Among Others

by Jo Walton

  FRIDAY 16TH NOVEMBER 1979

  Letter this morning. I haven’t opened it, and won’t.

  In prayers today Deirdre said “resur-esh-kun” instead of “resur-ec-tion” at the end of the Creed. Thinking about that during the hymn, I was wondering about “the resurrection of the body and the life of the world to come,” and how that relates to what I saw on Halloween. On the one hand, how much more likely resurrection if the dead process through the valley and descend into the hill. On the other, where is the religion? Where is Jesus? The fairies were there, but I didn’t see any saints or anything. I’ve been mouthing the Creed without ever thinking about it properly.

  To tell the truth I’ve been pretty angry with God since Mor died: He doesn’t seem to do anything, or to help at all. But I suppose it’s all like magic, you can’t tell if it does anything, or why, not to mention mysterious ways. If I were omnipotent and omnibenevolent I wouldn’t be so damn ineffable. Gramma used to say that you couldn’t tell how things would work out for the best. I used to believe that when she was alive, but then after she died, and Mor died, I don’t know. It’s not that I don’t believe in God, it’s just that I haven’t felt very inclined to get down and worship someone who wants me to think “no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.” Because I don’t. I think I ought to do something about the way the universe is unfolding, because there are things that need obvious and immediate attention, like the fact that the Russians and the Americans could blow the world to bits at any moment, and Dutch elm disease, and famine in Africa, not to mention my mother. If I just left the universe for God to unfold, she’d have grabbed a chunk of it last year. And if God’s plan for stopping her involves us and the fairies and Mor dying and me getting mashed up, well, if I were omnipotent and omniscient I think I could have come up with a better one. Lightning bolts never go out of fashion.

  I was reading The Broken Sword and there are times I think gods like that would be easier to worship. Not to mention they’re more on a human scale. Meddling like that. More like fairies. (What are fairies? Where do they come from?)

  But I do not want to give Grampar another stroke, so I continue to go to church and to school prayers and take communion even though I don’t know how it fits together. It’s not something I can imagine talking to a vicar about, somehow.

  With fairies it isn’t a matter of faith. They’re right there. They might not take any notice of you, but they’re right there where you can argue with them. And they know a lot about magic and how the world works, and they’re in favour of intervening in things. I could do some magic. I can think of all sorts of things that would be useful. I could make a better dream-ward. And I’d really like a karass.

  SATURDAY 17TH NOVEMBER 1979

  Seven books waiting for me in the library. I wonder what happens if there are more than eight? The woman librarian was there today, and she let me fill my own interlibrary loan cards out. If I keep ordering fifty or so books a week, there may well be more than eight on any given Saturday. I wonder if I could get permission to go into town on a week night. Some girls go in for music lessons. Maybe I could start learning an instrument so I could go to the library, though as I am so pathetic at music it might not work. I wonder if there’s any other kind of extracurricular thing they’d let me in for. I could ask Miss Carroll.

  I didn’t have any money, but I went down by the bookshop anyway. I’ve discovered the wood across from it is called Poacher’s Wood—it’s on the map—and I went in there to burn the letter I got yesterday. I went a way in, and made a circle. Nobody saw me except a couple of indifferent fairies. I didn’t read the letter either. I didn’t even open it. Because it was only one, and solid like that, I didn’t make a fire, I just set fire to the bottom corner and dropped it. I nearly burned my hair when it caught more quickly than I’d expected, so I won’t try that again.

  It was cold but not raining, the first time I’d been outside without it being rainy for ages. I tried sitting on the bench where I read Triton to read Born With the Dead but the wind was too cold. I don’t mind the cold all that much, what I do mind is the way the days are so short. It was getting dark before it was time to go back to school.

  I looked around the bookshop and saw some things I want to buy when I have some money again, or if not, order from the library. There’s an adult book by Alan Garner called Red Shift. I wonder what it’s about? It has a weird cover with a standing stone and a light, which doesn’t mean anything. If I tell Daniel I want to buy it, he’ll probably send me some more money, unless that ten pounds was supposed to last me until Christmas. Well, if I tell him I want it and it was supposed to, then he can say that, and I can just order it.

  Afterwards, because it was dark but I didn’t want to go back, and I didn’t have money to sit in a cafe pretending to drink tea, I looked around the other shops in town. I went into Woolworths where I pinched a bottle of talc and a Twix. There was a girl called Carrie in the Home who pinched things all the time, and she showed me how to do it. It’s quite easy as long as you keep calm. Nobody pays any attention to me. I wouldn’t take a book though, or rather, I would from Woolworths, if they had any, but I wouldn’t from a bookshop, not unless I was desperate.

  I went into C&A and looked at bras. I didn’t try any on. They’re more expensive than I would have thought, and the sizing is very complicated. Auntie Teg would know about them.

  In Smiths I saw Gill looking at records. I don’t care about records at all, in fact I associate being interested in pop music with the stuff she was talking about despising, trying to get boys interested in you. But I went to say hello. She was looking at a record called Anarchy in the U.K. by a group called the Sex Pistols. It was a very ugly cover, but I am quite interested in anarchism because of The Dispossessed. I think it would be much fairer to live on Anarres. Gill said we wouldn’t like it because our parents wouldn’t have money and we wouldn’t have advantages. I said everyone would have the same advantages. I didn’t say my family weren’t as rich as everyone else’s anyway. I said why should we have a better education than someone who can’t afford Arlinghurst?

  Gill bought the record, though she’s not going to be able to play it until Christmas so I don’t see the point.

  On the way back, we talked about Leonardo. Apparently, as well as painting the Mona Lisa, he was a scientist and invented helicopters and studied fossils and kept a notebook. Gill has a book of lives of scientists which she offered to lend me, which is kind of her, though it isn’t at all my thing. She’s a bit—I don’t know. She’s not stupid, which is refreshing, and she’s not afraid to talk to me, but she seems a bit over-eager somehow, which is off-putting. I get the feeling she wants something.

  I shared the Twix with Deirdre. I didn’t tell her I pinched it.

  SUNDAY 18TH NOVEMBER 1979

  I wrote to Grampar. When I next have some money I’ll buy him a get well card. I told him about my marks (boringly top in everything except maths as usual) and about the weather. I wrote to Daniel, mostly about Imperial Earth and The Shockwave Rider, but mentioning the Garner. I wish he’d give me pocket money like most of the girls get, and then I’d know how much I was going to get. I also wrote to Auntie Teg about the bra problem, very carefully not asking for money, in fact saying specifically not to send any, because that wouldn’t be fair, just wanting to know how the sizing works. There’s a number and a letter. I suppose I could ask Deirdre, or even Gill, but I’d rather not.

  No buns today.

  TUESDAY 20TH NOVEMBER 1979

  Parcel from Daniel this morning, with Clifford Simak’s City and Frank Herbert’s Dune, neither of which look all that immediately appealing. It’s so great having plenty to read. Also, another ten pounds. I don’t know, if he’s going to send me ten pounds every time I mention wanting to buy a book I suppose it’s good, but it’s very unreliable. I talked to Deirdre about this, though it was hard to get her to open up, as money, and pocket money, is one of those taboo subjects which you�
��re supposed to talk about in oblique ways. But when she did start to talk, I could hardly shut her up.

  “I get two pounds whenever we come back here. My mother says I don’t need any money because it’s all provided, but that’s daft. I know you’ve noticed I’m always borrowing your soap. There’s soap and shampoo and all that, and if you want anything at all at the tuck shop, even an apple. And if you don’t buy buns ever, everyone says you’re mean, or worse, knows you’re poor and patronizes you. Karen bought me a bun last term and said ‘I know you won’t be able to pay me back, but don’t worry about that at all’ in such a smarmy way. So I bought buns the first week after half term.”

  I had noticed, because she bought me one too. “You don’t have to buy me a bun back, really,” I said. “Though of course it’s nice to have one.”

  “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.

  WEDNESDAY 21ST NOVEMBER 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.

  THURSDAY 22ND NOVEMBER 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.

  FRIDAY 23RD NOVEMBER 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.

  SATURDAY 24TH NOVEMBER 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 s
he’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?

  SUNDAY 25TH NOVEMBER 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.