Among Others

from…” but I stopped as soon as I saw her face.
    I’m all ready to go as soon as Daniel comes for me tomorrow. I can’t wait.
    F RIDAY 21 ST D ECEMBER 1979
    First thing this morning was the Prizegiving. I won a copy of W. H. Auden’s Selected Poems for English, and Isaac Asimov’s Guide to Science for chem, and Winston Churchill’s A History of the English-Speaking Peoples for history. As everyone who got over ninety in anything got a book for it, it rather dragged on. I suspect Miss Carroll’s hand in the choice of books, which may mean that the Churchill isn’t as dire as it looks. Then the sports prizes were handed out, at even greater length. They let me sit down for assemblies, which is nice, but as everyone else is standing it does mean I can’t see, not that I especially want to. The teachers, who are lined up at the sides of the hall, can see me quite easily if they look, so I don’t dare read. Looking at everyone’s backs in their identical uniforms I can compare heights and wrinkles and how their hair falls down their backs, but that’s about all. It’s surprising how much variety there is in something that’s at first glance identical, a row of uniformed backs. I gave the girls in the row ahead marks for posture and neatness, and mentally rearranged them by height and by hair colour.
    Scott won the cup, in a narrow victory over Wordsworth. I’m supposed to be very excited about this but as far as I’m concerned it’s right up there with arranging people by the shades of their hair.
    I went to the library afterwards to give Miss Carroll her chocolates. She seemed very touched to have them. She gave me what I’m sure is a book, wrapped.
    I found Deirdre and gave her the soap box. I hadn’t wrapped it because I hadn’t thought to buy wrapping paper, but I put it in a pretty bag from the shop where I bought the scarves and things. She didn’t open it, but she thanked me very nicely. She gave me a thin wrapped present. It also feels like a book. I wonder what on earth it could be? I’ll have to read it and say I like it whatever it is.
    Then it was all down to waiting for cars. Some girls weren’t being picked up until this evening, poor dabs, but Daniel came for me just at one, not the first, but quite early in the process. Everyone was rushing about and shrieking even worse than normal. I’m sure he thought it was Bedlam.
    Daniel drove me back to the Old Hall in time for tea—very dry mince pies, almost as bad as school food. His sisters were delighted about Scott winning the cup. They opened a bottle of champagne to celebrate. I thought it was horrible, and the bubbles got up my nose. I’d had it before, at Cousin Nicola’s wedding, and I didn’t like it then either. Daniel offered to mix mine with orange juice and make something called a Buck’s Fizz, but I declined. If there was one thing that was going to make it worse it was horrible orange juice. Really, I only like to drink water. Why do people have such a problem with that? It comes out of the tap for free.
    It’s the solstice, the shortest day. After today the darkness starts to roll back a bit. I won’t be sorry.
    It’s nice to have a door I can shut and a bit of privacy. I went to bed early. I thought about thinking about Wim while I masturbated, because that breathless feeling is definitely sexual, but it felt intrusive, as well as hard to imagine. There’s also the Ruthie thing, which, whatever the ins and outs of it, gets in the way. So I just thought about Lessa and F’lar and Nicholas in the sea. It’s funny that Triton has so much sex in it but is so unerotic. And—because I’m still thinking about connections between them—there’s sex in The Dispossessed too, but not the sort that makes you feel breathless. I wonder why that is? Is there a way Fowles wrote Nicholas in the sea that’s essentially different from the way Delany wrote Bron and the Spike having exhibition sex? I think there is, but I don’t know what it is.
    S ATURDAY 22 ND D ECEMBER 1979
    The aunts took me shopping in Shrewsbury. They wanted me to get something nice for Daniel. I told them I’d already bought him The Mote in God’s Eye , but they just laughed and said they were sure he’d like it. They bought him—in my name—a charcoal-grey jacket with lots of pockets. It looks like the kind of thing he wears, but honestly I’d never have bought it, and he’ll know that. At least I got some wrapping paper. They took me for