The Dragonfly Pool

  They saw marmots and goats and an ibex—and found the nest of a kestrel from which the young had just flown—but they did not see a Berganian mountain cat.

  They had reached the top of the pass now with a clear view of the valley they had driven through. Matteo, who had been raking the mountainside with his binoculars, suddenly became very still and they all froze, trained as they had been not to interrupt his moments of concentration. But whatever Matteo had seen it was not something he meant to show them, and down below they could see the tiny figure of their driver waving his arms and heard the tooting of horns.

  As they ran down the hill Karil stopped for a moment and bent down to pick up something from the path. Not a valuable stone or a rare plant . . . just an ordinary pebble of Berganian quartz.

  “Is it to remind you?” asked Tally.

  “I shan’t need reminding,” said Karil.

  It was not until they were back in the bus and had been driving for several kilometers that Barney spoke.

  “How is it you never mentioned the Berganian mountain cat to us all the time we were there? Or before we went? And how come it’s not mentioned anywhere in the guidebooks if it’s so famous?”

  Matteo did not answer. When they were safely over the border he would explain, but to confess now that the noble and rare animal had come out of his own head would be to explain why he had invented it, and he was not ready for that. He had needed a chance to reconnoiter and what he had seen through his binoculars had relieved his mind. The road behind them had been clear; there was no sign of a black Mercedes of the kind that the Germans had brought to Bergania. He would never relax his vigilance, but so far at least there was nobody on their tail.

  The buses stopped at the checkpoint and everyone scrambled out. They had expected to go all the way to Zurich in the same transport but now there was a change of plan again. The buses were required by the army in Bergania, so they would travel on in charabancs provided by the Swiss on the other side of the border post.

  “So for goodness sake make sure you have all your belongings,” the teachers instructed their charges. “We can’t go back once we’re through.”

  The children grabbed their bags and books and scarves and the souvenirs they had bought in the market and made their way to the customs shed. It was a small building, not accustomed to receiving hordes of people, and the officials manning the three gates looked startled at the mass of children rushing in.

  This was the last chance that all the different groups would have to say good-bye properly; after that they would be driven to different destinations: some to trains going west or north, some to bus stations for the journey south.

  And it was the last chance for the children who had danced the prince down from the hill to give their help.

  The first-class passengers were allowed through straightaway, and Countess Frederica marched off with her ramrod back and got on to the waiting bus. Then came the folk dancers.

  The Deldertonians were by Gate 2. Magda and Matteo stood in front, the rest bunched behind them. Matteo showed his group passport. The official counted the children.

  “It says here, four boys and four girls. You only have three boys,” he said in his strong Swiss German dialect.

  Magda looked around. There were black rings under her eyes from thinking about Schopenhauer in the night and she blinked at the customs official like a troubled owl.

  “Oh dear,” she said. “We have lost a boy. Tally, see if you can find him.”

  Tally came back with Barney and Karil.

  “Here they are,” she said.

  “That is two boys,” said the customs official. “Which one is with you?”

  Magda pointed to Karil. “This one,” she said. “Look, here is his name.” And she pointed to Tod’s name on the list.

  One of the Swedish boys now came running up and took Barney’s arm.

  “Hurry up, Lars,” he said in his own language. “We’re just about to go through.”

  Barney went with him, but now there was a fuss at Gate 3, where there were too many Yugoslavs. Two of the boys from Italy had got into the wrong queue.

  The teachers were getting rattled.

  “Keep still,” they shouted. “Stand by your group.”

  But the children did not stand still. Verity broke away and rushed at Lorenzo, throwing her arms around him. Two French girls came hurrying up to Tally, waving address books. A Spanish girl started to cry noisily and abandoned her group to hug a girl from Norway.

  The Swedish boy who had fetched Barney away called, “Lars! Where are you, Lars? Come over here,” but “Lars” was nowhere to be seen.

  The Italians now had too many children whereas the Dutch had too few, and still the children swirled about and merged and parted while the harassed customs officials counted and recounted.

  The Deldertonians, by Gate 2, at least had the right number—four boys, four girls.

  “All right, you can go through,” said the man in charge of the gate. He lifted the barrier and they rushed out and climbed into the nearest of the waiting charabancs.

  One by one the children in the other groups gathered themselves together and passed through into Switzerland.

  The customs officials wiped their brows and closed the gates. It was the end of their shift and they were going for a beer.

  And at that moment a boy with long hair and desperately untidy clothes came running into the shed from the Berganian side.

  “Wait!” he called. “Wait for me! Don’t close the gates. I had to go back to the bus—I left my camera.”

  He held out a Brownie box camera, and the customs men glared at him.

  “Who do you belong to?” they asked.

  Barney, disheveled and distraught, said, “I’m British. I come from England. Look, I belong to those people over there—they’re waiting for me. Please let me through. His face puckered up; he looked as though he was going to cry.

  The men muttered together. “I counted the British,” said one.

  “You can’t have done.”

  The men conferred. Should they call everybody back and count them again?

  From the buses waiting to depart came the tooting of a horn, and now a man leaned out of the nearest one and yelled angrily.

  “What do you think you’re up to, Barney?” Matteo sounded like a public schoolmaster of the sternest sort. “Get over here at once. I told you you couldn’t go back to the buses. You’re holding everybody up.”

  The customs men gave up. They opened the gate.

  “Yes, sir, I’m coming, sir,” called Barney and scrambled on to the bus. It was the first time he had called anybody sir and he thought it sounded rather good.

  “We did it,” said Tally exultantly when they had been driving for some time, and they patted Barney on the back, because it had been his idea to get left behind and confuse the guards still further.

  “Everybody did it,” said Barney.

  “Yes.”

  Karil was silent. He had expected to feel devastated as he left his country behind, perhaps forever, but what he felt was gratitude and wonder that all these strange children had conspired to help him.

  They drove on steadily toward the clean and shining city lying beneath them in the valley. Their thoughts were with the future; no one looked back, not even Matteo, who was busy planning the next stage of their journey.

  So no one noticed the black Mercedes, with smoked windows, snaking behind them down the hill.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  The Cheese-Makers’ Guild

  What a good job I learned about having feasts in the dorm,” said Tally, “because this seems to be what we are having. The important thing is not to step on the sardines.”

  But actually there weren’t any sardines.

  There were rollmops and there were slices of Gruyère cheese and there were crunchy rolls and boxes of dates and apples—all of them bought in the market which was being held in the square down below.

 
They had been driven straight to the Hotel Kaiserhof, where they were to spend the night. Their travel arrangements had been disrupted by their sudden departure from Bergania, and the through train which was to take them to catch the boat at Calais did not leave till the following afternoon. Matteo had been at the British embassy arranging for their tickets and visas.

  Meanwhile they had been given vouchers for a large room with two rows of beds on the top floor, and a small sitting room. Looking out, they could see the beautiful city of Zurich and the Limmat River which flows through its heart.

  They had wanted to go out and eat in a restaurant but money was tight—and though Matteo was reasonably certain there was no one following the prince, he wanted to keep Karil safely indoors and out of sight.

  So Tally and Julia had stayed in the hotel with Karil while the others went shopping and came back with bags of delectable food.

  “It’s a pity it isn’t midnight,” said Tally when everything was spread out, “but you can’t have everything. Let’s hope Matron doesn’t come in in the middle and spoil everything.”

  Kit knew about feasts in the dorm, too. His friend in the school where they played cricket had told him about them. “You have pillow fights.”

  “So you do.” Tally looked at Karil. “But not when your father has just died.”

  Karil had been sitting quietly on his bed. Now he lifted his head and said, “No, that’s wrong. It’s when your father has died that you have pillow fights. It’s when your father’s died that you do everything he used to do.”

  And he picked up the big, spotless pillow from the nearest bed and hurled it across the room at Borro.

  There was a moment of silence. It seemed to the other children that they had witnessed someone behaving very well. Then Borro picked up his pillow and hurled it back. Soon the room was full of flying pillows and feathers. Julia managed to save the Gruyère cheese and Augusta Carrington’s bananas, but the plateful of rolls tumbled to the floor.

  Then the door opened and everybody stopped dead—because what Tally dreaded had come to pass. Glaring into the room, fierce and furious, was Matron. At least, she looked exactly like the pictures of Matron in the books: thin and black-haired and scowling, and she was within an inch of stepping on the rollmops.

  “Karil—are you mad? Have you totally forgotten yourself?” said the Scold. “And what is that that you are wearing?”

  Karil put down his pillow. “They’re Tod’s pajamas,” he said.

  The countess curled her lip.

  “You cannot possibly sleep in rags like those,” she said. “And all that food on the floor—I never thought I would live to see the day.” She raked the room with her eyes. “Is that a girl I see over there?”

  “Yes,” said Tally. “It is, and it’s me. And this is Julia and those are Verity and Augusta; they’re girls, too . . .”

  “It’s outrageous! Karil must have his own room. Where is the woman in charge?”

  “She’s with Matteo next door. They’re doing the accounts,” said Barney.

  But at that moment Magda came in to say it was time for everyone to wash and get into bed, and was instantly attacked.

  “Ah! You there. I demand that the prince has his own room. It is out of the question that he should share a bedroom with these savages.”

  “I’m afraid we only have one big room for everyone. Matteo and I are sleeping on sofas next door.”

  “Well then, you must erect a shelter so that the prince’s bed is screened from the rest and he can sleep in privacy.”

  “I don’t want to sleep in privacy. I want to be with my friends,” said Karil.

  The countess ignored him. “It should be perfectly possible to put up a shelter using a blanket—it can be suspended from a hook above the window.”

  Magda blinked at her hopelessly. She could have climbed Mount Everest more easily than she could have erected a shelter made of a blanket suspended from a hook. “We don’t believe in segregating children,” she said.

  “We are not dealing with children,” snapped the countess. “We are dealing with the Crown Prince of Bergania. And please remember that His Highness requires exactly two centimeters of toothpaste to be spread on his brush, and he invariably has two rusks and a glass of juice at bedtime. Not one rusk. Not three rusks. Two. Moreover—”

  She was interrupted by an angry voice. “I think I have asked you already, Countess,” said Matteo, coming into the room, “not to appear to be traveling with us. We may still be being followed, and you being the closest person to the prince would certainly be under suspicion. Once we are in Britain it will be different of course, but for now Karil must travel as one of our party and behave as our party behaves.”

  “Like a savage, you mean,” barked the Scold.

  But she turned and left the room, and they could hear the lift door clashing shut as she was carried down to her apartment on the ground floor.

  “I want everybody to stay here till I get back,” said Matteo the next morning, as he set off for the British embassy.

  Magda had had a bad night, dreaming that she had to cover Schopenhauer with a blanket suspended from a meat hook, and had a migraine, so she went back to lie down on the sofa in the sitting room.

  In their dormitory the children settled down to read or play cards. It was a beautiful day; from their windows they could see white birds wheeling over the river, the green and gold domes and spires of churches and museums and a glimpse of the lake which edged the western side of the town.

  Time passed very slowly. The church clocks struck the hours and still Matteo did not come.

  “We’re going to be cooped up in the train all night,” said Verity. “It’s ridiculous not to go out and stretch our legs. I’ll bet the shops are fabulous.”

  “Matteo said we were to stay,” said Borro.

  “No, he didn’t. He said he wanted us to stay,” said Tod. “That’s not the same thing.”

  They waited another half hour. A soft breeze came in through the open window. Then the chambermaid came to clean their room.

  “We’re in the way,” said Tally. And then: “It’s sort of our duty not to hinder people who are trying to work, don’t you think? If we went out just for half an hour?”

  “But let’s not wake Magda,” said Julia. “She might think she had to forbid us and that would make her sad.” She turned to Karil. “Unless you’d rather stay?”

  But Karil was as keen as anyone to get out of the stuffy room.

  They set off along the left bank of the river, across the famous Cathedral Bridge, and down the wide streets that led into the commercial quarter. Beyond making sure that Karil was always flanked by at least two people, they had quite forgotten that there could be any danger.

  It was a marvelously prosperous city; the shops were like museums, full of exquisite jewelry and high-precision watches and leather handbags; the pavements were wide and shaded by trees, and everything was so expensive that even Verity was not tempted to try to shop.

  And keeping out of sight behind them marched the Countess Frederica.

  They were walking down a particularly imposing street when Barney stopped suddenly in front of a notice set out on a wooden stand beside a big carved door.

  SWISS GUILD OF CHEESE MAKERS, it said. And underneath: FREE CHEESE TASTING, FOLLOWED BY THE UNVEILING OF THE NEW PORTRAIT BY THE BRITISH PAINTER FERDINAND PONSONBY-SMITH, COMMISSIONED BY THE GUILD TO MARK ITS TWO HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY.

  The notice was in German, but when Karil had translated it Barney became very excited.

  “I thought I recognized the name. Don’t you remember? It’s the picture Clemmy posed for. They said she had to be the Spirit of Cheese, and there was a row because the artist painted her as a lot of abstract cubes and the Cheese Makers were very upset and sent it back and he had to paint it again with Clemmy looking like herself. She charged a lot of money for modeling because she had really retired.” He turned to the others. “We have to see Clemmy unveiled
.”

  Not only Barney but all of them suddenly felt really homesick for Clemmy. She seemed to represent all that was best at Delderton: the safety, the art classes, the pancakes . . .

  The unveiling was at ten o’clock, and it was half past nine. It really seemed as if it was meant that they should go.

  The Swiss guilds are very important institutions. There are guilds of watchmakers and guilds of woodcarvers and guilds of yodelers—but the cheese-makers’ guild is perhaps the wealthiest and most important of them all. For where would the country be without its Emmental and its Appenzeller—and its world-famous Gruyère, that classic cheese which is so whole and perfect on the outside and so amazingly full of holes once it is cut.

  The children found the imposing building just off one of the main boulevards, and they followed the people going in.

  The cheese samples were laid out on a number of tables in the hall. There were little red-skinned cheeses and pale cheeses wrapped in silver foil and soft cheeses rounded into pats. All the cheeses were served with small biscuits and there was a bottle of sparkling water and some glasses on each table.

  The Deldertonians set to. They were very hungry. Augusta had thought that there might be one kind of cheese she could eat without coming out in lumps, but when she got closer she decided to be sensible and just looked.

  The room was very crowded—no one was rude or jostled but everybody was determined to taste as much cheese as possible in the shortest amount of time.

  Karil had not eaten much so far on the journey, but the little nibbles of cheese were very inviting. He was wearing Borro’s blue jersey and a little color had come into his cheeks.

  The Countess Frederica had followed them into the hall but stayed near the exit, hidden by a pillar. Needless to say, she did not stoop to tasting anything: nibbles were never eaten by the upper classes.

  After about half an hour a bell rang and then a very prosperous-looking man with a comfortable paunch got on to the dais and said everybody was now invited upstairs for the unveiling of the new portrait.