Guy Fawkes
It was Guy Fawkes Day and everyone was at the bonfire. I wasn’t going because I had wrecked my mackintosh. I’m not sure if this was a punishment (to teach me to be more careful and sensible) or just that everyone else was wearing theirs and I didn’t have one. Anyway I wasn’t going.
In England they have Guy Fawkes Day instead of Halloween. Guy Fawkes tried to blow up Parliament. He put lots of gunpowder underneath it — but it was discovered before it went off. They don’t have trick-or-treating on Guy Fawkes Day: they have fireworks and bonfires.
I was really CURIOUS about the bonfire and the guy (they burn a guy on the bonfire — I thought it was a kind of scarecrow but I wasn’t sure, and that was one of the things I was curious about) and the fireworks — kinds we don’t have in America. Roman Candles and Catherine Wheels sounded especially interesting — I pictured Roman Candles as like the Roman time candles we learned about in second grade (they were striped and timed to burn for exactly an hour). But the fireworks, I thought, would also do something exciting: sparkle, maybe, or explode. Catherine Wheels I imagined as circles of fire revolving in the air, but I couldn’t really imagine how they would work. So I was disappointed that I wouldn’t see them — I was so curious, and I probably wouldn’t be in England by the next Guy Fawkes Day.
A mackintosh is a warm, completely waterproof raincoat, with buttons and a belt. Our Sibton Park ones were tan on the outside and a brownish plaid on the inside, with rubber in between. Mackintoshes weren’t always tan: Emmy, Willy, and Bubby’s school had navy-blue ones.
But they were there, I wasn’t; there was no sense in thinking about it.
I looked around the room, at the blue-and-white tiles by the fireplace (each tile was different), and at the pale yellow walls. The house was so quiet that I could hear the wind in the bare branches and even against the creepers that grew all over the outside walls.
It felt strange to be all by myself: not unpleasant, just strange — I’d never been all alone in the house before. I hadn’t been by myself in a long time except to go to the loo, and that only takes a minute.
What about baths? you might think. We were together for those, too — each dormitory had its own time. There were four bathtubs in the room; each one had a curtain, but it was modest in a bad way to draw it so no one ever did. We played and talked while we had our baths.
Once, when I first came, Veryan turned on both faucets (they call them “taps”) and then squatted and, pointing between her legs, said, “Three taps!”
Everyone laughed; I was a little bit shocked. At first I hadn’t liked to take off my clothes in front of strangers, or have them see me in the bathtub, but by now I was used to these English ways.
I thought about how cozy our study was, and then I got out the story I was working on — I was hoping to finish it in time for Hobby Day. This was a day when things we had made were displayed in the Art Room. The whole school walked around and looked at them. My first term, mine looked very childish compared to the things the other girls had made.
But for THIS Hobby Day I was writing a story I hoped would be really good. It was called “The Richardsons” and it was already seventeen pages long — seventeen big pages, not composition-book pages (our composition books were only about half the size of regular big paper).
I hoped I could finish another chapter before the others came back and then read it to them. It felt snug to be writing in bed. After I’d been writing for a while I heard a lot of noise in the cloakroom downstairs, and soon everyone was running in. Their cheeks were all pink and they smelled of leaves and smoke and fresh air and everyone was talking at once. They described food they’d had, and then Clare pulled out her handkerchief tied up in a knot.
“We brought you some roast chestnuts,” she said.
“And I smuggled out two roast potatoes!” said Jennifer.
That was so nice of them! And, while I was trying to get to sleep (I was the last one to fall asleep and the first one to wake up in this dormitory, too), thinking of smuggling those potatoes gave me an idea.