The Dragonfly Pool

Barney was very indignant about what had happened in the London Zoo. On the very day that war was declared all the black widow spiders and poisonous snakes had been killed in case their cages were bombed and they escaped and bit people.

“And the boa constrictors, too,” he said angrily. “Just killed outright, which is ridiculous—people would have seen them coming. Or they could have sent them to Whipsnade like the elephants. But cold-blooded murder like that!”

It was really strange, realizing the difference these last weeks had made to their friends overseas. Borro could write to the French girl whose mother bred Charolais cows, because France and Britain were allies, on the same side in the war, but the German and Italian children had become “the enemy” and were as unreachable as the moon.

“It seems so silly,” said Tally. “Only a month ago we were just people.”

As for Karil, it seemed clear now that they were not going to hear from him.

“He’s obviously decided to be a prince after all,” Barney said. “I mean, he was brought up to all that since he was a baby, and now he doesn’t want to have anything to do with us. It’s quite natural really.”

Only Augusta, sitting on the bottom step so that the animal fur would not set off her allergy, said: “All the same, I think it’s funny that you can save someone’s life and they just forget all about you.”

Her brace had been removed in the holidays and her words were very clear.

Hearing their own thoughts spoken aloud upset the others badly—and from then on they did not speak of the prince again.

It was a beautiful autumn, that first autumn of the war, and Clemmy was busy pitting herself against the coming shortages—food rationing was expected the following month and she was determined to garner every berry, every rose hip, every mushroom before the coming frosts.

So every minute that the children were not in class she herded them through the lanes, armed with jam jars and saucepans and pots. The blackberries were more succulent that year than ever; the rose hips hung like crimson jewels from the briars, and on the moors the blueberries clustered between tufts of heather. There were sloes, so dark that their blueness was almost black, and chanterelles growing between the roots of trees. Clemmy was in her element as she led her troop of helpers, her hair streaming in the late sunshine, her cloak blowing in the wind. It is very different picking berries because you feel like a mouthful of something juicy and picking them because you are helping your country and can lay by stores against hardship. Even the detestable Ronald Peabody, who had broken the topmost branch of the cedar tree, picked with the best of them.

In her art classes Clemmy had let the children paint what they wanted, thinking that they might need to depict what they were going through in the changing world. When they came back after the journey to Bergania they had painted the mountains and the palace and the folk dancers, but that was before the outbreak of war. Now they painted orange and scarlet explosions and tanks and toppling houses as they saw them on the newsreels of the invasion of Poland.

But not Tally. Tally, as the term progressed, painted the things she saw on her walks with Clemmy: rowan berries on laden boughs; late foxgloves; fallen leaves, veined and crimson on the grass—and Clemmy realized that Tally was seeking comfort in nature as people have always done when their lives have run into difficulties.

“Nothing matters really when the world is so beautiful,” said Tally—and Julia, who did not agree, who knew that for someone like Tally it is people that matter, just nodded and smiled.

All the time they were in Bergania Julia had not mentioned her mother, and Tally hoped that she was no longer so unhappy about her. But when they had been back at school for nearly three weeks she called Tally into her room and held out a copy of The Picturegoer.

“Look!” she said.

On the center page was a picture of Gloria Grantley in her most pouting pose. The caption read: “Is Glorious Gloria running out of steam?”

The blurb underneath said that the plans for her new film, The Devil in Velvet, had been shelved. The studio refused to comment on the reasons for this decision, and her agent was not available.

“What do you think it means?” said Julia.

“Haven’t you heard anything from Mr. Harvenberg?” asked Tally, who knew that Gloria’s agent was a very important figure in her life.

Julia shook her head. “Not since the holidays. My grandmother wrote when war was declared because she wanted me to go out to America and spend the war there—well, I told you—but my mother didn’t want me to come. She said it was too dangerous traveling by sea because of the U-boats, but of course I knew it was because . . . she didn’t want me. But do you think she’s in trouble?”