Among Others

time we’re allowed out. But it might be worth it.
    It was hard to get her to talk about it. She’s been teased about it a lot, and also she uses it as a kind of thing for other people to be afraid of, so she quite sensibly doesn’t want people to know too much. I had to tell her about my father’s Jewish father. She says that doesn’t make me Jewish at all, you can’t be part Jewish, and you get it through your mother. She says if I wanted to be Jewish, I’d have to convert.
    I remember when a missionary came to Church and told us about converting the heathen. He said some of them pretended to convert for the free food, and then changed back to their old heathen gods as soon as there was some crisis. He called them “rice Christians.” I suppose I could be a rice Jew.
    On the other hand, Grampar would have an absolute fit if he found out. My mother would be sure to tell him in the hope of making him have another stroke.
    S ATURDAY 13 TH O CTOBER 1979
    The weather has changed completely in the last week. Last Saturday was mild and sunny, autumn looking reluctantly back over its shoulder towards summer. Today it was wet and blustery, autumn barrelling forward impatiently into winter. The ground was slippery with dead leaves. Oswestry looked even less appealing than ever. Now Gill has pointed it out to me, I noticed the girls on the bus passing around a forbidden lipstick and giggling. They remind me of Susan in The Last Battle . I went off into a daydream about meeting C. S. Lewis, though I know he’s dead. Much too embarrassing to recount.
    I went to the library, armed with my letter and my signed form, and was greeted by a friendly cheerful female librarian who I’m sure would have let me join without them. She hardly looked at them. I now have a little nested set of eight cards which will let me take out eight books at any time—or in fact, on any Saturday morning I can get into town before noon. Also, she told me that if I need anything they don’t have, interlibrary loans are free to people under sixteen. So I could order whatever I wanted to read and they’d get it for me. I only have to know author and title. So I started with all the Mary Renault books listed in The Charioteer that I’ve never heard of. I’m going to make a list of books listed in the front of other books and take it in next week. She said they can get anything published in Britain, ever, it doesn’t matter about out of print. She said they’d send me a card, but I said it was all right, they could save the stamp money to buy books, and I’d just come in every week and collect whatever they had.
    Interlibrary loans are a wonder of the world and a glory of civilization.
    Libraries really are wonderful. They’re better than bookshops, even. I mean bookshops make a profit on selling you books, but libraries just sit there lending you books quietly out of the goodness of their hearts.
    I then spent a happy hour among the stacks, which are like the school library in that they contain a few gems, but only a few. Also, the SF is shelved in with everything else, which makes things slower. With eight books weighing me down and rain slashing in my face, I considered going straight back to school and reading them in my own comfortable library. But I wanted to check the bookshop, and eight books sounds (and feels!) like a lot, but it isn’t as if they’ll last me all week. I normally read now in the early morning if I wake before the bell, for the three hours of compulsory games, during any boring classes, in prep after I’ve finished my prep, in the half-hour free time after prep, and for the half hour we’re allowed in bed before lights out. So I’m getting through a couple of books most days.
    So I walked slowly down the hill to the bookshop. The wind was whipping the willow branches out across the water. Most of the yellow leaves were down and floating on the surface. There was no sign of the swans. But I could see that beyond the pond there were more trees.
    I bought a couple of things. I wish I knew how long this ten pounds is supposed to last. Most books are 75p, with thick ones being more. I left a lot of books when I ran away. I could replace them, but I also want new things to read. Re-reading’s all very well. I bought a new Tiptree collection. This one has an introduction by Le Guin, so she must like him too! It’s lovely when writers I like like each other. Maybe they’re friends, like Tolkien and Lewis. The