Among Others

Auntie Bronwen had three sons and a daughter, and her husband worked in the pit. Auntie Florrie lived very near us and we saw her all the time—my grandmother used her for babysitting. Her husband, who had been a miner, died in the war. She had two little boys, my Uncle Clem, who went to prison for forgery, and Uncle Sam, who never seemed to come home. She had seen the devil in her house one day and chased it upstairs with a prayerbook and shut it in the box room. Afterwards, she asked my grandfather to brick up the door to the box room so the devil couldn’t get out. Years later, after she died, he unbricked the door and we went in, consumed with curiosity, to find a printing press. He threw it out, but not before we helped ourselves to a number of blank calling cards and some of the leaden letters.

My grandfather, Luke, was the youngest, and he married my grandmother, Becky, and they had two children, Elizabeth and Tegan. My mother, Liz, married my father and had us. Auntie Teg never married anyone, because she was always busy helping to bring us up. In most ways she was more like a much older sister than an aunt.

I miss her a lot, and Grampar too.

Saturday 6th October 1979

Beautiful day today, best day since I got here.

I got into town before the library closed and tried to join it. They wouldn’t let me. I was remarkably restrained and didn’t cry or raise my voice or anything. They said they needed a parent’s signature, and they needed proof of residence. I told them I was at Arlinghurst, as if they couldn’t see that for themselves from the uniform. When outside we have to wear a navy gymslip, a navy blazer, a school raincoat (if raining, but it’s always raining, except today the sun was shining) and a school hat. The winter hat is a beret. There’s a straw boater for summer. The hat is entirely penitential for me; it always wants to fall off my head when I move.

The librarian, who was a man, quite young, said that if I was at Arlinghurst I should use the school library. I said that I did, and that it was inadequate to my needs. He actually looked at me then, pushing his glasses up his nose, and for a moment I thought I’d won, but no. “You need a parent’s signature on this form, and a letter from the school librarian saying you need to have the use of the library,” he said. Behind him were all these shelves of books, stretching out. He wouldn’t even let me in to browse.

However, I found a bookshop, and a little bit of wild ground. The shopping bit of Oswestry is basically two streets with a market cross at the top, with a market. The library, which is a typical Victorian library building, is just off there. Last time, that’s all I saw—the bus stops at the bottom of the hill and the library is essentially the top of it. But there’s a road that curves down to the left and I thought it might go around to where the bus stop is. It didn’t, and it got very residential and I thought I was going to have to go back, but then there was another curve and a pond, with mallards and white swans on it and trees around, and on the other side of the road, a little parade of shops, and one of them a bookshop.

I bought Samuel Delany’s Triton. I don’t know if my father has it already, I don’t care. It was 85p. The lady in the bookshop was really nice. She doesn’t read SF, but she tries to keep a good selection. It was nothing to a really good selection like Lears in Cardiff, but it wasn’t bad at all. I’m going to ask my father for pocket money so I can buy books. I’m also going to ask him to sign the library form. I’m pretty sure he will. I’m not so sure about Miss Carroll writing a letter.

Next door to the bookshop is a junk shop with three shelves of secondhand books, all of them old and battered. I bought Dodie Smith’s I Capture the Castle for 10p. I liked her Dalmatians books, especially The Starlight Barking, or “Klothes that Klank” as Mor used to call it. I didn’t know she’d written any historical fiction. I’ll keep it until I’m in the mood for a good siege.