Among Others

The phone is in the corridor, and on a sort of table with a padded bench attached. I was sitting on the padded bench while I talked to Auntie Teg. After I put the phone down, I wondered who else I could call, while I was here and everyone else was out of the way. The trouble is I don’t know numbers. There’d be no point trying to call Greg at the library on a Sunday night anyway. I don’t know anyone’s home number, not even Janine’s. There was a phone book next to the phone, a home-made one, with people’s numbers written in, not a big Yellow Pages type book. I flicked through it, not seeing anyone I knew, until I came to M, and there was Sam, his address and also his telephone number.

His landlady answered right away, and she remembered me. “The little granddaughter,” she said. I’m not little, and it feels weird thinking of Sam being my grandfather. I already have Grampar, the position isn’t vacant. I like Sam though.

After a moment he came to the phone. “Morwenna?” he said. “Is there something wrong?”

“Not exactly wrong, only I’m at the Old Hall convalescing and I thought of you and wanted to speak to you.”

“Convalescing from what?” he asked, so I told him the whole thing and how I thought it had made me worse. “Maybe, maybe,” he said. “But sometimes healing hurts, had you thought of that?”

“They won’t tell me anything,” I said. “Dr. Abdul wanted to talk to Daniel, he wouldn’t say anything to me. I could be dying and they wouldn’t tell me anything.”

“Daniel would tell you, I think,” Sam said, but he didn’t sound sure.

“If they’d let him,” I said.

Sam didn’t say anything for a moment. “Maybe I’ll come down and see you,” he said. “I have an idea. Let me talk to Daniel.”

I had to call Daniel then, and explain, and he sent me off to bed and talked to Sam for a while. Then he came up and told me Sam was coming to see me tomorrow, on the train, and he’d pick him up in Shrewsbury.

It seems odd to think of Sam going anywhere, and odder to think of him here, but he’s coming tomorrow! Daniel says he’s getting to be a very old man and seldom goes anywhere, so I should think it a privilege, which I do.

Monday 21st January 1980

Sam brought me a tiny bunch of snowdrops from his landlady’s back garden. “They’re just starting,” he said. Despite the long journey by train and then car—Daniel met him in Shrewsbury—they were in very good shape and had that special scent. Mor used to love snowdrops. They were her favourite flower. We planted some on her grave, I wonder if they’re out yet? One of the aunts put mine into a tiny crystal vase that matches the decanter and I have them on my bedside table.

Sam also brought some more Plato—The Laws and Phaedrus, which I’ve been wanting because it’s the one they read in The Charioteer. They’re not new, he’s clearly had them a while, but he must have spent ages rooting around to find them. He also brought a little blue Pelican paperback book called The Greeks by H. D. F. Kitto, which he says will give me context. It’ll give me context for Mary Renault as well as Plato. I hope it’s interestingly written. I still haven’t started the Churchill history I got for a prize.

The other thing he brought was a pot of comfrey ointment, which smells very weird. “I don’t know if it’ll help, but I brought it anyway,” he said. I rubbed some on my leg and it didn’t help at all, except for making it smell peculiar, but I appreciated the thought.

Sam’s real thought though was that I should have acupuncture. There’s a kind of magic about Sam, not real magic, but he’s very solidly himself. It would be hard for any magic to find somewhere to start doing anything to him. It was interesting to see him with the aunts; he’s impeccably polite to them but he treats them as if they’re not important, and they don’t know how to deal with that. He has no cracks for them to get into. If they’d suggested acupuncture, which involves sticking needles into people, I’d have resisted as hard as I could. As it was, they were very opposed to the idea.

“It’s silly Chinese superstition, you can’t possibly believe in it,” one said.

“Morwenna’s terrified of needles, she wouldn’t even have her ears pierced,” another put in.

“What good could it possibly do?” the third finished.

Even this kind of thing doesn’t bother Sam. “I think we should try it. What harm could it do? Morwenna’s a sensible girl, I think.”

He had found a place in Shrewsbury, and written the address down. He wanted to go there right away, but the sisters managed to persuade Daniel that we should phone for an appointment. He made an appointment for tomorrow morning.