The Forget-Me-Not Sonata

by Santa Montefiore

  ‘I don’t want to join in,’ explained Leonora quickly, picking Saggy Rabbit off her bed and cuddling him.

  ‘She doesn’t want to,’ repeated Alicia in all innocence. ‘I’m not a beast, Mummy. I wouldn’t be unkind to Leo.’

  ‘I hope not, Alicia. You’re about to start boarding school where you’ll be among a large number of strange girls. You must stick together. Blood is thicker than water, don’t ever forget that. Life is very hard and you’ll rely on each other for support and encouragement. Isla and I were as different as you two are but we stuck together and never let the other down. It would never have occurred to me to be disloyal because she was a part of me as you are both a part of each other.’

  ‘I wish I had known Aunt Isla,’ said Alicia, deliberately digressing.

  ‘I wish you had too. She was a very special person whose light shone so brightly it dazzled. The world is a darker place now but still, there are other lights and you and Leonora shine just as brightly for me.’

  ‘I’m going to miss you when we go to school.’ Alicia suddenly burst into tears. She did it so convincingly that even Leonora who knew her sister’s ways better than anyone was convinced that she meant it. Alicia looked up from beneath her thick lashes and blinked away large salty tears.

  ‘I’ll look after you, Alicia,’ her sister soothed, placing a hand on her shoulder.

  ‘My darling child, come here,’ said Audrey, pulling her weeping daughter into her arms, stroking her hair and kissing her forehead. ‘You’ll be fine when you get there.’

  ‘I don’t want to go any more. I want to go home.’

  Leonora suddenly wanted to go home too but she bit her lip and tried to say the alphabet backwards in her head in order to prevent herself crying. Their poor mother couldn’t cope with both of them crying at once. She watched her sister in her mother’s embrace and wished that she were there too. Alicia was usually so strong and confident, it was unlike her to be scared of anything. Alicia’s apparent crisis of confidence sent her sister into a decline. Leonora now dreaded the thought of boarding school, of England and of Aunt Cicely whom she had never met, but from the snippets that she had picked up she sounded a cold, unfriendly woman in a big, haunted house in the middle of nowhere. She didn’t dare tell her mother of her fears because she knew that it would upset her. As Alicia poured her heart out Leonora wished she had kept her uncertainties to herself.

  Audrey was suitably distressed and diverted, which was Alicia’s intention. She blinked back at Leonora and despised her for being a martyr. Leonora smiled back sympathetically. Surely she now deserved her sister’s friendship. Alicia narrowed her eyes and decided to be nice for a bit. Being nice was always a challenge and she liked challenges.

  In the final days of the voyage Audrey was pleased to hear from Mrs B that Alicia was now including her sister in everything. ‘Whatever you said, my dear, did the trick. They’re like two peas in a pod,’ she exclaimed happily, hurrying up the deck with an armful of pirate costumes for the end-of-trip play. She had offered Mr Linton the part of Captain Hook but he had declined, stating that the willow tree had been the highlight of his acting career and besides, he couldn’t think of anything more beastly than wielding a nasty hook at all those dear children. ‘It’s against my nature,’ he claimed, winking at Audrey in amusement.

  The following morning when one of the youngsters ran down the deck screaming ‘land ahoy, land ahoy,’ Audrey’s timeless voyage, between the past and the future in what seemed an eternal moment, finally moved on. Gazing at the dreary sight of Southampton dock as it emerged out of the early morning mist anchored her mind and heart once more in the here and now and the painful journey that lay ahead of her. It was a joyless sight but one that aroused in the hearts of those who loved England a flutter of excitement and a sigh of relief. There was no place like home and even the dull skies and grey coastline did little to dampen their joy. ‘Ah, England,’ exclaimed Mr Linton happily. ‘There’s no place quite like it.’

  ‘No place,’ agreed Mrs B, pursing her lips together with emotion. Audrey looked bleakly out onto the country that her father and husband spoke of with such devotion and wondered what they saw in it. She remembered the story of the Emperor’s New Clothes and felt like the little boy who shouts into the crowd that the Emperor is in fact not wearing any clothes at all.

  ‘I thought it was late summer,’ was the least confrontational thing she could think of to say.

  ‘The end of the summer,’ Mrs B replied.

  ‘There’s nothing quite like an English summer,’ Mr Linton sighed, pulling his jacket around him to keep warm. Audrey glanced at her daughters who looked as grim as she did and felt the resentment towards her husband rise up inside her along with a sudden shiver of cold.

  Chapter 14

  ‘It’s all terribly quaint,’ said Alicia in amusement as she followed her mother and sister onto the station platform. ‘All the porters speak English.’

  ‘Well, of course they do,’ her mother replied, ‘we’re in England.’ But she knew what her daughter meant. In the Argentine the working classes spoke only Spanish.

  ‘I can’t understand a word he says,’ hissed Leonora, nodding in the direction of the porter who hurried along in front of them with a tower of suitcases balanced precariously on a trolley.

  ‘That’s because he speaks with a regional accent,’ Audrey said, trying to appear confident. ‘You’ll get used to it.’

  ‘It’s very misty,’ Alicia giggled. ‘It’s like soup. If he goes any faster he might disappear into it and never be seen again.’

  ‘I hope not, all your worldly possessions are in those suitcases,’ said Audrey lightly, but her laughter caught in her throat. She stifled a sob and pulled her coat tightly about her shoulders. It was cold. A damp cold that penetrated her very bones.

  Before Audrey could dwell any further on her impending loss a shiny green train appeared up the track, the metal of its carriages glinting in the dull morning light. A quiver of anticipation shivered up the platform as it drew into the station, hissed to a halt and exhaled thick puffs of steam. ‘It’s a dragon, it’s a dragon,’ squealed Alicia, jumping up and down, shouting above the screeching of brakes and the bustle of passengers who now boarded the train. Leonora copied her sister and jumped up and down too, her ankles tickled by the dragon’s smoky breath.

  ‘Come on, girls, we don’t want to miss it,’ said Audrey, taking Leonora by the hand and marching towards the carriages. For Leonora and Alicia the cheerless English weather no longer affected them for there was so much that was new and exciting. They threw themselves onto two seats by the window and knelt with their noses pressed against the glass staring out in wonder at the unfamiliar world that now opened up to them. Audrey took off her coat and hung it on the hook, then sat beside Leonora. ‘Girls, take your feet off the seats,’ she said in a low voice, eyeing the other passengers who glanced at them over the top of their newspapers with the utmost discretion.

  As the train rattled through the English countryside Audrey switched her mind from the high-pitched chatter of the twins and allowed her thoughts to drift rootless and free among the happy events of the past two weeks aboard the Alcantara. She recalled those languid afternoons on deck, with the warm breeze brushing her skin and the light happy voices of the twins carried on the wind in carefree songs of childhood and focused her thoughts on the past in order to avoid the pain of the present. But in spite of all her efforts the present had invaded those sunny decks and images of school and partings, suitcases and uniforms rose up in her mind in the form of dark shadows until her head throbbed. Weary and emotional she was no longer able to control her thoughts and Louis’ face finally emerged out of the gloomy picture of Colehurst House that Audrey had concocted from the brochure she had read and the tales she had heard of English boarding schools. She allowed her anxieties to retreat and steadied her mind’s eye on his raffish face and uneven smile and felt her heart lurch with longing. Gazing dreamily o
ut onto the misty English countryside she saw him in the dying summer trees and burning fields and she heard his hollow voice in an echo that leapt across the years: ‘I’m obviously a huge disappointment.’ She winced as once again those words pierced her heart and flooded her with regret. This was his home. This was where he had grown up and she imagined him riding across those autumn hills and resting his eyes upon the same scenery that she was now surveying. If she had had the courage to dream the impossible perhaps she would have made this remote island her home too. She might have grown to love it. Then he was tracing his long fingers down her face and across her lips and she blushed because even in her imagination Louis took more than he was offered.

  She swept a self-conscious glance about the carriage, afraid that her head was transparent and her thoughts laid bare. But she needn’t have worried. An old man smoked a pipe with his whiskers hidden behind a newspaper, a thin woman with perfectly behaved children sat reading a book, complimenting them at intervals on their neat drawings and a young couple had eyes only for each other. She laid a hand on her belly aware that the butterflies that caused it to shudder with nerves were for Louis and for the chance that their paths might cross once again. She had never met Cicely, but as Louis’ sister she might know of his whereabouts. Then her hand rose to rub the skin on her neck with anxious fingers for she knew if she were to see him again she would no longer have the will to resist her dreams, but would lose herself in them. And once lost, what hope had she of being recovered?

  The twins noticed everything that was different from the country of their birth. The patchwork of lush fields surrounded by hedges and fences, the hamlets of villages that resembled dollhouses with their thatched roofs and immaculate gardens, the pale, watery sky and the sun which now emerged from behind the clouds and celebrated their arrival by opening up like a giant sunflower. Everything was smaller and neater than in the Argentine and the twins tried to out-do each other by commenting on all the differences in loud, exuberant tones. Audrey pulled herself away from her daydreams to act as referee as her daughters’ voices got increasingly louder and more boisterous as the journey progressed.

  The train drew into Waterloo Station and Audrey struggled through the heaving crowds of passengers, holding her daughters’ hands so tightly their chatter dissolved into mute curiosity as they sensed their mother’s ill ease. But once in the safety of a shiny black London cab they began to comment once again on the narrow city streets, the pretty town houses and the red double-decker buses they had only previously seen in pictures.

  ‘It’s exactly like I imagined it to be,’ said Leonora. ‘Can we go on one of those buses?’

  ‘I’ll go on the top,’ Alicia interjected before Audrey had time to answer.

  ‘I want to see the Queen’s house.’

  ‘I bet I can get one of those guards to move.’

  ‘Tickle him under the nose.’ Leonora giggled. ‘I bet he’ll laugh then.’

  ‘Perhaps the Queen will ask us to tea in her palace when she learns that we’re here.’

  ‘I should think she’ll be far too busy for that,’ said Audrey and laughed, running a hand down Alicia’s long hair. ‘Besides, we’re going to be far too busy too.’

  ‘What are we going to do?’ Leonora asked.

  ‘First we’re going to the hotel.’

  ‘Goodie, I love hotels!’ Alicia exclaimed, although she’d never stayed in one.

  ‘We can have breakfast in bed,’ Leonora said excitedly.

  ‘If you like, but first we have to go and buy your school uniform,’ said Audrey, rummaging in her handbag for the letter from Miss Reid, the headmistress. ‘They’ve sent us a long list of things to buy in . . . what’s it called? It’s a very smart shop according to Aunt Hilda who seems to know everything about London.’ She tried not to think about her family who seemed so far away they might just as well have been living on another planet. ‘Ah, here it is, Debenham & Freebody in Oxford Street.’

  ‘What a funny name,’ said Alicia, screwing up her nose in the same way that Isla once had. Audrey saw much of her sister in Alicia. The same mischievous look in the eye, the same confidence, but Audrey didn’t see the malicious streak in her daughter that she had inherited from no one but cultivated entirely on her own. Alicia could be kind and she could be sweet, but only when it suited her. As there was no one else to play with she granted her favour to Leonora, who adored her with the unconditional love of a dog. Alicia looked forward to school where the choice would be vast and she could befriend anyone she wanted; besides, she’d no longer be under the watchful eyes of her parents. She recalled the Angela Brazil books and smiled at the fun she was going to have breaking the rules. After all, rules were there to be broken, isn’t that what Great Aunt Edna always said?

  ‘We’ll stay in the hotel tonight then take the train to Dorset where Aunt Cicely lives,’ Audrey continued, oblivious of Alicia’s wicked thoughts.

  ‘Then when do we go to school?’ Alicia asked, unable to hide the excitement that caused her voice to tremble. Audrey frowned at her, remembering the tears aboard the Alcantara.

  ‘On Wednesday,’ she replied in a small voice, then pulled a thin smile at Leonora who had suddenly gone quiet. ‘Aunt Cicely and I will take you together. She went there herself when she was your age and loved every minute of it.’

  ‘We’re going to love it, aren’t we, Leo?’

  Leonora nodded half-heartedly and Audrey instinctively put her arm around her and pulled her close.

  ‘I’m staying with Cicely for a few weeks to settle you in. I’m allowed to take you out for the weekend after a fortnight, so you can tell me all about it.’

  After they had settled into the Normandie Hotel in Knightsbridge they took another taxi to Oxford Street and Audrey promised them a ride on a bus after they had bought their uniform. Debenham & Freebody was throbbing with mothers buying clothes for their children, all clutching the same white sheets of paper that listed everything from pants to outdoor shoes and Aertex shirts, which Audrey had never heard of before. The girls eyed up the other children with a mixture of suspicion and curiosity while Audrey tried to find a sales lady to help her. She caught the attention of a small sparrow of a woman who was serving a tall lady in a camel hair coat. She smiled sweetly and indicated with a nod that as soon as she had finished she would look after her. So Audrey sat in an armchair and watched while the twins skipped through the department, playing chase.

  ‘We won’t be long,’ said the lady in the camel hair coat, sitting down next to Audrey. ‘They take forever in this shop. My Caroline’ – she pronounced this as Cairline – ‘has two elder sisters who are both seniors at Colehurst House but most of their old things are worn through so we’re having to get the essentials brand new. Quite an extravagance, it’s not cheap.’ The saleswoman disappeared through a door into the store room and the lady’s daughter, a freckly child with thin hair and a turned-up nose, emerged from the changing room in a brown and beige uniform looking long faced and grumpy. Audrey smiled at her but she lifted her chin and stuck out her lower lip sulkily. ‘Not a pretty uniform, is it?’ continued the girl’s mother who spoke with such a grand accent her chin practically disappeared into her neck.

  Audrey nodded. ‘It could be worse,’ she said diplomatically, feeling the child’s discomfort.

  ‘Goodness me, it’s ghastly, but at least it means they don’t wear out their own clothes. With all those dogs and ponies and tearing around in the mud, I’m jolly grateful for it.’

  ‘It’s my daughters’ first time at boarding school,’ said Audrey softly.

  The lady raised her eyebrows and grinned. ‘Oh, what fun, you’ve got it all ahead of you,’ she gushed. ‘It’s a charming school and the gels are nice and well mannered. Diana Reid is a jolly good headmistress and an excellent horsewoman. My Caroline has been longing to go, she’s the last, you see, and has had to put up with me. Jolly boring, isn’t it, darling?’ She didn’t wait for her daughter to reply. ‘
I wouldn’t let her go at eight like her sisters, she was a slow learner and needed extra tuition. So she’s ten. Going into the second year. She’s taking Teasel with her, though. Nothing in the world could split those two up, could it, Caroline? What would he do without you?’

  ‘Teasel?’ asked Audrey, assuming he was a dog.

  ‘Pony,’ replied the lady briskly. ‘Caroline won’t go anywhere without Teasel. If your gels have ponies they’re most welcome at Colehurst House. Really, it’s like a five-star hotel for horses. They’re happier there than at home, the little devils,’ she added, fluttering her eyelids and pursing her lips together to illustrate her amusement.

  At that moment Leonora and Alicia bounded around the corner giggling loudly. ‘Ah, do these two belong to you? They must meet Caroline.’ The twins skidded to a halt beside their mother and Leonora placed herself on her knee throwing her arm around her neck.

  ‘This is Leonora and that’s Alicia,’ said Audrey, ‘and this very smartly dressed girl is Caroline.’ The twins said hello politely and Caroline pulled a small smile in return.

  ‘I like your uniform, is it like ours?’ Leonora asked. Caroline’s eyes came alive and her smile lengthened.

  ‘Exactly like yours,’ Audrey replied, watching the other child’s expression soften.

  ‘If you follow me I’ll show you what else you have to have,’ she said and Alicia and Leonora followed her at once to the changing room where they rummaged through the pile of beige shirts and heavy brown skirts.

  ‘Charming gels,’ said the lady who suddenly remembered to her horror that she hadn’t introduced herself. ‘I’m dreadfully sorry, I don’t even know your name.’

  ‘Audrey Forrester,’ replied Audrey.

  ‘Dorothy Stainton-Hughes, a bit of a mouthful I’m afraid,’ she said and chuckled heartily. ‘Where are you from? You have a most curious accent.’

  ‘The Argentine.’

  ‘Gosh, you have come a long way, haven’t you!’ she exclaimed. ‘You won’t need to worry about your gels now, Caroline will look after them and Caroline already knows all her sister’s friends.’