Jo Walton - Among Others

“Why don’t you?” Wim asked.

Daniel just shrugged, looking defeated.

We went to the Chinese restaurant, where we ate essentially the same as last time, Wim and I fumbling with the chopsticks, and talked mostly about Silverberg, with digressions into all the things we’d mentioned on Tuesday night in the Pavane talk. Daniel had read everything except A Dream of Wessex . I could see him and Wim being impressed with each other, which was lovely, and very strange. When Daniel went to the bathroom, Wim took my hand. “I like your dad,” he said.

“Good,” I said.

“You’re so lucky,” he said again.

“I suppose I could be a whole lot less lucky,” I said. Most people wouldn’t think Daniel much of a father, but there are far worse people. Then I remembered the last time Wim had said that and what we’d been talking about. “Oh, this is priceless, he said he’d support me until I finished in full time education. But he hasn’t read—”

Wim burst out laughing, just as Daniel came back, so we had to explain to him. Fortunately, he thought it was funny too.

Wim’s fortune cookie said “You have been given a gift,” Daniel’s said “Fortune favours the brave,” and mine said “The time to be happy is now.”

Then Daniel drove us back. He asked Wim where he wanted to be dropped, and Wim said anywhere in cycling distance was fine, so he dropped him by the roundabout. I got out while they were getting the bike out, and boldly asked Wim for his phone number. “I could call you next week when I’m away,” I said. “And it would have been useful this afternoon.”

“No it wouldn’t, I was coming from work,” he said. But he gave it to me, and Daniel wrote it down too. Daniel then gave Wim his card—he would have a card!—in exchange. Wim and I hugged, and kissed very decorously, then Daniel drove me back to school in time for prep.

Sharon was picked up first, as usual. There are a whole lot of advantages to being Jewish if you ask me. There’s also the whole pile of things to watch out for. I must remember to ask Sam what happens if you break the rules.

Daniel was one of the first of the regular parents though. “I liked your young man,” he said as I got into the car.

“He liked you too,” I said, putting my seatbelt on.

“I thought we might ask him to tea tomorrow, at the Old Hall. If he came to Shrewsbury on the train, we could meet him there. You two could go for a walk or something, and then we could all have tea.”

Daniel sounded so tentative and hopeful that I couldn’t really say no. Also, I knew that Wim would like it. He’d like to see the Old Hall, and he’d like to see the aunts, because he knew they were magic. He wouldn’t be afraid of them, because he isn’t afraid of anything. Also, I wanted to see Wim, of course I did, even in less than ideal circumstances. “Terrific,” I said. “But have you asked your sisters?”

“Anthea suggested it,” he said.

“I thought they might not approve of me seeing a town boy,” I said.

“Well…” Daniel hesitated. “They did say that in their day it wasn’t done, but I’m sure they’ll change their minds when they meet Wim and see how intelligent and well-spoken he is.”

Well-spoken is code for middle class , by the way. I’ve figured that one out since I’ve been at Arlinghurst. Somebody or other once said that the British class system was branded on the tongue. Wim has a Shropshire accent but he uses grammar correctly. He sounds like an educated person. He doesn’t sound stuck up and pretentious like the girls in school, but I suppose I’m glad he counts as well-spoken enough for Daniel. It’s so stupid that this sort of thing counts!

I had dinner with all of them, and had to answer lots of questions about school and Wim and more school. I was Nice Niece as best I could be. Everything went smoothly. Ear-piercing was not mentioned.

After dinner, I rang Wim. Someone I assume was his mother answered, but got me Wim quite quickly. I was relieved he was there. He could easily have been at a disco with Shirley. “What are you doing tomorrow?” I asked.

“Why?”

“Daniel was wondering if you’d like to come here to tea. You could come to Shrewsbury on the train, and we’d meet you.”

“I thought you were going down to South Wales?” He sounded very far away.

“Not until Sunday,” I said. “But it’s all right if you don’t want to come. You don’t work Saturdays, do you?”

“I do, but only in the morning.”

“Well, it’s up to you.” I didn’t want to push.

“Would I get to see you?” he asked. “On our own, I mean.”

Bless him. “Daniel said we could go for a walk or something. And they leave me alone a lot of the time.”

“So, what should I wear? For afternoon tea at a manor house?”

It was so sweet that he worried like that! “Just what you always wear would be fine,” I said. “It’s not a formal black-tie dinner.”

“Will the sisters be there?” he asked.

“Definitely.”

“What a treat!” he said, his voice dripping with irony.

“Well, see you tomorrow. On the one o’clock train?”

“Tomorrow it is.”

After he’d put the phone down I felt cold and lonely and wandered around from room to room for a while. Daniel was drinking in his study and the sisters were watching television in the drawing room. It almost makes it worse that I’m going to see him tomorrow than if it wasn’t for a week. I’d braced myself for that.

The sun was shining and Wim showed up at the station in a collar and tie, which made him look younger, more like a schoolboy. I didn’t say that, of course. Daniel accommodatingly drove us to Acton Burnell castle. The castle is a ruin, covered in new spring grass and ivy.

“There’s nobody else here,” Wim said when we got out of the car.

“Well, it is February. Hardly grockle season,” Daniel said.

Wim raised his eyebrows. “Tourists,” Daniel said. “We get a lot of them in the summer. Now, you can walk back from here. It’s not much over a mile. Or, if you don’t feel like walking, call from the phone box, Morwenna, all right?” There was a red phone box right there by the castle gate.

“All right,” I muttered. He meant if my leg fell off, of course. I shouldn’t be churlish with people who want to accommodate me, really. It’s crass.

The outwall was fallen, the moat was full of nettles, and you could just about tell what’s what in the keep if you’d seen a proper castle like Pembroke or Caerphilly where everything is marked. There were fairies everywhere, of course, which was why I’d suggested it.

I’ve noticed before that there are two kinds of people for going round castles. There are the ones who say “And here’s where we’d put the boiling oil and here’s where we’d put the longbowmen,” and the ones who say “And here’s where we’d put the settee, and here’s where we’d hang the pictures.” Wim turned out very satisfactorily to be of the first camp. He’d been to Conwy and Beaumaris with his school, so he knew about castles. We fought a very successful siege (and had a few cuddles in corners out of the wind) before he even asked about fairies.

“Tons of them,” I said, sitting down in a windowseat so that he could have my stick and see them. I looked out through the cross-shaped arrow slit, but the view so attractively framed was of pylons stretching out wires over neat Shropshire fields, and the red telephone box down below.

Wim sat beside me, with my stick across his lap and watched them for a while. They didn’t take much notice of us sitting there. When we were children the fairies would play games with us, hide and seek, mostly, and other chasing games. The ones in the castle seemed to be playing games like that with each other, moving in and around the rooms, keeping out of each other’s sight, dashing through doorways ahead of entrances through broken walls. Not having the stick didn’t stop me seeing them, of course, so Wim and I sat there and wondered aloud what they were doing. Then one of them, a tall, impossibly tall, fairy woman, with long hair mixed with swan feathers, swept through the fallen wall, saw us and stopped. I nodded to her. She frowned and came over and stood before us. “Hello,” I said, and then in Welsh “Good afternoon.”