Blow Out the Moon

by Libby Koponen

  Finally, it was finished: thirty-two pages — on big, almost American-sized paper, not composition book pages. I read the whole thing out loud. Some people just sat and listened; some people went on with jacks and cat’s cradle; but everyone listened, no one seemed bored, and several people commented on how long it was.

  “Thirty-two pages! I expect you really WILL be a writer when you grow up.”

  I hoped that meant they thought it was GOOD, and not just — long. But more than that, I hoped that when Marza saw it on Hobby Day, she would read it — and that when she read it, she’d think it was good.

  A page from “The Richardsons,” the thirty-two-page story I wrote.

  Chapter Thirty-four:

  Marza, a Great Lady

  I was proud of my writing and I did show off about it a little, but in an English way.

  Once, I was washing my hands in the cloakroom (they were blue all over with ink) and an older girl said, “Libby Koponen! Your hands! Whatever have you been doing?”

  “Just writing,” I said airily, in a very English way.

  She thought that was funny and repeated it to everyone else: “ ‘Just writing!’ says Libby.”

  Part of the story I read.

  Everyone knew I wanted to be an author when I grew up, and some people read what I wrote and said it was good. I wrote some more stories about The Crazy Old Witch (I only let Clare read those; they were too childish and too American for the others). To the others, I read a story about an English girl who had been ill and never had many friends until she went to school and learned how to ride.

  But “The Richardsons” was by far my longest and, I thought, my best story.

  It told about all the things the family did in the forest during the war, including all the children’s complaints and arguments, and ended with: “The Germans were out of that part of England and Mr. Richardson was home at last!”

  After I read it out loud to everyone that day in the study, I copied it over neatly, in ink, in my best handwriting, and gave it to Miss Tomlinson for Hobby Day.

  As we walked around the art room on Hobby Day, looking at the things everyone had made, I wondered, again, what Marza (who was about the only person in the school who hadn’t read it) would think.

  She didn’t say anything when she saw the story, but when she left the Art Room, she took it with her.

  The next day after prayers she said she wanted to see me in her office. Usually, only seniors were called in there, and even they weren’t called in often. Everyone looked at me, wondering.

  When I went in, she was at her desk, sitting up very straight. She motioned for me to stand right next to her, so I did. My story was on the desk in front of her. I was standing so close to her that I could see right into her eyes. I was a little scared — they looked so serious.

  “I read your story,” she said, “and it was a good story. However — you made one mistake.”

  My throat started to hurt the way it does when you’re about to cry and trying hard not to. I’d been so proud of the story and I had wanted her to like it so much and she didn’t — I’d said something terrible, wrong, I could tell by the way she was looking at me.

  She drew herself up proudly, like a queen, and said, “The Germans never landed in England.”

  I started to cry — I didn’t know why saying they had was so bad, but I understood that it was a terrible thing to have done.

  “No foreign army has ever invaded us,” she said. “They have often tried; they have never succeeded.”

  She talked more and said a poem about “this little world, this precious stone set in a silver sea” and “moat” and “this blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.”

  I tried to stop crying and listen properly but I couldn’t. I’d wanted that story to be good so badly. She stopped talking and pulled me onto her lap.

  I stopped crying. I sat up straight and pulled my handkerchief out of my sleeve (in England all children carry handkerchiefs tucked into the sleeve of their jumpers). Marza looked at it and I did, too: a crumpled ball, wet in some places, stiff yellow-green in others. Gently, she tucked it back into my sleeve.

  “Most wet and uncomfy,” she said.

  She handed me a clean one and I blew my nose and dried my eyes and the rest of my face.

  “There, that’s better, isn’t it?” Marza said. She smiled and gave me a little squeeze. “Off you go — and it IS a good story, you know.”

  When I walked back to my form room I felt proud of my writing again. “The Richardsons” was a good story. Marza liked it.

  And I thought about the rest. It was odd — I never would have thought of Marza as cuddling anyone. She didn’t make me feel embarrassed about crying, or the handkerchief — it must have looked disgusting to her, but she didn’t make a face or a disgusted comment; she acted as though it — and my crying — were perfectly all right. That’s what being truly polite means: thinking about how other people feel and acting in the way that will make them feel best.

  Before that, I had admired Marza, but I had been a little bit afraid of her, too. From then on, I wasn’t afraid of her anymore, maybe in awe of her — she was a true lady. And after that, whenever I heard or read the phrase “a great lady,” I thought of her.

  Chapter Thirty-five:

  Riding on the Downs

  It was almost spring again and we were riding on the downs. The “downs” are little hills with no trees, just grass open to the sky. They look like the hills you draw when you’re little. We were racing to Miss Monkman, who was on top of a hill; she’d told us to stand still until she got there and that when she raised her arm we could start — and we could go as fast as we wanted to when we were going uphill; going down we had to walk or trot.

  As soon as Frisky and I got to the bottom and the ground was flat, I squeezed with my legs to make him go faster and he bounded into a canter. The grass felt short and springy. My feet were in the stirrups, my heels pushed down, my ankles acted like springs every time he bounded forward — but the rest of me stayed still except for my hips, which sank down into the saddle and moved back and forth in rhythm with his canter. I’d finally learned to canter and I loved it. It’s hard to describe what cantering feels like but I’ll try.

  Your legs grip the horse, your calves especially, and your hipbones move one TWO three (and then a little pause while the horse is in the air for a second), one TWO three (the little flying pause again). Your legs don’t move, your upper body doesn’t move — just your hips. Your hands are kind of pressing into the rough mane; they don’t move, either, but your elbows bend in rhythm, too.

  When we got to the top of the hill, I squeezed the reins and gripped hard to make him slow down: it’s a little scary going fast downhill — you feel off-balance, as though you might slip out of the saddle and slide right down the pony’s neck, And anyway it was against the rules of the race.

  So we walked down but when we got to the bottom he jumped into the canter as soon as I squeezed — and up the last hill we galloped. In a gallop your hips don’t move: you stand up in the stirrups a little bit and you feel the pony stretch out and jump, stretch out and jump, faster and faster, over and over … the rhythm isn’t smooth like the canter, and it’s so fast. You feel almost like the pony’s taking little jumps into the air, pushing and pulling and stretching himself with each foot, and the hooves on the ground are so loud. Frisky wanted to win as much as I did, I could feel it. We went faster and faster — it was almost hard to breathe. I just stood up in the stirrups and looked straight between his ears at Miss Monkman until we got there.

  We were first.

  “Well done, Libby!” she said, and I patted Frisky and felt proud.

  I’d worked hard at my riding and, even though almost all the other girls were better at it than I was, I still felt proud that I’d learned how to do it.

  And I loved it. Nothing is as much fun as riding your best on a good horse. That day the air was wet, with that muddy l
ate-winter, almost-spring feeling, and I was riding my best. My body was doing everything I wanted it to do all by itself. Without my even thinking, it moved in perfect rhythm with Frisky.

  Maybe, I thought, next term I’d learn to jump; and then I remembered that I wouldn’t be there next term.

  Chapter Thirty-six:

  “God Save the Queen!”

  It was the middle of March, the last day of term for the people going home by car, and — in England — muddy early spring. The daffodils were out and everything had that wet, coming-alive smell, the damp gray expectancy of early spring. Some people like real spring best and some people like fall best, but I like that: spring just before it really happens, when the sky is gray and everything else is damp, ready and waiting, just about to come alive.

  The people going home by car were leaving after the play, and I was one of them. My parents were in the audience, and when the play was over, they’d drive me to London.

  The play was a history of Sibton Park, and it started with Buffer as the man who built the house. There were scenes of the Middle Ages, and wars — people going off to fight the French, or coming home from beating them.

  The first scene I really liked showed Azma Haydray, who was quite fat and did look rather like a man anyway, dressed up in a red soldiers’ coat, a black three-cornered hat, riding britches, and black boots with spurs marching onto the stage with some other soldiers behind her.

  They were carrying swords and the flags from the church, the flags real English soldiers had carried into battle. In the same war Nelson said, “England expects every man to do his duty” and died doing his at Trafalgar, on the deck sprinkled with sand for the blood.

  Nelson led the English navy in the days of cannons and sailing ships; he was one of England’s heroes. The dormitories Nelson and Trafalgar (his last battle — even though he died in it, the English won) were named to honor him. Before battles they sprinkled the ship decks with sand so people wouldn’t slip on the blood.

  They marched off, beating the drums and singing very loudly while Miss Day played a march on the piano.

  The next good scene was the bachelor shooting himself in the library the night before his wedding (this really happened in real life, too, and there was a rumor that Sibton was haunted by him). His brother found the body. The girl playing the bachelor wore checked trousers and a jacket with tails. Her short, curly hair was brushed straight up so she looked like a man.

  There were scenes of people leaving to fight in World War I and World War II; I think Marza’s husband and some of her brothers had died in those wars. Maybe that was why she felt so strongly about the Germans never landing in England: because people in her family had died so that wouldn’t happen.

  The last scene showed a classroom. A senior was a teacher, in a grown-up dress with her hair curling around her shoulders and glasses, and the smallest day girl in the school was sitting at a little desk in the school uniform. Then I saw why they’d let her be in the play: because she was so little, she made the senior look grown up. The senior talked about history.

  “In the twentieth century two terrible World Wars have entirely changed the position of Britain, and she is no longer the richest and most powerful country in the world. But in the past …”

  A white, gauzy curtain moved across the back of the stage, and people — all the characters in the play — slowly appeared behind it.

  “Oh, look!” Felicity said. “We’re going into the pahst!”

  (That was her only line. But she did say it well — “pahst.”)

  The bachelor who had killed himself in the library shouted, “A school!” and then pulled out his gun and shot himself in the head, and his brother stepped forward and said, “By gad, there goes my brother. He’s done it again!”

  That was the end.

  When the bows and clapping stopped, the piano started “God Save the Queen” and we all stood up.

  As usual, I didn’t sing, but Jennifer nudged me and whispered, “Come on, Libby! Sing!”

  Clare sort of smiled and other people looked around at me and smiled, too — they all wanted me to sing; and it was the last time I’d ever be able to. As soon as the play was over, my parents would be taking me to London, and then to Europe, and then back to America.

  It would be good to sing “God Save the Queen” with everyone. I hoped I wasn’t betraying the Revolution, but I wanted to sing it with them once, before I left, so I did.

  The tune is “My Country ’Tis of Thee,” but because the words are different the music sounds different, too — slower, more stately, sadder.

  God save our gracious Queen,

  Long live our noble Queen,

  God save the Queen.

  Send her victorious,

  Happy and glorious,

  Long to reign over us,

  God save the Queen!

  Everyone smiled at me hard and then, without talking (we weren’t allowed to talk after church and plays and prayers until we’d left the room), we went outside. The rain had stopped and it was really sunny — so sunny that you had to blink and squint at first and there, standing right in the sunniest spot, were my parents.

  They were holding hands, which none of the other parents were doing, and looking around at everything — my father eager, my mother a little shy. She was wearing her pink suit, and they seemed younger — more happy and excited — than the other parents.

  I was watching them when Buffer came running up.

  “Oh, Libby, I thought you’d gone. I want to say goodbye,” she said — this was her last day, too. She hugged me; I looked up at her — my head only came a little above her stomach. She was staring into the distance, over my head, and her gray eyes looked sad: What was she thinking of? Leaving Sibton? Growing up?

  I went over to Clare and Jennifer and some other juniors, who were standing all together in a little clump on the front drive. Jennifer was proudly and excitedly telling everyone that she’d gotten me to sing “God Save the Queen.”

  “Here she is!” someone said and they all looked at me.

  I was the only one who was leaving; they were all coming back the next term. They were waiting for me to say something, but I can’t talk when big things are happening and this was starting to feel like a big thing — I was leaving.

  The gravel on the drive looked dazzlingly white.

  “Well, then,” Jennifer said. “Write to us, will you?”

  I nodded, and they all said they would write back.

  “We have your address in any case.”

  My parents and Marza were at the gate of the Tudor Garden. My father was waving, my mother was smiling as though she was glad to see me, Marza was waiting for me. I looked at Clare and she looked at me; she gave my hand a little pat and kind of smiled. I looked at her and then walked away quickly.

  It was odd, I had wanted to go back to America so much, and now I was sad to be leaving; my throat ached with trying not to cry.

  Marza and I looked at each other for a minute and then she said, “Good-bye, Libby. If you do not become a well-known writer I shall be very much surprised.”

  “Good-bye, Marza,” I said.

  Chapter Thirty-seven:

  Going Home

  … on the French coast the light Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand, Glimmering and vast …

  — from “Dover Beach” by Matthew Arnold

  Not long after that my family and I left England for France on another boat. We stood on deck, looking back at England. Behind the white, wall-like cliffs that rose — “glimmering and vast,” just as the poem said — straight up from the water, I could see the bright green of the downs, those grassy little hills I’d ridden on Frisky.

  I looked at them, remembering that, and how hard riding had been at first. I’d been very bad at it: My first report said: “VF (for Very Fair). Far too stiff. MUST learn to relax.” And I had — my last report said: “FG (for Fairly Good). Libby has finally learned to relax and has really
improved.” It had taken a long time, but I’d done it.

  I’d gone to Sibton Park almost exactly a year ago. I thought about that first night, and Marza; the sack on my birthday, and Hazel Fogarty kicking her sheet up in the air. I remembered Matron and being ill with Clare, and snug afternoons in our study — pressing my face against the cold window, and then writing or chatting. But most of all I remembered those pale sunny summer mornings when Sibton Park was new and strange to me, and how hard I’d tried there, at everything.

  “Today is April first,” I said. “The first day of summer term at Sibton Park.”

  My mother looked down at me and said, in her gentlest voice, “Are you sorry your little nose isn’t there, being counted with all the other little noses?”

  I looked up, and even opened my mouth to answer, and then stopped. “Yes” wasn’t right, but “no” wasn’t true either. It was a strange feeling.

  Finally, after two months of driving around Europe, we took another boat, a Norwegian one, back to America.

  For most of the voyage, I read on the deck with a blanket over my legs and the wind blowing my hair and the pages, too, when I didn’t hold them tightly.

  Sometimes, I went to the very back of the ship and stared at the trail of white foam — like a wide, white, sparkling road getting wider and wider — that the ship left behind it. There was nothing around me but wind and sea and sky and sunlight and, sometimes, seagulls. I loved being alone with that sparkling, churning water and light, with nothing but water and space between me and America.

  As soon as my mother unlocked the front door I ran into our house — the furniture was the same, the walls were the same colors, but it felt completely different.

  I ran upstairs. The hall looked so short!

  My father had warned us that everything would look smaller — places from the past always did, he said — but I wasn’t expecting it to FEEL different.