There’s something about my room

I don’t like the way people talk about my room.

‘That’s the room where…’ and then they walk off down the corridor and I don’t hear the rest. Or they ask: ‘How are you finding that room? Sleeping all right?’

There’s nothing odd about it – it looks the same as all the other rooms on the corridor: innocent.

It doesn’t have any distinguishing marks (there’s a perfectly round hole in the carpet of the room next door, where a bin caught fire; and a water stain that looks a bit like Audrey Hepburn on the ceiling of a room downstairs).

I asked the Bill the Porter, and he said not to worry about it, that it was all talk. And when I asked the cleaner, she switched on the vacuum cleaner and pretended not to hear me.

There were even tourists up here taking pictures on Saturday. I don’t know how they got in. ‘What are you doing?’ I asked the woman – the man was peering at the screen his camera.

‘Is this the room? We just had to get a picture. You wouldn’t take one of both of us, would you? Jim, this lady’s going to take a—’ The theology postgrad who has the room opposite me burst out and told them: ‘This is a place of study. You can’t take photographs.’

‘Why did they want to take a picture of my door?’

‘Something that happened last year. Or maybe the year before. I’ve got a deadline.’ And she shut the door of her room quite firmly.

And last night, I was woken by a noise in the corridor. I opened it and found an undergrad trying to unscrew the door number. He wasn’t going to be successful – he could barely stand, let alone connect a screwdriver with a screw. ‘Very sorry. Wanted the number for a… a bet.’ And he stumbled away into the night. I sat on my bed watching the numbers on my clock flip over from 2:02 to 2:03 and wondering what had happened and if I would like knowing about it.

Tied.

When I was very little, I thought my uncle went up on the roof, stretched out his arms as long as they would go, and flew.

It’s because Aunt Jo said he was flying from Lydd. It’s a place down on the Marsh, but I thought they meant a lid, which was the roof of the Martello Tower where they live.

My uncle doesn’t fly any more. Aunt Jo told someone on the phone that he’d had a near miss. These are the things he does instead:

• Builds models of aeroplanes and ties them to the ceiling. When no-one is looking, they fly in circles, like the planes on the round-about at Hastings. You can tell, because if you open the door of my uncle’s study – if you open it really quickly – you can see them shaking because they’ve stopped suddenly.
  
• Watches gulls hanging above the sea. He has a telescope.
  
• Asks people who photograph the tower without permission: ‘How would you like it if trippers kept taking pictures of your house?’
  
• Walks with me on the beach from the tower to the lifeboat jetty and back.
  

Yesterday, we found: three bits of blue rope; a cuttlefish and four slipper limpet shells (I’m collecting those). We picked up the blue rope because it’s litter; and the cuttlefish we are going to post to grandma for her bird-in-a-cage.

Today, we found a dragon face kite with its tail tangled in the breakwater and its yellow eyes staring out to sea. It’s wet and sandy, and the string is broken, but we think it’ll fly. We have a kite string, and my uncle has tied it on.

We have lunch, and then Aunt Jo goes to play golf. I’ve been thinking about our kite while it dries – the dragon face was red, and now it’s orange. I’ve been thinking that it escaped before, and it might escape again.

I say: ‘It’s more of a looking-at kite, isn’t it.’ My uncle says: ‘That’s what I was thinking. They were silly people to try and fly it.’

‘Probably trippers,’ I tell him. And we hang the kite on the study wall, twine the tail around the barometer, and look at it.

A Piper in the Street Today

I heard it and lifted my head.

Then another head went up, and another. Sophia caught my eye.

Then Miss Hargreaves, who had been dozing at her tall desk snorted and smacked her lips. Even a snore from her was enough to get us back to our sewing.

The Hargreaves settled again and Sophia mimed a drummer, although obviously, I could hear it for myself. They were playing the willow dance.

Just then, worse luck, Miss Hargreaves woke. Her poking stick was out before you could say ‘knife’.

I tried to get back to work, but when it’s hot, and there’s a piper outside, it’s hard to concentrate on sewing a tray cloth. And pipers always play catchy tunes to make you want to come out and dance.

Thinking about the tune made me hum it; and Sophia started, too, but she was sticking to one note.

‘Who is that humming?’ demanded Miss Hargreaves, prowling down the aisle. When she reached us, we stopped.

A girl at the back said: ‘It might be a wasp, Miss.’ Miss H hates wasps — or any insect— and began to hunt, poking stick ready for the kill.

Someone else was humming at the front. Sophie added: ‘I saw it!’ for good measure. ‘It’s at least an inch long. A hornet.’

That settled it – Miss H is mortal afraid of hornets. ‘Quickly, girls. Leave the room in an orderly manner.’ We didn’t need to be told twice to go out into the sunshine where the piper was playing half an hour before the end of school

A Visit in the Village

‘We’re going to see the-’

‘Shh, don’t tell her!’

Emily and Annie’s whispers were more intriguing than Miss Ash’s conversation about the goings-on in the pump room; but convention dictates that I attended to her, not her small sisters.

She might have sensed my feelings, for she said then: ‘Can I take your basket, dear Miss Stone?’ But her offer was redundant, for we had arrived.

There was no door, just a piece of sacking. Ducking to go in, I felt as if I were being swallowed. Goody Biller’s cottage was so thick with smoke and so dark after the spring morning outside that at first I could not discern by sight the old woman who was to receive our cream and bacon.

But my ears served me, and I heard her affectionate greeting to the children. She was less pleased to see Miss Ash, but took the contents of the basket graciously.

Then she pulled a filthy blackened pan from the fireplace and held it up. ‘This is it, the pan.’

‘She hit a wild boar with it,’ said Emily.

‘He comes in here right through the door,’ added Goody Biller ‘and he’s got his snout in the apple barrel. And I said to him, I says: “I’m not having that.” And I hits ‘im on the rump with this.’ She swung the pan down with a surprising strength. ‘They heard his squeal up at the big house.’

‘Look at the wall, Miss Stone, dear.’ Miss Ash indicated a spot by the door. ‘See where it gouged with its tusks.’

Twelve inches from the floor, was a hole into which I could have fitted my clenched fist.