Mother hated being in Scotland because she did not like her family and because she believed the soldiers would damage Fosse House while we were away. She said it made no difference that they were recovering from battle wounds, you could not trust soldiers, everyone knew that, and it was no use people saying they were mostly officers because officers were often the worst.
While my parents are away my governess lives at Fosse House, and we have lessons, which mostly I like. We study great English writers and poets – later we might read some of the French writers; my governess says my French is coming along very well, and we could try Victor Hugo or possibly the poetry of Louise Colet, although Mme Colet’s private life is to be much deplored. I thought, but did not say, that at least the lady had a private life, which is more than I have.
Sometimes we listen to music. We have a gramophone in the drawing room, and I am allowed to buy records with my small allowance and Christmas or birthday money. Father sometimes listens to the records with me – those are the rare occasions when we do something together. Mother often tells us she likes music, but usually she listens to two movements of a symphony, then says she cannot sit here all afternoon doing nothing.
It was Father who told me about Leonora. She was his aunt or great-aunt or third cousin – he is not sure of the exact relationship – and she had been part of a famous choir in Belgium.
‘Her name was Leonora,’ he said, and with the pronouncing of the name, a curious thing happened to me. I thought: Leonora. Leonora. It was as if a connection had been made, as if a door had been opened, and something that had been waiting in Fosse House’s darknesses for a very long time was peering out … Leonora, who had sung in a choir, and been afraid of something, so dreadfully afraid …
On Sundays we go to church and while my parents are away my governess and I take nature walks. This week, though, my foot is still troublesome so we don’t walk very far.
It is quite difficult to write my diary while my governess is living in the house.
I have received a postcard from Mother and Father from Belgium. They are staying in a place called Liège. The name touches a chord deep within my mind, and reading the postcard and looking at the picture on the front, I have the feeling that Leonora is watching me.
The postcard shows an old stone building with a small bell tower surmounted by a cross, so it is either a church or perhaps a convent. I stared at it for a very long time, and I have it before me now, propped up on a corner of my dressing table where I am writing this. It’s as if I recognize the place – no, it’s Leonora who is doing that. How long will I have to fight her before she leaves me alone, I wonder …? Sometimes I hate my father for telling me about her.
The message on the postcard says Mother and Father are having a pleasant time and the weather is good. They hope I am well and ensuring the house is locked up at night.
I have found Liège in my atlas and in the encyclopedia, and it’s one of those old towns soaked in the romantic history of so many European places: the small states and dukedoms with princes and margraves and little turreted castles. Reading about it, tracing its boundaries, I keep thinking: yes, I know that – and that. But how do I know? How?
If I ask Mother how a particular journey has been, she might say the food had not agreed with her, oily foreign rubbish and she is glad to be home, or remark how tiring it had been walking round museums and libraries and she believes she will not accompany my father next time he goes away. She always says this, but she always does accompany him. I think she does not trust him to find his way home by himself.
Father, asked about a journey, might say he had found a most useful museum in some small town, or been given access to a private library which had yielded some helpful information. But as to the people they meet and the places they see, neither of them ever seems much interested.
Today I think I may actually have seen Leonora – at least, someone I take to be Leonora. She is small and fragile-looking, and she has large dark eyes that she fixes on me as if she wants to suck out my thoughts and my memories. She is very pale and she has dark hair – too dark to be called brown, but not dark enough to be black.
It was shortly before supper and she was near the walled garden. I saw her from my bedroom window, which overlooks it. She was standing beneath a tree, looking up at me.
Later, I asked my governess if she had seen anyone wandering around, but she had not.
Am I going mad? What does Leonora want?
Does she want to take over my mind …?
The writing trailed off, the ink leaving splodges and what might be tear stains. Michael turned to the next page and saw, with relief, that the writing returned to its original graceful slant.
Mother and Father returned last night. Mother went straight to bed after the journey so I did not see her until lunch today. She was tired and snappish, picking at her food, and finding fault with everything that had been done in the house during her absence.
Father was wrapped in his thoughts, but he went all round the house as usual, making sure nothing had been disturbed or disrupted. This afternoon he showed me a small framed sketch he had found in a museum in a place called Holzminden. He said it was a piece of history from the Great War – a war in which a cousin of his had served and been killed – so he had asked the museum’s curator if he could buy the sketch. The curator had been more than happy to sell it – he had said he believed it was one of a series of sketches. He had not known what had happened to the others – probably, they had long since been destroyed. Herr Gilmore should remember that that war – the Great War, as some called it – had been over for more than thirty years, and the recent one was more than six years since. And they were all good friends now, England and Germany and Russia and Italy, waren sie nicht?