The Dragonfly Pool

The river is about twenty minutes’ walk from the school, and we have to ask permission to go there without an adult because the current is quite fast in places. It’s a really beautiful river, with banks full of balsam and bluebells everywhere, and there are sandy coves. We went to a place where there is an island which you can reach because a beech tree has fallen across from the bank. When we got to the island we had to lie down in the grass and be absolutely silent, and being absolutely silent didn’t just mean not talking; it meant more than that.

We lay there for a while and nothing happened and then there was a silver flash and a fish jumped out of the water and made a great arc . . . and behind the fish—we could see it quite clearly now—were two otters.

I’ve never seen otters before. They are amazing—so swift and so . . . graceful but funny, too. It was a mother and a nearly full-grown cub and they started rolling over and over in the water, trying to grab the fish, and at first they lost it and there was a lot of splashing, but then they caught it and swam with it to a big flat rock in the water and settled down to their meal.

But it was what came next that I liked so much.

When they’d finished eating the fish they swam back to the shore and started grooming themselves. They licked their fur and they polished their heads on each other and they went on rolling and polishing, till they were quite dry and fluffy, and only then did they dive back into the water and swim away.

We were there a long time because the otters were like people one was visiting and one didn’t want to leave them.

There was more we saw on the way back: a woodpecker, very close to, and a buzzard. It was as though Matteo knew where everything was—he would just go there and wait and there it was—and he said that we had to remember that everywhere was somebody’s home and tread respectfully and reverently.

You might think it wasn’t proper science, it was just a nature walk, but it wasn’t like that. When we got back we wrote down the date and the temperature of the water in the river and the exact location of the field-vole nest and I don’t feel that I will ever forget what I saw. Not ever.

When he had read Tally’s letter through twice and taken it upstairs to the aunts, Dr. Hamilton made his way to the surgery. He walked with a light step, ready for the question his patients always asked about his daughter.

“Tally is well,” he would tell them. “Tally is very well indeed.”

CHAPTER NINE

Trash Cans and a Festival