The Dragonfly Pool

Kit said he couldn’t do it—it was too difficult. Augusta snapped a string on her violin.

“We have to be able to do it,” said Tally. “We have to.”

At night the Delderton Flurry Dance ran through their dreams. They thought of it as a kind of sick animal that had to be nursed into health.

“It’s like those runts you get in a litter of piglets,” said Borro. “You know, the one that can’t feed itself.”

They ran into each other’s rooms at all hours, suggesting changes—making the steps simpler. Nobody now would have recognized it as a known morris dance or anything else, but it didn’t matter.

Gradually, very gradually, the children who had scoffed wandered away. The snooty Verity turned out to be the best at dancing, which was a pity but the kind of thing that happens in life.

Matteo came past once when they had got into a hopeless coil. He gave some orders that freed them, but if they had hoped that he would stay and help, they were disappointed.

Next came the clothes. White trousers or white skirts . . . bells . . . and flowers for their hats.

“Real ones will wither,” said Julia.

“We could buy artificial ones from Woolworth,” someone suggested. They were surprisingly expensive, but everyone gave up their pocket money.

The girls looked very weird in their hats, so Clemmy suggested they make wreaths and wear the flowers in their hair, which gave Verity the chance to nab all the forget-me-nots because she said they matched her eyes.

By the end of the week they were ready to show what they had done to the headmaster.

They took him down to the playing field. Augusta struck up on her violin. Borro, who was the hobbyhorse rider, galloped around the circle. The dancers began.

The Delderton Flurry Dance was bad. It was very bad indeed. But it was there.

“All right,” said Daley wearily. “You’ll have to work on it solidly till you leave—but, yes, you can go.”

It should have been a day of triumph and then suddenly everything went wrong. It was Verity of course who gave Tally the news that devastated her, but it was not really Verity’s fault; Tally would have found out anyway soon enough. But now she walked blindly away from the school and down the sloping, tangly path that led toward the river and sat down with her arms around her knees, trying to fight down the misery and wretchedness that engulfed her.

She must fix her eyes on the things that were outside herself. The new beech leaves, with the sun on them . . . the bluebells shimmering like a lake through the trees . . . A thrush flew by with his beak full of twigs, and a water vole ran along the bank of the little stream.

These were the things that mattered—not her own wishes and hopes and needs.

But it didn’t work. Tears welled up under her eyelids and she felt completely desolate.

From the moment she had seen those images of Bergania, she had felt as though the country somehow spoke to her. And now though her friends would go, she would stay behind.

“You realize that all the parents have to pay thirty pounds for our fares,” Verity had said. “The school can’t afford them. Daley’s going to write a letter to everyone and explain.”

Verity always knew things before other people.

Thirty pounds. It was nothing to Verity’s parents, with their estate in Rutland, and most of the others came from well-to-do families. But Tally would never ask her father for so much money. His patients were poor; he had both the aunts to support. He mustn’t be asked in case he felt he had to make the sacrifice and, whatever Tally wanted from her father, it was not a sacrifice.

“It doesn’t matter,” she told herself.

But it was no good. Perhaps it didn’t matter compared to people dying in famines and earthquakes and wars, but it mattered to her.

After a while she got up and brushed the grass off her skirt and made her way back up the hill to school.

She would see if Matteo was free.

She found him in his room, looking down a microscope on the windowsill, but when he saw her tearstained face he pulled out a chair for her at the wooden table.

“I see you have a problem,” he said. “A proper one, for yourself.”

“Yes, I do.” She felt better now that she was taking some action. “It’s . . . I want you to tell the headmaster not to write to my father about the fare to Bergania. Verity says it’s thirty pounds—that’s right, isn’t it?”

“It sounds about right. Why?”

“Well, I know my father can’t afford it, and I don’t want Daley to ask him in case he . . . I don’t want him to be asked. I don’t have to go. I can show one of the others how to take my place.”

“I see. But you want to go, don’t you?”

Tally wiped her eyes with her sleeve. “Yes, I do. I wanted to go from the minute I saw the travelogue about Bergania. But—”

“Why?”

Matteo had spoken sharply. Tally blinked at him. “I don’t know really. It’s very beautiful . . . the mountains and the river . . . And the procession. Usually processions are boring, but the king . . .”

“Yes?” Matteo prompted her. “What about the king?”