Among Others (13 page)

I had two pounds ten left of the ten pounds. (That might not seem like much, but I had bought a lot of books.) I went back into the station, where there’s a W. H. Smiths and bought a map, a pink-covered one inch to the mile Ordnance Survey map of Shrewsbury and district. (I always thought it was “ordinance,” but apparently not. Ordnance. What a funny word, and what a funny concept too. They surveyed the whole country for military logistics, and now they sell anyone the maps. Well, I wasn’t planning to invade.) I went back out into the car park and sat down on a bench. I found Mickleham, where the Old Hall is, and thought that a bus to Wolverhampton would probably go near there, when Daniel got there after all. I was relieved to see the black Bentley draw in. I folded the map up and put it away, but he saw it.

“I see you’ve bought a map,” he said.

“Maps are very interesting, really,” I said, embarrassed, though it was him who ought to be embarrassed, being late. I got into the car. He threw a cigarette butt out of the window and drove off. He shouldn’t do that, even in a car park. It’s a bad habit. It could start a fire. I felt thoroughly disapproving of him.

I think I’ll buy as many Ordnance Survey maps as I can. They’re arranged in logical squares. I could collect the set and get the whole country, eventually. Then I’d always be able to find my way, and know where places are in relation to other places. Though they wouldn’t do me much good if they were at home when I happened to be somewhere. I’ll just have to be organised and put the map for where I’m going, and the maps around it maybe, into my bag when I go out.

Shrewsbury is where we bought my uniform. It’s a town, not a city, and it all seems to be built of the same rose-pink-coloured stone.

We went back to the Old Hall for high tea. It’s afternoon tea if you have tea and cakes and scones and little sandwiches, but high tea if there’s something hot and substantial as well. In this case it was a hot dish with pasta and cheese and ham, but everything else was cold. The sandwiches were tuna and cucumber, ham and parsley, and cheese and pickle. I liked them a lot. The scones were as dry as the Kalahari. They also fell to crumbs when you put butter on them. I could make better scones when I was four. I didn’t say so, but maybe next time I’ll tell one of the aunts (I still can’t tell them apart) that I’d like to have a try at making some. It seems the sort of thing they might approve.

They talked about nothing but school, and expected me to contribute with current news about teachers and how the houses are doing. They were in Scott, all three of them, and they care a lot more about it than I do. I don’t understand them one bit. They’re grown up and they have their own house—and it’s a jolly nice house too. But they don’t do anything. They don’t read, and they don’t work and they don’t make anything. They organise jumble sales for church. Gramma used to do that, and she was teaching full time as well. They keep the house nice, but that’s not a full-time job for three people. They pay my father to manage the estate and the money, so they don’t do that. They’re rich, reasonably rich, I think, but they don’t go anywhere or do anything, they just sit there eating awful scones and talking with real enthusiasm about the time Scott won the Cup. I’m not sure exactly how old they are, but they were born before 1940, so they’re at least forty, and they still care about a stupid house they were in at school. They weren’t just pretending, so as to be interesting to me. I can tell the difference. They were talking to each other far more. Why do they stay there? And why didn’t any of them get married? Maybe they hate children. They certainly seem to find me a trial, but that doesn’t count; if they’d wanted to they could have had nice upper-class English children of their own and trained them not to be surly.

Daniel has
Glory Road
and
Waldo and Magic, Inc.
, which he says are both Heinlein fantasies. He has also lent me Poul Anderson’s
The Broken Sword
. I’m still reading the Callahan stories, which are amazingly sweet, not much like
Telempath
, but I’m enjoying them.

Tomorrow church, then lunch with the aunts, then back to school, dammit.

M
ONDAY
5
^TH
N
OVEMBER
1979

I remember how far away school felt from the labyrinth, but the second I got back it was totally pervasive and as if I’d never been away.

It’s funny how insignificant the reportable parts of my half term are. It was only a week, but so much happened in it compared to a school week that it might have been a year. But when I was asked about it in French Conversation first period this morning I could only say “
Je visite mon grandpere dans Londres et je visite mon autre grandpere dans Pays de Galles.
” Two visits to grandfathers, that’s all, and all Madame said was that it should be
en
not
dans
. I sink into school as into a warm bath, and it closes over my head. Even if I could tell them about Halloween and Glorfindel and the dead I wouldn’t.

Glory Road
is deeply disappointing. I hate it. I stopped reading it and read Gill’s book of Asimov science essays in preference, that’s how much I hate it. I love Heinlein but he clearly doesn’t
get
fantasy. It’s just stupid. And nobody saying “Oh, Scar” would be heard as “Oscar,” it’s not even plausible. It’s almost as bad as its cover, and that’s saying something, as the cover is so bad that Miss Carroll raised her eyebrows at it from her librarian desk on the other side of the room. It’s funny how
Triton
, which is all about sex and sociology, has a cover of a spaceship exploding, while
Glory Road
, which does mention sex here and there but is actually a stupid adventure story, has a cover like that.

There’s some poetry competition thing. Everybody seems to think I’ll win it as a foregone conclusion.

I miss the mountains. I didn’t miss them before, except in thinking how unattractively flat it was here. But now I have been home and had them around me for a while, I miss them actively, more than my living family, more than being able to shut the toilet door. It’s not really flat here, it rolls, and I can see the mountains of North Wales in the distance when it’s clear. But I miss having the hills tucked up around me.

T
UESDAY
6
^TH
N
OVEMBER
1979

Fireworks and a bonfire last night in the school grounds. I saw some of the fire-fairies clustering. Nobody else saw them. You can only see them if you already believe in them, which is why children are the most likely to. People like me don’t stop seeing them. It would be
insane
of me to stop believing in them. But lots of children do when they grow up, even though they’ve seen them. I’m not a child any more, though I’m not grown up either. I have to say I can’t wait.

But my cousin Geraint, who’s four years older than me, saw the fairies when playing with us in the cwm. He was eleven or twelve, and we were seven or eight. We told him he should close his eyes and when he opened them he’d see them, and he did. He was amazed by them. He couldn’t talk to them, because he only spoke English, but we translated what he said, and what they said. We must have been eight, because I remember freely translating what they said into purest Tolkien, and we didn’t read
The Lord of the Rings
until we were eight. At that point, when we were about that age, we were always looking for someone else to play with, and preferably a boy, because in books that’s the group you have to have to go into another world. We thought the fairies would take us to Narnia, or Elidor. Geraint seemed like a good candidate. He saw the fairies, and he was awed by them. He liked them, and they liked him. But he lives in Burgess Hill, near Brighton, and he only spent summers in Aberdare, and the next summer he couldn’t see them, he said he was too old to play, and he remembered what had happened as if it had been a game where we’d been pretending to be fairies. All he wanted to do was play football. We ran away and left him in the garden with his stupid ball, disconsolate, but he didn’t tell the grownups we’d abandoned him. He said at dinner that he’d had a very nice day playing. Poor Geraint.

I had a letter this morning, which I haven’t opened, and also a letter from Sam. He asked how I liked the Plato, and if I’d found any more, and he writes just the way he speaks. I’ll write back on Sunday. There isn’t any Plato in the school library. I asked Miss Carroll, and she says they don’t teach Greek so there’s no call for it. I might have a problem with interlibrary loan, as I don’t know translators, or even all the titles. But I can order the ones listed in
The Symposium
of course, so I’ll do that.

Penguin are the best of any publisher about listing other titles, even if they didn’t publish them. I have a whole pile of things to order on Saturday, because
Up the Line
has a whole long list of Robert Silverbergs. Also, I am going to order
Beyond the Tomorrow Mountains
. Sylvia Engdahl wrote this totally brilliant book called
Heritage of the Star
, and Puffin, who are Penguin, brought it out and I read it. It’s about people living with lots of superstitions but also some technology they think is magic, and they’re oppressed by Scholars and Technicians and anyone who thinks wrongly is called a Heretic. And actually they’re colonists on another planet but they don’t know, and it’s just brilliant. In the story, there’s a promise that when they can know, when everything will be all right, they’ll go “Beyond the Tomorrow Mountains,” and there’s a sequel with that title, but I’ve never seen it anywhere, though I’ve been looking for a long time.

The poetry competition is nationwide. Everyone in Arlinghurst has to write a poem, then they’ll pick the best from each form to send in. I can’t believe people really think I’ll win. All right, realistically, I’d win out of Lower VC, or even all of Form V, probably, because the academic standards here are not especially high. But out of all the fifteen-year-olds in the whole country? No way. The best one in the school is going to be awarded fifty house points. That’s made everyone as keen as mustard. The best hundred in the country are going to be published in a book, and the best one wins a hundred pounds and a typewriter. I’d really like a typewriter. Not that I can type, but you have to send typewritten submissions to magazines.

Deirdre came sidling up to me at lunch, and sat down one seat away from me, as if casually, but doing it so badly that lots of people noticed. She looked frightened, poor dab, but resolute. “My mother told me I should stick up for you,” she whispered.

“Good for your mother,” I said, in a normal tone.

“Will you help me with my poem?” she asked.

So I’m going to help her write a poem at prep, which will probably mean writing it. I haven’t written mine yet, though there’s plenty of time, I have until Friday.

T
HURSDAY
8
^TH
N
OVEMBER
1979

I wrote Deirdre’s poem, and I was quite pleased with it. But yesterday as I was sitting here reading
Waldo and Magic, Inc.
(which are two quite different novellas), Miss Carroll came over with a pile of modern poetry books, which she said she thought I might like to look at.

It seems poetry has moved on since Chesterton. Who knew? Clearly not Gramma, and nobody in any schools I’ve been to. I’d seen one stanza of one poem by Auden, that Delany quoted, and not even heard T. S. Eliot’s name, or Ted Hughes’s either. I got quite drunk on Eliot and was late for Latin and got an order mark. I got revenge by translating Horace just like Eliot, and she couldn’t say anything, because it was also accurate.

I’ve written a poem for the competition. I don’t feel very confident of it. I’ve mastered the Chestertonian, I really have, but I don’t feel as if I’ve had time to master this. It’s about nuclear war and Dutch elm disease and how we should actually be getting into space while we can.

There’s apparently a long T. S. Eliot poem called
Four Quartets
which the school doesn’t have. I’ll order that on Saturday as well. According to Miss Carroll, T. S. Eliot worked in a bank when he was writing
The Waste Land
because being a poet doesn’t pay.

“Oh dark, dark, dark … those are pearls that were his eyes … With these fragments have I shored up my ruins.”

F
RIDAY
9
^TH
N
OVEMBER
1979