, this time a little bit louder. But no one responded.

  Finally, when the pressure in her bladder won over her anxiety she slipped out of bed and slid her feet into her slippers. She pulled on her dressing gown, tying it about her waist as she silently talked herself into braving the journey. She remembered Alicia talking of ghosts and how all English houses had them and hoped with a shudder that she didn’t bump into one. The light was dim but it showed the way sufficiently for her to tip-toe through Milne and Dickens without tripping over anyone’s fallen teddy bears or slippers. She hesitated as she passed Alicia’s bed and peered at the pillow. Her sister was in a deep sleep, her long corkscrew curls fanning about her face and over the pillow in a silky waterfall. She envied Alicia. She doubted that her sister experienced the same emptiness, the same homesickness as she.

  Each time her foot landed on a squeaky floorboard she flinched, holding her position like a statue until she was sure that she hadn’t woken anyone up. Finally she crossed the landing and saw in front of her the bathroom and lavatories.

  ‘Psssst, is that you, Mattie?’ came a voice from one of the small cubicles. Leonora looked around. ‘Mattie?’ came the voice again, this time with more persistence.

  ‘It’s me, Leonora. I’m new,’ Leonora replied, approaching the door from where the voice was coming. A girl pulled it open and smiled a long-suffering smile.

  ‘Hello there, I’m Elizabeth,’ she said with a sigh. She was an unfortunately fat child with a round face and long red hair tied into pigtails. She was sitting on the lavatory with her elbows on her knees. She looked as if she had been there for a long time.

  ‘I’m in Milne,’ said Leonora.

  ‘I’m in Milton. I’m waiting for Mattie to come and use the loo.’ Then noticing Leonora’s bewildered expression she added, ‘She sends me out to warm the seat up for her.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Well, it’s jolly cold, don’t you think?’

  ‘Yes, it is.’

  ‘Where are you from?’ she asked. ‘You have a funny accent.’

  ‘The Argentine.’

  ‘Where’s that?’

  ‘South America.’

  ‘Oh. That’s a long way away, isn’t it?’ Then she added with a tactlessness that she was well known for, ‘Don’t worry, you’ll speak like the rest of us after a few weeks here.’

  Leonora was eager to be liked so she replied, ‘I hope so.’

  ‘Mummy says that one must speak like a lady. You’re obviously a lady, but you have to learn to sound like one too. Oh, and ride like one as well, I always forget that bit. I’m allergic to horses, you see. My eyes swell up and I sneeze a lot. Mummy wants me to ride, though. All well-bred ladies ride.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Leonora, trying to be agreeable. She wondered what Alicia would make of their conversation.

  Elizabeth sighed and looked at her watch. ‘I must have been here for at least fifteen minutes,’ she complained. Then she looked up at her new friend. ‘I say, why don’t you use it instead? It’s nice and warm now and I doubt Mattie’s going to come. She’s probably gone back to sleep. She does that sometimes. I’ve often been here for hours expecting her to come.’ She stood up and made way for Leonora. ‘See you tomorrow,’ she said before padding off.

  Leonora watched her go and wondered who Mattie was that she was able to make another girl warm the loo seat up for her in the middle of the night. She sat down. Elizabeth had done her job well.

  When the gong was rung from the Great Hall at seven a.m., Leonora was only too happy to get up. Lying in bed only made her fearful. She had awoken to that hollow sense of homesickness that made her want to cry all over again. So she dressed with haste and followed the other girls down to breakfast. Each place had an apple on it and the smell of toast and porridge wafted up from the kitchen.

  Alicia had slept well and woken with a quiver of excitement at the challenges that awaited her. When she saw her sister she was relieved to find that she was pale but no longer embarrassing herself by bawling like a baby. She threw her a brief wave before taking a place on one of the long benches at another table. ‘You can’t sit here,’ said a tall girl with shiny black hair combed into the shape of a helmet. ‘You’re a new girl. You have to sit at the end of the table. One sits in order of seniority.’

  ‘But I’m in the second year,’ replied Alicia, looking at the girl steadily.

  She blinked down at Alicia and frowned. ‘Careful, people won’t like you if you’re cocky,’ she warned. ‘I’ll excuse you because you’re new.’ But the truth was that she excused her because Alicia’s beauty was captivating and something to be greatly admired. Alicia moved reluctantly to the other end of the table where she stood beside a fat redhead, opposite a pretty blonde with a turned-up nose and dark brown eyes who looked her up and down without smiling.

  ‘You’re new,’ stated the blonde.

  ‘Yes, I am,’ Alicia replied. ‘I’m Alicia.’

  ‘That’s an unusual name.’

  ‘It’s Alice in Spanish.’

  ‘I know that. You must be from the Argentine,’ she said. ‘Elizabeth bumped into your sister in the loo last night, didn’t you, Elizabeth? She was warming the seat up for me. I hate a cold loo seat, don’t you?’

  ‘I’ve never thought about it. But I suppose so. What’s your name?’

  ‘She’s Mattie, short for Mathilda. She’s an Hon,’ said the redhead.

  ‘What’s an Hon?’ she asked.

  Mattie laughed. ‘My father’s a viscount,’ she said. ‘I suppose you don’t know what that is either.’ She sighed. ‘Elizabeth will teach you about our class system over here, it’s very important you know about it.’

  ‘I know all about it. My father’s a señor,’ Alicia retaliated, knowing that neither Mattie nor Elizabeth would know it simply meant Mr.

  ‘Good,’ said Mattie, suitably impressed. ‘Is he an important man?’

  ‘Very. He’s only second to the President,’ she lied. Then she smiled confidently and whispered, ‘The President doesn’t move without my father’s approval.’ Elizabeth sniggered and Mattie grinned. Alicia wasn’t just pretty, she was important too. Mattie was only too aware of the lack of Hons at the school, it was nice to finally meet someone on the same level as herself. At that moment Miss Reid walked in, took her place at the head of the top table and the whole hall fell silent for Grace. Miss Reid bowed her head and clasped her hands together in prayer. Leonora copied and closed her eyes while Alicia scanned the room restlessly.

  ‘For what we are about to receive may the Lord make us truly grateful, Amen.’ They all repeated Amen then sat down with a roar of chairs scraping the floor and the clattering of cutlery as the prefects began to serve steaming porridge from large cauldrons.

  ‘I hate porridge,’ Mattie complained.

  ‘I’ll eat yours,’ said Elizabeth eagerly.

  ‘Good. I’ll have your toast then,’ she said. Elizabeth’s face momentarily clouded with regret, she loved her toast and marmalade more than anything, but her expression cleared before Mattie noticed it.

  ‘In the Argentine we have croissants and brioche for br
eakfast,’ said Alicia, watching with a grimace as a bowl of grey porridge was placed before her.

  ‘We have eggs and bacon at home,’ added Mattie. ‘Mrs Bruton makes it every morning. No one makes it quite like Mrs Bruton.’

  ‘In the Argentine we have a maid called Mercedes . . .’

  ‘Like the car?’ said Elizabeth, catching Mattie’s eye and giggling behind her hand.

  ‘Yes, because she drives one,’ said Alicia quickly, determined not to look foolish.

  ‘The maids must be very rich where you come from. Mrs Bruton drives a little Morris,’ said Mattie.

  ‘Oh, they are. Daddy pays them very well,’ she added, pouring sugar onto her porridge.

  ‘Look,’ said Mattie, leaning forward and fixing her new friend with narrowed eyes. ‘I don’t want to hear you say that phrase over and over again.’

  ‘What phrase?’ Alicia asked, stunned.

  ‘In the Argentine,’ she said. ‘I know you come from there, so you don’t have to say it. It’s boring.’ For a moment Alicia was lost for words. She opened her mouth to say something but nothing came into her head. She stared back at Mattie defiantly. Elizabeth giggled again. She was used to Mattie terrorizing the other girls. But Alicia wasn’t used to being spoken to like that. She leaned forward and fixed her opponent with arrogant blue eyes.

  ‘Where do you come from?’ she asked quietly.

  ‘Hertfordshire,’ replied Mattie.

  ‘Oh, I see,’ she said and smiled knowingly, sitting back. This irritated Mattie who frowned crossly and stuck out her lower lip.