Among Others (38 page)

The Persian Boy
is so wonderful. It might be her best book. Stimulated not by it directly but by the general thought of her books, I have also raced through the
Phaedrus
and started
The Laws
and got a bit bogged down.

Miss Carroll seems to approve of me reading things that aren’t SF. She started a conversation about ancient Greece, and mentioned the possibility of me doing an O Level in Greek while I’m doing my A Levels. I don’t know if I’m going to be doing A Levels here or what, but if I am and I do, that would be a really good plan. I don’t think they’d let me do what Wim’s doing and keep mixing arts and sciences. Besides, I’d like to do English, history, and Latin, which is a very usual and conventional mix. I’d like to keep on with either physics or chemistry too, but as Miss Carroll pointed out, not having the maths would make that difficult. I might just scrape a pass in maths, if I’m lucky, but that’s the best I can hope for.

At the doctor’s, I asked if I was seeing him in confidence, and he said of course. Then I asked if he’d give me a prescription for the Pill. He asked if I was sexually active, and I said not yet, but I was thinking of becoming so. He looked at my date of birth and tutted a little, but he gave me the prescription. He said I’d have to take it for a whole month before it would work, that I had to start taking it on the day after a period, and that if I missed one pill after that I’d be okay, but no more than that, and I should take them at the same time every day. I picked the prescription up in Boots on the way back. I also bought a packet of condoms (be prepared) and a bar of Cadbury’s Dairy Milk, which was more to disguise the other things than because I wanted it, though I ate it anyway.

I’m keeping the pills and the condoms in my bag, because there isn’t anywhere else safe.

T
UESDAY
12
^TH
F
EBRUARY
1980

Deirdre nearly got caught copying my Virgil today. There are two verbs, “progredior” and “proficiscor” and they’re both weirdly in the passive all the time, and they both start “pro” and one means “advance” and the other “set out” and I always confuse them, and I did in my prep, which Deirdre had copied. Miss Martin, who’s very sharp, gave us both a stern look when Deirdre read that bit aloud, and she said that mistakes with passive verbs seem to be catching, and then she had Deirdre come up to the front and do the next bit, the bit we hadn’t been set to prepare. She didn’t make too bad a muck of it, so I thought we’d got away with it. Then she made me construe the next part, again unseen. After class, while the bell was ringing and everyone was charging off down the corridor for physics, she stopped me and said “Did you and Deirdre co-operate a little on that piece of Virgil, Morwenna?”

“She was a bit stuck,” I said, which was the truth, and sounded much better than saying she copied all of mine.

“She’ll never learn if she doesn’t learn to learn on her own,” Miss Martin said, which sounds like an aphorism, and maybe is one in Latin, where it would be about three words, no six, maybe seven.

Letter from Daniel saying he’ll collect me on Friday and it’s fine to go to Aberdare on Sunday, also saying I might get a surprise before that. I wonder what he means? Maybe he’s sent books separately?

Book club tonight, talking about
Pavane
.

W
EDNESDAY
13
^TH
F
EBRUARY
1980

Hussein led the meeting, and we didn’t just talk about
Pavane
, but also Brunner’s brilliant
Times Without Number
and Dick’s
The Man in the High Castle
(which I haven’t read) and Ward Moore’s
Bring the Jubilee
and the whole idea of having para-history. We also mentioned
Up the Line
and
Guardians of Time
and Christopher Priest’s
A Dream of Wessex
(must order!) which Wim says is brill. There was a question of whether they were really SF, which they obviously are, and whether there was a difference between the kind of “paratime” thing, like
Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen
and a book like
Pavane
which is all in one universe where things went differently.

We kept coming back to
Pavane
and the way
Pavane
covers such a span of time, which, Greg says, is what makes it SF, the perspective. Then Brian mentioned the Lord Darcy books (I adore Randall Garrett!) and asked whether they were SF, which was a cheat, as they’re obviously fantasy, except that they’re not at all like fantasy, and they are exactly like SF. Harriet said she felt they belonged rather with things like Dunsany’s club stories and tall tales, they were whimsical. I disagreed (probably talking too much and too vehemently) because I think the way in which they’re like SF is the opposite of whimsy, they’re taking magic and treating it as another bit of science, especially in
Too Many Magicians
.

Janine doesn’t seem to be speaking to me, or Pete either. They’ll get over it, Wim says. I hope so.

Hugh looked a bit confused. Greg thinks—he said in the car—that Hugh thought he and I would automatically become an item, because we were the same age. I never heard anything so stupid in my life, and said so, because while I like Hugh I never thought of him in that way for two seconds. Greg just laughed and said these things sort themselves out, and had I read McCaffrey? I don’t know what that has to do with anything, but we talked about Impressing dragons all the rest of the way back.

Wim’s meeting me in Gobowen again tomorrow. He seems to think this isn’t very often to see each other, but I think it’s loads. I need time in between to think—and to write it all down! I don’t suppose he does that.

It has just belatedly occurred to me that tomorrow is Valentine’s Day. I don’t suppose he’ll take any notice of it—or will he? I don’t have the foggiest. Miss Carroll thinks he might, and that I should have something ready to produce if he does. The problem with that is that I don’t have anything. She suggested a book—well, she would!—and that would be a terrific idea if there was time to go to a bookshop. I could make him a card. Well, except that nobody would want a card I’d made. I could write him a poem, or more to the point, write out neatly one of the poems I have already written about him. But what if he didn’t like it? I’ve never talked to him about poetry, I have no idea whether he likes it or not. If he didn’t hate Heinlein I could give him
The Number of the Beast
, but he does, so I can’t. I don’t have anything else new, and he probably has everything I have here.

If I leave school a little bit early, I can go to the bookshop on the way to the station, I suppose.

T
HURSDAY
14
^TH
F
EBRUARY
1980

Well, that was awkward.

Daniel’s “surprise” was turning up to drive me to Shrewsbury. I can’t think why he did it today, when it’s half term tomorrow, but I shouldn’t expect him to make sense. He was sitting outside in the car, looking very pleased with himself, like the cat who got the cream. I stopped still when I saw him, absolutely convulsed with horror.

Wim was meeting me in Gobowen station. I had no way of contacting him to tell him what had happened. If I didn’t meet him, I wouldn’t see him until after half term. He’d think I’d dumped him, and on Valentine’s Day too.

The alternative was to tell Daniel about Wim. I thought about that as I got into the car. The problem there was that I hadn’t said anything about him at all up to that point, because as usual my letters to Daniel had been exclusively about books. It was an excruciating situation. I couldn’t possibly ask Daniel to turn around and leave me alone, which would really have been what I’d have preferred.

“I managed to get away,” Daniel said. “We can go to the Chinese restaurant again.”

“That’s lovely, but,” I said, and stopped.

“But what?” he asked, starting the engine and driving down the drive, between the two dead elms, which look terrible again now that the other trees are starting to think about getting leaves. “I thought you’d be pleased.” He sounded really pathetic.

“I’m supposed to be meeting a friend in Gobowen railway station,” I said. “Do you think we could go there and collect him and take him with us?”

Daniel’s face went oddly blank, then he smiled. “Of course,” he said, and did a U-turn in the road, which was, fortunately, deserted.

After that, I couldn’t possibly say I wanted to go to the bookshop first.

“Is this a boyfriend, or just a boy-type friend?” he asked.

“Sort of a boyfriend. Well, actually a boyfriend, yes.” I was tripping over my own tongue in embarrassment.

“So, tell me about him?” Daniel sounded encouraging, but also bewildered.

I didn’t know quite what to say. “His name’s Wim. I met him in the book group. He’s seventeen. He likes Delany and Zelazny. He’s doing English, history, and chem for A Level, at the college, while working part time. I’m thinking of doing that myself next year, if I need to.”

“Why would you need to?” Daniel asked.

“I’ll be sixteen in June,” I said. “You won’t have to support me. I could live on my own.”

“I’ll support you for as long as you want to be in full-time education,” Daniel said, not having read
Doorways in the Sand
or
The Number of the Beast
.

“Did you know there’s a new Heinlein?” I asked, having remembered it.

“You told me on Sunday,” he said. “I’m looking forward to it, even if it isn’t his best.”

At that point, we were at Gobowen station. It was deserted. For once, I’d got somewhere ahead of Wim, because he was expecting me to come by buses around two sides of a triangle, while in fact I’d come by car down the third side. “He’ll be here soon, he’s always early,” I said. Daniel parked neatly on the forecourt.

“How long have you been seeing each other?” he asked.

I added it up. “Almost two weeks,” I said.

To his credit, Daniel didn’t say anything about how I should have told him, or that I was too young, or anything like that. “Yet another new role,” is what he said, but he was smiling. “I feel absurdly nervous.”

“Well how do you think I feel?” I asked.

He laughed, and just then Wim came freewheeling into the station yard, hair blowing around his face. “Is that him?” Daniel asked.

“Yes,” I said, feeling more proud than I had any right to be. I got out of the car, which Wim hadn’t been paying any attention to at all. He isn’t a very noticing person.

Daniel got out too. “We can put the bike in the boot,” he said.

“Wait here while I explain to him,” I said.

I walked over to Wim. Daniel leaned on the car, smoking a cigarette and watched. Wim saw me, saw the Bentley, and then saw Daniel, I saw him registering. “Wim, my father turned up unexpectedly to take me to acupuncture. I had no warning at all either. Do you want to come to Shrewsbury with us, in the car?”

He looked very surprised. “In the car? With your dad?”

“He doesn’t mind. If you’d like to. But we wouldn’t be on our own, and we can’t talk about magic or anything, because he doesn’t know anything about it.”

“Anything for a weird life,” Wim said, quoting Zaphod. Then he kissed me, a little tentatively, but still bravely considering that Daniel was standing right there. He pulled a packet out of his coat pocket and handed it to me almost defiantly. “Happy Valentine’s Day.”

I opened it right away. It was three books! Theodore Sturgeon’s
A Touch of Strange
, with a lovely cover of a woman’s head and the moon, Christopher Priest’s
Inverted World
, and something I’d never heard of by an author new to me,
Gate of Ivrel
by C. J. Cherryh. I was overwhelmed. “Oh Wim, that’s lovely. And I haven’t got any of them. I didn’t have a chance to buy you anything yet, but I did make this for you.” I pulled the poem out of my pocket. I’d written it on nice blue paper Miss Carroll had given me, in my best handwriting. (It’s the one that starts “To drag yourself over the dry rock of the deserts of the mind.”)

He read it, and I waited while he read it, watching him, very conscious of Daniel waiting behind me. Wim blushed and pushed it into his pocket. I don’t know whether he liked it or not.

Then I introduced him to Daniel, and they shook hands like a pair of judges. Things got a little easier when they cooperated in getting the bike into the car boot. Then we all climbed back in and started off for Shrewsbury. I realised as we did that the two of them were going to have to spend an hour together without me while I was having acupuncture. Has anything ever been awkwarder? It served Daniel right for not telling me, but poor Wim didn’t deserve it at all.