Among Others

Vulgar to mention specifics about money, but what kind of car your father has and what job he has and what kind of house and what kind of fur coat your mother has are common topics of conversation. I didn’t even know there were different kinds, let alone which are good. The first time they asked me I said fox, just at random, which seems to be plausible, though Josie asked me if I meant silver fox or just plain red fox. It was so obvious from the framing of her question that silver fox was good that I didn’t hesitate. Of course, my mother doesn’t have a fur coat at all, and if she did she’d probably torture the poor thing. Anyway, I think fur is wrong, and I said so. I said I’m never going to have a fur coat, not ever, because it’s wrong to kill animals just for the fur. I’m not a vegetarian, I think it’s all right to kill animals to eat them, because that’s different. They’d do that to us. There’s no need for us to take their fur just to show off.

There are five school weeks until Christmas, so if I divide this ten pounds into two pounds a week that would work pretty well. Though I might anticipate on it to buy a bra this weekend, because now I’ve noticed that I have breasts I can’t seem to stop noticing them, and it would be nice to have a harness to get them out of the way.

Wednesday 21st November 1979

Letter.

I didn’t open it, but just touching it seemed to bring on the pain in my leg, it’s been very bad indeed today.

This morning I finished Up the Line as I was sitting here, and I didn’t have anything else with me, so I was going to get something off the shelf. Miss Carroll was bustling about shelving a consignment of new books that had come in, mostly in nonfiction, and I was sitting in my usual corner, where I have panelling on two sides and a bookshelf in front of me. Sometimes I sit one seat along, where I can see out of the window, but there’s nothing worth seeing today, grey sky and bare branches and endless rain.

I was about to get up and go to the shelves, when Miss Carroll came over. “I remember you were asking about Plato,” she said, and put down a brand-new copy of the Everyman edition of Plato’s Republic. She also casually left two other books on the table nearby, a most intriguing book by Josephine Tey called Daughter of Time and Nevil Shute’s An Old Captivity, which I have read, of course, it’s the Leif Erickson one.

The Republic isn’t as much fun as The Symposium. It’s all long speeches, and nobody bursting in drunk to woo Socrates in the middle. But it’s very interesting all the same. I keep thinking that it wouldn’t work, though, like Sam said. Human nature is against it. People just tend to behave in certain ways because they are people. And if Socrates thinks ten-year-olds would be blank slates for him to work with, it must have been a long time since he was ten! Put me and Mor in The Republic and we’d turn it upside-down in five minutes. You’d have to start with babies, like Brave New World, which I see now is influenced by Plato. You could have a lovely story about two people in Plato’s Republic falling in love and messing up the entire plan. Falling in love would be a perversion. It would be like being queer is for Laurie and Ralph. I prefer Triton or Anarres if I want a utopia. You know what I’d love to read? A Dialogue between Bron and Shevek and Socrates. Socrates would love it too. I bet he wanted people who argued. You can tell he did, you can tell that’s what he loved really, at least in The Symposium.

When I came back this afternoon and sat down here again, I noticed the Shute and the Tey were still there. She mostly doesn’t move my things, and if she does she tells me where they are, or gives them to me. But these were hers. All the same I started reading the Tey. I think she meant it for me. I think she noticed moving around was hard today and brought it over so I’d have something. I’m positive she ordered The Republic for me. I suppose I am the only person who actually uses this library for the purpose to which it is intended—no, that’s not fair, some of the sixth-form girls do use it to get books out for essays. I’ve seen them. But I suppose Miss Carroll must have taken notice of me sitting here all the time reading and done something nice for me.

I should do something nice for her. People sometimes buy teachers buns. Does Miss Carroll count as a teacher? Or maybe I could think of something to get her for Christmas.

Thursday 22nd November 1979

My leg’s still not great. I wonder if I should go to the doctor again about it. Nurse has the prescription for Distalgesic, I could go to her and have one. I would, except it’s down two flights of stairs and then up one.

Who would have thought Richard the Third didn’t actually kill the princes in the Tower?