Leonora Read Free Page B

hand; prey no longer, still less corpses. They have won the match and are laughing at the shotguns and the foxhounds panting with their lolling tongues.
    â€˜The hounds are thoroughbreds, just like the children,’ the governess boasts to Mary Kavanaugh, who isn’t sure she has understood her.
    â€˜I see the children talk to anyone and anything: dogs, cats, ducks, and the geese who stretch out their necks and sway as they waddle along behind them.’
    â€˜They’d do better to prioritise their Latin and Greek. All I beg of them is less imagination and more wisdom! Knowledge is synonymous with precision and these children behave no differently to opium addicts.’
    â€˜The truth of the matter is that the animals talk to these children, regardless of how much of a hurry they are in.’
    â€˜Nanny, you are responsible for this madness.’
    â€˜I have attained heights that you never shall, Mademoiselle. I travel through astral spheres.’
    â€˜I don’t doubt it in the slightest.’
    â€˜The problem is that you are French and in so being are fixated on matter. Merde! Merde! Shit! Shit!’
    Father O’Connor, one of Patrick’s Jesuit teachers, comes to celebrate Sunday Mass in Crookhey Hall’s private chapel, attended by a number of guests and neighbours. Although Harold is a Protestant whose only real belief is in hard work, Maurie imposes her Catholicism. In addition, the priest is an intelligent man. After Mass he is invited to dinner and proposes:
    â€˜Let’s take a look at the night sky, here in the northern hemisphere you can clearly see the spiral of the nebula of Andromeda, as well as some other constellations.’
    On Leonora’s face falls the reflection of the brightest star of all: Orion. ‘Look up there, it’s Venus!’ The planets are revolving over the heads of the children. In the celestial dome over the north of England the circles made by the lights of Andromeda are clearly visible:
    â€˜I’ve seen this spiral in my dreams, this isn’t the first time I’ve seen it. I recognise it,’ Leonora observes.
    â€˜The division that exists between reality and the imagination is actually very tenuous,’ replies Father O’Connor.
    â€˜My family tells me I’ve been seeing visions ever since I was two years old and nobody believes they’re real except Nanny and Gerard.’
    â€˜And Pat?’
    â€˜Pat’s a bossy boots and the fact he goes to Stonyhurst is no guarantee of intelligence.’
    â€˜There are men and women whose dreams foretell what will happen to them.’
    â€˜I haven’t the faintest idea what could happen to me, but I certainly know what I do not want to do.’
    â€˜What is this you do not want to do, Prim?’
    â€˜Don’t call me Prim, I hate it. What I don’t want to do is what everyone else does.’
    â€˜Yes, it goes without saying that you succeed in creating quite a few problems.’
    Father O’Connor pays his visits not only in order to celebrate Sunday Mass, but because the only female Carrington child intrigues him:
    â€˜When the moon is full I sleep really badly.’
    â€˜Why?’
    â€˜It’s because she’s a she-wolf,’ interrupts Gerard. ‘Haven’t you heard her howl at the moon?’
    â€˜One night I saw a mark on the carpet and, since I didn’t remember having spilt anything there, I looked up and saw how the moon’s reflection had landed at my feet. Is it true the moon has a store of fourteen thousand curses? Once I saw it drown in the lake. Is there water on the moon, Father O’Connor?’
    â€˜If there is water then there is life.’
    â€˜But is there water?’
    â€˜I don’t think that scientists have found any yet.’
    The girl surprises him. To him, curiosity is the greatest virtue, just as wisdom is the goal of every desire. Who knows where her erratic temperament