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 she’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.