Jo Walton - Among Others

I couldn’t lock the front door again. I locked it from inside and went out the back, then put the back door key in through the letterbox. I’ve told Auntie Teg, who’ll be the next person to come in.

I saw Moira and Leah and Nasreen after they got out of school this afternoon. They asked me what Arlinghurst was like, and I didn’t tell them, except for superficial things. Leah has got a boyfriend, Andrew who used to be so good at maths in Park School when we were all little. I said that and Moira said some of us were still little. She’s had a growth spurt. I wonder if I will. I’ve been the same height since I was twelve, when we were the tallest in the class, but now almost everyone has passed me. They told me all the gossip. Dorcas, who always used to be top in French and Welsh and whose parents are some kind of nutty religion, Seventh-day Adventists or something, has got pregnant. Sue has left because her parents were moving to England. It felt really normal, but also really weird, as if I was just pretending.

Back to Shrewsbury tomorrow, just when they’re going to be out of school and we could have done something together.

The Crewe train is much smaller than the London train. It has a corridor and little carriages that seat eight, on sort of benches across from each other. There’s a luggage rack up above, and black and white photographs of places—in my carriage Newton Abbot, which I’ve never heard of. I wonder where it is? It looks nice. For most of the way I had the carriage to myself, though a middle-aged lady and her two children got on in Abergavenny and off in Hereford. They didn’t bother me much. Most of the time I alternated looking out of the window and reading, first my Destinies and then I started Spider Robinson’s Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon , which I also bought in Lears.

The train runs up the Welsh border. Once it gets away from Cardiff and Newport it’s all hills and fields as it goes up through the borders. The sun was in and out, in a fitful autumnal way, with that odd autumn afternoon light that looks almost like an underwater colour. The clouds made patches of darkness on the mountains, and when there was a patch of sun the grass seemed almost luminous, as if you could read by it. You can see the Sugarloaf from the train. Well, it’s a very distinctive mountain. We used to go to Abergavenny sometimes, and there was a song we’d sing in the car, “Over the hills to Abergavenny, hoping the weather’ll be fine.” It gave me a warm feeling to see it, even just the railway station and the hills behind. I’ll mention going through it to Grampar when I write. After Abergavenny the train crosses the border into England somewhere, because Hereford is in England, and Ludlow definitely is. Ludlow is a little market town. It looks a lot like Oswestry, from the train, but a bit warmer.

The last stop before Shrewsbury is Church Stretton. A lot of people came into my carriage then, and my beautiful corner where I’d felt so comfortable all the way became a bit crowded. My heart sank a bit too. I’d managed to enjoy the journey up to that point without thinking about where I was ending up.

Daniel wasn’t waiting in Shrewsbury station. I’d thought he’d be on the platform, but he wasn’t. I went out through the barrier and stood in the car park. I thought about getting a bus but I didn’t have the faintest idea what bus I’d want or where it would go from. That’s another thing, in the Valleys I know where all the buses go, and their routes, and which ones are useful to me. Red-and-whites go to Cardiff, and the dark-red ones are locals. It’s easy to think about knowing the dramroads and the way things fit together, but I’d never thought how useful it is to know buses, until I was standing there and felt so stuck. I had my bag, and a bag of books too, and I wasn’t exactly weighed down with luggage but it wasn’t nothing.

I had two pounds ten left of the ten pounds. (That might not seem like much, but I had bought a lot of books.) I went back into the station, where there’s a W. H. Smiths and bought a map, a pink-covered one inch to the mile Ordnance Survey map of Shrewsbury and district. (I always thought it was “ordinance,” but apparently not. Ordnance. What a funny word, and what a funny concept too. They surveyed the whole country for military logistics, and now they sell anyone the maps. Well, I wasn’t planning to invade.) I went back out into the car park and sat down on a bench. I found Mickleham, where the Old Hall is, and thought that a bus to Wolverhampton would probably go near there, when Daniel got there after all. I was relieved to see the black Bentley draw in. I folded the map up and put it away, but he saw it.

“I see you’ve bought a map,” he said.

“Maps are very interesting, really,” I said, embarrassed, though it was him who ought to be embarrassed, being late. I got into the car. He threw a cigarette butt out of the window and drove off. He shouldn’t do that, even in a car park. It’s a bad habit. It could start a fire. I felt thoroughly disapproving of him.

I think I’ll buy as many Ordnance Survey maps as I can. They’re arranged in logical squares. I could collect the set and get the whole country, eventually. Then I’d always be able to find my way, and know where places are in relation to other places. Though they wouldn’t do me much good if they were at home when I happened to be somewhere. I’ll just have to be organised and put the map for where I’m going, and the maps around it maybe, into my bag when I go out.

Shrewsbury is where we bought my uniform. It’s a town, not a city, and it all seems to be built of the same rose-pink-coloured stone.

We went back to the Old Hall for high tea. It’s afternoon tea if you have tea and cakes and scones and little sandwiches, but high tea if there’s something hot and substantial as well. In this case it was a hot dish with pasta and cheese and ham, but everything else was cold. The sandwiches were tuna and cucumber, ham and parsley, and cheese and pickle. I liked them a lot. The scones were as dry as the Kalahari. They also fell to crumbs when you put butter on them. I could make better scones when I was four. I didn’t say so, but maybe next time I’ll tell one of the aunts (I still can’t tell them apart) that I’d like to have a try at making some. It seems the sort of thing they might approve.

They talked about nothing but school, and expected me to contribute with current news about teachers and how the houses are doing. They were in Scott, all three of them, and they care a lot more about it than I do. I don’t understand them one bit. They’re grown up and they have their own house—and it’s a jolly nice house too. But they don’t do anything. They don’t read, and they don’t work and they don’t make anything. They organise jumble sales for church. Gramma used to do that, and she was teaching full time as well. They keep the house nice, but that’s not a full-time job for three people. They pay my father to manage the estate and the money, so they don’t do that. They’re rich, reasonably rich, I think, but they don’t go anywhere or do anything, they just sit there eating awful scones and talking with real enthusiasm about the time Scott won the Cup. I’m not sure exactly how old they are, but they were born before 1940, so they’re at least forty, and they still care about a stupid house they were in at school. They weren’t just pretending, so as to be interesting to me. I can tell the difference. They were talking to each other far more. Why do they stay there? And why didn’t any of them get married? Maybe they hate children. They certainly seem to find me a trial, but that doesn’t count; if they’d wanted to they could have had nice upper-class English children of their own and trained them not to be surly.