Among Others (25 page)

The weird thing about Monopoly was that you could see how long they’d been playing together, the four of them. They all had favourite pieces which they instantly grabbed. Their pieces, when I occasionally had to move them a few squares on my side of the board to save leaning, were full of the magic of use and fondness. In the pieces, I could tell them apart for the first time. They always dress alike, but the dog, racing car and top hat know. The other weird thing about it was how we were sitting there playing it like a normal family, only not, because I don’t belong, but even leaving me out, they’re not. Normal families have different generations, and they’re all one generation. Normal families have married people. Daniel’s the only one of them to have married, and look who he picked! Normal families are not just forty-year-old children who are in charge now without having grown up. There were times in that game when they were squabbling with each other when I felt as if I was the oldest person at the table.

Afterwards we ate Christmas cake, though I just crumbled mine on my plate because it would be a really obvious thing to magic, because it has all those connections to everything. Anyway I don’t like any fruitcake except Auntie Bessie’s. Then I followed Daniel into his study and got him talking about the books he’d sent me, especially
Dune
. Arrakis is such a great world. You could feel it was real, with the different cultures. You don’t see culture clash often enough in SF, and it’s very interesting. Paul going into the desert to the Fremen is someone going right into another culture, and there are secrets both ways. Daniel was quite lively talking about this, and though he’d poured a glass of whisky, he only sipped it. He was smoking the whole time, of course. He asked me what I’d been reading and about the book club and what I’d like to borrow, and all the time I didn’t say “Do you know your sisters are witches?” and he didn’t say “So, why did you freak out about the earring thing?” We weren’t saying those things so loudly you could almost hear them.

Then I got him on the subject of Sam, which is the most human he ever is. They must not be able to mess with Sam, maybe because of his religion? But Sam is a stable point for Daniel, a sane point. The more I was talking to him the more I was wondering how much they control him, what things he isn’t able to think about, what things make him reach for the bottle. They have a tame brother. They have a man to manage the estate. That’s when I thought that what they want is a Nice Niece. Because if they’re not evil witches who want to take over the world—they’re not insane, they’re not like Liz—if they’re pretty much what they seem to be, three women who haven’t grown up properly living together and maybe using a bit of magic to arrange their lives the way they want, then that makes the most sense.

“Are we going to see Sam?” I asked.

“There isn’t really time if you’ve told your Auntie Teg that you’ll go down on Thursday,” he said.

“We could do what we did last time,” I said. “We could do it tomorrow.”

“They wouldn’t want me to be away on Boxing Day,” he said, and I could see that they wouldn’t. They have their Boxing Day rituals like their Christmas Day ones. They’re his sisters and his employers and they have a magic hold on him; how can I compete?

I can look at Daniel now. I feel sorry for him. He’s as kind as he knows how to be, as he can be in the limits of what he is, and he can’t see the walls they’ve built around him. No wonder it was my mother he married, really. It would have to be someone else who had magic to get him away from them. Magic and sex, and maybe it took the getting pregnant too, because that would make a strong strong connection, yuck. No wonder they look so prune faced in the photographs. It didn’t take them long to get him back though.

Then today, which was sunny and frosty, we all went for a walk on the estate. It was very feudal. I’ve never seen anything like it. Class, yes, class is everywhere, but not people touching their caps. We had lunch in a little old pub built literally into the side of a hill, called the Farrier’s Arms. The lunch was great. I had steak and kidney pie which came in a bowl, with chips and a feeble winter salad. It was still the best meal I’ve had for ages. There were a lot of people there they knew, people kept coming over and saying hello. Then after we came back, lots of those people came around for mince pies and tea. They let me hand round mince pies. I played Nice Niece as well as I could, said I was enjoying school and coming third in the class. Several of the women had been to Arlinghurst, but only one of them asked about the Cup. I realised that meeting all those people was good, because they were the aunts’ friends. If their friends have met me, Daniel’s daughter, I can’t just disappear without embarrassing them.

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.

T
HURSDAY
27
^TH
D
ECEMBER
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.

F
RIDAY
28
^TH
D
ECEMBER
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.

This is the second time, the second time
running
, that I’ve got off a train and not been met and realised I can’t cope. I have got to stop doing this. I need better organisation and I need more money. I need to keep emergency money in my bag. As soon as I get some, I’m keeping at least five pounds for that. And maybe I should keep a pound in the back of my purse too, in case I use the other, or only need a bit. Also, maybe I should start saving running-away money again, just in case. It would be lovely to have my life in order enough not to need it, but let’s face it, I’m not there yet.