Leonora (18 page)

After several hours up on her hill, Leonora spies a herd of horses in the distance, all turning their heads towards her and, without more ado, she heads off towards the green meadow where they are grazing. They don't move away and she caresses them, sniffs them, speaks to them. She is but one more horse, refreshing her face on their lips, combing their manes, wiping their eyes clean of sleep, and is on the point of mounting a yellow stallion who awaits her, when Catherine and Michel frighten them off, simply by turning up in their midst.

‘Don't you see what you've done?' Leonora asks them accusingly.

‘Then go off with them if you want to!' Catherine yells at her.

‘That's quite enough! Tomorrow we are going to try and cross the border into Spain,' Michel interrupts.

‘I have more in common with the horses than with you!' Leonora struggles to free herself from Michel's restraining hand, and he sees something in her eyes that makes him withdraw it at once.

Thanks to the documents and the money sent from London by Harold Carrington and handed over by the Jesuit emissary in the service of Imperial Chemical, Catherine positions herself behind the steering wheel of the Fiat once more. Michel has no safe conduct, however, and will catch them up in Madrid; what is most at stake at present is Leonora's health. The Jesuit sits down beside Catherine and the three of them set out for Seu d'Urgell.

‘This woman is the death of me, my nerves are shot to shreds,' she advises the Jesuit. ‘I've no idea if we will get her even as far as Arinsal.'

‘She looks tranquil enough.'

‘Every single thing she does is atrocious.'

Leonora has become as unbearable to Catherine as the war.

‘This is my kingdom! Its earth is reddened by the dried blood of the Civil War, and this is where I shall find Max,' Leonora shouts.

‘If she carries on shouting like this, they are bound to detain us,' the mysterious Jesuit agrees.

‘Or else she'll drive me as mad as she is,' Catherine adds.

21

MADRID

A
S THE DAYS GO
by, Catherine understands her friend less and less; she had never thought Leonora might put her in danger. Her company becomes more intolerable with each hour that passes. One hundred and ninety-seven kilometres of madness, accentuated by the Jesuit, because he never once raises his voice. Eventually, Leonora proposes abandoning the Fiat and continuing by train to Madrid. Catherine sighs with relief. At least she would not be driving accompanied by the lunatic shrieks of her friend. The Jesuit bids them farewell. Here, in the branch office of Imperial Chemical, their mission is to be accomplished.

Leonora endows every word she hears with a significance she alone can decipher. It becomes the key to pursuing their journey in a landscape strafed by bombs.

On the first night they put themselves up in the Hotel Internacional, close to the station. Although meals are only served in the dining room, Leonora's beauty and her deep eyes persuade the staff to bring her dinner up on to the roof garden, so that she can look out over the rooftops of Madrid.

They move to the Hotel Roma. Catherine sends telegram after telegram to Michel and when, after six days, he appears, she throws herself into his arms.

‘I am dead. Every day she gets more impossible. You try looking after her.'

Inside the Hotel Roma, Leonora again demands her dinner on the roof terrace. She shouts aloud in a state of euphoria: ‘As soon as all the suffering that has accumulated in my guts is dispelled, Madrid will also become calm again. Madrid lives in my belly and I shall return health to this city!'

‘Madrid is the stomach of the world,' the porter advises her.

She spends the night seated on the toilet with a catastrophic bout of diarrhoea. Next morning she happily announces that in voiding her guts, she has liberated Madrid. Her belly, now cleansed of the least residue of slime, can reveal the full bounty of humanity.

As soon as she can gather the strength to do so, she yells: ‘The war is over!'

Catherine and Michel opt to lock her in her room.

‘I have to take Max's passport to the Foreign Ministry, in order to obtain a visa for him.' Leonora is adamant. Realising she will not be able to leave by the door, Leonora exits by the window and, at great risk to her life, steps out along the roof cornice. She walks in through the lobby, cleaving a path between the guests before her, to be intercepted by a tall, blond Dutchman, who immediately stands in her way:

‘I am Van Ghent.'

Without further ceremony, Leonora accosts him:

‘Can you obtain a visa for Max Ernst for me? It's vital to get him out of France.'

‘I believe I know you already: my daughter works in Imperial Chemical's branch office here in Madrid. She would be delighted to assist you.'

The omnipresent persecutor and Nazi sympathiser Harold Carrington yet again! All her accumulated distress tightens her chest.

‘Van Ghent?'

By way of proof, the man holds out his passport.

‘It's blighted with swastikas!' Leonora is horrified. ‘You are on the other side, and I am revealing myself to you.'

‘Why is it you see swastikas everywhere?'

‘You're in cahoots with the Nazis!' Leonora is once again swirling in the mists of delirium.

Unburdening herself of all her identity cards is her one salvation, and Leonora hands over her own passport to an unknown man in the hotel lobby.

‘Take it, it's a present.'

The unknown man retreats and Van Ghent regards her with something approaching scorn. Leonora attempts to offload the entire contents of her handbag – a tube of lipstick, powder, hanky, a little mirror – all without success.

‘Why is everyone looking at me like this? I am handing them over quite politely.'

Pinpricks of rejection and humiliation redden her cheeks.

Van Ghent proffers her his arm. His body is as rigid as armour. His look is steely, his cheeks clean-shaven and his forehead broad beneath his receding fair hairline; his protuberant jaw line and cheekbones give his head the appearance of a skull.

From that moment on, Leonora decides to discard everyone else and remain glued to Van Ghent, since she has convinced herself that he will procure a visa for Max.

Van Ghent offers her a cigarette and while he lights it he says:

‘Keep the packet.'

He steers her with martial steps towards a table in the café and asks her what she would like to drink.

‘A cup of tea, please.'

Leonora pursues him magnetised, much to the relief of the suddenly unburdened Caroline and Michel. The man seats himself at the bar, Leonora seats herself at his side, and exchanges her tea for a Scotch, watching him relentlessly. The annoyance of the Dutchman is immediately obvious to all.

‘Don't think that I am unaware of what you're doing, Van Ghent. You are using the way you stare at everyone here to manipulate their behaviour. See how the people passing by all pause at our table!'

‘Yes indeed. And the reason is that, in your mood of exultation, you are making a spectacle of yourself.'

‘I am not making the slightest movement,' protests Leonora, rummaging in her bag.

‘What are you looking for?'

‘My badge of support for the Republic.'

‘Why aren't you wearing it, then?'

‘I lost it.'

‘It will be somewhere there in your bag.'

The badge appears and Van Ghent himself pins it to her lapel. Leonora does not know whether to thank him or to feel scared, for Van Ghent's mental powers are limitless. If Van Ghent requested it, Hitler would surrender to him, not a single bomber would cross the skies of Europe, the tanks would no longer advance upon them, everyone could go home, and Max would once again – immediately – be at her side. ‘If Van Ghent's power is not pernicious, then he alone will save Madrid.'

Leonora gets up from her seat and goes from one table to the next, pointing out the saviour of Spain, France and England. The customers look round at where she points to but the man has dematerialised.

‘Your Messiah is a spectre!' they say, and they laugh at her.

Three uniformed officers take her by the arm, put her into a car, and drive her to a house with wrought iron balconies. They install her in a room with red satin curtains and carpets, gilt doors and mouldings, Chinese hangings and ceramic ginger jars.

They throw her down onto a bed, tearing her clothes as they rip them off her, and try to rape her.

Leonora puts up such resistance that they finally abandon the attempt. As she tries to tidy up in front of the mirror, one of the men empties a bottle of Eau de Cologne on her head. Another rifles through her handbag.

They abandon her in the Retiro Park and she walks round in circles until a policeman finds her looking dishevelled and asks if she has lost her way:

‘I'm staying at the Hotel Roma.'

On reaching her room number 17 at three in the morning, she phones Van Ghent to recount the tragedy that has befallen her. The Dutchman furiously hangs up on her.

There are some nightdresses on her bed, sent to be laundered by Catherine, and which the housemaid has left in Room 17 in error. She imagines they must be a present from Van Ghent by way of an apology for having left her on her own. She takes a cold bath and puts on a pink nightdress; then another cold bath, and she tries on the pale green one; and so, going from one nightdress to the next, she continues until dawn when she decides to wear the pink nightdress because it chimes with the rising sun.

Persuaded that Van Ghent is hypnotising the citizens of Madrid with poisoned sweets, Leonora requests the hotel administration to provide her with newspapers and scissors to make kites. On them she writes: ‘Hitler is a menace to Madrid' over a thousand times. When she has accumulated an acceptable number, she goes up to the top floor of the hotel and looses the kites. She also writes, in capital letters, VISA FOR MAX; MADRID MUST BE LIBERATED; DEATH TO FRANCO. When she sees passers-by trampling over them, she goes out into the street shouting: ‘Hitler will destroy us all!' and distributes the rest of her propaganda leaflets herself. Some passers-by extend their hands and take them, others avoid her.

Then she runs up to Catherine's room, arriving out of breath. She commands her to look into her eyes and launches into another disturbing question:

‘Have you observed how my face is the exact image of the war?'

Catherine slams the door in her face.

Downstairs, in the hall of the Hotel Roma filled with German soldiers, she runs into Van Ghent and his son.

‘You are the one who has been sending out all the paper planes, aren't you?' asks the terrified young man, the spitting image of his father. ‘Would you like me to give you the news I have brought of Harold Carrington?' he then enquires obsequiously and, when Leonora tells him ‘
No
', Van Ghent
père
intervenes:

‘Let her be, she's mad.'

Humiliated, Leonora risks life and limb crossing the main road between the traffic, runs back to the Retiro Park, and flings herself down on the lawn, much to the surprise of both the adults and children there, since trespassing on the grass is strictly forbidden. Upon noticing that she is being stared at, Leonora's acrobatics become even more daring. Mothers grab their children by the hand and flee, calling out for the police. A Falangist official takes her to the hotel lobby and a bell hop accompanies her to room number 17. She undresses once more and spends hours in a cold bath.

The nightdresses have vanished.

Van Ghent is but another version of Harold Carrington, her executioner; she must overthrow him. She alone can defeat him, as she used to when a child. Otherwise she will be rebuffed by Maurie, Winkie, her mare, Nanny, Gerard, King George VI of England, the dukes of Norfolk or York, Lord Cavendon, the Duke of Cavendish, all of them right down to and including Tim, the chauffeur's son.

It now suddenly occurs to her that the cigarettes given her by the Dutchman must be poisoned.

‘That's why I can't sleep.'

The one way to liberate Madrid is to denounce the evil powers of Van Ghent and, in order to achieve this, an accord between Spain and England is essential. She phones the British Embassy and, on hearing her surname, the consul gives her an immediate appointment:

‘Hitler and his followers have hypnotised the world and Van Ghent is Hitler's emissary to Spain. It is essential to remove his hypnotic powers. That is the sole means of turning back the war.'

Leonora is a beautiful but terrifying sight, with her crinkly hair and her mad black eyes. She speaks standing up, her pronunciation is as immaculate as her distinction. The diplomat has no time even to ask her to be seated before Leonora starts issuing him with threats:

‘Instead of losing time in labyrinthine politics and economics, we must put our faith in metaphysical force and distribute it to every human being.'

‘Miss Carrington, please sit down.'

‘I cannot be seated, I am as stalled as Catherine's Fiat.'

‘Kindly show me your passport.'

Leonora empties her handbag on to the desk.

‘Are you the daughter of the President of Imperial Chemical?'

Leonora turns on her heels, walks out, and leaves the man talking to thin air.

After a few days, Leonora presents herself at the Embassy once more, and the diplomat observes that Mr. Carrington's daughter is unwell. He puts through a telephone call to Doctor Martínez Alonso.

‘This is a serious problem for the British Embassy: it concerns the daughter of an English magnate! I have already been in communication with the ambassador, Eric Phipps, and he has instructed me to manage this situation with maximum discretion. Above all we should always remember to treat the lady as who she is: Harold Carrington's daughter. Otherwise unfortunate consequences are bound to follow. We have to put ourselves at her service.'

Dr. Martínez Alonso offers his confirmation: ‘The political views expressed by the young lady are the fruit of her paranoid disturbance.' After four days, it is decided to transfer her to the Hotel Ritz.

‘Your daughter is highly perturbed. She is not only putting her own life at risk, but that of all the rest of us. She is in urgent need of medical attention,' reads the highly confidential telegram sent to the address of Imperial Chemical.

Catherine and Michel vanish and Leonora neither notices their departure nor registers that she is no longer at liberty. In her room at the Ritz, a big improvement on that at the Roma, she happily washes her clothes in the bath, and creates new garments for herself out of the towels. She informs the housemaid that she has an appointment with Franco, therefore she requires proper apparel for the interview.

‘Low-cut or right up to my neck? Close-fitting or as wide as a ballerina's skirts? Hat and gloves? I shall awaken and liberate him from his somnambulism!'

As soon as Franco hears her, he will reach a peace accord with England and then Germany, then finally France. He will sign the peace treaty and thus the war will come to an end.