The Dragonfly Pool (9 page)

Julia stopped dead and glared at her friend. “Well, really, Tally! I may not be a genius, but I would hardly tell you that Smithy gives brilliant biology lessons.”

“I don't understand.”

“Smithy stands in when teachers are ill or away. He lives in the village; he used to teach at the high school in St. Agnes, but he had to retire early. He's the most boring teacher in the world, but Daley keeps him on because he's good at getting people through external exams when we have to take them.”

But two nights later, as Tally drifted into sleep, Julia knocked at her door.

“Wake up! Open your window and listen.”

The courtyard was deserted; the cedar tree stood silvered in the moonlight. And floating toward them, very faintly, came the sound of a long, drawn-out, and very melancholy noise.

“What is it? ” asked Tally.

“It's Matteo's Moan,” said Julia. “He likes to play it on the sackbut last thing at night. He says it's a folk song from the mountains—but we think he's made it up, it's so weird.”

The headmaster, sitting in his study, was frowning over documents and decisions. The founders of Delderton, who were still very much concerned with the school, had written from New York suggesting that if war came, Daley should evacuate the school to America. They offered the use of a large farmhouse in Maine, which could be the basis of a school while the war lasted.

Daley had read this letter a dozen times and pondered it, but he didn't know what to do. He didn't want to leave Delderton and he knew that many children—especially those on scholarships—would not be able to go; the fare to the States would be far too expensive. But did he have the right to turn down such an offer?

This was a big issue, but there were other annoyances. The parents of Phillip Anderson wanted him to learn the accordion so that he could mix with the “common people.” And the Ministry of Culture had written asking Daley to send a folk-dance group to a festival in an obscure country in central Europe.

This last letter annoyed him particularly. Delderton did not go in for folk dancing—the mere mention of Morris dancers with bells and funny hats would have the children up in arms, and it was not exactly a time when schools wanted to send their pupils gallivanting all over Europe. The man from the ministry had written very earnestly: there was nothing, he said, so likely to increase goodwill among nations as an exchange of cultural activity, especially if it involved children or young people—but the whole idea was ridiculous. All the same, Daley would bring it up at the council meeting at the end of the month—it would take everybody's minds off the free period the children had decided they needed on Wednesday afternoons, not to mention the matter of the trash cans which came up at every meeting.

And at least Matteo was back.

It was through the founders—Mr. and Mrs. Ford-Ellington—that Matteo had come to Delderton, arriving two years earlier with nothing but a leather suitcase and his sackbut in a battered case.

No one knew much about his early life. He was a European who spoke five languages and had a Nansen passport—the document given to those who no longer have a country of their own—but he had spent most of his adult life traveling and working in the wild places of the world: the Galápagos Islands, the Mato Grosso, the high peaks of the Andes.

The founders had come across him on the Amazon, where he was doing research on the harpy eagle. They were with a party of tourists in the charge of a tour guide who turned out to be incompetent and lazy, and when they met Matteo they left the party and persuaded him to take them into the jungle for a week.

It was a week that they never forgot. Matteo took them through a maze of secret rivers to a valley where the morpho butterflies, in a shimmer of ultramarine and turquoise, came down to the water's edge to drink, and the trees were brilliant with humming-birds and parakeets. He told them nothing about himself, but one night as they lay sleepless under their mosquito nets, watching the stars moving like fireflies between the waving branches, he admitted that his mind was once again turning to Europe. He foresaw great trouble over there, but at a time when so many people were planning to flee from the dangers they foresaw, Matteo wanted to return.

The founders offered him the cottage they had kept in Delderton village when they sold the school, and he had accepted. He had meant to stay for a few months at the most but now, nearly two years later, he was still in Devon and living in a room in the school. Yet Daley, as he greeted him and ordered coffee for them both, knew that at any moment he might move on. Like so many people during this uncertain time, Matteo was waiting.

“I've given you another girl to tutor,” Daley said when they had talked for a while. “She's new. Her name's Tally.”

“Oh? And what particular problems does she have? ” said Matteo suspiciously, for he knew that the headmaster liked to send him the most difficult and troubled children.

Daley smiled. “It is rather you who will have the difficulties, I'm afraid. She is a girl who wants to make the world a better place.”

A few days after Matteo's return, Julia called Tally into her room and asked her if she would come to the cinema in St. Agnes.

“Daley says I can go but I have to take someone with me. The bus times don't fit, so we have to walk, but it's only an hour and there's a matinee.”

They were sitting on Julia's bed, and from the way she spoke Tally realized that this was no ordinary visit to the cinema. She looked at the photograph on Julia's bedside table and her heart sank.

“Is it a film with Gloria Grantley in it? ” she asked.

“Yes, it is. It's called
I'll Always Be Yours
. It's got an ‘A' certificate but one of the maids will go with us and then go and sit with her boyfriend.” As Tally hesitated Julia went on. “Please, I'd rather it was you. The others tease me.”

“Yes, of course I'll come. Is she a good actress? I mean, I can see she's beautiful, but can she act? ”

Julia flushed. “She's an absolutely marvelous actress.”

Later Tally thought how different her life would have been if she had refused to accompany her friend—so much happened as a result of that visit to the cinema. But she did not go back on her word, and the following Saturday they set off to walk to St. Agnes. The cinema was in the market square and already there was a queue of people waiting for the doors to open at two thirty.

“Her films are always terribly popular,” said Julia.

They decided to go for the good seats, which cost six pence, and settled down to enjoy themselves.

The newsreel came first. The queen had launched a big aircraft carrier, releasing a champagne bottle to swing on to the hull, only it didn't smash the first time and had to be swung back again. The little princesses, Elizabeth and Margaret Rose, looked worried, but the second time the bottle smashed properly and the ship slid safely into the water.

After that came some pictures of Hitler and his followers yelling, “Sieg Heil!” and goose-stepping in jackboots. Hitler said Germany needed more room for the German nation and he wanted Danzig, which really belonged to him and not to the Poles, and if they didn't give it to him he would take it by force. And an American had invented a new kind of bath plug.

Tally had hoped that there would be a cartoon:
The Three Little Pigs
perhaps . . . but what came next was a travelogue about a country called Bergania.

Bergania was in the news because the king of Bergania had just refused to allow Hitler's troops to march through his country if there was a war, and this was brave because it was a tiny kingdom, one of the smallest in Europe, and everybody feared the worst.

Though she was disappointed about the cartoon, Tally enjoyed the travelogue very much indeed. Bergania might be small, but it seemed to have everything one could want. A ridge of high mountains with everlasting snow, wide valleys planted with orchards and vineyards, and meadows where children herded goats like in
Heidi
. The capital of the country, which was also called Bergania, was a pretty town on the banks of a river, and overlooking it on a hill was the royal palace, guarded by soldiers in splendid uniforms.

The last part of the film showed the king on horseback at the head of a procession making its way toward the cathedral, where they were celebrating the birthday of Bergania's patron saint, a brave woman called Aurelia who had been beheaded by the Romans because she wouldn't renounce her faith.

Obviously St. Aurelia was important to the Berganians. They had draped their balconies with flags and decorated the streets with flowers and the procession was very grand. Behind the king rode courtiers and soldiers in splendid uniforms—and beside him, on a spirited pony, rode the crown prince, who was only a boy.

Tally was staring at him, wondering how it felt to be a prince so young, when the ancient projector gave a hiccup and the image on the screen stayed frozen. But though she saw the boy's arm held up to acknowledge the cheers of the crowd, she couldn't catch even a glimpse of his face. It was completely hidden by the gigantic feathery plumes on the helmet that he wore.

The film ended with a close-up of the king looking stern and resolute but rather tired, while the voice of the commentator said: “To the brave ruler who defied Hitler's bullying, we, the people of Great Britain, send our greetings. Well done, Bergania!”

Then came the film they had come to see.

I'll Always Be Yours
was not a good film. In fact, it was a perfectly awful film.

Gloria Grantley played a poor girl who went to work in a department store where she caught the eye of a handsome millionaire. She fell in love with the millionaire and he promised to marry her but it turned out he was married already, so Gloria jumped off a bridge and everyone thought she had drowned and the millionaire felt terribly guilty. But it turned out that she hadn't, and she became a nun and looked after little children in a convent and taught them to sing. It ended with her on her deathbed looking up to heaven and saying the millionaire's name (which was Lionel) in a throbbing voice before she closed her eyes forever.

Tally was glad it was over; she couldn't wait to get into the fresh air, but although people were streaming out of the cinema, Julia hadn't moved. She was sitting with her shoulders hunched and her hands over her face.

“What is it, Julia? What's the matter? It ended all right—she's perfectly happy with God. It's what she wanted.”

Julia shook her head. She was crying—not at all in the way that Gloria Grantley had cried, with glycerine tears rolling down her perfectly made-up cheeks, but hopelessly, her face scrunched up, her shoulders heaving. She had no handkerchief and Tally didn't have one to give her; the children in Magda's house did not come easily by handkerchiefs.

“Come on,” Tally urged her friend. “Let's go outside.”

She took Julia's arm and led her across the square and down some stone steps to the towpath along the river. There was a bench looking over the water and they sat down on it side by side.

“If you feel like telling me what's the matter, I wouldn't tell anyone. It isn't because she didn't get Lionel, is it? It's something else.”

Julia went on sniffing and gulping. Then she lifted her head and said, “I miss her so much!”

Tally stared at her. “Who? Who do you miss so much?” And then: “What is it about Gloria Grantley that you—”

“She's my mother.” Julia's voice was flat and exhausted. She sat bent up like an old woman.

“Your mother? ” It seemed incredible, but now that Tally looked out for it she could see a likeness . . . something about the set of Julia's mouth and her eyes.