The Dragonfly Pool

“I suggest you set up a working party to see if it can be done. You have one week to prepare a suitable dance.”

Nothing would happen in so short a time; Daley was sure of that.

CHAPTER TEN

The Flurry Dance

Tally was right. There was a book about folk dancing, several books in fact, but they were not very helpful.

“There’s Scottish dancing and maypole dancing and morris dancing,” she said.

But Scotland was a long way from Devon and they did not feel they had a right to pretend to be Scottish, and anyway the steps were difficult.

“Maypole dancing looks nice,” said Julia. “All those ribbons.”

But Barney said that disasters happened very easily with maypole dancing. In his village the vicar at the garden fête had been completely trussed up when one of the children had taken her ribbon in the wrong direction.

“He had to be cut out in the end,” Barney said.

So that left morris dancing, which was derived from the ancient sword dances of medieval England, only instead of swords the dancers had wooden sticks—and it was danced by men.

“Well, we can’t have only boys,” said Julia. “We’d never get enough.”

They had of course consulted Armelle, but she was so horrified at the idea of a dance that did not come spontaneously from inside the soul that she was not helpful at all.

“It says here that they hit each other with the sticks—they’re called staves—at least they bang them together and they flap at each other with handkerchiefs,” said Tally, looking at the book. “And they have bells on their ankles, rows and rows of bells, and more bells tied around their knees so that their trousers look baggy.”

“And they wear hats with flowers sewn onto them. There’s one dance called the Helston Flurry Dance, which is danced in Cornwall. Flurry means flowers,” said Tod. “It’s not exactly a morris dance, but it’s that kind of thing.”

He had at first wanted to have nothing to do with the trip to Bergania. The king who had said no to Hitler might be brave but he was still a king, and all kings belonged in dungeons—preferably with their heads chopped off. But when his friends all became involved he had joined in and put in some very useful work in the library.

“I don’t want to flap with my handkerchief,” said Kit, looking even more woebegone than usual.

“There’s one person who rides a sort of hobbyhorse through the dancers,” said Barney. “The Devil, they think. Or maybe the Fool. It’s a very old dance. ‘Full of antiquity,’ it says here.”

It certainly looked old from the few pictures they could find. Not only old but exceedingly odd.

“What about the music? ” asked Borro.

They went to consult the old professor who taught music and he said it would probably have been danced to pipes and tambours but perhaps a violin would do.

“Augusta’s got a violin,” said Tally. “I remember when she came.”

So they went to find Augusta, who was eating a banana and reading a detective story, and she said she could play the violin, but she couldn’t play it well.

“I don’t really like the noithe it maketh,” she said.

But she fetched it and played a slow tune full of double stops and they thought it would do if she could play it faster and maybe learn a more jigging sort of piece as well. Taking Augusta to Bergania would be complicated because of her only being able to eat so very few things.

“But if we stock up with bananas you’ll be all right, won’t you?” said Julia, and Augusta agreed that she probably would. She was really a very good-natured girl and they were glad she had come back from Wales.

“Of course, the other groups will probably have all sorts of instruments—an orchestra even—all those Swiss and Bavarian people in lederhosen slapping their thighs will be terribly good—but we can’t compete with them. All we want is to be there,” said Tally.

“I don’t,” said Kit. “I don’t want to be there.”

“We could always alter it a bit and make a Devon version,” Tally went on. “ ‘The Delderton Flurry Dance.’ ”

Getting a team together was the next problem. Tally’s immediate friends all rallied around, and Verity, after watching snootily for a while, said she would come, which was a pity but they couldn’t afford to be fussy. Kit of course was really too small, but they couldn’t get people who were matched in size; they would just have to make do with what they had.

The next day the rehearsals began, and they did not go well.

“Form a circle,” said Barney with the book in his hand. “Now pick up your sticks . . . Then bow to each other. Now lift the right foot . . .”

Augusta took up her violin, and the dancers lifted the staves they had begged from the gardeners, who used them for staking peas.

“Move toward the center . . . hold the sticks up high . . . now flap your handkerchiefs. One, two, three, and hop . . .”

None of the children in Magda’s house had handkerchiefs; they flapped their headscarves or borrowed tea towels. Borro flapped his shirt.

“Ow!” said Borro, as Tod’s stick went into his cheek.