That was when the unknown man reached out his hand and said, in his difficult, heavily-accented French, ‘Don’t be afraid. I’m here to help. We’ll climb through the window.’
She’s writing as if she really could see it, thought Michael, coming out of the journal for a moment. How does she know so much? Did she find information about Leonora in this house – some information her father tracked down – and become fixated on it? Is she subconsciously drawing on that, or simply not mentioning it? There was Iskander’s journal as well. Luisa could have read that when she was younger. Translating from the French would not have been very difficult for her – she had mentioned learning French with her governess. Either or both of these explanations would fit.
He had intended to simply glance through the opening pages of the journal to find names or phone numbers for the hospital, and to do no more than skim a few more pages, in deference to Luisa’s words. But at some barely-acknowledged level of his mind he had already made the decision to remain in this room and read the whole thing. If nothing else, it might distract him from listening for soft footsteps, or wondering what might lie inside the oak chest. It was a peculiar way of spending the night alone in a haunted house, but it was the precept of whatever gets you through. Wasn’t it John Lennon who had said that? Michael was so pleased at remembering this snippet of comparatively modern philosophy that he wrote it down in order to prove to Nell that he did not live half inside the world of the metaphysical and romantic poets.
He glanced around the room, but all seemed quiet, and if Stephen walked the halls of his old home he did so unobtrusively. Michael adjusted the desk lamp and returned to Luisa’s diary.
He was an adventurer, of course, that man with whom Leonora ran away. A rogue and a vagabond – a gentleman of fortune … Do I say ‘gentleman’? But, in a strange way, I think he was a gentleman. He was the one who sought out people in Liège after that brutal attack on the convent. He routed out the townspeople, the young, strong sons who could fight, and he rallied them, ignoring the danger from the other troops of German soldiers already roaming the streets. He was the one who saved the nuns – that must never be forgotten.
So, a thief and a gambler, but always a gentleman.
He was a gentleman when he broke into the wealthy houses on that flight from Liège and took whatever could be taken and sold to fund their journey. He was deft and stealthy and he could enter a house like a shadow and vanish into the night afterwards without the occupants knowing.
‘Only take what will not cause hardship or loss,’ he said to Leonora. ‘These people will not miss that – they will not suffer from the loss of that, or that – oh, or that, we cannot possibly leave that behind for it is beautiful and valuable …’
Somehow, throughout everything, he managed to send articles to the newspapers which employed him, travelling from place to place, as the original invasion developed into full-blown war. Money was sent to him by incomprehensible means – banks were sometimes involved. Leonora did not always entirely understand how this was done; there was something called wiring of funds, and sometimes there were bank drafts to be collected from pre-arranged places.
When this money did not arrive as expected, or the collection place could not be reached, the pieces of jewellery, the silver snuff boxes, the small beautiful ikons, could be sold to provide sufficient money for travel and food. The travel was nearly always the best available, and the food was the finest.
‘I do not settle for the inferior when I can have the best,’ he said, with his unfailing air of believing the world was arranged for his specific enjoyment.
Even that night in the bedroom of a roadside tavern on the Dutch/German borders, with midnight chimes sounding romantically, with the owl-light draining the colour from the trees, and the scent of roses from the gardens … Even then, he was a gentleman …
‘Leonora, my sweet, innocent girl, we must stop this … I mustn’t do this, I must not … We may be forced to share a room because the others were all booked, but I can quite well sleep in the chair – on the floor … I can be honourable, and I will be. Oh, but if you look at me like that I don’t think I can be honourable for much longer …’
French was not his first language and the words were fragmented, but the emotions, the sheer driving urgency of passion, were whole and sweet and undeniable.
And here, at that part of Leonora’s memories, I am faced with a blank, brick wall, for whatever those two did that night – and, I suppose, on subsequent nights – I have not the knowledge or the experience of the knowledge to interpret it. I cannot enter into their emotions, either physically or mentally. I know Iskander’s emotions got the better of him, and I know Leonora matched his passion. But that is all I know. Leonora retreats from me at that point. Her wild, dangerous, uncharted flight across war-ravaged Europe with her lover vanishes, and I am left with only my own memories where once I had hers.
I’ve liked setting down all that about Leonora and Iskander. It makes it all less shadowy – it makes them more real. But they were real, they lived.
Do my parents ever guess that Leonora is inside my mind? How far does it go, this overshadowing? Does she sit at my place in the dining room, and do my parents ever have the impression that it is no longer their daughter but another person who is there?
But I shall not let her take over completely, I shall not …
I cannot write more now. Fosse House’s darknesses are closing around me …