Among Others (16 page)
Authors: Jo Walton
Tags: #Fiction, #Fantasy, #Contemporary, #Magical Realism
“Most of the girls have a pound every week, or even two pounds, some of them. I don’t know how they’ll manage if they ever really do change the pound notes to coins, because they send it in letters. Nobody talks about exactly how much they get, because it’s vulgar to mention specifics about money.”
Vulgar to mention specifics about money, but what kind of car your father has and what job he has and what kind of house and what kind of fur coat your mother has are common topics of conversation. I didn’t even know there were different kinds, let alone which are good. The first time they asked me I said fox, just at random, which seems to be plausible, though Josie asked me if I meant silver fox or just plain red fox. It was so obvious from the framing of her question that silver fox was good that I didn’t hesitate. Of course, my mother doesn’t have a fur coat at all, and if she did she’d probably torture the poor thing. Anyway, I think fur is wrong, and I said so. I said I’m never going to have a fur coat, not ever, because it’s wrong to kill animals just for the fur. I’m not a vegetarian, I think it’s all right to kill animals to eat them, because that’s different. They’d do that to us. There’s no need for us to take their fur just to show off.
There are five school weeks until Christmas, so if I divide this ten pounds into two pounds a week that would work pretty well. Though I might anticipate on it to buy a bra this weekend, because now I’ve noticed that I have breasts I can’t seem to stop noticing them, and it would be nice to have a harness to get them out of the way.
W
EDNESDAY
21
ST
N
OVEMBER
1979
Letter.
I didn’t open it, but just touching it seemed to bring on the pain in my leg, it’s been very bad indeed today.
This morning I finished
Up the Line
as I was sitting here, and I didn’t have anything else with me, so I was going to get something off the shelf. Miss Carroll was bustling about shelving a consignment of new books that had come in, mostly in nonfiction, and I was sitting in my usual corner, where I have panelling on two sides and a bookshelf in front of me. Sometimes I sit one seat along, where I can see out of the window, but there’s nothing worth seeing today, grey sky and bare branches and endless rain.
I was about to get up and go to the shelves, when Miss Carroll came over. “I remember you were asking about Plato,” she said, and put down a brand-new copy of the Everyman edition of Plato’s
Republic
. She also casually left two other books on the table nearby, a most intriguing book by Josephine Tey called
Daughter of Time
and Nevil Shute’s
An Old Captivity
, which I have read, of course, it’s the Leif Erickson one.
The Republic
isn’t as much fun as
The Symposium
. It’s all long speeches, and nobody bursting in drunk to woo Socrates in the middle. But it’s very interesting all the same. I keep thinking that it wouldn’t work, though, like Sam said. Human nature is against it. People just tend to behave in certain ways because they are people. And if Socrates thinks ten-year-olds would be blank slates for him to work with, it must have been a long time since he was ten! Put me and Mor in
The Republic
and we’d turn it upside-down in five minutes. You’d have to start with babies, like
Brave New World
, which I see now is influenced by Plato. You could have a lovely story about two people in Plato’s Republic falling in love and messing up the entire plan. Falling in love would be a perversion. It would be like being queer is for Laurie and Ralph. I prefer Triton or Anarres if I want a utopia. You know what I’d love to read? A Dialogue between Bron and Shevek and Socrates. Socrates would love it too. I bet he wanted people who argued. You can tell he did, you can tell that’s what he loved really, at least in
The Symposium
.
When I came back this afternoon and sat down here again, I noticed the Shute and the Tey were still there. She mostly doesn’t move my things, and if she does she tells me where they are, or gives them to me. But these were hers. All the same I started reading the Tey. I think she meant it for me. I think she noticed moving around was hard today and brought it over so I’d have something. I’m positive she ordered
The Republic
for me. I suppose I am the only person who actually uses this library for the purpose to which it is intended—no, that’s not fair, some of the sixth-form girls do use it to get books out for essays. I’ve seen them. But I suppose Miss Carroll must have taken notice of me sitting here all the time reading and done something nice for me.
I should do something nice for her. People sometimes buy teachers buns. Does Miss Carroll count as a teacher? Or maybe I could think of something to get her for Christmas.
T
HURSDAY
22
ND
N
OVEMBER
1979
My leg’s still not great. I wonder if I should go to the doctor again about it. Nurse has the prescription for Distalgesic, I could go to her and have one. I would, except it’s down two flights of stairs and then up one.
Who would have thought Richard the Third didn’t actually kill the princes in the Tower?
Letter from Auntie Teg, full of news. And now I understand the bra system, though if I have to be measured I don’t know about that. Maybe I should just try on some likely sizes and refine from that.
F
RIDAY
23
RD
N
OVEMBER
1979
I went to Nurse in the end yesterday, and she gave me a painkiller and said I ought to go to the doctor and she was making an appointment for me. I don’t see the point, considering, but I didn’t argue.
I got Gill to put the letter in the kitchen dustbin for me. Having all the scraps and grounds and everything dumped on it will stop it being so strong, and soon it will be taken away altogether. I asked Deirdre first, but she wouldn’t touch it. Sensible of her really.
No wonder fairies run away from pain. They like to be entertained, and it’s awfully boring.
Tomorrow, I have to be fit to go to the library.
S
ATURDAY
24
TH
N
OVEMBER
1979
Only three things for me at the library. I picked them up and bought a get well card for Grampar and came straight back.
Red Shift
and a bra can wait until next week.
Sometimes I’m not sure whether I’m entirely human.
I mean, I know I am. I shouldn’t think my mother is beyond sleeping with the fairies—no, that’s not how you say it. “Sleeping with the fairies” means dead. I shouldn’t think she’s beyond having sex with fairies, but if she did she’d boast about it. She’s never so much as hinted. She wouldn’t have said it was Daniel and made him marry her. Besides, Daniel does kind of look like us, Sam said so. And children of fairies in songs and stories are always great heroes—though come to think I never heard what happened to Tam Lin’s Janet’s child. But look at Earendil and Elwing. No, that’s not what I mean.
What I mean is, when I look at other people, other girls in school, and see what they like and what they’re happy with and what they want, I don’t feel as if I’m part of their species. And sometimes—sometimes I don’t care. I care about so few people really. Sometimes it feels as if it’s only books that make life worth living, like on Halloween when I wanted to be alive because I hadn’t finished
Babel 17
. I’m sure that isn’t normal. I care more about the people in books than the people I see every day. Sometimes Deirdre gets on my wick so much I want to be cruel to her, to call her Dreary the way everyone does, to yell at her that she’s stupid. I only don’t out of sheer selfishness, because she’s practically the only one who talks to me. And Gill, sometimes Gill gives me the creeps. Who could help wanting to Impress a dragon in preference? Who wouldn’t want to be Paul Atreides?
S
UNDAY
25
TH
N
OVEMBER
1979
Wrote to Auntie Teg, gratefully. She asked about whether I’d be there for Christmas, so I wrote to Daniel and asked about that. I expect he’ll be fine with it, it’ll get me out of the way. I also wrote to Sam about
The Republic
, at length. And I wrote in the card to Grampar too—it’s nice, it has an elephant in bed, with a thermometer sticking out beside his trunk.
I miss Grampar. It’s not that I’d have a lot to talk to him about really, like Sam, it’s just that he’s an essential part of life. He fits into my life. Grampar and Gramma brought us up, and they didn’t need to really, they could have left us with my mother, only they never would.
Grampar taught us about trees, and Gramma taught us about poetry. He knew every kind of tree and wildflower, and taught us to tell trees from their leaves first, and later from their buds and bark so we would know them in winter. He taught us to plait grass too, and to card wool. Gramma didn’t care about nature so much, though she’d quote “With the kiss of the sun for pardon and the song of the birds for mirth, one is nearer God’s heart in a garden than anywhere else on Earth.” But it was the words she loved really, not the garden. She taught us to cook, and to memorise poetry in Welsh and English.
They were a funny couple in a way. They didn’t agree about all that much. Often they exasperated each other. They didn’t even have all that many interests in common. They met doing amateur dramatics, but she loved plays and he loved being on the stage. Yet they loved each other. The way she used to say “Oh,
Luke
!” in a fond and exasperated way.
I think she felt confined by her life. She was a teacher, and a mother and a grandmother. I think she would have liked more poetry in her life, one way or another. She certainly encouraged me to write it. I wonder what she would have thought of T. S. Eliot?
M
ONDAY
26
TH
N
OVEMBER
1979
I woke up in the night—this was not a dream. I woke up and I couldn’t move at all, I was absolutely paralysed, and she was in the room, hovering over me, I know she was. I tried to cry out and wake someone but I couldn’t. I could feel her coming nearer, coming down over my face. I couldn’t move or speak, there was nothing to use against her. I started repeating the Litany Against Fear from
Dune
, in my head, “Fear is the mind killer, fear is the little-death,” and then she was gone and I could move again. I got out of bed and went to get a drink of water and my hand was shaking so much that I poured half of it down my front.
If she can get in, another time she might kill me.
The fairies here won’t talk to me, and I can’t write to Glorfindel or Titania and ask them how to stop her. Even if Daniel lets me go there for Christmas, that’s a month, well, close enough.
I have got two little stones I used in part of the circle last time I burned letters, and I have put them on the windowsills. I think that if she tried to come through the stones would rise up as sheets of rock and block the way, making the windows solid with the wall. Really it should be a whole row of stones, or a line of sand or something. The real trouble with that is that there are eleven other girls sleeping in this dorm, and any of them will see just a little odd pebble and not care about disturbing it, or actively want it gone. I’ll have to check them every night before I go to sleep, and somebody is going to notice sooner or later. I suppose I could tell them, but all this scary stuff has worked all too well already.
She couldn’t get through stained glass, for what good that is.
I am going to have to get some stuff together and do some real protection magic, even without talking to the fairies first. I’m afraid to, but not as afraid as I am of her coming into the room when I’m asleep and holding me frozen like that. I couldn’t move at all, and I really tried.
T
UESDAY
27
TH
N
OVEMBER
1979
It’s funny how it’s hard to concentrate on reading in a waiting room. On the one hand, I really want nothing more than to pull down inside a book and hide. On the other, I have to keep listening for them to call my name, so every sound distracts me. Everyone here is sick, which is very depressing. The notices are about contraception and diseases. The walls are a bilious green. There’s a leaflet about getting your eyes tested. Maybe I should.
Looking out of the window, a list of everything I see while waiting:
2 scruffs
1 man with sheepdog—a lovely sheepdog, in beautiful condition.
6 people on bikes.
12 doughy housewives with 19 kids.
4 unaccompanied school age kids.
4 young couples.
1 baby in a pushchair, pushed by a woman in a puce dress.
1 tatty old man in jeans—what was he thinking? Jeans are for young people.
1 man parking a motorbike.
Millions of cars.
2 businessmen.
1 taxi driver.
1 man with a moustache and his wife.
2 blonde women in matching green coats, who came past twice, once in each direction. Maybe sisters?
1 pair of middle-aged twins. (I sort of hate to see twins, though I know it doesn’t make sense.)
1 pompous man in a dinner jacket. (At lunchtime?)
1 man in a pink shirt. (Pink!)
A skinhead carrying a dragon tankard. (He stopped outside the window and I got a good look at it.)
1 business woman, in a pin-striped suit with a briefcase. (She looked very groomed. Would I like to be her? No. But most of everyone I saw.)
6 teenagers in gym clothes running a race.
8 sparrows.
12 pigeons.
1 unaccompanied black-and-white dog, probably mostly terrier, that lifted a leg against the motorbike. He went off alone, looking jaunty and sniffing at everything. Maybe I’d like to be him.
People who notice me:
1 man in a denim shirt, who waved.
Funny how unobservant people are generally.
When it finally got to be my turn, the doctor was very gruff. He didn’t have much time for me. He said he’d recommend me to the Orthopaedic Hospital and get my x-rays sent there. I had to wait all that time surrounded by snuffling children and decrepit old people for two minutes of the doctor’s attention. I missed physics for that?
However, I bought two apples and a new bottle of shampoo, and I went back via the library and managed to return three books and pick up four, so I count it a successful trip to town.
Waiting for the bus back to school, I was thinking about magic. I wanted the bus to come, and I wasn’t exactly sure when it was due. If I reached magic into that, imagined the bus just coming round the corner, it isn’t as if I’d be materialising a bus out of nowhere. The bus is somewhere on its round. There are two buses an hour, say, and for the bus to be coming right when I wanted it, it must have started off on its route at a precise time earlier, and people will have caught it and got on and off at particular times, and got to where they’re going at different times. For the bus to be where I want it, I’d have to change all that, the times they got up, even, and maybe the whole timetable back to whenever it was written, so that people caught the bus at different times every day for months, so that I didn’t have to wait today. Goodness knows what difference that would make in the world, and that’s just for a bus. I don’t know how the fairies even dare. I don’t know how anyone could know enough.
Magic can’t do everything. Glory couldn’t help Gramma’s cancer, though he wanted to and we wanted him to. It may reach back into time, but it can’t make Mor alive again. I remember when she died and Auntie Teg told me and I thought,
She knows, and I know, and other people are telling other people and more and more people know and it spreads out like ripples on a pond and there’s no undoing it without undoing everything.
It’s not like falling out of a tree and nobody seeing but the fairies.
W
EDNESDAY
28
TH
N
OVEMBER
1979
Gill sneaked into the dorm last night to bring me her scientist book. She sat on my bed, and as we were talking she put her arm behind me, as if casually, but I could see how carefully she was doing it, and that she was looking at me all the time. I jumped up and said she ought to go, but Sharon gave me a very strange look afterwards and I think she saw. Could I have done something to encourage Gill? Or anyway, to make her think I might be interested in her in that way? It’s very awkward, as she’s one of the very few people who are actually talking to me. I think I need to talk to her, but not in the dorm! And I’m afraid to say I want to talk to her privately in case she takes that for more encouragement, which would be hurtful when it turned out not to be.
