So he had a drive in the Daimler past the shops with Cousin Frederica and Carlotta, followed by tea with the aged Baroness Roditzky in her stifling apartment — and then back to what Karil was beginning to think of as his prison.
After dinner the silver salver was brought in again, but Karil scarcely glanced at it. He had written a last letter a week ago, trying desperately not to sound sorry for himself, and again there had been no reply. Now he had really given up; he was not going to grovel and beg for friendship.
As he was undressing he felt the quartz pebble in his trouser pocket, and for a moment he was back in Bergania, on the mountain, with Tally saying, “Is it to remind you?”
What were they doing now, those people who had helped him and made him feel that life could be a splendid thing?
Well, he would never know.
Karil turned out the light and pulled aside the curtains. Could it be that the duke was right, and his uncles also? His father’s memory was all he had left now, alone as he was, and he began to wonder whether in his own longing to live a life without power or pomp was betraying him. Did he really have a duty to try to follow in his father’s footsteps? Were the plans he had made on the journey just a selfish dream?
Soldiers did their duty. Was he perhaps just shirking his?
There was a short cry from the homesick monkey, an oath as someone stumbled over Pom-Pom, and then silence.
“Oh, why did you have to die?” asked Karil of his father.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Matteo’s Visit
Everyone did their best to carry on as usual that first term of the war. O’Hanrahan, who was very shortsighted and did not expect to be called up, said that in his view the most useful thing to be done about the threat from Hitler was for the children to immerse themselves in the treasures of English literature. The class had decided definitely to turn the story of Persephone into a play. They would work on the script this term, but the actual performance would be the following term, at Easter, which was suitable because it was after all a story about rebirth and regeneration. The children found it soothing that O’Hanrahan was sure that there really would be an Easter term and that the world would not have gone up in smoke before then. At the same time they were already getting angry with Julia, who said again that she absolutely would not play the leading part.
“Does someone have to die before you stop skulking in corners?” said Tally furiously. “There were a hundred people up on the hill when you recited that poem and you didn’t seem to mind that.”
“That was different,” said Julia. “This would be in a theater.”
“No, it wouldn’t,” said Barney angrily. “It would be in a school hall with a stage — if it gets that far.”
Needless to say, Verity did not try to persuade Julia. She was already planning what to wear while being carried off into the Underworld kicking and screaming.
Julia’s mother had sent the usual box of chocolates, and the usual note, put in by the shop, sending lots and lots of love, but there was no news about her new film.
“I’m really worried about her,” Julia said, and Tally did her best not to snarl.
Magda had lost the whisk that the aunts had sent to froth up her cocoa, and she was being persecuted by the Delderton air-raid warden, who kept the pub in the village and came up each night to check the blackout at the school.
“I can see chinks!” he would shout at Magda. “There are chinks of light coming from your windows.”
“What chinks?” Magda would cry, running distractedly up and down the corridor. “Where are the chinks?”
And the children would leave their homework and go chink-hunting in the twenty rooms of Blue House.
Clemmy, usually so serene and good-tempered, was having a hard time with the new gardener who had replaced the trusty man she had worked with up to now and who had volunteered for the air force.
“What are you doing?” she shouted at the young lad, who was pouring poison on a spinach bed to kill the snails, and she dragged him indoors to look at the beautiful striations on a snail shell under a magnifying glass before ordering him to pick off the offending animals one by one and transport them to a patch of woodland nearby.
And all the time Daley brooded over the latest letter from the founders in America, trying to make the final decision about whether to evacuate the school. With one stroke of the pen he could secure the safety of all those in his care. The Americans were famously hospitable and friendly, and the founders were ready to do everything to smooth his path.
Yet did he really want to forsake his country now? Was that what he wanted for the children? He imagined the buildings empty, the grass in the courtyard growing between the stones, the cedar tree untrimmed. Or the army would move in — they would be glad of the building.
“I must decide,” he said wearily and reached for the aspirin bottle yet again.
Tally, meanwhile, threw herself into all the activities that were going on. She helped Clemmy resettle the mice that were caught in the kitchen. She dealt with Kit when he said he didn’t want to be an erupting seedpod in Armelle’s drama class, and she stirred Josie’s cauldron of whatever wort they were using till her arms ached.
But sometimes she went off on her own into the woods and made things she had not made since she was six years old: little houses of sticks and interlacing leaves which a worm might come and live in if he felt so inclined, or a necklace of scarlet berries which she did not put on but left lying in the grass. Or she would wander over to the library after supper and Julia would find her bent over a book of those phrases that are supposed to help people with their lives. Sayings like: “You cannot stop the birds of sorrow from flying over your head, but you can stop them nesting in your hair.”
“Well, how goes it?” asked Matteo as Tally came to his room for her tutorial. “Any problems?”
“No, not really. I’m all right.”
Matteo looked at her. He knew that she was not all right and he knew why. The other members of staff, though they watched over Tally with concern, were sure she would soon get over her disappointment.
It was a mistake that he did not make. He and Johannes had met when they were seven years old and they had known in an instant that they were going to be friends. Till Matteo was in his twenties his life had been bound up with that of the king — his best ideas and most selfless visions of the future had come from this relationship — and when he cut himself off and stormed away from Bergania some part of him had died.
His friendship with Johannes had lasted for fifteen years. Tally and Karil had known each other only for a few days, but that made no difference. Sometimes you meet someone — and it can be at any age or time — with whom you should go forward into the future. All the children had warmed to Karil, but for Tally the friendship had been special. She had believed totally in Karil and his wish to live a life that was honorable and free — and she believed that in this life she had a part to play. Now the ground had gone from under her feet. She was not the sort of child to pine, but Karil’s silence had hurt her very deeply.
Matteo glanced at the sackbut propped up in a corner of the room. He had not played it since he came back from Bergania.
Then he said, “Karil is safe, I can tell you that. Nothing bad has happened to him. He is with his family.”
Would this make it better for her? In one way yes, but in another way no. She must surely think that an able-bodied boy could write a letter and put it in a box.
There were other things he kept to himself: his visit to a lawyer who told him that there was nothing legal he could do to take Karil away from his grandfather; and the message he had sent to old von Arkel, who was supposed to have fled Bergania and be on his way to England.