“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.