Eva Ibbotson - The Dragonfly Pool

“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.

“No one knows except Daley and Matteo, so you mustn’t tell.”

“I won’t say anything. But if she’s your mother… you mean you miss her during term time? I miss my father but—”

“No. I miss her all the time; I don’t see her even on the holidays. Well, hardly ever — just in secret places for a very short time. I’m too old, you see. I’m nearly thirteen, and it wouldn’t do for her to have a daughter my age. She’s supposed to be twenty-five, so I have to be kept out of the way, but I just want to be able to be with her. I love her so much.”

Tally knew what she should have done next — sat quietly beside Julia and let her talk — but she couldn’t. She got to her feet and collected the largest stones she could find and hurled them one by one into the river. Except that in her mind it wasn’t stones she was throwing, it was Gloria Grantley she was sending into the swirling, icy water. Gloria with her pout and her bosom and her fluttering eyelashes, who was too busy being famous to acknowledge her daughter.

It was a while before she could come back to comfort her friend.

“I expect it’s just as hard for her. She must long to be with you, but I expect it’s her manager who told her she has to be careful.”

Julia looked at her with gratitude. “Yes — he says it’s only while her contract lasts. Then when she’s saved lots of money she can retire and we can be together.” She looked wistfully at Tally. “There’s another performance at five o’clock. I’m going to stay for it — even if I get into trouble. Will you tell Magda? ”

Tally sighed. “I’ll stay with you,” she said. “You shouldn’t go home by yourself in the dark.”

The thought of another two hours of the swan-necked Gloria was appalling. But at least she’d get another look at the brave king of Bergania, not to mention the prince-under-plumes.

Dr. Hamilton was reading the latest letter from his daughter:

We had our first biology class with Matteo today. Only it wasn’t a class really. It was a sort of walk… or an exploration… or an expedition. It was like being hunters on a trail and having your eyes sharpened with special drops so that you saw things that you didn’t think you could see and yet they had been there all the time.

Matteo is tall with broad shoulders and very dark hair and eyes. He looks foreign and he is — he has a slight accent and his voice is very deep. He can look quite scary but he has a very funny laugh. I’m not describing him well because he isn’t really like anybody else I’ve met. And the biology class wasn’t like anything I’d imagined either.

For one thing it started at four o’clock in the morning. You wouldn’t think a class could start then, would you, but Matteo’s classes start at whatever time he thinks we will see the things he wants to show us.

So I was woken by him walking down the corridors and opening our bedroom doors and saying, “Out”—and then we were all huddled in the courtyard, trying to wake up.

But we didn’t stay huddled for long because as we followed him into the copse where the path goes down to the river we were greeted by the most incredible noise! I’d read about the Dawn Chorus, but I thought it was just a gentle twittering. I didn’t realize that while I was asleep all the birds in England were singing their heads off.

Matteo made us stop to listen but actually he didn’t have to make us — it was so beautiful we couldn’t help listening. He didn’t tell us the names of the birds — it was about listening not identifying. Barney told me later that there were thrushes and robins and warblers and wrens — but I heard them like instruments in an orchestra, each one distinct and separate but joining up to make a marvelous whole.

Then we went on through the wood and no one said a word. If anyone starts talking when they’re out with Matteo he bites their head off.

It was getting lighter now, and when we came to a boulder lying on the side of the path, Matteo stopped and said, “Well? What do you expect to find?”

All the others stood around and Barney said, “Snails’ eggs,” and Tod said, “Centipedes,” and Julia said, “Wood lice,” and Matteo nodded and said, “Anything else?” and when no one said anything he said, “What about the humidity?” and one of the other boys said, “Violet ground beetles,” and Matteo said, “And a sheltering toad perhaps?”

So then he turned the stone over — and all the things were there, and I know it sounds silly but he made us all so pleased — I suppose because he was so pleased himself. It was as though what was under the stone was a splendid present that God or whoever does these things had put there for us. Then he put the stone back — putting things back is the core of fieldwork, he says. And we walked on a bit farther and crossed a paddock, and he bent down to a tuft of rough grass by a hedge and parted it very carefully, because he said it was the sort of place where there might be a field-vole’s nest but there might not.

Only of course there was. Right at the base of the tussock was a round ball of chopped grass like a tennis ball and inside were three tiny squirming babies as pink and bald as sugar mice. We had to look at them very very quickly so that they wouldn’t get disturbed, but I think I’ll always remember them — they were so small but so alive.

The river is about twenty minutes’ walk from the school, and we have to ask permission to go there without an adult because the current is quite fast in places. It’s a really beautiful river, with banks full of balsam and bluebells everywhere, and there are sandy coves. We went to a place where there is an island which you can reach because a beech tree has fallen across from the bank. When we got to the island we had to lie down in the grass and be absolutely silent, and being absolutely silent didn’t just mean not talking; it meant more than that.

We lay there for a while and nothing happened and then there was a silver flash and a fish jumped out of the water and made a great arc… and behind the fish — we could see it quite clearly now — were two otters.

I’ve never seen otters before. They are amazing — so swift and so… graceful but funny, too. It was a mother and a nearly full-grown cub and they started rolling over and over in the water, trying to grab the fish, and at first they lost it and there was a lot of splashing, but then they caught it and swam with it to a big flat rock in the water and settled down to their meal.