I imagined him just standing there, watching his father’s legion leave: men in tunics and metal helmets marching straight down a Roman road. That was the last time the boy ever saw his father — his father disappeared into the gray mist and never came back.
I saw that so clearly in my mind that I was almost surprised to look around me and see the old tree, the dappled light on the lawn, the faded pink house — surprised and glad. The old bricks’ colors were soft and peaceful — beautiful, even — glowing in the sun. They’d been there for hundreds and hundreds of years. They were solid and safe.
The letter I wrote asking about staying with Matron.
Chapter Twenty-four:
After Lights Out
The days got longer and longer: in England, the sky stays light almost all night in summer. When we went to bed it was still bright blue. The seniors had Lights Out much later — they were still outside when the sky had turned a strange silvery-white color and we were sitting up in bed, talking. If there was a pause in our conversation, we could hear them.
One night we talked, first about our running heats (we were practicing for Sports Day), and then about the Tennis Match. Juniors didn’t play tennis, but we’d all watched it, the whole school had. The look on the loser’s face was awful — and the loser was Jill, Buffer’s twin sister.
“Buffer didn’t even say anything to her,” Veryan said.
“She didn’t the day the seniors got their exams back, either,” Clare said, sounding even more critical.
I remembered Buffer running up the back stairs two at a time, so fast that she was putting her hands on the steps ahead of her, laughing and screaming: “I pahssed! I pahssed!”
Jill had not passed. She spent the whole afternoon crying in Alice and Tina’s room, being comforted by them — and Buffer ignored her.
“I hated Buffer that day,” Veryan said.
“So did I,” Brioney said.
“She was selfish,” said Clare.
I didn’t hate Buffer, but I did remember how the other seniors had acted. Alice and Tina passed, everyone knew they would; I don’t think anyone even asked them. Someone asked two other seniors if they’d passed. One looked a little embarrassed — as if she hadn’t really deserved to — and said yes. The other smiled, trying to be casual, but you could tell she was pleased. Only Buffer ran around screaming and laughing and telling people who hadn’t even asked her. I understood that you shouldn’t behave like that, ever; but I didn’t know if Jill being her own twin made it worse. I was wondering about that when we heard Matron laughing outside (of course, the windows were all open).
We all went to the same window and looked out. Miss Davenport and Matron were riding in the big meadow that sloped up to a skyline of trees. The sky was that strange light silvery color — not like day, but not like night, either — and their horses, Nella and Nike, looked silvery-white, too.
Suddenly Matron leaned forward in the saddle and shook her head, and first Nella, then Nike, GALLOPED towards the top of the meadow, stretching out their necks and tails while Matron shrieked with laughter.
Matron’s laugh got fainter and fainter as they raced farther and farther away, the horses’ tails streaming behind them.
We stood close together, watching. No one talked until we couldn’t see them anymore and were slowly getting back into bed.
“I didn’t know Matron rode,” Clare said quietly.
I hadn’t, either. I listened for Matron and the horses while the room grew dimmer; on the towel rack, I could see the white part of my towel, but not the colors of its gray and red stripes. I listened hard, but the only sounds were some seniors playing tennis: a ball being hit, someone calling “BAD luck!” and a piano — probably other seniors were rehearsing the play. None of us were in that (only one junior, a four-year-old day girl, was), and suddenly I had the idea of putting on our own play. ONLY the Night Nursery would be in it and we’d make it up ourselves.
In the morning I told the others, and everyone wanted to do it. In bed that night, we decided to make the play about doctors and nurses falling in love with each other (this, I admit, was kind of copied from an English TV show). The first thing we made up was a song about them falling in love, which Brioney and Clare and Veryan sang in American accents, one verse each. I just hummed the chorus.
Veryan made up a song to sing by herself. Her idea was that she would march down the aisle, dressed in a bride’s outfit, filing her nails with the file from my manicure kit, singing:
I’ll be walking’ down the aisle
with a smile
filin’ me nails with me file.
She got out of bed to show us. I had to laugh: She filed her nails so briskly and looked so businesslike about the whole thing, and the words were so ridiculous! Once we started working on “Emergency Ward Eleven: A Love Story,” after Lights Out was hilarious: we laughed and laughed. We rehearsed every night, and the whole school came to the performance — even all the seniors came. At the end they clapped and clapped, and some people shouted “Bravo!” and “Encore!” and “Author, Author!” Even though it was only in the Nursery, and not on a real stage, everyone acted just as if we were all grown-up and at the theater.
Chapter Twenty-five:
“Going Home Tomorrow!”
It was the last day of summer term: All the people who were going home by car (most of the school) had already left, so the rest of us were all put in the same wing. I was in Trafalgar, a big dormitory down the hall from Nelson, where I’d spent that first night. Hazel Fogarty was there, too, with other fourth- and fifth-formers — Clare and Brioney and Veryan had gone home by car.
It was also the night before my birthday. At Sibton Park on the night before your birthday, two people from your dormitory went around to all the other dormitories with a pillow case, and everyone who liked you put in a little present. Then when you woke up on the morning of your birthday, the two girls from your dormitory who had gone around gave you the pillowcase, which was always called “your sack.” But I wasn’t in my own dormitory, and everyone from it had already gone home, so I wouldn’t be having one.
Because the Trafalgar girls were in the fourth or fifth form, Lights Out was much later. Everyone seemed very excited. They jumped up and down on their beds singing — practically shouting — a song with a lively tune:
One more day of pain,
One more day of sorrow,
One more day of this old dump,
We’re going home tomorrow!
I was a little surprised to see Linda Jay shouting and laughing — I don’t think I’d ever even seen her smile before. She had long blonde braids and hair cut straight across her forehead. She was the best rider in the school; that made sense to me because her hair — those braids, that fringe — made you think of horses. Also she had very long legs and her mouth was long and determined-looking, too. Linda Jay and Foggy were best friends. They sang the song again.
Foggy said, “Come on, Libby! Sing!”
So I did. We sang and jumped up and down and threw pillows at each other until Matron came in and turned out the light; after that they just talked. I don’t remember the conversation: I must have fallen asleep at the very beginning of it, which was unusual. In the Night Nursery I was always the last one to fall asleep — by far.
When I woke up the next morning it was hot and sunny, and Linda Jay and Hazel Fogarty were standing next to my bed, both smiling, with their hands behind their backs.
“Happy birthday, Libby!”
“Many happy returns!” everyone said, and Linda Jay handed me a white pillowcase — a sack!
I was too surprised and happy to say anything.
“Your sack,” Linda said.
I looked inside and then took the things out one by one. There was a book from Catherine Marshall; a little notebook from Matron with a note about writing (and seeing me soon); little things people had made; a pencil; a pen; jacks; a little vase for dolls’ flowers … there were so many presen
ts — EVERYONE must have put something in. I was surprised and very, very pleased that so many people liked me.
The little doll’s vase from the sack.
Then we all sang:
One more day of pain,
One more day of sorrow,
One more day of this old dump,
We’re going HOME toMORrow!
Foggy FLUNG her sheet into the air — it billowed out sunny and white and then floated down slowly, full of light —
“TODAY!”
Chapter Twenty-six:
At the Vicarage
My parents’ new apartment didn’t seem at all like home, but we didn’t stay there long: We went to Cornwall and then to Matron’s. She said to call her Veronica, and she had a brother about Emmy’s age! His name was Barnabus; Veronica called him Barny. He was blond and plump and seemed to like having us there.
Emmy, Bubby, and me in Cornwall.
They lived in an old house — not as big as Sibton Park, but big, with lots of halls and passageways and a room just for books. There was a big overgrown garden with a swing, and at the back, a fenced-in yard for a flock of chickens!
Emmy and Bubby, of course, thought this was great and spent most of their time playing there. They ran around the house clucking and giggling, too. They had become very good friends — they slept in the same room and Veronica let them sleep in the same bed. She also let them feed the chickens and find their eggs.
I didn’t like the chickens: They were very smelly and, I thought, quite stupid. Barny didn’t like them either. He said, “Before you came, I had to go into the hen house and get the eggs every morning. I hated it!”
He usually played with Willy. Sometimes I played with them, but usually I talked to Veronica or read on the first-floor landing. It had dark green-patterned wallpaper — very old, Veronica had told me. It went well with the house, I thought: branches from all the old trees around it came right up to the windows. One morning I was lying there, reading — with that green wallpaper and those leafy branches it was almost like reading in a tree house. Downstairs, I could hear Veronica typing (she was writing a novel and we talked about it every afternoon). I heard Willy and Barny playing in the small drawing room; after a while, I decided to go down and see what they were doing.
They were playing an old-fashioned, by-hand version of pinball, which they called backgammon. They played this over and over, almost every day! They were playing when I went in: Willy was shooting and Barny was holding a pad of paper. They both looked very serious.
“Shh!” Barnabus said. “He needs to concentrate on his shot!”
Willy looked almost scared as he flicked the marble. Then: “BAD luck!” Barnabus said, in that polite, cheerful English way. “My turn!”
I looked at the pad: There were lots of points for Barnabus, none for Willy.
I went outside: Emmy and Bubby were, of course, in the chicken yard — I could hear them laughing and clucking.
I could have gone in — or asked them to come out — but I didn’t. I didn’t really mind playing alone. After all, if I wanted to talk to someone I could always talk to Veronica, or write to Henry.
Instead, I got on the long, old-fashioned swing — it went up really high.
I was swinging my hardest, singing loudly. (The night before, Veronica had taken me — only me — to a village sing; I was singing an English song I’d learned there called “Green Grow the Rushes, O!” When no one can hear me, I like to sing.) I was seeing if I could get high enough to touch a branch on the next tree with my toe when I heard Veronica calling me.
“Green Grow the Rushes, 0!” is fun to sing — almost like a game. The leader sings:
“I’ll sing you a one-o, green grow the rushes, o!”
Then everyone else sings:
“What is your one-o?”
The leader sings back:
“One is one and all alone and ever more shall be so.
I’ll sing you a two-o, green grow the rushes, o!”
“What is your two-o?”
“Two, two the lily white boys, clothed all in green-o,
One is one and all alone and ever more shall be so!”
(It goes up to twelve.)
I dragged my feet on the ground to stop the swing — in America when we did that we always used to say, “Let the old cat die!” (I don’t know why) — and ran in.
“My parents are coming back early,” she said. “They’ll be here late tonight.”
“I thought they were going to be gone for the whole time,” I said.
“They were.”
It IS kind of fun to be at home without any grown-ups. It was odd; at Sibton Park Veronica had seemed grown up, but here she seemed more like our American teenage baby-sitters, only I liked her even more than I liked them.
“Well!” Veronica said very briskly. “Let’s see what sort of state your rooms are in.”
To make a hospital corner, you pull the sheet out, then tuck in the bottom part. Then you pull the top, folding it in a sort of triangle, and tuck it in very tightly and tidily.
“I’ll help you tidy up!” I said, and I did.
The most interesting part was putting clean sheets on her parents’ bed. She showed me how to make real hospital corners, and the sheets smelled exactly like the sunny lavender on the walk to church. When I said so, Veronica said, “It is that lavender. Mummy dries it and puts it in the linen cupboard.”
That was the only thing she said about her parents.
When I came into the dining room the next morning, Veronica’s mother, a faded gray woman — her face was pale and her hair was pale and kind of messy — was sitting at one end of the table. Barny, Willy, Bubby, Emmy, and Veronica were at the other.
I thought the politest thing to do would be to sit next to Veronica’s mother, so I did. I smiled politely, too, and waited for her to say something.
She looked around, in a bewildered sort of way.
“MUST we have the bottle on the table?” she said. (This was a large milk bottle at the children’s end of the table.) “It looks so …”
She stopped talking and waved her hand kind of helplessly, as though she couldn’t think of a word. At home we never had the bottle on the table, either — my mother always put the milk into a pitcher. I started to say that, but then I thought that would make it seem WORSE that we had done it here; so I looked at the floor (big black and white tiles — I liked them) and then out the windows. The dining room had long windows opening onto the lawn.
I wondered if Veronica’s mother liked us being there. Veronica didn’t say anything: She just picked up the milk bottle, carried it into the kitchen, and came back with a pitcher. She didn’t say a word.
I was making my bed, with hospital corners, when I heard a scream from the next room, Emmy and Bubby’s room.
I ran in. Veronica’s mother was standing in front of an open drawer, and in the drawer, squawking and flapping its wings, was — a chicken!
It looked so ridiculous, and Veronica’s mother looked so astonished, that I laughed. But then, when I saw the mother’s face closer up, I stopped quickly.
“Don’t be afraid,” I said in what I hoped was a calming English voice. “It’s only a chicken. My sisters must have put it there — they’re mad about all animals, even chickens. They’re young and not very sensible yet.”
Veronica’s mother nodded and then sat down on the bed, suddenly.
I looked in the drawer: There was some chicken feed sprinkled on the bottom and a bowl with a little water left in it. The rest of the water had spilled: You could see a big wet spot on the paper. It WAS the kind of thing, exactly the kind of thing, that Emmy and Bubby would have done.
Veronica came running in, and her mother said, sounding VERY angry, “Veronica, those children have put a HEN in a drawer! This is really —”
Veronica grabbed the hen and shoved it at me. “Libby, take this back to the chicken yard.”
I took it in both hands, holding my arms
out straight in front of me to keep it as far away from me as I could. The feathers felt slightly greasy, and under THEM it was warm and wriggling; and (worst of all) solid and squishy at the same time. It also smelled horrible.
I turned my face away from it, but no matter what I did, I could feel it wriggling hotly under my hands. It was heavy, too.
I wasn’t listening, but I couldn’t help hearing Veronica say, “But, Mummy!”
Then her mother (who had a very quiet voice, even when she was angry) said something and Veronica said, “I think they’ve done him a lot of good!”
Her mother must have said something about our influence on Barny.
I got to the chicken yard and sort of threw the chicken over the gate. It flapped its wings as it landed, but didn’t really fly.
Emmy and Bubby came running up.
“Did you put that hen in the drawer?”
Emmy nodded.
“What on Earth did you do that for?” I said.
Emmy and Bubby giggled, and I realized I DID sound sort of too English — like a schoolmistress! I hadn’t been trying to sound English; when I first went to Sibton Park, I did try with my accent — very hard; but now, I didn’t have to try. I just sounded English.
But I really was curious.
“Why?” I said. “Why did you do it?”
“I thought it would be nice for Philip to have another bird’s company,” Emmy said. “Someone to talk to.”
Of all the idiotic reasons!
“Couldn’t you just have brought HIS cage out here?”
“I didn’t think of that.”
Then Bubby said something in their chicken language, and they went on with their game, whatever it was.
I went back inside and found Veronica.
“Was your mother VERY cross about the hen?”
“More startled,” Veronica said. “She’s not used to American children. How would you like to go to the seaside today?”
Blow Out the Moon Page 10