After they’d all gone, I offered to wash dishes, but they wouldn’t let me. They’re determined to keep me out of the kitchen. Daniel retreated into his study, and I retreated up here, supposedly to bed.
To Cardiff tomorrow, by train. I hope Auntie Teg meets me. She didn’t reply to my letter. If not, I’ll get the bus up the valley. I have the key to Grampar’s house. I have to talk to Glorfindel, not that getting straight answers from fairies is the easiest thing in the world. But I have to try.
Thursday 27th December 1979
On the train, in the corner of a little carriage I have to myself, at least so far. The countryside is frosted as if it has been sprinkled with icing sugar. The sun peeps out of the clouds every so often as the train rushes along, and when we go around a bend I can see the Welsh mountains in the distance, and coming closer. I love the train. Sitting here I feel connected to the last time I sat here, and the train to London too. It is in-between, suspended; and in rapid motion towards and away from, it is also poised between. There’s a magic in that, not a magic you can work, a magic that’s just there, giving a little colour and exhilaration to everything.
I have not let them make holes in my head to hang jewellery from, and to take magic from me. And I am free, at least for now, at least as the train swoops through Church Stretton and Craven Arms, with Shrewsbury left behind and a long time yet before we come to Cardiff. There’s a bit about this in Four Quartets, I’ll see if I can find it when I have the book.
If there’s an easier form of magic than making somebody do what they want, with things that want to do it too, I don’t know what it is. They buy his clothes. They buy his shoes. They buy him glasses and whisky. They own the house and the furniture. He wants to drink the whisky, and the chair wants that and the glass, and of course nothing could be easier than making him drink so much he can’t get up to drive me to the station. The only strange thing is that I didn’t think of it myself. But I don’t know that I could have stopped him, without magic, and even apart from the fact that it wouldn’t be a good idea, I wouldn’t do that, even if they do. If he loved them to start with, if he was grateful, they’d do anything to keep that. Probably over the years they’ve done more and more little things, not meant to hurt him, but never letting him go, binding him up in spider-strands of magic so that he stays, he does what they want, he has no will. It would take something very strong to get through that.
Poor Daniel. The only place where he’s free is with Sam, and in his books. It’s hard to use books for magic. In the first place, the more mass-produced and newer something is, the harder it is for it to be individually magical, rather than part of the magic of the whole thing. There’s a magic of mass production, but it’s spread out and hard to hold. And with books especially, books as objects are not what books are, it’s not what’s important about them, and magic works with objects, mostly. (I should never have done that karass magic, I didn’t know half of what I was doing, and the more I think about it the more I see it. I can’t be truly sorry I did it, because having people to talk to is worth more than rubies, more than anything at all, but I know I wouldn’t have done it if I’d been wiser. Or less desperate.)
Anthea drove me to the station. I know it was Anthea because she told me so, though of course she could easily have been lying. That’s very easy to do when you’re twins. I should know. (I wonder if Daniel can reliably tell them apart. I should ask him about that.) Two of them stayed home to keep an eye on him, I think. “Daniel’s a bit hung over this morning,” one of them said, smiling as she put the rack of disgusting cold toast down on the breakfast table. “So Anthea will drive you to the station.”
“I’m not having my ears pierced,” I said, putting my hands over them again.
“No, dear. Maybe you’ll be sensible about it when you’re older.”
In the car, Anthea didn’t talk about the ear-piercing thing. I talked cheerily about school, about Arlinghurst and the prefects and the houses, and tried my hardest to seem like I’d turned into Nice Niece spontaneously without the need of any magical intervention. It was hard, because of course I hadn’t been doing it before, so perhaps I should have started more gradually if I wanted to be plausible, rather than going into a full-blooded imitation of Lorraine Pargeter right off. Her car is a silver thing, middle sized, I’m not sure what kind, though if I were really Nice Niece I’d have checked to compare it with the others when I got back to school. The inside has leathery upholstery, and it’s much newer than Daniel’s car. There’s a mirror in the passenger side sun flap. I’d been in the car before, when we all went shopping, but I had always sat in the back. I know they take turns driving, and sitting in the front passenger seat. They’re very peculiar really. There are all kinds of things they could be doing. They could be working on Dutch elm disease. They could see the world.
When we got to Shrewsbury, instead of going to the station, she parked outside a jewellers with a sign in the window that said “Ear Piercing.” “There’s just time before the train,” she said. “I’ve brought your hoops.”
“I’ll scream,” I said. “You won’t get me in there without dragging me.”
“I wish you wouldn’t be so silly,” Anthea said, in that “more in sorrow than in anger” voice adults use.
I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know what she knew, how much she knew about why I was objecting. It seemed to me, and it still seems right, that it’s best to keep as much as possible unspoken. If I started talking about magic not only would she know, but she’d have every reason to tell Daniel I was deranged.
“I absolutely will not have my ears pierced,” I said, as firmly as possible. I clutched my bag, which was on my lap, and which helped to centre me. “I don’t want to behave badly, I don’t want to cause a scene in the street or in the shop, but I will if I have to, Aunt Anthea.”
As I was talking, I put one hand on the lever that opens the car door, ready to leap out if I had to. I had another bag in the boot, with books and some clothes in, but everything I really needed was in my bag on my lap. I’d be sorry to lose some of the books, but you can always buy them again if you have to. Heinlein says you have to be prepared to abandon baggage, and I was. I know I can’t literally run, but I thought that if I leapt out of the car and hobbled down the street, she’d have to chase after me, and there might be people she knew and she’d be embarrassed. There were already some people about, though it was quite early. If it came to physically fighting, there was for the time being only one of her. I might have a bad leg but that also means I have a stick.
We sat like that for a while, and then she grimaced and turned the key and drove off. We came to the station where she bought my return ticket and then kissed my cheek and told me to have a good time. She didn’t come up to the platform. She looked—I don’t know. I don’t think she’s used to being thwarted.
Magic isn’t inherently evil. But it does seem to be terribly bad for people.
Friday 28th December 1979
By the time the train got to Cardiff it was raining, and all the exhilaration of frost on distant hills was lost in city rain. Auntie Teg wasn’t in the station to meet me. I thought she must be too cross with me not coming to help on Christmas Day to want to see me at all. I walked out of the station and across through the bus station to find the bus up the valley and realised that I still only had 24p, two tens and two twos in my purse, big as cartwheels and just as useless. I couldn’t think how I could get some more money. I have a few pounds in the post office, but I didn’t have the book. There are people I could borrow money from, but none of them were in Cardiff station today at lunchtime in the rain. And my stupid leg was stupidly hurting again. Fortunately, before I got to the point where I started hitchhiking, which I have done but only when I was running away, I spotted Auntie Teg’s little orange car turning in to the car park. I limped across slowly to intercept her before she put money in the meter. She was very pleased to see me and didn’t reproach me. She’d been expecting me to come on the next train. I think I probably caught the earlier one because of Anthea wanting the time to have my ears pierced.