The Dragonfly Pool

All the same, Christmas was lovely—it always was in the doctor’s house. Tally went with Kenny on his rounds with Primrose, delivering holly and mistletoe to his customers, and came back with armfuls of greenery with which to decorate the rooms. Aunt May cooked the turkey which the butcher had saved for them, though meat was getting scarce. The lady with the German sausage dog sent a Christmas tree from her brother’s market garden, and Dr. Hamilton’s patients trooped in with strange presents they had made for him. Though the aunts had been worried that the king’s stammer would trouble him, with the war on his mind, he got through his speech on Christmas Day with hardly a stutter, and in the evening they went to hear The Messiah at the Albert Hall.

Tally did her best not to spend time with Roderick and Margaret during the holidays, but a week before the Delderton term began again, her Aunt Virginia rang up to say how much her children were longing to see their cousin, and Tally was invited for tea.

This usually meant that Roderick and Margaret wanted to show off something that they had bought, or brag about something they had done, and this time was no exception. Though they had been equipped with brand-new uniforms the last time Tally had seen them, a great deal of shopping had been done since then. Margaret had two new Sunday dresses and a new dressing gown with a St. Barbara’s crest on the pocket. What’s more, the girls of St. Barbara’s did not carry their gas masks to school in cardboard boxes like common children, but had special cases in the school colors of blue and green.

“And I’m getting kid skating boots—they’re being sent from Harrods,” said Margaret. “It’s that very soft leather and it’s incredibly expensive. Some of the girls just have ordinary leather ones, but Mummy wanted me to have the best because my ankles are so sensitive.”

Roderick’s bed was again piled high with clothes striped in ferocious red and yellow. It had been necessary to replace his blazer and his cap, and he had an entire new kit for rugger on which he had left the price tags so that Tally could see them.

“Pretty steep, aren’t they?” he said proudly.

But what he particularly wanted to boast about was the kind of pupils that were coming to Foxingham. Not only was the Prince of Transjordania still there but his younger brother was going to join him, and so was a great-nephew of the Kaiser who was third in the line of succession to the Prussian throne should it ever be restored.

“I’ve made good friends with Transjordania,” said Roderick carelessly. “He’s not really stuck up at all, not when you get to know him. Of course he doesn’t bother with everybody, but I know how to treat him.”

If it wasn’t for the amazingly good tea which her aunt Virginia served, Tally would have found the afternoon almost impossible to get through. Virginia was the sort of person who always seemed to be able to get hold of sugar and chocolate and all the other things that were in short supply. She had come back from Torquay when the expected bombs did not fall on London, but she had kept her flat down there so that if air raids did start she would be able to get away at once.

“It’s all so terribly trying,” she said wearily. “Now the maid wants to go and join the ATS. I don’t know how I’m supposed to get through all the work myself. But there it is—servants never know when they’re well off.”

“I tell you, it’s no good,” said Kenny, sitting on an upturned crate in the storeroom behind his father’s shop. “It’s a fortress, that place. I took the cart around like you asked me to, but they didn’t want any vegetables and they just shut the door in my face. I had some mistletoe and chestnuts for roasting and all sorts of stuff, but they said no one celebrated Christmas there and I can believe it. You’ll never get a message through to Karil like that. Just give it up, Tally.”

But giving up on things was not one of Tally’s talents. “Couldn’t we try once more? Please. If you take me there I might get an idea. I just want to let him know that it’s all right about the scholarship and he can come. There must be some way I can get a note to him.”

Kenny shrugged. “I’ll take you if you like, but not with the cart. There’s nowhere to leave Primrose—it’s all posh streets with snooty people.”

So the following Saturday they took the Underground to Trafalgar Square and walked down the Mall to Rottingdene House.

The huge gray building with its spiked railings was a grim sight. They walked all around it, but there was no side door other than the one that Kenny had tried; it was the most sealed-up and unapproachable place Tally had ever seen.

But when they came around to the front of the house, they found a small group of people waiting on the pavement.

“It’s about now they come out,” said a woman in a purple headscarf.

“Who?” said another bystander. “Who is it comes out?”