Among Others

that affected everything. We thought we were living in a fantasy landscape when actually we were living in a science fictional one. In ignorance, we played our way through what the elves and giants had left us, taking the fairies’ possession for ownership. I named the dramroads after places in The Lord of the Rings when I should have recognised that they were from The Chrysalids .
    It’s amazing how large the things are that it’s possible to overlook.
    T UESDAY 18 TH S EPTEMBER 1979
    School is awful, as expected. For one thing, as I’d known from all the school stories, one of the most important things about boarding schools is the games. I’m not in any shape to be doing games. Also, all the other girls are from the same background. They are almost all English, from not too far away, products of the same landscape as the school. They vary a little in size and shape, but most of them have the same voice. My voice, which was posh for the Valleys and immediately marked my class origins to everyone there, here brands me an outlander barbarian. As if being a crippled barbarian isn’t bad enough, there’s also the fact that I was coming late for the year into a class that has known each other for two years already, with enmities and alliances drawn up across lines I know nothing about.
    Fortunately, I figured this out quickly. I’m not stupid. I’ve never gone to a school before where everyone didn’t already know me, or know my family, and I’ve never gone into a new school as a singleton, but I’ve just been through three months of the Children’s Home, and this can’t possibly be any worse. Using the clue of voice, I identified the other barbarians, one Irish (Deirdre, called Dreary) and one Jewish (Sharon, called Shagger). I do what I can to befriend them.
    I glare at the other girls when they try to tease me or patronise me or pick on me, and I’m glad to see that my glare works as well as ever. I get called names a lot, “Taffy” and “Thief” and “Commie,” as well as slightly more justified things like “Crip” and “Suck-up.” Commie is because they think my name is Russian. I was wrong in thinking it would mean nothing to them. They pinch me and thump me when they think they can get away with it, but there’s no real violence. It’s nothing, absolutely nothing, after the Home. I have my stick and my glare, and soon I started to tell ghost stories after Lights Out. Let them fear me as long as they leave me alone. Let them hate me as long as they fear me. It’s a pretty good strategy for boarding school, however it worked out for Tiberius. I said this to Sharon, and she looked at me as if I was an alien. What? What? I’ll never get used to this place.
    I quickly rose to the top of the class in everything but maths. Very quickly. More quickly than I’d expected. Perhaps these girls are not as clever as the ones at the grammar school? One or two there gave us some competition, but here there doesn’t seem to be any of that. I soar above the others. My popularity, bizarrely, goes both up and down slightly because of the marks. They don’t care about lessons, and they hate me for beating them, but you get house points for exceptional marks, and they care a lot about house points. It’s depressing how much boarding school is just like Enid Blyton showed it, and all the ways it’s different are ways it’s worse.
    The chemistry class, with a different set of girls, is a lot better. It’s taught by the science master, the only male teacher in the school, and the girls seem a lot more engaged by the subject. It’s the best thing on the curriculum, I’m really glad I fought for it. I don’t care that I miss art—though Auntie Teg would care. I haven’t written to her. I’ve thought about it, but I don’t dare. She wouldn’t tell my mother where I am—she’d be the last person to do that—but I can’t risk it.
    Then yesterday I found the library. I’ve got permission to spend time here when I’m supposed to be on the playing field. Suddenly, being crippled starts to feel like a benefit. It’s not a wonderful library, but it’s so much better than nothing that I’m not complaining. I’ve finished all the books my father lent me. (He was right about the other half of Empire Star , but Empire Star itself is one of the best things I’ve ever read.) On the shelves here there’s The Bull From the Sea and another Mary Renault I’ve never heard of called The Charioteer ,