Eva Ibbotson - The Dragonfly Pool

Then he fell back in his chair, aghast at what he had done. He had not been at Delderton for a week and here he was, lecturing and pontificating.

But now Julia had lifted her head and her voice carried very clearly, because that was one of the things she knew — how to make herself heard if she wanted to.

“All right,” said Julia. “I’ll do it.”

Everybody stopped dead and stared at her.

“You’ll do it?” repeated Tally. “Really? You’ll be the heroine? You’ll be Persephone?”

“I’ll be the heroine,” said Julia, “but I won’t be Persephone. Persephone’s not the heroine; she’s just a pretty girl who gets carried off. Anyone can be her… Verity can.”

In the classroom one could have heard a pin drop.

“The heroine,” said Julia, “the person who matters, is her mother. It’s Demeter, who roams the earth looking for her daughter and never gives up. Not ever. Because loving her daughter, and finding her, matters more than anything in the world.”

Tally, who alone knew Julia’s story, looked at her friend.

“And you’ll be her?” she asked quietly.

Julia nodded. “Yes, I’ll be her.”

After that everything fell into place, and a few days later casting was complete and they moved into the hall to begin rehearsals. Ronald Peabody was to be the king of the Underworld.

“He’s nasty enough,” Borro had agreed, but he also acted well.

And Verity got her wish and played Persephone. She took the part seriously, working out how to scream and struggle and wondering what to wear while doing it, and if her lines got fewer and fewer as Tally and Karil adjusted the script, she did not seem to notice it. Persephone was described in the old myth as having “delicate ankles,” and that was enough for Verity. And she could dance.

The rest of the casting went without a hitch. Borro was Hermes, the messenger chosen to bring Persephone back, and a tall senior whose voice had broken reliably played Zeus, King of the Gods.

And the scenes in Hades were easy. Being horrible or tortured or weird is always popular. Tod was Sisyphus, endlessly pushing his rock up a hill, Barney made an excellent Tantalus, never quite allowed to sip the water that reached to his mouth — and no one felt like refusing Kit when he asked if he could be the man whose liver was pecked out by an eagle, even though he belonged to a different myth.

As for Cerberus, the three-headed dog who guarded the gates of Hades, there was a stampede of juniors all wanting to be one of his heads. Since the heads did not speak and would be covered in masks it was difficult to choose, so they drew lots — but the good thing about Hades is that it is always full, and those children who were not picked to be a head could still gibber and wail and wobble across the stage.

Karil and Tally were joint stage managers and were incessantly busy. “Bossy” was the word Verity used, and she had a point, but there was so much to remember.

O’Hanrahan directed, never raising his voice but holding the play completely under his hand. At the beginning Tally had been put in charge of the script; she was to gather up ideas and make notes, ready for the actual writing. So she had gone to the library, found a book called Greek Myths for Schools —and gone back, puzzled, to O’Hanrahan.

“It’s not like you told it to us,” she said. “It’s sort of flat. You must have made an awful lot up. All that about Persephone’s delicate ankles, and Demeter tearing off her headband in grief…”

O’Hanrahan shook his head. “No, I didn’t make it up. The words are all there in the original Greek, just as they were nearly three thousand years ago.”

And he went to his bookcase and began to read. The musical words, serious but beautiful, went straight into Tally’s soul. Understanding no word of the ancient language, she yet sensed the story’s depth and resonance.

The next day she took Greek Myths for Schools back to the library — and they began to write their play.

Now, as rehearsals began, she was eagle-eyed, watching for missed lines — a fierce prompter protecting every syllable of the script.

As for Karil, he was everywhere, attending to the lighting, assembling props, checking the thunder sheets, experimenting with the sound of rain. To serve the play after years of being served, to be part of something and yet not singled out, was his greatest joy. He knew he was on borrowed time — any day now the duke would find out where he was, but meanwhile there was the present, there was this day — and Karil set himself to live in it.

Like all plays that take off, Persephone reached out into every activity in the school.

Clemmy knew all about the Greeks; she had posed for a dozen painters who had tried to show the beauty of the ancient world.

“You’ve got to realize that the Greeks really adored their flowers and their trees and their countryside. They absolutely worshipped them.”

She found pictures of the flowers that Persephone had been picking when she was carried away, precise botanical drawings full of detail and loving care, and she stood over the scene painters.

“Remember this was Arcadia, it was Paradise. Everything was flooded with light — that blue is far too muddy.”

Josie and the housekeeper, with a team of helpers, ran up the costumes, and the old professor left his ancient manuscripts long enough to be really helpful about the music.

“We want dreamy music for the beginning and scary music of course for Hades and a lament for when Demeter is roaming the earth, but at the end there has to be something glorious — a proper hymn praising the gods,” said Tally.

“Full of triumph,” said Karil.

“Oh, there does, does there?” growled the old man.

“Couldn’t you compose one?” they asked him.

“No, I could not. If I could compose triumphant and glorious music, I wouldn’t be here teaching a lot of hooligans.”

But he found a chorus from a Handel opera, which made the hair stand up on the nape of one’s neck — and he bullied the school choir into learning it.

As the weeks passed, O’Hanrahan began to look tired.

“You’re working too hard,” Clemmy told him.

But she knew what was happening. It was possible that what they had here was not just a school play — it was a play . A number of things were coming together. The children acting in it had had a real experience: a king had died; a war was beginning.

And there was Julia. But about Julia’s performance, nobody would speak.

Matteo had reported to the War Office and received his instructions. Now he walked down Piccadilly, turned into Old Bond Street, and made his way toward Grosvenor Square. He passed Polish cavalry officers in their glamorous uniforms, come to join the Allies, sailors on leave from a British submarine, high-ranking American servicemen from the embassy nearby.

But he saw none of them. What he saw in his mind was a huddle of children, some tearstained, who had got up at dawn to say good-bye.

Barney, whom he had turned into a biologist… Tally, whose problems seemed always to be about other people… Julia, whose mother he had mentally throttled many a time…

And Karil, Johannes’s son…

If his plan misfired… if the people he was now seeking out refused to help him, or had not yet arrived, then Karil’s future was bleak indeed.

In front of a tall, narrow house, he stopped and rang the bell. The house, though in the fashionable area inhabited by embassies and diplomats, was shabby, and the servant who opened the door wore no uniform, only a leather apron. He had gray hair and a weather-beaten face and looked like a man who had spent his life out of doors.