The Dragonfly Pool

As it happened, Tally was late for the first biology class. She had cut her knee, tripping on a paving stone, and gone back for a bandage, and everyone was already settled when she slipped into a desk near the back.

The man standing at the blackboard wore a gray flannel suit. He had sparse ginger hair and a pointed ginger beard and he wore rimless spectacles.

“Today we are going to study the life cycle of the liver fluke,” he said in a high, slightly squeaky voice. “Look at page seventy-six of your textbook and keep it open.”

Tally fought down a wave of disappointment. The life cycle of the liver fluke might be necessary. It might be important. But it does not make the heart beat faster. The nuns had taught it also.

“The history of this organism begins in vegetation in slow-moving streams, where it exists in the form of slime-encrusted eggs. You can see a picture of these in your textbook, labeled diagram A. Please copy it carefully into a blank page of your exercise books.”

He waited, the chalk in his hand, till everyone had finished.

“The eggs are then eaten by a sheep and make their way through the animal’s bile duct into the liver, where they become adult flukes.”

He drew a liver (but not a sheep) and put in the adult flukes, explaining their effect on the animal, which was bad. “I will allow five minutes for you to copy from the blackboard,” he said.

Tally, filling her liver with the flattened parasites, felt increasingly miserable, and angry, too. Why did everyone tell her how wonderful biology was? The nuns had taught it better.

“There now follows hermaphrodite fertilization, and the resulting eggs pass out through the alimentary canal and on to the grass, where they turn into conical organisms which are known as miracidia,” he droned. “You will find these on the next page, page seventy-seven . . .”

When the lesson was over Tally hurried out past Julia and her friends. She wanted to be on her own, for it seemed clear that they had been playing a joke on her, pretending that the biology teacher was special. She didn’t mind being teased usually, but she had written to her father about him because she knew how much he wanted her to enjoy science.

But they caught her up.

“I’m sorry—that was a shame,” said Julia. “We should have warned you—but everyone was sure that Matteo would be back today.”

“What do you mean? Wasn’t that Matteo? ”

Julia stopped dead and glared at her friend. “Well, really, Tally! I may not be a genius, but I would hardly tell you that Smithy gives brilliant biology lessons.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Smithy stands in when teachers are ill or away. He lives in the village; he used to teach at the high school in St. Agnes, but he had to retire early. He’s the most boring teacher in the world, but Daley keeps him on because he’s good at getting people through external exams when we have to take them.”

But two nights later, as Tally drifted into sleep, Julia knocked at her door.

“Wake up! Open your window and listen.”

The courtyard was deserted; the cedar tree stood silvered in the moonlight. And floating toward them, very faintly, came the sound of a long, drawn-out, and very melancholy noise.

“What is it? ” asked Tally.

“It’s Matteo’s Moan,” said Julia. “He likes to play it on the sackbut last thing at night. He says it’s a folk song from the mountains—but we think he’s made it up, it’s so weird.”

The headmaster, sitting in his study, was frowning over documents and decisions. The founders of Delderton, who were still very much concerned with the school, had written from New York suggesting that if war came, Daley should evacuate the school to America. They offered the use of a large farmhouse in Maine, which could be the basis of a school while the war lasted.

Daley had read this letter a dozen times and pondered it, but he didn’t know what to do. He didn’t want to leave Delderton and he knew that many children—especially those on scholarships—would not be able to go; the fare to the States would be far too expensive. But did he have the right to turn down such an offer?

This was a big issue, but there were other annoyances. The parents of Phillip Anderson wanted him to learn the accordion so that he could mix with the “common people.” And the Ministry of Culture had written asking Daley to send a folk-dance group to a festival in an obscure country in central Europe.