Among Others (20 page)

“Pete told me about it. Pete’s the dark-haired boy, you must have seen him. He used to be my boyfriend, sort of, but we sort of broke up, only we’re still friends.” She poured herself tea and stirred in sugar.

“Are you going out with the other one now?”

Janine snorted. “Hugh? You’re kidding. He’s shorter than I am, and he’s only fifteen. He’s still in the fourth form.”

“How old are you?” I asked.

“Sixteen. How about you?”

“Oh, I’m only fifteen too, and in what a sensible school would call the fourth form, but which Arlinghurst calls the lower fifth.” I fussed with the tea and made mine mostly hot water. It’s not so bad like that.

“I thought you were older,” she said. “You certainly have read a lot for fifteen.”

“It’s about all I have done,” I said. “Did Pete get you reading SF?”

“Yes, though I always liked things like that. He used to lend me books, well, he still does, and he took me to the club. My mum says SF is childish and for boys, but she’s just wrong about that. I tried to get her to read
The Left Hand of Darkness
, but well, she doesn’t read much and when she does she likes a nice romance. I’ve just found one for her called
The Kissing Gate
. Just her kind of thing.” She sighed at the thought of it.

“How many of you are there?” I asked.

“Sixteen people I have to buy presents for,” she said promptly. “Three sisters, Mum and Dad, four grandparents, two aunties and one uncle and four cousins, one of them a baby. I’ve got him a teddy. How about you?”

I hesitated. “It’s all so different this year. My grandfather, my Auntie Teg, another aunt, three cousins, my father, his sisters I suppose—I don’t know what I can get for them.”

“What about your mum?” she asked.

“I’m not buying her anything,” I said, fiercely.

“Like that, is it?” she said, though I had no idea what she imagined it was like.

“Oh, and there’s Sam,” I said, thinking of him belatedly. “Except Sam’s Jewish, so I don’t know if a Christmas present would be quite the thing.”

“Who’s Sam?” she asked, through a mouthful of honey bun.

“My father’s father,” I said.

“He’s your grandfather then,” she said.

“Sort of,” I said.

“Are you Jewish, then?”

“No. You have to have a Jewish mother to be Jewish, apparently.”

“I don’t think Jewish people celebrate Christmas. Probably better just to get him something really nice when it’s his birthday,” she advised.

I nodded. “I really ought to buy something for Miss Carroll too because she’s been really good to me, taking me to the book club and getting books for me specially.”

“Is that who you were with? She was very quiet. Who is she?”

“She’s the school librarian. She won’t be coming with me normally, I can come on the bus and Greg’s going to take me home.”

Janine considered this, chewing. “You should get something for Greg too, then,” she said. “Greg’s easy. He likes dark chocolate. You could get him some Black Magic or something.”

“I don’t suppose a book would be quite right for a librarian,” I said.

“Talk about coals to Newcastle,” she said, and laughed. “You should probably get chocolates for your Miss Carroll too. I expect you’ve got lots of money.”

“I do, just at the moment,” I said, and then I realised what she’d said. “I’m not—I know I go to Arlinghurst, but that doesn’t mean I’m rich. The opposite. My father’s paying for me to go there, or really his sisters are. They’re rich, and stuck up too I think. My family, my own family, are from South Wales and they’re all teachers.”

“Why are your aunties sending you to Arlinghurst then?”

“I really don’t feel as if my father’s relations are my family,” I said. “It feels really weird when you call them my aunties, or Sam my grandfather.” I bit my honey bun and felt the honey squirt on my tongue. “They’re paying for me to go away to school so they can get rid of me, I think. They know Daniel’s stuck with me now, and this way they don’t have to see me very much. But they want me there for Christmas, which I don’t understand. I could go to Auntie Teg’s. But they don’t want me to.”

“I never thought of boarding schools as dumping grounds before,” she said, licking honey off her lip.

“That’s just what it is,” I said. “I hate it. But I don’t have any choice.”

“You could leave next year when you’re sixteen,” she said. “You could get a job.”

“I’ve thought of that. But I want to go to university, and how can I do that without any qualifications?”

She shrugged. “You could do A Levels part time. That’s what Wim’s doing.”

“Who’s Wim?” I asked.

“Wim’s the long-haired bastard who was sitting opposite you on Tuesday night. He got thrown out of school, our school, Fitzalan, and now he’s working in Spitals and finishing his A Levels at the college.”

“He’s a bastard?” I asked, disappointed. He was so gorgeous, it didn’t seem possible.

She lowered her voice, though there was nobody else in earshot. “Yes he is. I saw you looking at him, and I agree he’s easy on the eyes, but he’s a double-dyed bastard. He got thrown out of school for getting a girl pregnant, and they say she had to have an abortion. And that’s what I broke up with Pete over, because he’s still friends with Wim after all that, and he said it was Ruthie’s fault. That’s the girl, Ruthie Brackett.”

“What’s she like?”

“Nice enough. Not as clever as Wim, not interested in poetry and books and that kind of thing. I don’t know her very well. But I do know that when a girl falls pregnant, you don’t only blame her.”

“Good point,” I said. I had finished my honey bun without noticing. “I think it was very moral of you to break up with Pete over that.”

“We’re still friends,” she said quickly. “But I wasn’t going to keep going out with him if that’s what he thinks.”

“How old is Wim?” I asked.

“Seventeen. His birthday’s in March and he’ll turn eighteen then. You keep away from him.”

“I will. Not that he’d look at me anyway,” I added.

“He might think you don’t know. None of the girls who do know are going to spend any time with him. And anyway, he was looking at you last week. You’re not so bad. If you let your hair grow a bit and tried some mascara maybe. But not for Wim!”

I was about to tease her back, when I remembered about the magic, and that maybe I’d inadvertantly made all these things happen so there’d be a place for me. The honey bun felt like iron in my stomach and I couldn’t talk naturally.

Janine didn’t notice. “Come on, I’ll help you find some presents if you like,” she said.

We went back into the bookshop, and then up the hill to a little shop where I bought pretty Indian silk scarves in different colours for Anthea, Dorothy and Frederica, and a dressing gown with a dragon on it for Auntie Teg, and a little brass elephant paperweight for Grampar. Then we went to British Home Stores and Janine helped me buy a bra—she was very knowledgeable about it. I couldn’t bear some of them with seams and lace, but we managed to find a sports bra with a plain cup and no frills. Sports is a laugh. She didn’t ask me about the stick at all, not a word, as if it was normal. I don’t know if that’s tact or magic or just obliviousness.

I had to rush to catch the bus. Gill was on it, but she was sitting at the back and she didn’t come up to me or speak to me at all.

Apart from the magic thing, which it is too late to change, but which worries me a lot, I like Janine. It was like shopping with my friends at home, only better, because she has read a lot of things I’ve read. She wishes she could Impress a dragon. She said she’d see me at the book club and if I wanted she’d meet me next Saturday and we could finish our Christmas shopping. It’s so nice to spend an afternoon with someone who isn’t a moron for a change. Coming back in to the dorm to put things in my locker I overheard a chorus of “Dreary Dreary Drip Drip…” followed by poor Deirdre running out with her hands over her face.

I went after her of course, but I couldn’t help contrasting her with Janine.

It’s a pity about Wim.

S
UNDAY
9
^TH
D
ECEMBER
1979

If church—if religion—if Jesus, Aslan … but I don’t think it is. There’s a way it’s true, but it’s a layered way, not a literal way. It isn’t a way that’s going to help. Otherwise I could just have gone to the vicar about her, and said “Reverend Price, do something about my mother!” And he wouldn’t have said “Eh, what? What’s that? Maureen isn’t it, or are you the other one? How’s your grandmother, eh?” He’d have taken up his crozier, well, he doesn’t have a crozier, he isn’t a bishop, maybe he’d have snatched up the churchwarden’s staff and gone out to cast demons out of her. It’s hard to imagine.

I had another even worse thought about magic. What if everything I do, everything I say, everything I write, absolutely everything about me (and Mor as well) was dictated by some magic somebody else will do in the future. The absolute worst would be if it was my mother, but I don’t think it could be, as so much of what we’ve done has been directly about stopping her. But if it was somebody in the future where she won and was Dark Queen Liz, and they did a magic to make us oppose her to make their world better. Well, I suppose I don’t mind that too much, though I don’t like the thought of being a puppet any more than making other people puppets.

I wrote to Grampar and Auntie Teg and told them I couldn’t come for Christmas but I’d come down the day after Boxing Day, as that’s the first time there are trains. I wrote to Daniel, mostly about the book club and what everyone said.

M
ONDAY
10
^TH
D
ECEMBER
1979

Exams. Chemistry this morning and English this afternoon. Not as much time as normal for library, I’m writing this in prep. I’d kind of forgotten about the exams, or rather, I knew about them and have been working for them, but they seemed rather further away. Never mind. I can write down chemical formulae and witter on about Dickens even half asleep.

T
UESDAY
11
^TH
D
ECEMBER
1979

Exams. Maths and French.

W
EDNESDAY
12
^TH
D
ECEMBER
1979

So last night, after dinner, I signed out for the book club, showing my permissions, and took the bus into town. It was strange going in on my own in the dark. There were only two other people on the bus, a fat woman in a green coat and an old man in a cloth cap. Normally the bus is full of Arlinghurst girls when I go in. I felt conspicuous in my uniform and my silly hat. I was a little bit later than last week, but got there before things really started. Janine was earlier. She came in not long after me, and we sat together. The boys, Pete and Hugh, came and joined us.

All the same people were there as last time except for Wim. I half-thought he’d come in late, but he didn’t show up at all.

Brian led the meeting. He mostly wanted to talk about what an incredible range Silverberg has—well, he has. But let’s face it, some of it is hackwork. It’s still fun, but you can’t put
Stepsons of Terra
next to
Dying Inside
and take it seriously. Hugh hadn’t read any Silverberg before, and he read
Up the Line
and
Voyage to Alpha Centauri
for the meeting. “You keep saying ‘you should have read this, you should have read that,’ but all I could read was what was on the shelf,” he said. “And from the random sample that was on the shelf, I don’t think I’ll bother with any more.”

Now I like
Up the Line
. I do have a weakness for time travel though. One of the first SF books I ever read was time travel, Poul Anderson’s
Guardians of Time
. (There is something to be said for alphabetical order.) But even so, I could see what he meant. Everyone agreed that Silverberg was variable, and people were talking about what his best books are, and then Keith mentioned
The World Inside
and we talked for ages about overpopulation, that book, and
Stand on Zanzibar
and
Make Room! Make Room!
, and whether it was a real problem or not, and whether Brunner’s view of it as something awful or Silverberg’s vision of it as something people would embrace was more plausible. It was epic! Brian didn’t get us back on topic the way Harriet had the week before, and the funny thing was that Harriet was one of the worst for going off topic and tossing out tangents.