Leonard Who Is So Very Knowledgeable About Maps

Leonard was only four when Mrs Mellinghurst began to suspect he was not like her other children. They were not without their small obsessions: Jill was mad keen on all things pony and Trevor wouldn’t go anywhere without Mr Buttons -his favourite threadbare teddy- and little Joany had gone through a phase of talking to an imaginary friend. But if you read any of the child development books -and Mrs Mellinghurst had read quite a few- it was clear that these sort of obsessions were to be expected. Most normal children would, at some stage during their formative years, take an intense interest in rocket ships or wish to be called by a made-up name or refuse to eat any food that wasn’t white, then after a certain period grow out of the obsession and blush furiously, overcome with pure mortification if anyone reminded them of what they’d previously been like. 

Leonard was different. Mrs Mellinghurst had noticed this at an early stage. Leonard was obsessed with cartography. The owning of maps. The drawing of maps. The precise and pedantic following of maps. Though the nursery was equipped with an abundance of toys and books, and the back garden ran to several acres, and there were three natural play fellows to run around with, maps were the only thing which interested young Leonard. He couldn’t get enough of them. At first Mrs Mellinghurst had indulged her son. She’d assumed this obsession at such a young age, was an early indication of genius; something to be nurtured rather than dismissed. She’d bought him an atlas, papered his bedroom in maps of the English countryside and purchased reams of tracing paper and a box of the fine point technical pencils which he’d insisted were better than regular pencils though they were almost ten times the price.

By the age of six Leonard’s obsession had morphed into something strange and deviant. He could not venture outside the house without a map to guide him from point A to B. It did not matter that most of his journeys were reasonably short and extremely familiar. He’d set out to walk to the end of the lane or the sweetie shop in the village, with the same sense of purpose and intense focus as an explorer off to conquer the heights of Everest. Mrs Mellinghurst would watch him from her bedroom window, his little face frowning and focused upon the map he clutched in his hands. It made her sad to see her youngest son like this when the other children ambled around the place freely, roaming and roving as their imaginations led them. As Leonard grew older, the problem became more pronounced. By the time he was ready to enrol at the local grammar, he could not take a single step if it hadn’t been mapped out in advance.

The situation became exhausting. Mrs Mellinghurst found herself rising increasingly early, often before six o’clock, in order to predict where Leonard might want to go that day and sketch out maps accordingly. A map to guide him from his bed to the bathroom. A map from the bathroom back to his wardrobe where he’d find his school uniform clearly marked in a different font. A map to guide him down the stairs and into the breakfast room. A map to indicate what he should reach for on the breakfast table: orange juice, cereal, toast, marmalade. By the time she got Leonard out the door and on to the school bus, Mrs Mellinghurst’s hand was aching from all the maps she’d already drawn. So fatigued was she from effort, she often retreated back to bed where she’d lie unsleeping in a state of anguish, wondering how Leonard was managing at school and whether the classroom aide she paid to assist him was any good at drawing maps.

Six months into this new arrangement, Mrs Mellinghurst began to lose the plot. Maps. Maps. Maps. All she ever thought of was maps and while she wanted to help poor Leonard, she understood that there was a fine line between helping and enabling. If she continued to plan out his every move, would the child ever learn to think for himself? What if he got to thirty or even forty and still required a map from his mother in order to function? The possibilities were too horrific to comprehend. So, Mrs Mellinghurst hatched a plan.

She would shock Leonard into venturing off the map. She would present him with a path so ludicrous he’d have to choose his own alternative route and, in doing so, perhaps for the first time, achieve a degree of autonomy. It was a good plan. In other circumstances it might even have worked. Leonard would’ve stopped in his tracks to question the wisdom of following maps and afterwards felt a little freer to choose his own future paths. But Mrs Mellinghurst had underestimated Leonard’s devotion to maps. When she drew him a path which led straight over the edge of the old quarry she’d assumed it would shock him into sense. Any other twelve year old would not pitch himself headfirst down a sixty foot drop. But Leonard wasn’t a normal twelve year old. Leonard always followed the map.

Inspired by a line from Agatha Christie’s 1957 novel, 4:50 From Paddington