The Dragonfly Pool (34 page)

While he was dressing he heard a familiar thud, but as no cries or screams followed, Karil did not come out of his room to see who it was that had fallen over Pom-Pom. The little dog was black and tubular and almost impossible to see in the dimly lit corridors of Rottingdene House as he padded about looking for feet that were worthy of his care.

The duke himself did not come down to breakfast, but the three uncles and their wives were there. In front of Uncle Dmitri was a marmalade jar labeled with the crest of the Drimadoffs. In front of Uncle Franz Heinrich was a toast rack decorated with a silver griffon, which was the emblem of the House of Carinstein, and Uncle Alfonso was feeding a piece of bread to his shivering monkey, who wore a jacket modeled on that of the household cavalry that had guarded Alfonso when he still ruled his lands.

When Karil entered, the three uncles very slightly raised their buttocks from their chairs, because a search through the
Almanach de Gotha
had shown that the son of a reigning king, even a dead one, did definitely take precedence over another prince or an archduke or a don, and this was the nearest they would get to bowing to their nephew.

The dining room at Rottingdene House was so dark that the light had to be put on even at breakfast, and the food was quietly nasty. The bread was never fresh, the butter slightly rancid, and the bacon undercooked. The truth was that the servants were so ill paid and badly treated that they had long ago given up any attempt to do their job well.

The last to appear as usual was Carlotta, who came into the room in a freshly ironed blouse and a pleated kilt with a tartan ribbon in her shining curls.

“Here comes my little sunbeam,” said her mother, and Carlotta smiled, because in truth she knew herself to be a ray of light and cheerfulness illuminating the dark house.

Being a sunbeam is hard work, but Carlotta did not shirk her duty. She saw to it that the maids crimped and curled her hair several times a day, and that her dresses were laundered and ironed before anybody else's. She “borrowed” any trinkets she needed from her relatives—her dimpled wrists usually glittered with bracelets—and she never passed a mirror without checking that everything was as it should be.

Carlotta knew that cheering up her Cousin Karil was her job, and she rose to the task. Whenever he came into a room she patted the chair next to her and told him about the interesting things they were going to do that day, and she was always thinking of ideas for refurbishing the palace when they returned together to Bergania.

Countess Frederica had taken Carlotta into her confidence when they first arrived.

“I'm afraid Karil had a really dreadful time on his journey.”

But the dreadful time, when told to Carlotta, did not mean being chased by ruffians and nearly captured, it meant traveling in the company of the most appalling, unruly, and impertinent children.

“I can't tell you, Carlotta, what the poor boy had to endure. Bad language, sharing a room with utterly lowborn people, being called by his Christian name. There was a girl there who, from the way she spoke to him, seemed to think he was simply an ordinary person. And I'm very much afraid that Karil was taken in by them. He called them his friends.”

“Oh, he couldn't have done!” Carlotta was really shocked. “What was this girl like?”

“Rude. Abominably dressed. The children all came from some impossible school in Devon where everybody does as they like—and you can believe it or not, they wanted Karil to go there with them.”

“They didn't! But surely they knew that he was a prince—and would be a king one day.”

“They knew, but they took absolutely no notice. It was the most shocking thing I've ever seen. I don't think there is any danger that they will try to get in touch with him, but you know how good-natured Karil is—he might find it difficult to snub them.”

“My goodness, yes.” And then: “What was the name of this girl? ”

“Something ridiculous. They called her Tally. I have never met anyone so lacking in respect.”

The countess said no more. Carlotta was a highly intelligent girl; no usurper would get past her. Altogether Countess Frederica was very pleased with the way things had turned out; Carlotta spent most of her free time with Karil and the countess was sure that her amusing prattle must cheer him up.

After breakfast the duke sent for Karil. He lived in a dark, fusty set of rooms on the first floor, which smelled of mothballs, tobacco, and an unappetizing ointment that he rubbed into his joints to ease his rheumatism. The duchess had died three years earlier, but no one had noticed this very much. She had been a browbeaten, skeletally thin woman, usually dressed in a mountain of gray cardigans, who had followed her husband about bleating, “Yes, Mortimer,” and agreeing with everything he said.

“Ah, there you are,” he said, glaring down at his grandson. “I have to tell you that I'm not at all pleased with you! I'm hearing bad things—very bad things—and I won't stand for them!”

Karil waited, trying to think what he had done, but nothing occurred to him.

“You have been hobnobbing with the servants. Being familiar. Talking to the footmen, gossiping with the maids—and it must stop at once!”

And as Karil remained silent . . .

“Do you hear me, boy? I'm talking to you and I expect to be answered.”

“I don't think I was gossiping exactly. One of the maids had sprained her ankle.”

“Are you contradicting me?” asked the duke, turning crimson.

“No, sir.”

“I hope not. I really hope not. Remember you are here for one reason only, to fulfill your father's wishes. You may have a few years to wait, but you'll go back to Bergania as rightful king, no doubt about it, so I don't want to hear any more about you letting people take liberties. Never forget who you are.”

But Karil was beginning to forget just that: who he was, and where he was going.

“You should take a leaf out of Carlotta's book. She never forgets who she is. You'll be fortunate to have her to help you when you go back. And of course she has the blood. She's got the Rottingdene blood from my side, and her father is descended from Attila the Hun. You'll do very well with Carlotta when the time comes; she'll see that you behave yourself.”

Karil's lesson that morning was with Prince Dmitri, who was designing a new coat of arms to be embroidered on the sofa cushions in his room. He was a stupid man, but when he began to talk about fesses and bends sinister and gules he became quite excited.

“I've never been happy with just the lion couchant. Now what do you think about a salamander? Rampant, of course.”

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.

E
veryone 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.

And all the time Daley brooded over the latest letter from the founders in America, trying to make the final decision about whether to evacuate the school. With one stroke of the pen he could secure the safety of all those in his care. The Americans were famously hospitable and friendly, and the founders were ready to do everything to smooth his path.

Yet did he really want to forsake his country now? Was that what he wanted for the children? He imagined the buildings empty, the grass in the courtyard growing between the stones, the cedar tree untrimmed. Or the army would move in—they would be glad of the building.

“I
must
decide,” he said wearily and reached for the aspirin bottle yet again.

Tally, meanwhile, threw herself into all the activities that were going on. She helped Clemmy resettle the mice that were caught in the kitchen. She dealt with Kit when he said he didn't want to be an erupting seedpod in Armelle's drama class, and she stirred Josie's cauldron of whatever wort they were using till her arms ached.

But sometimes she went off on her own into the woods and made things she had not made since she was six years old: little houses of sticks and interlacing leaves which a worm might come and live in if he felt so inclined, or a necklace of scarlet berries which she did not put on but left lying in the grass. Or she would wander over to the library after supper and Julia would find her bent over a book of those phrases that are supposed to help people with their lives. Sayings like: “You cannot stop the birds of sorrow from flying over your head, but you can stop them nesting in your hair.”