The Dragonfly Pool

This last letter annoyed him particularly. Delderton did not go in for folk dancing—the mere mention of Morris dancers with bells and funny hats would have the children up in arms, and it was not exactly a time when schools wanted to send their pupils gallivanting all over Europe. The man from the ministry had written very earnestly: there was nothing, he said, so likely to increase goodwill among nations as an exchange of cultural activity, especially if it involved children or young people—but the whole idea was ridiculous. All the same, Daley would bring it up at the council meeting at the end of the month—it would take everybody’s minds off the free period the children had decided they needed on Wednesday afternoons, not to mention the matter of the trash cans which came up at every meeting.

And at least Matteo was back.

It was through the founders—Mr. and Mrs. Ford-Ellington—that Matteo had come to Delderton, arriving two years earlier with nothing but a leather suitcase and his sackbut in a battered case.

No one knew much about his early life. He was a European who spoke five languages and had a Nansen passport—the document given to those who no longer have a country of their own—but he had spent most of his adult life traveling and working in the wild places of the world: the Galápagos Islands, the Mato Grosso, the high peaks of the Andes.

The founders had come across him on the Amazon, where he was doing research on the harpy eagle. They were with a party of tourists in the charge of a tour guide who turned out to be incompetent and lazy, and when they met Matteo they left the party and persuaded him to take them into the jungle for a week.

It was a week that they never forgot. Matteo took them through a maze of secret rivers to a valley where the morpho butterflies, in a shimmer of ultramarine and turquoise, came down to the water’s edge to drink, and the trees were brilliant with humming-birds and parakeets. He told them nothing about himself, but one night as they lay sleepless under their mosquito nets, watching the stars moving like fireflies between the waving branches, he admitted that his mind was once again turning to Europe. He foresaw great trouble over there, but at a time when so many people were planning to flee from the dangers they foresaw, Matteo wanted to return.

The founders offered him the cottage they had kept in Delderton village when they sold the school, and he had accepted. He had meant to stay for a few months at the most but now, nearly two years later, he was still in Devon and living in a room in the school. Yet Daley, as he greeted him and ordered coffee for them both, knew that at any moment he might move on. Like so many people during this uncertain time, Matteo was waiting.

“I’ve given you another girl to tutor,” Daley said when they had talked for a while. “She’s new. Her name’s Tally.”

“Oh? And what particular problems does she have? ” said Matteo suspiciously, for he knew that the headmaster liked to send him the most difficult and troubled children.

Daley smiled. “It is rather you who will have the difficulties, I’m afraid. She is a girl who wants to make the world a better place.”

A few days after Matteo’s return, Julia called Tally into her room and asked her if she would come to the cinema in St. Agnes.

“Daley says I can go but I have to take someone with me. The bus times don’t fit, so we have to walk, but it’s only an hour and there’s a matinee.”

They were sitting on Julia’s bed, and from the way she spoke Tally realized that this was no ordinary visit to the cinema. She looked at the photograph on Julia’s bedside table and her heart sank.

“Is it a film with Gloria Grantley in it? ” she asked.

“Yes, it is. It’s called I’ll Always Be Yours. It’s got an ‘A’ certificate but one of the maids will go with us and then go and sit with her boyfriend.” As Tally hesitated Julia went on. “Please, I’d rather it was you. The others tease me.”

“Yes, of course I’ll come. Is she a good actress? I mean, I can see she’s beautiful, but can she act? ”

Julia flushed. “She’s an absolutely marvelous actress.”

Later Tally thought how different her life would have been if she had refused to accompany her friend—so much happened as a result of that visit to the cinema. But she did not go back on her word, and the following Saturday they set off to walk to St. Agnes. The cinema was in the market square and already there was a queue of people waiting for the doors to open at two thirty.

“Her films are always terribly popular,” said Julia.

They decided to go for the good seats, which cost six pence, and settled down to enjoy themselves.

The newsreel came first. The queen had launched a big aircraft carrier, releasing a champagne bottle to swing on to the hull, only it didn’t smash the first time and had to be swung back again. The little princesses, Elizabeth and Margaret Rose, looked worried, but the second time the bottle smashed properly and the ship slid safely into the water.