Among Others (18 page)

I still can’t forgive Lewis for his allegory. I understand now why Tolkien said in the prologue that he hated them. You can’t take something that’s itself and make it stand for something else. Or you can, but you shouldn’t push it. If I try to think of it as a retelling of the gospels, that diminishes Narnia. I think I’m going to have trouble re-reading them without thinking about it. That’s so annoying! However, Carpenter says Lewis wrote some books directly about Christianity—overtly about it, I mean. Maybe I should try them. I have to say I feel horribly mixed up about religion. And RE is no help. We’re droning through the Journeys of Paul, and I’m reading my way slowly through the Bible. There are some good stories in it, in between all the tedium. But most of it is history, not so much theology, and I’d be very interested to know if Lewis says anything about fairies—because he has the maenads in
Prince Caspian
and they always remind me of fairies a bit. There’s nothing here but the Interplanetary books, but I’ll see if they have
Mere Christianity
in the town library, and if not, well, that’s what interlibrary loan is for.

Just as I was writing that, Miss Carroll came over.

“Has your father signed the form for the book club?” she asked.

“Not yet,” I said. “I’m sure he will, but there hasn’t been time yet.”

“If you like, I could take you tonight. If I’m there the whole time,
in loco parentis
, that would be all right. It would be like taking girls to the theatre. I’ve checked with Miss Ellis, and she says it would be fine.” She smiled at me.

“But do you want to go?” I asked. I can’t help being such an ungracious lump when people are nice to me. It isn’t what I mean, it just comes out before I think.

“It should be interesting,” she said.

“Do you even read SF?”

“I try to read a sample of what’s in my library, so I can recommend things to people. I’ve certainly read some SF. It isn’t my favourite, like it is yours, but I have read some. I’ve even read some Ursula Le Guin; I’ve read
A Wizard of Earthsea
.”

“Did you like it?” I asked.

“I thought it was excellent.” Miss Carroll sat down opposite me across the wooden table and looked at me quizzically. “What is this? I didn’t expect to be interrogated on my suitability for the book club, I thought you’d be pleased.”

“I am pleased,” I said. “Thank you. I really want to go. I’m just not used—I mean I can’t quite believe you’re giving up your evening for me.” She’s quite young really. She must have boyfriends, or at least somewhere she lives and cooks herself dinner and reads her book without being disturbed. To be honest, I find it quite hard to imagine her life away from the school. But whatever it is, she could be doing it tonight, and instead she’s going to the SF book club because I want to. Why would she do that? I didn’t know magic worked this well. It’s frightening.

“It’ll be an interesting experience,” she said. “It’ll be nice to see how they do these things at the town library. And I always like hearing about books. Maybe we could start a book club here. Some of the older girls might be interested. Besides,” she leaned forward and lowered her voice, even though we were the only people in the library, as usual. “One of the things they tell you in library school is that you have to consider the needs of the clients and keep them happy. Now you’re definitely my best client, and one of the few people who is really using this library, so keeping you happy is important.”

I laughed. “Thank you,” I said. “Thank you very much.”

So I am going to the book club tonight! Miss Carroll is going to pick me up after supper.

W
EDNESDAY
5
^TH
D
ECEMBER
1979

Of course they didn’t instantly decide they were my karass and welcome me to their bosoms. That would be too much to expect. But it was brill anyway.

I was so afraid we were going to be late that we were actually early. The library was just closing when we got there. The librarian looked quite surprised to see me coming in with Miss Carroll. “Ah, Miss Markova,” he said, which is literally the first time anyone has ever called me that. I’ve been called Miss Phelps before occasionally, but never Miss Markova. It felt weird. “You made it after all.”

“This is Miss Carroll, she’s the librarian at the school. And this is, um…” I floundered.

“Greg Mansell, but do call me Greg.”

“Then I’m Alison,” Miss Carroll said, to my total surprise, and they shook hands. I’d stupidly never thought of her as having a first name, maybe because Carol is a first name.

I knew that I should have said my name, that they were both looking at me waiting for me to say it, but my tongue clotted in my mouth and I couldn’t get it out. It wasn’t that I’d forgotten my name, so much as I wasn’t sure what form of it to use. “Mori,” I said, after way too long. “My friends call me Mori.”

Then two other people arrived, both middle-aged guys but one tall, Brian, and one short and stout, Keith. Greg took out his key and let us into a room at the back of the library.

The library must have been built about a hundred years ago. It’s Victorian, with stone windows in brick walls. The room where they have the meetings was once a reading room, but now the reading room is the reference library upstairs and this is kept locked. It has wood panels to about elbow height, and above that it’s painted cream between the windows—there are lots of windows on one side, but I couldn’t see what was outside because it was dark. On the other long wall there’s a huge dark Victorian painting of people sitting in a library reading, looking down at their backs as they sit at little tables among rows of bookshelves. This room isn’t like that at all—there’s one big old table in the middle with old wooden chairs around it. There are two busts, one at each end of the rectangular room. One is Descartes, who I don’t know but who has a wonderful face, and the other is Plato, yes!

I sat on the side of the table facing the picture, with my back to the windows, and Miss Carroll sat down next to me. The men, who all knew each other of course, were standing up talking. Some more men came in, some of them younger, but none of them much under thirty. Then two boys came in, wearing the purple school blazers of the local comprehensive school. I’d guess they were sixteen or seventeen. I was starting to think there weren’t going to be any women when a stout grey-haired woman bustled in and sat at the head of the table. She had a big pile of Le Guin books in hardcover editions and she put them down next to her in a businesslike way. Seeing this, the others started to take seats. I was wishing I’d brought copies, but of course I didn’t have any except my dear old
Wind’s Twelve Quarters, Volume 2
. My mother still has all my books, but books are replaceable.

Miss Carroll was looking at the pile of books a bit nervously. “Have you read all those,” she asked me quietly.

I looked at them properly, and I had, all except one called
The Eye of the Heron
. “All but one,” I said. “And I’ve read one that isn’t there,
The Word For World is Forest
.”

“You really do read a lot of sci fi,” she said.

Just then the grey-haired woman took a deep breath as if she were about to begin, and as she did the door opened and a boy—a young man—practically fell in to the room. He’s the most gorgeous thing I ever saw, with longish blond hair flopping about his head, extremely blue eyes, a passionately intense gaze, though I didn’t see that at once, and a kind of casual grace of movement even when tripping over his own feet. “I’m sorry I’m late, Harriet,” he said, favouring the woman with a dazzling smile. “The bike had a puncture.”

It seemed a cruel trick of the gods that such a glorious creature should have to go about on a bicycle. He sat down directly opposite me, so close that I could see the raindrops beading on his hair. He must be eighteen or nineteen. I wonder why he isn’t in university? He has somewhat the look of a lion, or of a young Alexander the Great.

“I was just going to start, but you’re not late,” Harriet said, smiling at him. (Harriet! I’ve never met anyone called Harriet in real life. I had a brief fantasy about her being Harriet Vane, because she’d be about the right age for that, except that Harriet Vane would be addressed as Lady Peter, and anyway she’s fictional. I can tell the difference, really I can.)

The door banged open again and a teenage girl came in. She was wearing a purple blazer, which looked appalling with her ginger hair. She sat with the two boys in blazers, who, I saw now, had kept a seat for her between them. I felt … not exactly jealous, but I felt a sort of pang when I saw that.

Then Harriet started to talk about Le Guin. She talked for about fifteen or twenty minutes. After that the talk became general. I talked far more than I should have. I knew it even at the time. I just couldn’t stop myself. I didn’t actually interrupt anyone, which would be unforgivable, I just didn’t hold back enough to give other people a turn. Miss Carroll didn’t say anything the whole time. The gorgeous boy said some very perceptive things about
The Lathe of Heaven
. One of the men, Keith I think, said it was like Philip K. Dick, which is
nonsense,
and the gorgeous boy said that while there were certain superficial similarities you can’t compare Le Guin to Dick because her characters are like people in ways his just aren’t, which is exactly what I’d have said. There’s also apparently a film of it, which nobody has seen.

He also said that maybe she writes about the scientific process so well in
The Dispossessed
, despite not being a scientist, because she understands that creativity isn’t all that different across fields. He and Brian agreed that she did get the scientific process right, and everyone deferred to them about that, so they must be something scientific. I didn’t like to ask what. I’d already been talking too much, as I said. I kept thinking of things to say and ask, and thinking I’d said too much and should let other people speak, and then thinking of more things I just had to say, and saying them. I hope I didn’t totally bore everyone.

The gorgeous boy—I must find out his name next time!—kept his eyes fixed on me when I was talking. It was quite disconcerting.

The most interesting thing anyone said though was said by one of the boys in purple blazers. I had said that Le Guin’s worlds were real because her people were so real, and he said yes, but the people were so real because they were the people the worlds would have produced. If you put Ged to grow up on Anarres or Shevek in Earthsea, they wouldn’t be the same people, the backgrounds made the people, which of course you see all the time in mainstream fiction, but it’s rare in SF. That’s absolutely true, and it’s very interesting, and I couldn’t help jumping in again to say that it fit back with
The Lathe of Heaven
and what happens to people in the different worlds, and whether a grey person in a world of grey people was inherently a different person from a brown one in a mixed race world.

I don’t know when I had such a good time, and if it wasn’t for worrying that I talked too much I’d say it was a total success. There’s a thing—I’ve noticed it often. When I first say something, it’s as if people don’t hear me, they can’t believe I’m saying it. Then they start to actually pay attention, they stop noticing that a teenage girl is talking and start to believe that it’s worth listening to what I’m saying. With these people, it was much less effort than normal. Pretty much from the second time I opened my mouth their expressions weren’t indulgent but attentive. I liked that.

Afterwards, Keith asked who was coming to the pub. The gorgeous boy went, and Harriet, and Greg, but not the teenagers in school blazers, and not me, because I had to go back to school. Everyone said goodbye to me, but I got all awkward and tongue-tied again saying goodbye and hoping to see them next week.

Miss Carroll had a word with Greg, and then we got back into her car and she drove back to school. “You don’t get a lot of chance to talk to people about things that matter to you, do you?” she asked.

I stared out at the night and the dark. In between the traffic lights at the bottom of town and the school, there’s nothing to make light but the occasional farmhouse, which means car headlights seem an intrusion of brightness. I saw mice and rabbits and the occasional fairy scurrying off as the beams lit them. “No,” I said. “I don’t get a lot of chance to talk to people at all.”

“Arlinghurst is a very good school in its way,” she said.

“Not for people like me,” I said.

“The last bus that runs past the school leaves at eight-fifteen,” she said. “They finished closer to nine tonight. I asked Greg as one librarian to another if he’d be able to give you a lift back regularly, and he said he would. As long as you’re in bed by lights out, that should be all right.”

“It’s very nice of him. He’s very kind to ask me at all. You don’t think I talked too much?”

Miss Carroll laughed, as the car swung between the elms into the school drive. “Maybe a little too much. But they certainly seemed interested in what you had to say. I wouldn’t worry about it.”