Among Others (22 page)

“Whatever he did to Ruthie?”

“No, not whatever he did, but until we know what it was he did.” Hugh shrugged, and blushed again. “For what it’s worth, I think they probably, well, did it, by mutual agreement. They were careless with contraception and Ruthie had a scare and panicked. That’s not something to condemn someone to the outer circles of Hell for.”

I didn’t know what to say. My father had been made to marry my mother because she got pregnant, and look how well that worked out. Fortunately the bus came around the corner and saved me from saying anything. I took my bag from Hugh and moved towards the queue.

“See you Tuesday,” I said, as I got on the bus.

Gill was just ahead of me. She turned around and gave me a look of utter contempt.

S
UNDAY
16
^TH
D
ECEMBER
1979

As long as I don’t think about them being puppets, I can have a really good time with them. Mostly yesterday I didn’t think about it at all. The whole thing with what I’d done, with the magic, just wasn’t in my mind, and I could act as if they were perfectly naturally part of my karass, both of them.

But today, thinking about it, of course I can’t help thinking about that.

When we were young, Auntie Lillian once bought us a doll that could really talk. Her name was Rosebud, and she was just the kind of doll little girls are supposed to want. Her eyes closed when you laid her down, and opened when you picked her up. She had a bland pretty face with no personality and a white dress covered in a rosebud pattern. She had pink shoes that slipped on and off and golden hair that you could really comb. She also had a string in her chest, and when you pulled it she spoke. She could say two things. “Hello, my name is Rosebud,” and “Let’s play schoo-ul!” If you pulled the string slowly, she’d say them in a deeper voice, and if you pulled it really fast, she’d squeak.

The problem with Rosebud and her really talking was that our other dolls could pretend talk, and that was better. Our collection of dolls (who mostly had some disadvantage like one arm or leg, or were animals rather than being humanoid) had epic adventures surviving after nuclear wars or rescuing dragons from evil princesses. Battered old Pippa, with her one arm and her ragged hair (Mor cut it when she was disguising herself as a soldier) could stand there vowing defiance and revenge against the evil Dog Overlord (the toy dog had a moustache which could be twirled, so he often got the bad-guy parts) and Rosebud couldn’t compete when all she could say was “Let’s play schoo-ul.”

I don’t want a karass like Rosebud.

I mean I don’t want a karass like Pippa and Dog and Jr. and the others either, so this isn’t a very good analogy. (I do not miss my toys. I wouldn’t play with them anyway. I am fifteen. I miss my
childhood
.) Jr. was a plastic boy on a motorbike, one of our few human male toys. His name came from Ward Moore’s “Lot.” I thought it daring and American to have an odd name like that with no vowels. We pronounced it Jirr. I was mortified for whole minutes when I found out what it really meant.

When Hugh mentioned that Wim had done a session on Delany, my first thought, my very first thought, though I know I didn’t write this down yesterday but that’s because I was ashamed, was that I could do a magic to make that not have happened yet. I could do a magic that would mean he’d do it so I could be there for it. I didn’t do the magic, or even really mean to, but I thought it. If I did it, I’d be making them into Rosebud. I’d also be risking what happened to George Orr, because so far, I might have made it all happen but I might not. I didn’t see it without. It could have been there all the time. If I didn’t exist, or if I had died with Mor, they could still have had a session on Delany. Maybe all the magic did was make me see the group was there and find them. I can’t tell. I won’t ever be able to tell. Deniable magic. If I did that, I really would be treating them as Rosebud, to say the same things when I pulled a string. And that’s if I even could do that. I think actually I couldn’t, it would do that thing Glory talked about where too many people create too much weight and you can’t change what’s happened.

But even thinking about it.

I don’t want to be evil, I really don’t. The worst of anything she could do to me would be to make me like her. That’s why I ran away. That’s why the Children’s Home was better, why this is better.

I hereby solemnly swear to renounce the doing of magic for my own benefit, or for anything but protection against harm.

Morganna Rachel Phelps Markova, 16th December 1979.

M
ONDAY
17
^TH
D
ECEMBER
1979

I hadn’t realised that with the exams over this week would be given over relentlessly to fun.

In English, I played Scrabble with Deirdre. I beat her by 600 points, but it wasn’t any fun. It would be a good game with someone who could spell and had some vocabulary. I made “torc,” Celtic necklace. She suggested shyly that it should be spelled “talk.” Then we played Snakes and Ladders, which she won.

Apart from that, I’ve been reading pretty much all day, generally in the middle of complete pandemonium.

I’m onto
The Grey King
.

There’s a thing in
The Dark Is Rising
, the Christmas one, which is definitely the best of them, where Will does magic in a church, and the vicar asks about the magic crosses and they say they’re before Christ, and he says “But not before God.” The magic generally is pretty well written but conventional, the battle of Dark and Light, and you learn it from grimoires and then you can fly and time travel and whatever you want. Nothing like magic really is, much less confusing. In children’s books with magic everything is always very black and white, though not of course in Tolkien. But “not before God” made me think.

T
UESDAY
18
^TH
D
ECEMBER
1979

Exam results, Winter Term 1979

Chemistry: 96%—
2nd

English Literature: 94%—
1st

English Language: 92%—
1st

History: 91%—
1st

Physics: 89%—
1st

Religious Education: 89%—
1st

Latin: 82%—
1st

French: 79%—
2nd

Mathematics: 54%—
19th

Gym:
excused

Games:
excused

Dancing:
excused

Average: 85%—
3rd

I just don’t have a mathematical brain, I never have. But at least I scraped a pass. I was afraid they were going to give me a zero for gym and games and dancing and then count them into my average. Gill beat me in chem. Good. And Claudine beat me in French, which isn’t surprising as her mother is French. She pronounces it, which none of the rest of us know how to do. They should have Claudine teach the class. The maths brought me down more than I was expecting, so Claudine and Karen are both ahead of me overall. But it’s otherwise pretty good.

I wish I could show it to Gramma. Grampar will be pleased, I expect everyone will be pleased, but it isn’t the same.

I had a letter from Auntie Teg this morning. She’s very upset indeed about me not coming home for Christmas. I did already say it wasn’t my fault. I wish I could go.

Deirdre rushed out of the room when she saw her marks. I’m assuming they’re terrible. Shagger’s fourth. She deigned to say “Well done,” to me, which is the first thing she’s said to me for ages.

W
EDNESDAY
19
^TH
D
ECEMBER
1979

Pretty good meeting last night. Everyone was there. Hugh did very well at leading it, gently getting people back on topic when they wandered away. We had a great talk about the seasonal nature of the books, and about their very specific locations. Greg’s been to North Wales and walked on Cadfan’s Way and says that Craig yr Aderyn is just like that. Everyone agreed that the end of
Silver on the Tree
is a cop-out and we’d all hate it if that happened to us. It’s funny, the younger people were, the more vehement they were about how much they’d hate it. Harriet almost thought the children ought to have their memories wiped, but Hugh and I would rather have died, with everyone else falling on a spectrum by age. Hugh’s nice. And I did like the feeling of being vehemently in agreement. Harriet, who really could be Harriet Vane grown up, I keep seeing her that way, stopped saying “I can see it might be kinder,” and came around to our point of view as far as “I do understand what a loss it would be.”

We finished early and all went to the pub. “I’ll buy you an orange juice,” Greg said to me. I didn’t say I hate Britvic orange, I said “Thank you.” Who says I have no social graces?

The pub is called the White Hart, which I said had a very Narnian sound. We’d been talking about Narnia a bit, in comparison, so it wasn’t just out of the blue. We’d been comparing the ends. It really is odd how two children’s fantasy series should both have such problematic ends. It isn’t an inherent genre problem, because look at
The Farthest Shore
! Maybe it’s a problem with books about children from our world, or British writers—but no, there’s Garner. He doesn’t exactly write series, but he certainly has no problem with ends! That reminds me, I never went back and got
Red Shift
.

The White Hart is an old pub with beams and horse-brasses hanging up on leather belts and a big oak bar with pumps for different beers. It stinks of smoke, like all pubs, and the supposedly white plaster between the beams is yellow because of it. I had an orange juice, and gave Greg his chocolates. He opened them right away and handed them around. I got a Viennese truffle, which felt a little mean as they were my present. Delicious though.

I found myself sitting next to Wim. Honestly, I didn’t do anything to arrange it! He remains disconcertingly gorgeous close up. It’s not just the long blond hair or the very blue eyes, it’s something about the way he holds himself. I like Hugh much better, but Hugh is like a solid piece of treetrunk, while Wim is like new branches of blossom waving in the breeze, or a rare butterfly that lands near you and you hold your breath watching it in case it flies away. It’s the same sort of breathlessness.

“So, you like Susan Cooper as well as Le Guin?” he said.

“I’d never read them before this week,” I said. “I borrowed Janine’s, and I’ve just given them back.”

“You read all five books this week?” he said, tossing his head a little so his hair fell back out of his eyes. “You must have a lot of free time.”

“I do,” I said, quite coldly.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I hate it when people imply that people only read because they have nothing better to do, and here I am doing it.”

I liked that. “What could be better?” I asked.

He laughed. He has a nice laugh, very natural. When he laughed, I could imagine doing all the stupid things girls do when they have a crush on someone, keeping a stub of pencil and a piece of sticking plaster like Harriet Smith in
Emma
, or kissing a photograph before bed like Shagger and Harrison Ford.

“How about films?” he suggested, and instantly just like that the whole group was involved in a passionate discussion about
Star Wars
.

Everyone either loves it or hates it. Middle ground is not permitted. My general feeling that it was fun to see actual robots and spaceships but that it was a bit childish compared to real SF didn’t seem like a possible position.

A bit later, when people had stopped shooting fish in a barrel or passionately defending, I turned to Wim again. “I heard you did a meeting about Delany.”

“Do you like Delany?” he said. “You have very broad-ranging tastes.”

“I love Delany,” I said, pleased that he had not said I had broad-ranging tastes
for my age
, the way so many people always do. “But there’s something I’ve been wondering about the end of
Triton
.”