Jo Walton - Among Others

If I leave school a little bit early, I can go to the bookshop on the way to the station, I suppose.

Well, that was awkward.

Daniel’s “surprise” was turning up to drive me to Shrewsbury. I can’t think why he did it today, when it’s half term tomorrow, but I shouldn’t expect him to make sense. He was sitting outside in the car, looking very pleased with himself, like the cat who got the cream. I stopped still when I saw him, absolutely convulsed with horror.

Wim was meeting me in Gobowen station. I had no way of contacting him to tell him what had happened. If I didn’t meet him, I wouldn’t see him until after half term. He’d think I’d dumped him, and on Valentine’s Day too.

The alternative was to tell Daniel about Wim. I thought about that as I got into the car. The problem there was that I hadn’t said anything about him at all up to that point, because as usual my letters to Daniel had been exclusively about books. It was an excruciating situation. I couldn’t possibly ask Daniel to turn around and leave me alone, which would really have been what I’d have preferred.

“I managed to get away,” Daniel said. “We can go to the Chinese restaurant again.”

“That’s lovely, but,” I said, and stopped.

“But what?” he asked, starting the engine and driving down the drive, between the two dead elms, which look terrible again now that the other trees are starting to think about getting leaves. “I thought you’d be pleased.” He sounded really pathetic.

“I’m supposed to be meeting a friend in Gobowen railway station,” I said. “Do you think we could go there and collect him and take him with us?”

Daniel’s face went oddly blank, then he smiled. “Of course,” he said, and did a U-turn in the road, which was, fortunately, deserted.

After that, I couldn’t possibly say I wanted to go to the bookshop first.

“Is this a boyfriend, or just a boy-type friend?” he asked.

“Sort of a boyfriend. Well, actually a boyfriend, yes.” I was tripping over my own tongue in embarrassment.

“So, tell me about him?” Daniel sounded encouraging, but also bewildered.

I didn’t know quite what to say. “His name’s Wim. I met him in the book group. He’s seventeen. He likes Delany and Zelazny. He’s doing English, history, and chem for A Level, at the college, while working part time. I’m thinking of doing that myself next year, if I need to.”

“Why would you need to?” Daniel asked.

“I’ll be sixteen in June,” I said. “You won’t have to support me. I could live on my own.”

“I’ll support you for as long as you want to be in full-time education,” Daniel said, not having read Doorways in the Sand or The Number of the Beast .

“Did you know there’s a new Heinlein?” I asked, having remembered it.

“You told me on Sunday,” he said. “I’m looking forward to it, even if it isn’t his best.”

At that point, we were at Gobowen station. It was deserted. For once, I’d got somewhere ahead of Wim, because he was expecting me to come by buses around two sides of a triangle, while in fact I’d come by car down the third side. “He’ll be here soon, he’s always early,” I said. Daniel parked neatly on the forecourt.

“How long have you been seeing each other?” he asked.

I added it up. “Almost two weeks,” I said.

To his credit, Daniel didn’t say anything about how I should have told him, or that I was too young, or anything like that. “Yet another new role,” is what he said, but he was smiling. “I feel absurdly nervous.”

“Well how do you think I feel?” I asked.

He laughed, and just then Wim came freewheeling into the station yard, hair blowing around his face. “Is that him?” Daniel asked.

“Yes,” I said, feeling more proud than I had any right to be. I got out of the car, which Wim hadn’t been paying any attention to at all. He isn’t a very noticing person.

Daniel got out too. “We can put the bike in the boot,” he said.

“Wait here while I explain to him,” I said.

I walked over to Wim. Daniel leaned on the car, smoking a cigarette and watched. Wim saw me, saw the Bentley, and then saw Daniel, I saw him registering. “Wim, my father turned up unexpectedly to take me to acupuncture. I had no warning at all either. Do you want to come to Shrewsbury with us, in the car?”

He looked very surprised. “In the car? With your dad?”

“He doesn’t mind. If you’d like to. But we wouldn’t be on our own, and we can’t talk about magic or anything, because he doesn’t know anything about it.”

“Anything for a weird life,” Wim said, quoting Zaphod. Then he kissed me, a little tentatively, but still bravely considering that Daniel was standing right there. He pulled a packet out of his coat pocket and handed it to me almost defiantly. “Happy Valentine’s Day.”

I opened it right away. It was three books! Theodore Sturgeon’s A Touch of Strange , with a lovely cover of a woman’s head and the moon, Christopher Priest’s Inverted World , and something I’d never heard of by an author new to me, Gate of Ivrel by C. J. Cherryh. I was overwhelmed. “Oh Wim, that’s lovely. And I haven’t got any of them. I didn’t have a chance to buy you anything yet, but I did make this for you.” I pulled the poem out of my pocket. I’d written it on nice blue paper Miss Carroll had given me, in my best handwriting. (It’s the one that starts “To drag yourself over the dry rock of the deserts of the mind.”)

He read it, and I waited while he read it, watching him, very conscious of Daniel waiting behind me. Wim blushed and pushed it into his pocket. I don’t know whether he liked it or not.

Then I introduced him to Daniel, and they shook hands like a pair of judges. Things got a little easier when they cooperated in getting the bike into the car boot. Then we all climbed back in and started off for Shrewsbury. I realised as we did that the two of them were going to have to spend an hour together without me while I was having acupuncture. Has anything ever been awkwarder? It served Daniel right for not telling me, but poor Wim didn’t deserve it at all.

In the car, we talked about Zelazny, a subject of deep and unfailing interest, and then we talked about Empire Star and how it could be just an ordinary adventure except that it isn’t. I felt that Daniel and Wim were starting to like each other through all this, though of course Wim was sitting in the back so they couldn’t exactly see each other. We came to Shrewsbury, early for my appointment. We had a little look at the bookshop, and Wim and Daniel had an argument about Heinlein, very much the argument that Wim and I had had, though at greater length. I was on Daniel’s side, and both of them knew it, but I tried to bite my tongue and not say anything and just look at the shelves. When he wasn’t looking I bought Sign of the Unicorn and Cat’s Cradle for Wim, and gave them to him when we got outside.

Then I had to leave them together. They agreed to come to the clinic and meet me afterwards. I have never felt so apprehensive having acupuncture, not even the first time when I was afraid of the needles. I just tried to get my mental breath back when I was on the table, I didn’t concentrate on the diagram or the magic or anything. It didn’t seem to do me as much good as sometimes, or maybe I was better when I went in and didn’t notice the difference the way I sometimes do.

They were waiting for me when I came out, both leaning against the wall. Next to Wim, Daniel looked old and saggy. When I came up to them they were talking about Wim’s experiences at Seacon in Brighton and his hopes for Albacon in Glasgow. “I wish I could go,” Daniel said.