Among Others

was about to grab for it. Then he rushed out of the room. I sat there for a minute, my cheeks burning. I couldn’t understand it. I still can’t understand it. He wanted me. I thought he did. I thought I was acting like a normal person, but evidently not. There’s something I’m just not seeing about this even now, because I still do not get it.
    Leah said to me when I went back that I should watch out for Owen because he had wandering hands. Was I supposed to stop him? Was he expecting me to put up resistance instead of cooperating? That’s sick . The whole thing is sick, and I want nothing to do with it.
    I want the infinite series of bars in Triton . Or even just the three real bars. That I could cope with. This is completely beyond me. At least I won’t ever have to see him again, probably.
    F RIDAY 4 TH J ANUARY 1980
    Into Cardiff this morning to spend my book tokens in Lears. I love Lears. It’s huge—two floors, with a whole wall of SF, and some American imports. I got another issue of Destinies and Red Shift and The Einstein Intersection and Four Quartets and Charisma by Michael Coney (who wrote Hello Summer, Goodbye ) and, wonder of wonder miracle of miracles, a new Roger Zelazny book in the Chronicles of Amber series! I squealed out loud when I saw it. Sign of the Unicorn ! It has a horrible yellow cover, but bless Sphere forever for publishing it and Lears for stocking it!
    I would rather have Sign of the Unicorn than all the boys in the Valleys.
    This afternoon we went for a run on the Beacons to see if the waterfalls were frozen. They weren’t, it isn’t anything like cold enough, though they do freeze for a few days some winters. There was no ice cream van in the layby, and Auntie Teg remarked on this as if she really thought there would be. I love the mountains. I love the kind of horizon they make, even in winter. When we went down again, towards Merthyr first and then over the shoulder of the mountain to Aberdare, where Auntie Teg walked, once, when she was still in school, it felt like nestling back down in a big quilt.
    My new walking stick is still with me. Grampar is the only person who has noticed it, when we went to see him tonight on the way back. He said it’s hazel wood. I said I’d bought it in the market with Christmas money. He said it was a lovely piece of work and I should get a rubber ferrule to protect the end, and I could get one of those in the market too. He was looking much more alert today. Nobody could be doing more than Auntie Teg to try to get him out of there.
    S ATURDAY 5 TH J ANUARY 1980
    On the train I read The Sign of the Unicorn , all of it in one gulp, so I can leave it with Daniel when I go back to school. The thing I really love about those books is Corwin’s voice, so very personal, making light of things, joking about them, and then suddenly so serious. I also love the Trumps and the Shadows, and the Hellrides through Shadow. (I think I’ll always call Kentucky Fried Chicken Kentucki Fried Lizzard Partes from now on.) I don’t think he has done as much with Shadow as he could. If you can walk through it and find shadows of yourself, there are lots of things you could do with that.
    I finished it at Leominster, and after that read Four Quartets again and got drunk on the words. I could just copy out pages and pages of it. Sometimes it’s hard to figure out what it means, but that’s part of the joy of it, putting the images together into coherence. There’s a story in there just the same as there is in “Young Lochinvar,” but it isn’t on the surface much at all. I’m so glad I have my own copy. I can read them again and again. I can read them again and again on trains , all my life, and every time I do I’ll remember today and it will connect up. (Is that magic? Yes, it is a sort of magic, but it is more just reading my book.)
    Shropshire remains horribly flat and unmountained. It looks miserable in the January drizzle. The sky is so low you feel as if you could reach up and poke it. I can imagine feeling claustrophobic and acrophobic at the same time.
    Daniel met me without any problem. He was early, sitting in the Bentley reading Punch when I came out of the station. He was very apologetic about not driving me to the station when I left. It’s so hard to know what to say. I could say it didn’t matter, even though it did. What difference does it make if he feels guilty after the fact? “Don’t apologise, just don’t do it again,” I