Eleanora's Sundown: Eleanora's Sundown, #1

By Lumi

Requiem of darkness: The unearthed symphony of a life of shadows.

 

Step into the extraordinary life of Eleanora, a rockstar with a remarkable journey. Born into an old aristocratic family, she defied all odds and reached meteoric fame.
But beneath the lights and music, Eleanora battles her own inner demons, a haunting secret, and the relentless belief that she is not worthy.
Join her, on a gripping odyssey of resilience, music, deep shadows and the quest to find self-acceptance and peace.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lumi
• Release date: Dec 5, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223125570

Book preview

Chapter 1

Origins

My name is Eleanora.

My friends call me Ellie.

I present myself officially as Eleanora von Saschen-Coburg und Gotha, the only Duchess in her own right in the kingdom, apart from Her Late Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II. I need no husband to rightly own the title of Duchess of Somerset, as did my grandmother before me.

I may have been born with a freight train of names attached, but people know me solely on a first-name basis and my title is of no import. It is quite a station to get to in life, where a single name does all the talking for you.

What have I done to deserve such an honour? The first decisions that led me down this path where I am now were rather… unorthodox, to say the least, for someone with my backstory. But, then again, orthodoxy never really was my forte and I believe it must be something that runs down the family’s mitochondrial DNA. We all stem from the same tree. And I do mean all of us…

My Mami – that is to say, my maternal grandmother -, Margaret, wished to break all norms when she threw a tantrum, urging my great-grandfather William to send her to Paris, where she wished to establish herself as an artist.

Of course, being his only daughter and the apple of his eye, he reluctantly obliged and 17-year-old Margaret pranced her way to Paris, in 1938. Her brother, Teddy, was immensely proud of Maggie’s resolve and he cheered her on to always fight for what she truly wanted.

Bad luck did come a-knocking on Europe’s door, when a moustachioed maniac decided to plunge an entire continent, nay, the entire world into a full-scale war.

And so, in early 1940, after her brother had volunteered, Margaret made her way back home.

Every day she would wake up in the hope of hearing the news that the war was over but, instead, all she heard about was her beloved Paris being taken by the Nazis and her second home of London being under attack.

Never being one to back down, she took the car to London and volunteered as a nurse, almost giving her father a stroke, when he realised how his older son was fighting in the front and his youngest daughter was under a nightly enemy barrage.

Mami survived the Blitz, but uncle Teddy did fall in El-Alamein. As well as his own namesake, his own uncle Teddy, had fallen in the Somme. Teddy, or Edward is now, of course, the most proscribed name in the household.

As soon as the heir presumptive had passed, my Mami’s wings were clipped. She was told she should forget all her wild dreams about being a rebellious artist. She had gone from a relatively carefree childhood, with no real strings attached and a free spirit to match, if you took away the expectation that she would, one day, find a suitable and proper husband, to heiress presumptive herself.

The House, suddenly, fell upon her shoulders.

I find it an interesting concept, that of The House. I dreaded it terribly for years but my own shoulders have long been crushed under it. Yet, still I rose and fear it no more.

The House is not just our ancestral home of Somerset Hall. That may be its physical aspect, but the concept spans so much wider than the estate itself. The House is a whole dynamic yet, timeless concept, that passes from generation to generation, probably until the end of the World. And even so, I am not so certain about that.

The House encompasses everything, from the estate to other types of property and even to what we, both individually, but also as a family, represent in the midst of all of this.

We do not own The House. The house owns us, temporarily, until our inner fire fades away and then, it passes on to the next in line, consuming every one of us as a sort of immaterial, aristocratic and parasitic vampire.

And what must we, the ones who get to hold that torch high, do? We must protect and preserve, be its guardians. Guardians of memory, history, the space, to honour and protect what we are and what we represent, serve King and country, keep the family assets and, if possible, be little greedy dragons and add a little thing here and there. Easy-peasy, right?

So, my Mami, who had fed the dream of moving to the Continent, to travel and live a relaxed life on her allowance, maybe even fall in love, suddenly found herself, and overnight, chained and shackled as she never imagined her brother Teddy might have been. He made everything seem so easy, so light. He was the heir, he was the one that had been born for that. According to her, he was the embodiment of it all…

In 1946, her father allowed her to make a European tour. Her education had, after all, been neglected during the war years and there were things someone in her station needed to have experienced, to present herself as a worldly and cultured person.

But what she yearned for, was the trail of destruction that had been left behind. She managed to travel to Egypt first, as she wanted to see the place her brother had seen last. Back on the Continent, she stepped on rubble throughout the land and wept, as she was told the atrocities that had taken place.

Margaret wandered, until she had to return home.

She came back, a few months later to find that her father’s health was faltering, after a lifetime of loss and heartache. At 25, Margaret Anne Charlotte Blackburn de Mercoeur-Vêndome von Saschen-Coburg und Gotha, became head of the Household: Her Grace, the Duchess of Somerset.

Margaret dove deep into the post-war spirit of rebuilding. She diverted funds to bring doctors and teachers to our surrounding villages and towns, helping them establish themselves. She helped create an assistance network, for mothers to have reliable and free nurseries, so they could go to work, as many had been widowed and needed jobs.

She was a whirlwind and she never stopped until, someday in the mid-1950s, when she screeched to a halt and asked herself where was the real Margaret. The now Duchess felt like she had lost herself along the way and did not enjoy the feeling.

So, with a packed suitcase, Margaret left home once more, this time not to fill her eyes with misery and death, but with art and life. She visited museums and palaces, cathedrals and art galleries. She met with distant cousins and saw golden sand beaches and lush-green mountains. She basked in sunrises and sunsets until one day, when she laid eyes on my grandfather

So far had Margaret run and she still ended up with an Englishman. Even more English than she was, with all the Continental blood running through the family veins.

Mami used to say he was the most handsome man she had ever met. And, the most beautiful thing is, it was one of those passions that starts with a bang and which flame never sways.

Boldly, Her Grace proposed and the two lovebirds got married in 1958. My mum, Elizabeth, came along in 1961, their only daughter.

I think there might have been something that clicked into place in Mami’s brain, when she laid eyes on my mum. Mami wanted her daughter to have the freedom that she had been denied. All the freedom. And so, my mum grew up to be the perfect wild child, from not having a bedtime, to not eating whatever she disliked.

My grandpapa was on board with this. He was a staunch defender of Rousseau’s theory of the noble savage and felt that only goodness could come from a child that had been born free, in touch with nature, unpolluted by societal norms.

And all this freedom did make my mum a very unique person, but it gave her very few rules to live by, apart from her very own. Her primary education was entirely led at home by the best tutors my grandparents could find, trying their best to keep up with their moon child. She would go, tutors in tow, on scientific expeditions on the grounds and surrounding fields and woods, she would skip class and be found inside a cupboard, in the library, reading with a torchlight. She would walk on the rooftop, swim in the lake, take the boat herself to our Isle of the Dead (the family mausoleum, not an island with actual zombies, in case you’re wondering), she would get lost in the ancient woods north of the house… If there ever was a child that represented the spirit of the 60s, I’m certain that child was my own mother.

My grandpapa indulged her in every whim: if she asked for a microscope, it would be by her bedside the very next morning. An aquarium to keep tadpoles? Of course! Towers and towers of books, telescopes… anything a curious child could ever have wanted, it was hers.

On the weekends, they would drive to London, to New House. Concerts, art exhibits, museums, theatres… Wherever there was life, you would find the three of them, enjoying it.

I think there was only one thing in my mum’s early education that went perfectly and not because of her tutors, but because of the method Mami used – which she replicated with me, rather successfully – and it was the grasp my mum managed to get on languages. Mami always said that we might be Englishwomen, but there were many more languages that were part of the family legacy and we would honour it by learning them. And so, at the beginning of a day, Mami would pick either French, German or English and that would be the day’s official language and that was that. The only notable exceptions were if we had guests and to speak with the house staff who wasn’t fluent.

Being my family, tragedy is almost bound to strike every generation. In 1971, my grandpapa John died of lung cancer.

It was the hardest of blows for both my Mami and my mum. Mami went on mourning for the rest of her life, really, but those first years were the hardest and her pain and grief were immense. For my mum, it was like losing her best and closest friend in the world, aggravated only by her own mum’s withdrawal from society. Not only had she lost her father, she felt like her own mother had deserted her, and that led to a tumultuous relationship that they could never work out, even later in life.

Lizzie rebelled, and not only in the flower child sort of way. She entered her teenage years with such anger in her, that my grandmother felt like she could not deal with tantrums and was only making it worse, so off to boarding school my mum went.

This little formula for chaos, combined with the time’s call for freedom and breaking up of Old World shackles, made my mum come out of boarding school with a complete sense of rejection of everything she was, and my grandmother represented. She deemed herself a socialist, she said she hated the idea of monarchy, said the likes of my grandmother were all that was wrong with the world and vowed to never have anything to do with any of it. According to mum, the Somersets would end with her.

In 1979, mum headed North, to the University of Edinburgh, to study English and German literature. My Mami insisted she would go to Oxford – which is, traditionally, the family’s alma mater, as it’s so close to home -, but blatantly unaware of the notions of reverse psychology, she only managed to make Lizzie run the other way.

In the Summer of 1980, Lizzie dearest and a couple of close friends decided to do what Britons do best: a trip to Southern Spain. What could go wrong with this picture?

Well, the chance encounter with a charming Portuguese man, who had decided to celebrate the fact that he could now call himself a college graduate, with a nice and sunny holiday.

Sparks flew, when the star-crossed lovers met. My mum’s rebellious spirit fed my dad’s revolutionary one and vice-versa. He had grown up in a dictatorship and had lost his own father to it, so he had the cause my mum lacked. It was probably one of the things that drew her to him, his purpose and his drive. Where she had suffered from psychological imprisonment alone, my father had had the restraint and oppressiveness of real authority around him.

My mum’s friends flew back home. My dad’s friends drove back. But Lizzie and João both stayed, lost in each other.

They rented a car and went on a little Mediterranean tryst, all along the coast. They would, occasionally, call home and be greeted by the same speech of Where are you? Please come back home, before they would ask for more money for their adventure.

- I think I’m pregnant – my mum said, out of the blue, as they swam in the warm and calm waters of the Mediterranean. I, Eleanora, was announced to the world in Italy, possibly hence my name.

My dad was over the moon and he immediately started making plans so he could spend the rest of his life with his beloved and now, their baby… He had just graduated, so he would find a nice job, they would get a nice house and they would live a nice life, as a happy little family.

But what mum saw, in all that idyllic scenario, was not a happy little life. She saw a prison… and her mental claustrophobia started setting in. He could stop right there, she would not move in with him and he would not move in with her.

- What do you mean, no? - he asked in French, the language that was their bridge to understanding, their own love language.

No apparently meant No, and she left him, broken-hearted with only a phone number scribbled on a paper napkin before she flew back home.

Chapter 2

Inception

Mum stepped foot, once again, in Somerset Hall. But not to broker for peace or understanding, as that was not her style.

- I know my father left something for me – she said, not bothering with having a seat – I need it now.

Indeed, her father had left a small trust for her, which she would get access to when she turned 21.

- Why would you need that now, Lizzie? I’m paying for your studies, there’s really nothing you would need the trust for, is there?

And then mum dropped the atom bomb that Margaret was about to be a grandmother and that she needed the money, to get a place to stay. Mum said she was moving to London and that was that. She wasn’t begging for anything, just asking for what had been legitimately left for her. When inquired as to who the father might be, she just said it was none of my Mami’s business.

And so, just a couple of months later, my little embryo self and my mum moved into a nice flat, in Notting Hill. I don’t really know how good my mum was with finances but I am assuming they really weren’t her major focus.

There were some negotiations, back and forth, between Lizzie and João, in regards to their relationship and to my future. João wanted to be there for me and be part of my life, but Lizzie said she had no intention of feeling trapped with another person and that she needed her freedom.

Peace talks failed and João found himself ringing the doorbell to what I guess was our flat now, somewhere close to Christmas of 1980.

It just so happened that a very distinguished lady was just getting out of a car, with the exact same purpose as him and so, in a strike of Destiny, Maggie met the father of her grandchild.

The langue franque was French, as my dad was always more of a francophone than an anglophone.

- Have you given the name any thought, by now? - my Mami asked.

Mum was in a mood for bao and had sent both intruders to fetch some for her, to the Chinese restaurant that was just next door.

- I was thinking I’d like Tomás, if it’s a boy. It was my father’s name.

- Oh, no, darling. I’m talking about family name.

- What do you mean, Your Grace? My child will bear my name.

- And that may be where you’ve got it wrong, dear João.

And so, an arm wrestling competition began, as they were both waiting on my mum’s – and mine’s, of course – bao. My father insisted his family name was perfectly valid and respectable and, as a Historian, he just went swiftly up his family tree, and gave her big names, like Charlemagne. My Mami laughed as they were, after all and unknowingly, cousins and tried to soothe him. My dad was never one to get worked up, but he was nervous about the whole situation.

Her Most Serene Grace ended up winning the battle with an argument as simple as:

- Would you like to give your unborn child an early start in life? An edge, of sorts?

- Well, of course. Who wouldn’t?

- Then let the child bear my names. Let the child bear my titles. - and before he could have another word in – Your name could weigh as much as if all of your family tree was made of gold. But you live in a Republic, the only thing it will be good for is as a mere conversation starter. Here, my name will be greeted with open doors. It is still worth something, even if it is just a name. If you truly want to start the child’s life with a fighting chance, you open the first door. The Duchy of Somerset will unlock all others.

My dad was handed a small and still warm aluminium foil pouch, with the freshly made buns.

- And I will personally guarantee that your name and your History will not be forgotten. - she went on, unwavered - You have my word, Mr Sousa.

And so, it was settled over some delicious bao buns, that I would be a Blackburn de Mercoeur-Vêndome von Saschen-Coburg und Gotha. The next heir presumptive in line, for the Duchy of Somerset. My mum couldn’t care less, as long as that was the full extent of my grandmother’s interference. And also, that way, the focus of the title inheritance would shift from her permanently. Win-win.

In January, my dad fulfilled his promise of getting a job to help with future baby bean’s expenses. The only problem was that the job would take him all the way to Macao, where he would be working as an attaché for the Portuguese government.

In March, my mum asked her doctor if she could still take a trip, as her term was nearing its end.

- Certainly – the doctor said – Just don’t exert yourself and stay close to a hospital, in case you need it.

She did, in fact, stay close to a hospital, but it just so happened to be the São Januário Hospital, in Macao. After an over 24-hour trip, between flights and transfers, she knocked on my dad’s door, almost giving him a heart attack, when he saw his very much pregnant lover at his doorstep.

- You’re insane!

- I thought you might want to be there – she just said, with a wicked smile on her pretty face.

And so I was born, on the last stretch of March 1981, in Macao. I was named Eleanora Beatrice Victoria Alexandria.

The mystery remains if my mum’s love for all things Italian Renaissance was somehow blurred by tiredness or if it was just my father who got the name wrong, because I ended up Eleanora and not Eleonora. Maybe a slight intermingling of Eleonora and Eleanor, who knows? But what’s done is done, right?

Beatrice is an obvious nod to Dante’s beloved, the one he would go through Hell for, his own model of perfection. The Victoria Alexandria part still baffles me, though. I believe that, despite my mum’s ideas, she was still able to admire a strong feminine figure, like Queen Victoria had been.

The permanently enlarged pupil in my right eye was already there when I left the womb’s motherly embrace. The doctors thought I could have suffered some sort of brain damage and I lived in the hospital for two weeks, undergoing every possible exam under the sun. But the anisocoria was there to stay.

My dad said that it felt auspicious that I was honouring Bowie from birth. My mum couldn’t be bothered, as long as I was healthy. After all, I had all my limbs and a head with, hopefully, a functioning brain in it, so all was good.

In fact, I believe it was the anisocoria that put me on the rock and roll path early on. It was, after all, thanks to it that I took coke for the first and last time in my life, in the shape of eye drops. And maybe it has saved me a lifetime of addiction, as it made me able to say been there, done that, even if I did not get the t-shirt.

My right pupil never really changes size, nor does it react to light. When it’s dark, you can barely notice it’s there but, under the flashing lights, the difference is striking. And it does impact my vision, so much so that I am not allowed to drive. But my brain is fine. Or so they say.

Mami took the first flight all the way across the world as my dad called her, breathless, to say it’s time! She stayed with us for two months and, having both those very important women in my life in the same space was, obviously, a very delicate time bomb. She left when the bickering became too much to handle, but only under the promise that my mum would not keep me there forever.

We went back, mum and I, two months later. It was the first time that I stepped – even if I really was just being carried – on British soil.

A few months later, my 20-year-old mum was starting to have some of her freedom issues. After all, a