The Dragonfly Pool (36 page)

It was two days before any of the children dared to approach him. Then suddenly he was himself again—and at dawn on the third day he got everybody out of bed to go and look at a badger sett by the river where three cubs were hunting for wasps' nests.

B
y the beginning of November shortages and restrictions caused by the war were beginning to bite, and among the things that were in short supply was petrol for private motoring.

The duke needed the Daimler to drive to the Whitehall Bank, of which he was a director, so that the afternoon outings Karil took with Carlotta and the Scold became even shorter and less interesting. As often as not now they spent the time taking tea with whatever family lived close by and was considered worthy of knowing the duke of Rottingdene and his dependents.

Sometimes they even went on foot, with one of the servants walking behind them, to whatever entertainment was suitable, and free.

And one of these places was the National Portrait Gallery. The sides of the building were sandbagged and only three of the galleries were open, but it was a perfectly respectable place, with no danger of seeing pictures of people with nothing on, and would provide, the Scold thought, suitable history lessons for Karil and Carlotta since the paintings were mainly of people who were both important and dead.

For Karil the hour they spent there was interesting. He had expected to see mostly kings and statesmen and governors of the far-flung empire, but he found faces that intrigued him. There were scientists and explorers and other people who had done real things: Florence Nightingale, who had nursed the dying soldiers in the Crimean War, and David Livingstone, who had beaten his way through the African jungle looking for the source of the Nile, and Shelley, who had written great poems about freedom before meeting his death at sea.

Karil had thought that Carlotta would be bored, but she came out with a rapt expression and at first she did not answer when they spoke to her, for the truth was that she had had an inspiration.

They had passed a number of paintings of little girls—the daughters of noblemen and wealthy citizens from all over the land. The girls in the pictures wore sumptuous clothes and sat on thronelike chairs—and their portraits were set in heavy golden frames—yet none of them was more important or had a brighter future than she had herself.

To Carlotta, as she came down the steps of the gallery, it was absolutely clear. She, too, had to have her portrait painted, and soon. It would be a surprise for Karil—a Christmas present perhaps—and when she returned with Karil to Bergania the picture would hang in the palace.

First, though, she had to persuade her parents.

“I'm afraid that would cost too much, my little kitten,” said her father as she sat on his knee and played with his mustache.

“Oh please, Papa,” she wheedled. “It would be such a nice present for Karil. Think how pleased he would be.”

“I know, my angel, but really it isn't necessary, since Karil is here now and can look at you every day.”

“But I want it to happen. I
want
it. Royal people always have their portraits painted.”

“You've no idea how much a good painter would charge, and a bad one wouldn't do justice to my sweetheart,” said the archduke, tweaking her ringlets.

But Carlotta didn't want to have her ringlets tweaked, she wanted to have them painted.

“I'm being very unselfish,” she pointed out, “because you have to sit very still to be painted, and you can get quite uncomfortable; and if I can promise to sit still, then at least you and Mama should find the money. Or Aunt Millicent—she's got a diamond-studded garter left. I know because her maid told me so.”

Her father stood firm for several days, and then Carlotta began to refuse her food. She did not refuse it completely but often she had only one bun for tea, or a single helping of custard with her pudding, sighing ostentatiously and saying she did not feel well.

“Why can't we sell Pom-Pom if he's got such an important pedigree?” she said. “He'll never get to Brazil now that there's a war, and anyway he's far too old to be a father.”

The old princess began to lift Pom-Pom out of Carlotta's way when she came near him, and the other relatives hid the few valuables they still had as best they could. But when Carlotta had three biscuits instead of four for her mid-morning snack her mother became alarmed. She shut herself up into her bedroom and turned out her drawers and her underclothes and her makeup boxes. There was hardly any jewelry left, but she did find one shoe buckle studded with sapphires. She had been saving it for emergencies, but Carlotta going off her food was a kind of emergency. There was no need to sell it yet—the portrait might not turn out satisfactory or the artist might be persuaded that painting Carlotta von Carinstein was enough of an honor to undertake the work without payment, but at least they could get the portrait underway.

As soon as she had what she wanted, Carlotta got down to the problem of what to wear. Since the picture was to be a surprise for Karil she could not consult him, but she appeared every few hours in a different dress: pink with a broderie-anglaise collar, yellow with appliquéd buttercups, green with a row of velvet bows—and pirouetted in front of mirrors or asked advice from her relatives, which she instantly ignored. Sometimes she thought she would look best holding something—a kitten perhaps, or a bunch of flowers, but there were no flowers to be had in that dark house, and the kitten she brought up from the servants' quarters scratched and refused to sit still, so she prowled through the rooms of the aunts and the governesses, seeing what she could beg or borrow or simply steal. Bracelets tinkled on her wrists, glittering headbands appeared on her hair, necklaces circled her plump neck—only to be rejected as not good enough.

“I think it would be best if I sat in that big chair in the Red Salon,” she said. “If it was draped in brocade it would look almost like a throne.”

The next thing was to choose a painter and Uncle Alfonso, who was artistic because of designing all his uniforms, went to his club and asked around, and came back with the name of an artist who was highly thought of and not too expensive.

The painter was approached and said he would do it—and Carlotta, for a few days, was thoroughly happy and as nearly good as she was able.

Karil, on the other hand, was in disgrace. The misery of being shut indoors all day was more than he could bear and one morning, when the servants were busy, he had slipped out of the back door and into the street.

The next two hours were spent blissfully alone in the city that was now his home and that so far he had hardly seen.

He wandered through St. James's Park, enjoying the sight of the waterfowl and watching men digging trenches. There had been a group of people filling sandbags and Karil had stayed to help them for a while; they had been friendly and cheerful. He passed Buckingham Palace, but the sight of the enormous building in which he knew the two little princesses were incarcerated lowered his spirits, and he had made his way up Whitehall and stood in Piccadilly, with its shrouded fountain, and drank in the bustle, the traffic, the advertisements . . . At last for a while he was free and part of the real world.

He would have slipped back again unnoticed—the servants would not have betrayed him—but Carlotta had been looking for him, and when he returned she was there with her shocked accusations.

“You know that people like us aren't supposed to go out alone,” she said. “I'm afraid Grandfather is very angry.”

And Grandfather was.

“You don't seem to understand, Karil, that you are not like other people. You are a future king and—”

“No.” The cry came from Karil without him being aware of it. “I'm not . . . I'm just a person. No one knows what will happen in Bergania—even if Hitler is defeated the people might not want a king again and anyway it could be years. I've got to have some air . . . I've got to learn something. I can't live like this.”

“Can't!” roared the duke, and a shower of spittle came from his mouth. “How dare you defy me? While you are under my roof you will do exactly as I order.” His great hands gripped Karil's shoulders like a vice. “From now on I shall see to it that you are watched at all times. What's more, you will be locked into your bedroom at night.”

“No! Please. I've never been locked in. My father never punished me like that.”

“It would have been better if he had,” said the duke—and he sent for the servants straightaway and gave his instructions.

Under this regime, Karil became more and more desperate. He even wondered if he was beginning to lose his reason—for he had been sure that he had seen Matteo, a few days earlier, walking across the courtyard away from the house. He had been standing at an upstairs window, and by the time he'd managed to pull back the curtains and struggled with the heavy sash cords, the man had gone.

“Was Matteo here?” he had asked his grandfather—and the duke had scowled and told him not to be stupid.

“The sooner you realize that those vagabonds you came over with have forgotten you, the better,” he said.

Karil did realize it. He was too proud to show his grief, but his body began to let him down. He developed a cough that did not go away, he lost weight, and found it difficult to sleep.

At night, the sound of the key turning in the lock seemed to set the seal on a life to be lived without love, or endeavor, or hope.

I
t was not only David Prosser who was in love with Clemmy. The children at Delderton were used to seeing young men standing outside the school with their motorbikes, hoping she would go out with them. But Clemmy had a boyfriend to whom she was absolutely faithful. She had known him since she started work as a model and she loved not only him but his work. Francis Lakeland was a landscape painter who did quiet and very beautiful paintings of the countryside. People liked these and they were shown in exhibitions, but no one bought them very much because they were too peaceful and didn't have anybody being set on fire or dismembered or sitting with their mouth open, screaming.

So, to make some money, Francis Lakeland took on commissions to paint portraits of society people who wanted their wives and daughters to look beautiful.

A week after half term, Clemmy had a letter from Francis in which he asked her to come up to London for a weekend because he expected to be called up for the army.

“It won't be straightaway,” he wrote, “but I want to see you badly and I need to talk to you about a piece of work I've been asked to do.”

The idea of Francis in the army made Clemmy's stomach crunch up in a most alarming way. He was a gentle, scholarly man, serious about his work but funny about everything else. It wasn't easy to think of him as a soldier.

All housemothers had a free weekend each month, and a week after she got his letter Clemmy arrived in London. She and Francis wandered hand in hand through the city and it was when they were sitting in one of their favorite places, a bench in St. James's churchyard in Piccadilly, that Francis told her about his commission to paint Carlotta von Carinstein, the daughter of an exiled archduke.

“Oh Francis, do you have to?” asked Clemmy, for she knew how much he disliked the fawning and flattery that went with painting the children of rich and snobbish people.

“I don't have to—but the money would be useful. Only I have to go tomorrow and set it up and I wondered if you could possibly come along and pretend to be my assistant. She's supposed to be an absolute horror and you know how good you are with children.”