Among Others

I miss the mountains. I didn’t miss them before, except in thinking how unattractively flat it was here. But now I have been home and had them around me for a while, I miss them actively, more than my living family, more than being able to shut the toilet door. It’s not really flat here, it rolls, and I can see the mountains of North Wales in the distance when it’s clear. But I miss having the hills tucked up around me.

Tuesday 6th November 1979

Fireworks and a bonfire last night in the school grounds. I saw some of the fire-fairies clustering. Nobody else saw them. You can only see them if you already believe in them, which is why children are the most likely to. People like me don’t stop seeing them. It would be insane of me to stop believing in them. But lots of children do when they grow up, even though they’ve seen them. I’m not a child any more, though I’m not grown up either. I have to say I can’t wait.

But my cousin Geraint, who’s four years older than me, saw the fairies when playing with us in the cwm. He was eleven or twelve, and we were seven or eight. We told him he should close his eyes and when he opened them he’d see them, and he did. He was amazed by them. He couldn’t talk to them, because he only spoke English, but we translated what he said, and what they said. We must have been eight, because I remember freely translating what they said into purest Tolkien, and we didn’t read The Lord of the Rings until we were eight. At that point, when we were about that age, we were always looking for someone else to play with, and preferably a boy, because in books that’s the group you have to have to go into another world. We thought the fairies would take us to Narnia, or Elidor. Geraint seemed like a good candidate. He saw the fairies, and he was awed by them. He liked them, and they liked him. But he lives in Burgess Hill, near Brighton, and he only spent summers in Aberdare, and the next summer he couldn’t see them, he said he was too old to play, and he remembered what had happened as if it had been a game where we’d been pretending to be fairies. All he wanted to do was play football. We ran away and left him in the garden with his stupid ball, disconsolate, but he didn’t tell the grownups we’d abandoned him. He said at dinner that he’d had a very nice day playing. Poor Geraint.

I had a letter this morning, which I haven’t opened, and also a letter from Sam. He asked how I liked the Plato, and if I’d found any more, and he writes just the way he speaks. I’ll write back on Sunday. There isn’t any Plato in the school library. I asked Miss Carroll, and she says they don’t teach Greek so there’s no call for it. I might have a problem with interlibrary loan, as I don’t know translators, or even all the titles. But I can order the ones listed in The Symposium of course, so I’ll do that.

Penguin are the best of any publisher about listing other titles, even if they didn’t publish them. I have a whole pile of things to order on Saturday, because Up the Line has a whole long list of Robert Silverbergs. Also, I am going to order Beyond the Tomorrow Mountains. Sylvia Engdahl wrote this totally brilliant book called Heritage of the Star, and Puffin, who are Penguin, brought it out and I read it. It’s about people living with lots of superstitions but also some technology they think is magic, and they’re oppressed by Scholars and Technicians and anyone who thinks wrongly is called a Heretic. And actually they’re colonists on another planet but they don’t know, and it’s just brilliant. In the story, there’s a promise that when they can know, when everything will be all right, they’ll go “Beyond the Tomorrow Mountains,” and there’s a sequel with that title, but I’ve never seen it anywhere, though I’ve been looking for a long time.

The poetry competition is nationwide. Everyone in Arlinghurst has to write a poem, then they’ll pick the best from each form to send in. I can’t believe people really think I’ll win. All right, realistically, I’d win out of Lower VC, or even all of Form V, probably, because the academic standards here are not especially high. But out of all the fifteen-year-olds in the whole country? No way. The best one in the school is going to be awarded fifty house points. That’s made everyone as keen as mustard. The best hundred in the country are going to be published in a book, and the best one wins a hundred pounds and a typewriter. I’d really like a typewriter. Not that I can type, but you have to send typewritten submissions to magazines.

Deirdre came sidling up to me at lunch, and sat down one seat away from me, as if casually, but doing it so badly that lots of people noticed. She looked frightened, poor dab, but resolute. “My mother told me I should stick up for you,” she whispered.

“Good for your mother,” I said, in a normal tone.

“Will you help me with my poem?” she asked.