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.
Sunday 9th December 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.
Monday 10th December 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.
Tuesday 11th December 1979
Exams. Maths and French.
Wednesday 12th December 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.
I was trying not to talk too much, but I probably did anyway.
“Do we want to have a meeting next week?” Greg asked. “Or should we leave it until after Christmas?”
“We should have a meeting, but how about a Christmas theme?” Harriet suggested.
“Christmas-themed SF?” Greg asked. “What is there?”
“There’s The Dark Is Rising,” Hugh said. “It’s fantasy and it’s a children’s book, but it’s all about Christmas.”
“All right, do you want to lead discussion about that?” Greg asked.
Everyone looked at Hugh, and I realised something in that moment, which is that they took him totally seriously, even though he was only fifteen. They didn’t just let him come to the meetings, they thought he could lead one. They’re the same with me, they don’t look at me as a remarkable dancing bear, they listen to what I say.
“I’m not sure there’d be enough discussion material for a whole meeting,” Hugh said. “But there are the other books in the series.”
“If we run out of things to say early, we can always adjourn to the pub,” Harriet said.
“I think it’s a good idea. We haven’t talked about a children’s fantasy since we did the Narnia books,” Greg said.
“I suppose they have Father Christmas in,” I said, and everyone groaned.
“Worst thing in them,” Keith said.
“Tolkien hated that,” someone else said, a little dark man. “He said it wasn’t internally consistent. Father Christmas and Bacchus and boarding schools and everything all mixed in like a Christmas pudding with raisins and candied peel and sometimes breaking your teeth on a sixpence.”