Eva Ibbotson - The Dragonfly Pool

“And they wear hats with flowers sewn onto them. There’s one dance called the Helston Flurry Dance, which is danced in Cornwall. Flurry means flowers,” said Tod. “It’s not exactly a morris dance, but it’s that kind of thing.”

He had at first wanted to have nothing to do with the trip to Bergania. The king who had said no to Hitler might be brave but he was still a king, and all kings belonged in dungeons — preferably with their heads chopped off. But when his friends all became involved he had joined in and put in some very useful work in the library.

“I don’t want to flap with my handkerchief,” said Kit, looking even more woebegone than usual.

“There’s one person who rides a sort of hobbyhorse through the dancers,” said Barney. “The Devil, they think. Or maybe the Fool. It’s a very old dance. ‘Full of antiquity,’ it says here.”

It certainly looked old from the few pictures they could find. Not only old but exceedingly odd.

“What about the music? ” asked Borro.

They went to consult the old professor who taught music and he said it would probably have been danced to pipes and tambours but perhaps a violin would do.

“Augusta’s got a violin,” said Tally. “I remember when she came.”

So they went to find Augusta, who was eating a banana and reading a detective story, and she said she could play the violin, but she couldn’t play it well.

“I don’t really like the noithe it maketh,” she said.

But she fetched it and played a slow tune full of double stops and they thought it would do if she could play it faster and maybe learn a more jigging sort of piece as well. Taking Augusta to Bergania would be complicated because of her only being able to eat so very few things.

“But if we stock up with bananas you’ll be all right, won’t you?” said Julia, and Augusta agreed that she probably would. She was really a very good-natured girl and they were glad she had come back from Wales.

“Of course, the other groups will probably have all sorts of instruments — an orchestra even — all those Swiss and Bavarian people in lederhosen slapping their thighs will be terribly good — but we can’t compete with them. All we want is to be there,” said Tally.

“I don’t,” said Kit. “I don’t want to be there.”

“We could always alter it a bit and make a Devon version,” Tally went on. “ ‘The Delderton Flurry Dance.’ ”

Getting a team together was the next problem. Tally’s immediate friends all rallied around, and Verity, after watching snootily for a while, said she would come, which was a pity but they couldn’t afford to be fussy. Kit of course was really too small, but they couldn’t get people who were matched in size; they would just have to make do with what they had.

The next day the rehearsals began, and they did not go well.

“Form a circle,” said Barney with the book in his hand. “Now pick up your sticks… Then bow to each other. Now lift the right foot…”

Augusta took up her violin, and the dancers lifted the staves they had begged from the gardeners, who used them for staking peas.

“Move toward the center… hold the sticks up high… now flap your handkerchiefs. One, two, three, and hop…”

None of the children in Magda’s house had handkerchiefs; they flapped their headscarves or borrowed tea towels. Borro flapped his shirt.

“Ow!” said Borro, as Tod’s stick went into his cheek.

Kit said he couldn’t do it — it was too difficult. Augusta snapped a string on her violin.

“We have to be able to do it,” said Tally. “We have to.”

At night the Delderton Flurry Dance ran through their dreams. They thought of it as a kind of sick animal that had to be nursed into health.

“It’s like those runts you get in a litter of piglets,” said Borro. “You know, the one that can’t feed itself.”

They ran into each other’s rooms at all hours, suggesting changes — making the steps simpler. Nobody now would have recognized it as a known morris dance or anything else, but it didn’t matter.

Gradually, very gradually, the children who had scoffed wandered away. The snooty Verity turned out to be the best at dancing, which was a pity but the kind of thing that happens in life.

Matteo came past once when they had got into a hopeless coil. He gave some orders that freed them, but if they had hoped that he would stay and help, they were disappointed.

Next came the clothes. White trousers or white skirts… bells… and flowers for their hats.

“Real ones will wither,” said Julia.

“We could buy artificial ones from Woolworth,” someone suggested. They were surprisingly expensive, but everyone gave up their pocket money.

The girls looked very weird in their hats, so Clemmy suggested they make wreaths and wear the flowers in their hair, which gave Verity the chance to nab all the forget-me-nots because she said they matched her eyes.

By the end of the week they were ready to show what they had done to the headmaster.

They took him down to the playing field. Augusta struck up on her violin. Borro, who was the hobbyhorse rider, galloped around the circle. The dancers began.

The Delderton Flurry Dance was bad. It was very bad indeed. But it was there .

“All right,” said Daley wearily. “You’ll have to work on it solidly till you leave — but, yes, you can go.”

It should have been a day of triumph and then suddenly everything went wrong. It was Verity of course who gave Tally the news that devastated her, but it was not really Verity’s fault; Tally would have found out anyway soon enough. But now she walked blindly away from the school and down the sloping, tangly path that led toward the river and sat down with her arms around her knees, trying to fight down the misery and wretchedness that engulfed her.

She must fix her eyes on the things that were outside herself. The new beech leaves, with the sun on them… the bluebells shimmering like a lake through the trees… A thrush flew by with his beak full of twigs, and a water vole ran along the bank of the little stream.

These were the things that mattered — not her own wishes and hopes and needs.

But it didn’t work. Tears welled up under her eyelids and she felt completely desolate.

From the moment she had seen those images of Bergania, she had felt as though the country somehow spoke to her. And now though her friends would go, she would stay behind.

“You realize that all the parents have to pay thirty pounds for our fares,” Verity had said. “The school can’t afford them. Daley’s going to write a letter to everyone and explain.”

Verity always knew things before other people.

Thirty pounds. It was nothing to Verity’s parents, with their estate in Rutland, and most of the others came from well-to-do families. But Tally would never ask her father for so much money. His patients were poor; he had both the aunts to support. He mustn’t be asked in case he felt he had to make the sacrifice and, whatever Tally wanted from her father, it was not a sacrifice.

“It doesn’t matter,” she told herself.

But it was no good. Perhaps it didn’t matter compared to people dying in famines and earthquakes and wars, but it mattered to her.

After a while she got up and brushed the grass off her skirt and made her way back up the hill to school.

She would see if Matteo was free.