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.
Monday 17th December 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.
Tuesday 18th December 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.
Wednesday 19th December 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.