The Dragonfly Pool

After that came Uncle Franz Heinrich, who played him his latest version of a celebration march that would be performed in the great hall of Carinstein Castle when he was restored to his lands.

Uncle Alfonso canceled his lesson because the monkey had eaten something that disagreed with him.

After lunch came the worst part of the day, because Karil had to spend the afternoon with Carlotta. He had asked if he could go out alone; St. James’s Park was only five minutes’ walk away, but the idea had been greeted with horror.

“People like us must never go out alone. It is unheard of—and no footman can be spared,” he was told.

So he had a drive in the Daimler past the shops with Cousin Frederica and Carlotta, followed by tea with the aged Baroness Roditzky in her stifling apartment—and then back to what Karil was beginning to think of as his prison.

After dinner the silver salver was brought in again, but Karil scarcely glanced at it. He had written a last letter a week ago, trying desperately not to sound sorry for himself, and again there had been no reply. Now he had really given up; he was not going to grovel and beg for friendship.

As he was undressing he felt the quartz pebble in his trouser pocket, and for a moment he was back in Bergania, on the mountain, with Tally saying, “Is it to remind you?”

What were they doing now, those people who had helped him and made him feel that life could be a splendid thing?

Well, he would never know.

Karil turned out the light and pulled aside the curtains. Could it be that the duke was right, and his uncles also? His father’s memory was all he had left now, alone as he was, and he began to wonder whether in his own longing to live a life without power or pomp was betraying him. Did he really have a duty to try to follow in his father’s footsteps? Were the plans he had made on the journey just a selfish dream?

Soldiers did their duty. Was he perhaps just shirking his?

There was a short cry from the homesick monkey, an oath as someone stumbled over Pom-Pom, and then silence.

“Oh, why did you have to die?” asked Karil of his father.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Matteo’s Visit

Everyone did their best to carry on as usual that first term of the war. O’Hanrahan, who was very shortsighted and did not expect to be called up, said that in his view the most useful thing to be done about the threat from Hitler was for the children to immerse themselves in the treasures of English literature. The class had decided definitely to turn the story of Persephone into a play. They would work on the script this term, but the actual performance would be the following term, at Easter, which was suitable because it was after all a story about rebirth and regeneration. The children found it soothing that O’Hanrahan was sure that there really would be an Easter term and that the world would not have gone up in smoke before then. At the same time they were already getting angry with Julia, who said again that she absolutely would not play the leading part.

“Does someone have to die before you stop skulking in corners?” said Tally furiously. “There were a hundred people up on the hill when you recited that poem and you didn’t seem to mind that.”

“That was different,” said Julia. “This would be in a theater.”

“No, it wouldn’t,” said Barney angrily. “It would be in a school hall with a stage—if it gets that far.”

Needless to say, Verity did not try to persuade Julia. She was already planning what to wear while being carried off into the Underworld kicking and screaming.

Julia’s mother had sent the usual box of chocolates, and the usual note, put in by the shop, sending lots and lots of love, but there was no news about her new film.

“I’m really worried about her,” Julia said, and Tally did her best not to snarl.

Magda had lost the whisk that the aunts had sent to froth up her cocoa, and she was being persecuted by the Delderton air-raid warden, who kept the pub in the village and came up each night to check the blackout at the school.

“I can see chinks!” he would shout at Magda. “There are chinks of light coming from your windows.”

“What chinks?” Magda would cry, running distractedly up and down the corridor. “Where are the chinks?”

And the children would leave their homework and go chink-hunting in the twenty rooms of Blue House.

Clemmy, usually so serene and good-tempered, was having a hard time with the new gardener who had replaced the trusty man she had worked with up to now and who had volunteered for the air force.

“What are you doing?” she shouted at the young lad, who was pouring poison on a spinach bed to kill the snails, and she dragged him indoors to look at the beautiful striations on a snail shell under a magnifying glass before ordering him to pick off the offending animals one by one and transport them to a patch of woodland nearby.