Blow Out the Moon (21 page)
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.
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.
Emmy and I ran up to Kenny’s, where his mother was gardening. She hugged us and cried, and said, “I always knew you’d come back like this!” And when Peg and Pat and Kenny came home from school, they were as happy to see Emmy and me as we were to see them. We stayed up long after dinner, talking, in the Tampones’ front yard — the summer night sounds were just as I’d remembered them: the little insects, the leaves swishing whenever there was a wind, and, later, a baseball game on TV or the radio. …
The sky was dark enough to show lots of white stars when Mrs. Tampone said it was bedtime, and when everyone said oh no, not yet, she smiled down at us and said, as though she was really glad, too:
“Libby and Emmy are home for good now. You’ll see each other tomorrow.”
And we did: We walked to school together just as usual, except that there was lots more to tell each other.
And just as usual, we separated as soon as we got to the Big Rock. On the playground people from my class came running over, waving and shouting until almost everyone in the class was crowded around me — everyone but Henry.
I kept looking around for him, but he wasn’t there.
All the girls talked at once, telling the news and commenting on my English clothes (I was wearing my Sibton Park white-and-blue-striped summer dress) and my English accent (I tried not to have one but I couldn’t help it, it was just how I talked).
One of the boys said, looking a little puzzled, “All the girls have been going around telling the teacher: ‘A tomboy’s coming into the class.’ But you seem like a girl now.”
In the classroom, I looked again for Henry. Could he be absent?
The room was like the old one: big, with the same kind of desks and blackboards and bookshelves and windows. Even the pencil sharpener was in the same corner, at the edge of the windows!
And the teacher seemed nice. She said, “So you’re the famous Libby! I’ve heard so much about you!” The way she said that, and smiled, made her seem very warm-hearted. All the grown-ups I’d seen so far seemed warm-hearted, in fact. Kenny’s mother had cried and hugged us! “I’m Mrs. Sullivan.”
She showed me which desk was mine and then we all put our right hands over our hearts and said the Pledge of Allegiance:
I pledge allegiance
to the flag
of the United States of America.
And to the Republic
for which it stands,
one nation,
under God,
indivisible,
with liberty and justice for all.
Of course, I remembered the words — all of them. And I believed in them even more than I had before. Then we sang:
My country ’tis of thee,
Sweet land of liberty,
of thee I sing.
Land where my fathers died,
Land of the pilgrims’ pride,
From every mountain side:
Let freedom ring!
Freedom! It wasn’t just a word in a song; I really
did
feel freer here, in America: freer to feel my feelings, freer to say what I was thinking.
Just as we were pulling out our chairs, I saw Henry standing in the doorway, and he saw me. We didn’t say anything (out loud), but his whole face said how glad to see me he was. I really, really like Henry.
We did signal whenever he turned around in his seat, which he did quite a lot.
Mrs. Sullivan shook her head, just a little; but she didn’t tell us not to. Still, I tried to listen to her properly — and after a while, I did.
She asked who had finished their “reports on transportation.” Hardly anyone raised their hands, only Henry and a few girls, and Mrs. Sullivan said she’d collect them after lunch. So I could do one at lunch and recess! I didn’t have to, but I wanted to. I wanted to do well, especially on my first day, especially at writing.
When it was time for recess Henry ran over, talking. “I saw you start to stand at attention when Miss Kelly came in. You had to do that in England when a teacher walked into the room, didn’t you?” he said with a big smile. “And you have an English accent!”
“I know,” I said. “It’s odd. I’m not English, but — I don’t feel all the way American anymore, either.”
He nodded, and frowned down at the ground, thinking.
“Maybe you will when you’ve been back for a while.”
“Maybe,” I said, not really believing it.
But I was still glad I’d told him.
“I know!” he said. “We can have an Iroquois re-initiation ceremony!”
“Like when we became blood brothers! Remember?”
