Eva Ibbotson - The Dragonfly Pool

The curtain dipped only for a moment. It rose on Demeter, the Goddess of Plenty, arriving with her entourage of nymphs and dryads.

It was necessary for Demeter to be beautiful, so Julia had become beautiful. She moved across the stage, tall and bountiful, and radiant with power and grace.

But she was looking for her daughter.

“Persephone?” she called. “Where are you? Are you hiding? Is it a game?”

The audience watched spellbound, almost unable to bear it, as Julia, still searching, became uncertain, then bewildered… then afraid… then desperate. Till she understood that the unthinkable had happened and her child was lost — and a look of such anguish spread over her face as stopped the heart.

The curtain went down to an ovation. Yet some of the parents were almost nervous that someone so young could transmit such terrible grief. The woman in the silver fox fur took out her handkerchief and sniffed.

Backstage, the scene shifters moved silently, preparing Hades.

Everybody liked Hades. The anguished figures, half obscured by mist, going about their terrible tasks; the wailing of the dead. Cerberus got a special clap, and so did Karil’s dry ice. In the background Persephone languished beside her husband, toying with her pomegranate.

But the next act belonged to the sorrowing Demeter. The radiant goddess had vanished; here was a grief-stricken woman looking for her child. Julia had become old — not because of her makeup but because oldness came from inside her. It was in every movement she made, every sigh she uttered. She wore a black cloak and they could see how its folds weighed on her, how it hurt her to walk. And the world she moved in was a dead world — the crops had withered, flocks lay stricken in the fields. The grieving goddess had turned aside from her duties, and famine stalked the land.

The people she met could tell her nothing of her daughter’s whereabouts.

Disguised now as an old nurse, she begged for a child to look after — and they could see how she tried to love it — tried and tried, bathing it and tending it — but failed because it was not the child she longed for; it was not her daughter.

Then came the voice of the Sun God, telling her that Persephone was lost forever, deep in the bowels of the earth — and with a cry that echoed that of her daughter as she was carried off, the broken goddess fell to the ground.

There was a short interval and the parents blinked and came down to earth. They had long since stopped watching only their own children; they were watching a play.

In the last act the gods on Olympus took pity on the goddess and the dying world and sent Hermes to the Underworld to bring Persephone back. And now the audience, watching Julia, saw a reversal. Demeter, reunited with her daughter, grew young before their eyes; she became tall and radiant and utterly beautiful.

“My God,” whispered a man in the audience. “I swear she makes the light come out of herself.”

In the final tableau, Persephone knelt at her mother’s feet, and as Demeter raised her hand the stage grew light, petals streamed down from above, and the entire cast entered, bearing fruit and flowers and garlands of leaves. The glorious hymn to Demeter was sung, the curtain fell — and the woman in the silver fox fur broke into noisy sobs.

“I’m sorry, Mother,” said Julia, “but it’s what I really want to do. Act, I mean. I know you think I can’t do it but—”

“Oh no, my darling, no no. Not at all; I may have said…” She extracted a mauve and scented handkerchief and dabbed her eyes. Daley had lent them his room, but there seemed to be nothing to drink on his desk, and she signaled to her agent, Mr. Harvenberg, who slipped out for a gin and tonic. “But I was wrong, I see that now. Only it’s such a terrible profession. There is such heartbreak.” She clutched Julia, digging her long fingernails into her daughter’s arm. “I wanted to do my best for you and that meant acting younger than my age so that I could make a lot of money for us. And I have made a lot — and I shall make more when I’ve sued the film company. I’m going to take them to the cleaners. You’ve no idea how they’ve treated me.”

“Aren’t you going back to Hollywood then?” asked Julia.

“Go back to that sewer? Never! I wouldn’t go back if they asked me on their bended knees. I’m going to stay and do my bit for my country. I’m going to join the WVS. The uniform is dreadful — that miserable bottle green — but I shan’t let it put me off. You’ll see, my darling; you’re going to be proud of me. Now come and give me a kiss.”

Afterward Mr. Harvenberg took Julia and Tally aside.

“They sacked her. Booted her out. Said she was all washed up, too old. Don’t take too much notice — she’ll find someone to protect her. There’s a boyfriend lined up already. Doubt if she’ll last in the WVS, whatever that is. You mustn’t take anything she says to heart. I’m off back to the States, but if you want anything let me know.” He extracted his card and handed it to Julia. “It’s much too early to say, but if you want to go in for the profession later, I might be able to help you. You’re not a looker like your mother, but you can act and that counts for something. Not much, but something.”

Everyone had gathered together in Magda’s room — the aunts, the minister of culture, those parents who were staying in the school… But Dr. Hamilton had taken Karil aside and was talking to him in the courtyard.

“Matteo came to see me before he went abroad,” he said. “He asked me if I was willing to have you stay for the holidays. Not just these holidays, but all of them.”

Karil waited.

“I said I was more than willing. That I would be delighted, if it suited you.”

“There’s nothing I’d like better,” said Karil. “But you don’t know me.”

For Tally’s father had been at a conference when Karil had come to stay after the funeral.

Dr. Hamilton smiled. “Tally knows you,” he said. “That’s enough for me.”

As they made their way upstairs and into Magda’s room, they heard Kit’s plaintive voice.

“I don’t like cocoa with skin on…” he began.

But there wasn’t any skin on it. The aunts had made the cocoa.

And the party began.

This time they were not sleeping in tents on the edge of the park; there were no toilet blocks, no large Yugoslav ladies rinsing their feet in the sinks for washing up. They were guests of the new Berganian government and had rooms in a wing of the palace.

Not all the children who had come to Bergania six years before were able to come. Verity was tossing her hair about in a modeling agency and Borro had returned to Africa where his father had been invited back, but the rest of them were there: Tally and Julia, Barney and Augusta, and Tod and Kit.

They were hardly children now. All of them had left school at the end of the summer term. Barney had got a scholarship to Cambridge to read Natural Sciences, Julia was to start at acting school in the autumn, and Tally, to everyone’s surprise, had been bitten by a thirst for the legends and teachings of the ancient world.

“There’s a degree at Oxford where you can do all that,” O’Hanrahan had told her, “but it’s no use for getting well-paid jobs.”