Eva Ibbotson - The Dragonfly Pool

“Freedom doesn’t mean causing distress and inconvenience to others,” said Magda, and told them what Schopenhauer had said about this, which was a lot.

Arguments about the trash cans took nearly a quarter of an hour and after that Verity said she had thought they were going to discuss the free period on Wednesday afternoons. She had tried to bring it up last time and Daley had promised to put it on the agenda, she said, and why wasn’t it there? They had a free period in her cousin’s school, and Wednesday was early-closing day in the village, so they had a right to have one here. A proper one, not the kind you got by cutting classes.

After this came “Domestic Work,” which seemed to be getting on all right on the whole, and Daley then decided to bring the meeting to an end with something that would unite everybody because it was so obvious that it couldn’t be done. He picked up the letter about the Folk Dance Festival.

“I have had a request from the Ministry of Culture. It’s rather a strange request and I shall of course turn it down, but I thought you might like to know that we have been invited.”

And he read out the letter from the ministry in London, which ran as follows:

Dear Mr. Daley:

As your school is well known for its enterprise and initiative I am writing to ask whether you would consider sending a group of children to a Folk Dance Festival to be held in Bergania in the second week of June.

The Berganian authorities are very anxious to make stronger links with other European democracies and to foster friendship between the children of different nations as one of the most effective ways of securing world peace.

Quite a small group would suffice, and we would offer you assistance in the matters of group passports, visas, and travel assistance generally.

Should you feel able to comply with this request, please get in touch with me at the ministry.

Yours sincerely,

Daley folded up the letter and looked around at the meeting.

“It’s quite an honor to be asked. As I say, I shall of course turn it down but—”

“Why?”

The clear voice carried to all parts of the hall. Julia grasped her friend’s arm, trying to quiet her but without success. The peppermint disappeared down Tally’s throat.

“Why?” she said again. “Why would you refuse?”

She had forgotten that she was not going to speak again. One word had leaped out at her from the letter that Daley read.

“Bergania”—it was more than two weeks since she had seen the travelogue, yet she found she could remember the film in detail. She could see the snowy mountain range with the central jagged peak, and the fir trees running up the slope toward them. She could see the river and the spire of the church where St. Aurelia was buried, and the palace. She could see the proud king on his horse and, as clearly as if she was there, the young prince in his troublesome helmet trying to blow the plumes out of his eyes.

“Why can’t we send anybody?” said Tally yet again. “The King of Bergania is very brave; he said no to Hitler.”

“Because,” said the headmaster patiently, “we have never done folk dancing here at Delderton and it is less than a month till the festival. And there are other reasons.”

“Just because we’ve never done it doesn’t mean we can’t do it. There’s probably a book about it; there’s a book about everything. It must be very difficult to stand up to Hitler. It wasn’t just that he said no about letting the troops go through his country, but he also won’t let Hitler dig up minerals in his mountains to use for armaments. And I know people like Tod think there shouldn’t be kings, but if there are and they’re brave and resolute then surely we should show them that we’re on their side.”

“I don’t see how it would help the Berganians if we went and did folk dancing all over them,” said one of the senior girls, “especially when we haven’t any idea how to do it.”

“It’s to do with just being there,” said Tally. “They invited us so they must want us to come, and refusing would be a snub.”

She looked around the room for support but no one seemed ready to back her up. Even her own friends were silent.

“Folk dancing’s silly,” said a boy with huge spectacles. “People wind ribbons around a pole and get tangled up.”

“Or they wear idiotic clothes — trousers with bells on them and bobbles on their hats,” said Ronald Peabody.

“Only sissies do folk dancing,” came Verity’s disdainful voice.

“Really?” The deep voice came from the back of the hall. Matteo had appeared to be asleep. “You surprise me.” He uncoiled himself and moved forward to the center of the room, and the children made way for him. “You surprise me very much.”

Everybody fell silent, watching him as he turned and faced the meeting.

“You might of course call the Falanian Indians sissy. Certainly they do a folk dance before they dismember their enemies and nail them to trees. There are even bells — or rather gongs — involved, though not, if I recall, ribbons. It takes an Indian child five years to learn the steps, and they are not allowed to take part in it till they can crunch up the skull of a jaguar with their bare hands.

“And there are the leopard hunters of Nepal. They do a folk dance to prepare themselves for the chase, which includes leaping over pits of burning cinders with a firebrand in their mouth. The steps go something like this.”

And without any warning Matteo leaped high into the air, seemed almost to hang there, and came down with a bloodcurdling howl about a foot away from David Prosser, who stepped back with an agitated squeak.

“I could give you more examples,” said Matteo, “but I just wanted to make the point that whatever folk dancing is, it’s not sissy.”

Daley shook his head. That Tally wanted the school to march to the help of the Berganians was to be expected — but he had not thought that Matteo would stab him in the back.

“I suggest you set up a working party to see if it can be done. You have one week to prepare a suitable dance.”

Nothing would happen in so short a time; Daley was sure of that.

Tally was right. There was a book about folk dancing, several books in fact, but they were not very helpful.

“There’s Scottish dancing and maypole dancing and morris dancing,” she said.

But Scotland was a long way from Devon and they did not feel they had a right to pretend to be Scottish, and anyway the steps were difficult.

“Maypole dancing looks nice,” said Julia. “All those ribbons.”

But Barney said that disasters happened very easily with maypole dancing. In his village the vicar at the garden fête had been completely trussed up when one of the children had taken her ribbon in the wrong direction.

“He had to be cut out in the end,” Barney said.

So that left morris dancing, which was derived from the ancient sword dances of medieval England, only instead of swords the dancers had wooden sticks — and it was danced by men.

“Well, we can’t have only boys,” said Julia. “We’d never get enough.”

They had of course consulted Armelle, but she was so horrified at the idea of a dance that did not come spontaneously from inside the soul that she was not helpful at all.

“It says here that they hit each other with the sticks — they’re called staves — at least they bang them together and they flap at each other with handkerchiefs,” said Tally, looking at the book. “And they have bells on their ankles, rows and rows of bells, and more bells tied around their knees so that their trousers look baggy.”