Eva Ibbotson - The Dragonfly Pool

“I don’t want you to go away, Tally, believe me… We will all miss you very, very much.”

“Well then, why do I have to go? Why? Why? ”

“The nuns are very kind but I want you to have a broader education. Science, modern languages…”

“But I’m learning French. And you could teach me science.

You’ve always said, as soon as one can read one can teach oneself anything. Please, oh please, don’t make me go away.” She looked at him. Then: “It isn’t about the teaching, is it? It’s because there’s going to be a war.”

There was a long pause. Her father reached out for comforting words, but he had never lied to his daughter. “Yes,” he said heavily. “I think there’s going to be a war. There may not be but…”

But if there was, everybody expected that London, like all big towns, would be heavily bombarded. A man who did not protect his daughter from that horror must be the greatest criminal on earth. This chance to send her to safety in one of England’s loveliest counties had been a godsend.

But Tally was angry.

“Well, what if there is going to be a war? Why can’t I share in it? Kenny’s father says we’re all getting gas masks, and they’re digging a big shelter in the park, and Aunt May has got lots of khaki wool to knit hats for the troops, and anyway we’ve got the balloons to protect us. Why should I miss everything just because I’m a child? And why should I be buried in the country and you be in danger? Everybody talks about sharing — you and the aunts and the nuns. Well, why can’t I share the war? ”

Dr. Hamilton leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes for a moment. “Most of the children will be sent away. The government’s made all the plans for evacuation. You don’t want to go to strangers with a label around your neck.”

“No, I don’t. And I wouldn’t go. They tried to make Maybelle go to a rehearsal for evacuation at her school, and she just screamed and kicked and bit and now they’ve said that she can stay.”

But even as she spoke Tally knew that she wouldn’t scream and kick and bite. Not about something that concerned her father whom she loved so much.

“I think sending children away like parcels is wicked and wrong,” she said. “I could take messages and look out for nuns coming from the sky. At school they say Nazi spies are going to come down on parachutes disguised as nuns. Well, I know nuns; I wouldn’t be fooled — you can tell by their shoes. And anyway, there may not be a war in the end. You always say the German people are good, it’s only the Nazis who are wicked, so maybe they’ll rise up and overthrow Hitler and everything will be all right.”

But her father was near the end of his tether.

“Delderton is a first-class school,” he said, making a final effort. “Children come there from all over the world — and with the kind of scholarship they give, you can do all the extras: music and horse riding…”

“I don’t want to ride a horse; I’ve got Primrose. I want to stay here and be part of things and help. And anyway, who’s going to look after you? ”

But she had lost, and she knew it.

For two nights Tally cried herself to sleep. Then she pulled herself together. What was done was done and she would have to make the best of it.

It was her father who had taught her that knowledge is power — that if one could find out about something one is afraid of, it made the fear less. So now, when she wanted to know what to expect when she went away to boarding school, she decided to consult her cousin Margaret.

James Hamilton had a brother called Thomas, who was also a doctor but a very different kind of doctor. He saw only special patients in his elegant rooms in Harley Street, and he charged them about ten times as much as James charged his patients, so that his family was as rich as his brother’s family was poor.

The house he lived in was in one of the smartest streets in the West End, with a gleaming brass plate on the door giving a list of all his degrees and qualifications — and his two children, Margaret and Roderick, went to the most expensive boarding schools in the country.

Margaret and Roderick were obedient, tidy children. Their manners were good but inside they were chilly creatures, thinking of themselves the whole time — and they looked down on Tally, who lived in a shabby street and wore old clothes and played with the children of greengrocers and butchers.

But when they heard that Tally was going to go to boarding school and wanted some advice they were ready to be helpful, and their mother, Aunt Virginia, asked Tally to tea.

So now Tally rang the bell and followed a maid in uniform up the thickly carpeted stairs to Margaret’s room, which looked like a room in a furniture catalog, with looped curtains and a kidney-shaped dressing table and fluffy white rugs.

“I was wondering about — oh, you know… well, everything really…” said Tally. “I mean, is it true you have prefects and feasts in the dorm and crushes on the head girl and all that? And… do you like being away?” asked Tally, longing to be reassured. “Do you like your school? ”

“Oh yes,” said Margaret. “I like it very much. I couldn’t bear to stay at home”—and Tally sighed, thinking how very much she could have borne just that. “It’s strict of course, but all boarding schools are strict, and St. Barbara’s has everything. We have four titled girls there and a millionaire’s daughter and the head girl is related to one of the queen’s ladies-in-waiting. She’s absolutely super; we all want to do things for her. And we have such fun. Last term we had a midnight feast in the dorm and one of the girls stepped on a tin of sardines, and she shrieked like mad — the tin was open — and that brought Matron rushing in. Only they couldn’t do much to us because the girl who was the ringleader had a terribly rich father who’d just given the school a new sports hall. And we are always hiding prickly things in the beds of people we don’t like and putting spiders in Matron’s slippers.”

“Yes, I see.” Tally was trying not to think of the poor spiders, squashed to death by unexpected feet. But Margaret was in full cry now, explaining the rules.

“You have to curtsy when you meet the headmistress and call her ma’am and always walk on the left side of the corridor, but you soon get the hang of it. And of course you have to have exactly the right clothes. We’ve just finished buying my uniform for next term and you wouldn’t believe how expensive it was. Mummy nearly died when she got the bill from Harrods!”

She went to her wardrobe and took out, one by one, the clothes she would need for St. Barbara’s and laid them on her bed. There were two bottle-green gym slips with pleated skirts and a matching sash to tie around the waist. There were four pale blue flannel blouses, a tie, a pudding-shaped velour hat with a hat ribbon, a straw hat for later in the term, and a blazer edged in braid. The blazer, like the tie and the hat ribbon, was striped in the St. Barbara’s colors of bottle green and blue, and the motto on the pocket said: BE THE BEST.

“The best at what? ” asked Tally.

“Oh, everything,” said Margaret airily. She picked up one of the gym slips and held it in front of her. “There’s always a big fuss about the length of the skirt. Matron makes us kneel down and if the hem is more than four inches off the ground we get detention.”

Tally tried not to panic. The whole bed was covered in clothes; there was a smell of starch and newness.

But Margaret had not finished. She went back to the wardrobe and brought out a big carrier bag full of brand-new shoes.