She didn’t say anything, just looked. Everyone was lying down, breathing quietly and slowly. Then …
“Catherine Marshall, were you talking?”
No answer.
“Hazel Fogarty, were you talking?”
No answer.
“Sarah Riley, were you talking?”
No answer.
“Elizabeth Koponen, were you talking?”
“Yes, Marza,” I said proudly — (in books, the girls always owned up).
There was a little pause and then she said, in a different voice, “You’re far too young for this wing of the house.”
She didn’t say anything else, but even after she left, there was no more talking — except that Catherine Marshall whispered, “When she asks, you don’t have to answer.”
I think they all went to sleep after that. I didn’t — I lay on my back with my eyes open, thinking and listening. The girls were nice … they liked me … Sibton Park wouldn’t be like St. Vincent’s. …
The night was very quiet — so quiet that I could hear leaves rustling outside the window.
After a while I heard a sound I hadn’t heard in a long time, a sound that felt safe and familiar even before I knew what it was: a car far away coming closer and closer, getting louder and louder, until its lights swept the room fast. Then the room got dark again, and slowly, the sound faded away.
I heard that every night in my room in America.
I lay on my back, listening for the next one. Finally I heard it. First the engine from far away getting closer and louder — it felt lonely and adventurous from far away, but safe, too; and then exciting when the sound was really loud and the lights swept the room. Then the sound went farther and farther away until I couldn’t hear it anymore, and the night was still and peaceful and quiet; until the next safe sound — a car from far away coming closer.
Chapter Fifteen:
Talking to a Real Horse
The next day, there weren’t any classes: The first day of term was always a day just for everyone to get settled in.
As soon as I was by myself and could, I thought, do what I wanted (which was after I’d been moved into my new dormitory, the Night Nursery, and been shown around the school), I ran to the big meadow where the horses were.
I was a little surprised by how BIG they were and decided not to get too close. There was a dead tree, gray and smooth like driftwood, lying on its side in the sun, and I stood near that, watching the horses eating grass. After a while a big gray one lifted its head up and looked at me.
A pony in the big meadow. I took this picture myself, with a Brownie camera my father had given me.
It walked towards me slowly, kind of curiously, with its neck stretched out, swishing its tail. It looked very relaxed. It came right up to me and sniffed me. Then it touched me — sort of nudged me — with its nose. I didn’t know what to do. In books they always said horses could tell if you were scared, and that quick movements frightened them, so I just stood very still and tried not to be afraid. The horse bent down its head and shoved me with its nose until I was pushed back against the dead tree, and it was standing right in front of me. This wasn’t done in a MEAN way — it was as though the horse was old and bossy, and saying, “Get over there.”
So I did.
Then I was trapped between the horse and the tree. The horse’s neck was higher than my head. I stood still and started talking to the horse in a quiet, steady voice, the way people did in books. The horse pushed its nose against my chest — hard — so my back pressed into the tree, and then, very slowly, it rubbed its whole face against me, pushing hard, rubbing up and down my chest and stomach. It closed its eyes and rubbed the space in between them, and then the long bony part of its face that went from between its eyes down to its nose — over and over, up and down my body — and then it turned its head and put one foot out in front of the others (even its feet were big) and rubbed one side of its face against me, then the other.
It didn’t hurt, except where a bump on the tree was pressing into my back. I kept talking, quietly and calmly. Finally the horse kind of shook itself all over (as though it was saying, “Oh! I needed that!”); gave me one last nudge with its nose; and ambled away, head hanging down, neck stretched out, tail swishing. It stopped a few feet away from me and started munching grass again.
That was the first time I ever talked to a horse.
I felt a little proud of myself and very happy. I had talked to a real horse. The books had been right (I like it when things in books turn out to be true) — I’d remembered what they said to do and I’d done it.
When something frightening happens, the best thing to do, I think, is to stay calm, figure out what to do, and then (even if you’re afraid) make yourself do it, no matter what. “Make sure you’re right, then go ahead,” as Davy Crockett said.
Anyway, although it was a little scary at first, it was neat to have been that close to a real horse.
I walked back to the house slowly, out of the meadow and into “the paddock” and up some brick steps. Then I was on a big smooth lawn called the Lower Garden, with bushes cut into fancy shapes. The part of the house I could see from here (the house was huge, with more than a hundred rooms) was made of rose-colored brick; it even looked old. (I knew from the little booklet that it had been built in 1300-something.)
The paddock steps, with the Lower Garden and part of the house in the background.
And what I could see was only part of Sibton Park — there was another huge lawn called the Upper Garden, a Tudor Garden (twisty little brick paths arranged in a complicated pattern around little hedges, with an old sundial in the middle), tennis courts, and the Rose Garden. Our whole yard in America could have fit into half the Rose Garden. It was strange to think that one person owned all of it, that it used to be her house.
You can use this plan to see where these things were and what they looked like. 1. Front drive 2. Main house (Marza) 3. Classrooms on ground floor, Night Nursery and other junior dormitories on second 4. More classrooms (French) 5. Art room — later, theater for play 6. Classrooms 7. Stables 8. Laundry 9. Yard 10. Rose Garden 11. Tennis courts 12. Kitchen Garden 13. Meadows and fields 14. Lower Garden 15. Upper Garden 16. Tudor Garden 17. Steps up to lawn 18. Paddock 19. Ring 20. Out of bounds
More of the Lower Garden, with different angles of the house in the background.
I opened a dark green door in a brick wall and then I knew where I was again — right next to our part of the house. I ran up to the big room called the Nursery.
Matron was sitting at a round wooden table, folding clothes. She was sixteen-and-a-half, but she seemed older than our baby-sitters in America — she seemed like a grown-up, not a teenager, maybe because she was so big. She was almost as tall as my father and I think even bigger.
Everyone called her “Matron,” but (as I found out later — I didn’t remember any Matrons in the school stories) it wasn’t her name: it was her job. I don’t know what she did while we were having lessons, but when we weren’t, she was usually in the Nursery, or some place else where we could easily find her and talk to her. She also put us to bed, gave us our baths, and looked after us when we were ill.
The matron at English boarding schools for younger children looks after the girls somewhat the way a nanny does and is called “Matron,” just as nannies are called “Nanny.” The Matron my first term was unusually young, interested in us, and fun.
Everything about her was round: she had a round face and shiny blonde hair in a round bun at the back, very fair skin, and round navy-blue eyes. That day she was wearing a navy-blue dress with a white collar and white rims on the sleeves. This was her first term at Sibton Park, too; she had just left school herself and was only going to be at Sibton Park for one term — she would be going to the university in September. She wanted to be a writer, too. She had told me all this after breakfast, when she was moving me into my new dormitory and showing me around. I liked her.
When
I came in from the meadow, she said, “My goodness, Libby, look at your jumper! Whatever have you been doing?”
I looked. My sweater (“jumper”) and culottes and even my socks were covered with horse hairs. I told her what had happened.
“That must have been Nella. A big gray mare?”
“I don’t know if it was a mare or not — it was big, and seemed old.”
“She is. Twenty at least.”
I was pleased that I’d guessed right about the age and decided it would be all right to ask a question.
“Why do you think she did that?”
“Scratching herself.”
She explained that horses’ faces get very itchy and that they can’t scratch themselves or each other, and that a person in wool clothes is the very best thing.
“For their backs they roll on the grass,” Brioney (the seven-year-old in my new dormitory) said — she was lolling on a bed by the window. “Like this!”
She rolled on the bed, rubbing her back into it, and waved her arms and legs. Her feet were big — although she was younger, Brioney was much bigger than I was. She had big bones and big round eyes that were so blue they sometimes looked green, and strong bones in her cheeks — even her mouth was big. That might make her sound ugly but she wasn’t — later one of the seniors said Brioney would grow up to be “a beauty.” She was kind of babyish, though.
While Brioney was rolling around like a horse itching its back, Clare came to the door. She was in my new dormitory, too, and she was my age. She was a new girl as well. Her last name was Sweeting and she seemed sweet, but I liked her. She had blonde hair and very fair skin; everything about her was light — even her voice.
She came into the room quietly, and then she asked me, kind of shyly, if I would like to go for a walk with her.
“Sure!” I said.
Brioney sat up eagerly, as though she wanted to go too, but Matron said, “Stay here with me, Brioney — you can help butter the bread.”
So Clare and I went by ourselves. We were wearing exactly the same clothes: fawn-colored jumpers (we each had on a pullover with a cardigan over it), gray wool culottes, and fawn-colored knee socks. Only our shoes were different. Having a uniform was kind of fun, I thought.
She told me that she had an older sister named Carol who had been at Sibton for two years. I didn’t say anything, and there was a little pause.
Then she asked me what my “hobbies” were.
“What do you mean?” I said. I thought of the school stories. “Things like stamp collecting?”
“Well, yes. Things you’re interested in — that you do just for the fun of it.”
Playing isn’t really a hobby.
“Does writing stories count as a hobby?” I said.
“Yes, of course,” she said.
“Well, then: writing. I do write, quite a lot — I’m going to be an author when I grow up.” Clare looked interested, and asked more questions. I told her one of the Crazy Old Witch stories, and when the Witch said “My foot!” she laughed. Talking about my writing felt strange, but fun, and after that we talked about lots of other things. We walked around the fields talking until Brioney came out and said it was time for dinner.
Chapter Sixteen:
Manners and Matron
All three of us walked to the Dining Hall together, and when we got there, Matron told me that I would be sitting next to her at meals, so she could teach me to “eat properly.”
That, I learned over the next few days, meant always holding your fork in your left hand, and your knife in your right, and eating from the back of the fork, instead of the front. You used the knife to push food onto the back of the fork. It was hard, especially with peas, which we had a lot — they were always sliding off the fork, and of course, you couldn’t use your fingers to push them back on.
There were lots of other eating rules, too, that we don’t have in America: When you butter bread, put the butter on your plate; then (with your butter knife, not a regular knife) put a little bit — just what you’re going to eat at that bite, no more — on the bread, eat it, then, when you’re going to take another bite, put on a little more. NEVER butter the whole piece, never scrape your knife on the side of the plate.
This is what I mean by the back of the fork.
When you’re finished, put your knife and fork together in the middle of the plate, with the fork’s prongs facing up. When you’re not finished, put the handle of the knife on the right side of the plate, with the blade in the middle, and the fork handle on the left side of the plate, with the prongs in the middle and facing down. This is so the servants know when to take your plate away and when not to.
There are rules not just for how you eat, but what you talk about at meals.
One day my milk had yellowy splotches floating in it.
“Yuck!” I said. Matron looked cross. “Yuck!” wasn’t an English word, I knew that, but I was so surprised by the milk that it slipped out. I held out my cup: “Look!”
She looked.
“You’re jolly lucky — you got the cream!”
She frowned at me — then she frowned at Brioney and some other people, who were giggling. They stopped.
I took a sip before she could tell me to, but I could feel the lumps in it, and I made a face.
Matron looked even more annoyed.
There was a little pause and then she said, in her storytelling voice, “Once, there was a very important person.”
Everyone put down their knives and forks (in the still-eating position) to listen — we loved it when Matron told stories.
“This very important person went to a luncheon party, and there was a caterpillar in his salad. So he folded it up in a piece of lettuce —,” she imitated him putting the caterpillar in the middle of the lettuce, folding the lettuce neatly around it with his knife, and then pushing it firmly onto his fork, “— and ate it.”
She imitated him chewing and swallowing politely, with no expression at all on his face.
The others were listening calmly; I was horrified.
“But WHY?” I said. “Why would he do that?”
I looked around — Clare was looking amused; she didn’t laugh or smile, but I could tell something was making her laugh inside (you can tell by her eyes, and the corners of her mouth — they quiver a little). Matron looked at me and blinked in that mild, calm English way (it’s how they show that they’re surprised).
“He had to. He was a very important person.”
The others nodded and went on eating, as though that made sense. It didn’t to me. But I did understand that you don’t make comments (or even a face) about food, no matter what. So that night, when we had the English idea of spaghetti — plates of plain spaghetti, which they called “macaroni,” and a small pitcher of completely smooth, very runny ketchup to pour on top — I didn’t say anything.
Chapter Seventeen:
Lessons
But I did still talk like myself during lessons.
Lessons started after quite a lot of others things had happened: When the bell first rang, we got up, dressed quickly, folded our mattresses in half (this was supposed to air them out), and went down to breakfast. Then we came back upstairs, made our beds, and lined up for prayers.
We marched through Marza’s part of the house to a beautiful room called the Long Room. It had big fireplaces at both ends and dark wood square panels on all the walls. We stood in rows. Marza stood in front of us, next to a very polished little table, and the mistresses all stood on one side.
We bowed our heads and said a prayer, and then, when Marza picked up her hymn book, we opened ours. (The hymn number for the day was always written on a little board in our part of the house, where we lined up.)
Then Miss Day played the piano and we all sang. That morning it was one of our favorites, “Onward Christian Soldiers.” We almost shouted the chorus:
Onward Christian SOLDiers!
Marching as to WAR!
With the cr
oss of JEsus
Going on before!
I liked singing that.
The music to “Onward Christian Soldiers.”
After the hymn, Marza made announcements, if there were any. Announcements were usually just which dorms had been talking after Lights Out and how they would be punished. But that morning she said that seniors could audition for the school play that day after lessons.
Then, slowly and majestically, she picked up her prayer book and hymn book and walked out, her back very straight. Then (this happened every day), Miss Day played “The British Grenadiers” and we marched out, row by row, and went to our form rooms for lessons.
Our form, IIB, was in a long, low, white metal building by itself. There were windows all along one side of it and all day sun poured in — sometimes, it even got hot.
Everyone in the class was younger than I was. They were all-day girls (girls who didn’t sleep at the school but just came for lessons) except for Brioney and me and the only boy in the school, Mo.
Lessons were interesting — not at all like school in America. We read real books and copied Alice in Wonderland to practice our handwriting, and out loud we read real poetry. We had English History, World History, and Ancient History. In Nature Study we found plants in the woods and fields and drew pictures of them. In Geography we copied maps and colored in the sea with short strokes of light blue pencils. For Singing we went to a special room and Miss Barton played the piano while we sang old folk songs like “My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean” (after the first letter from Henry came, everyone thought it was hilarious to sing “My Henry lies over the ocean,” nudging each other and looking at me) and “Loch Lomond.”
I tried hard to be good at everything except singing: I have a terrible voice and I know it. (On my reports I always got “Poor.” Once she added: “Shows some improvement, though.”) French was hard, because I’d never had it. All the other kids had; and it was because I didn’t know it that I was in IIB, not IIA with Clare and the other girls my age. So I tried extra hard at French.
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