I used today’s letter writing time to send a “Good Luck” note to cousin Arwel Parry and a congratulations note to Uncle Rhodri.
Why did Bron lie to Audri?
Monday 8th October 1979
On the one hand, Gramma and Grampar never mentioned sex at all. They must have done it, or they wouldn’t have had Auntie Teg and my mother, but I don’t think they did it more than twice. Then there’s the way they talk about sex in school and in church. And there’s no sex, hardly any love stuff at all, in Middle Earth, which always made me think yes, the world would be better off without it. Arwen’s just a sop to propriety. Or just a vessel for future half-elven High Kings of Gondor and Arnor. A prize. It would have been better for him to have married Eowyn—who was a hero, after all, in her own right—and just let the Numenoreans dwindle. (After all, look at us now!) So sex, necessary evil to produce children. That’s normal.
And when you look at those girls on the bus, and my mother and her boyfriends, and the girls who creep into each other’s beds at night and, well, ach y fi.
But on the other hand, I do have sexual feelings. And Triton, and Heinlein, and The Charioteer have made me think that actually sex itself is neutral, and it’s society demonizing it that makes it icky. And the whole sex-change thing in Triton, there must be a sort of spectrum of sexuality, with most people somewhere in the middle, drawn to men and women, and some off on the ends—me at one end and Ralph and Laurie at the other. One of the things I’ve always liked about science fiction is the way it makes you think about things, and look at things from angles you’d never have thought about before.
From now on, I’m going to be positive about sex.
Wednesday 10th October 1979
If the school was going out of their way to try to detach us from magic, they couldn’t organize things better. I wonder if that was someone’s original intention. I’m sure nobody here now knows a thing about it, but Arlinghurst has been running like this for more than a hundred years.
We do no cooking, we’re completely cut off from the food we eat, and the food is incredibly awful. Yesterday, for instance, dinner was spam fritters, totally tasteless mashed potatoes, over-boiled cabbage. For pudding, we had a dish of set custard with a half walnut in the middle, between six people. That’s called Hawaiian Delight. There’s a similar one we have at least once a week called Hawaiian Surprise, which is set custard with a half glace cherry. I don’t like glace cherries or walnuts, so I’m marginally popular for a moment whenever it’s served for not joining in the squabble over who gets it. I don’t like custard either, but sometimes I’m hungry enough to eat it. You couldn’t get worse food, or food more detached from nature, if you tried. If you have an apple, you’re connected to an apple tree. If you have a dish of set custard and half a glace cherry you’re not connected to anything.
Still on the subject of eating, we don’t have our own plates, or our own knives and forks or cups. Like most of what we use, they’re communal, they’re handed out at random. There’s no chance for anything to become imbued, to come alive through fondness. Nothing here is aware, no chair, no cup. Nobody can get fond of anything.
At home I walked through a haze of belongings that knew, at least vaguely, who they belonged to. Grampar’s chair resented anyone else sitting on it as much as he did himself. Gramma’s shirts and jumpers adjusted themselves to hide her missing breast. My mother’s shoes positively vibrated with consciousness. Our toys looked out for us. There was a potato knife in the kitchen that Gramma couldn’t use. It was an ordinary enough brown-handled thing, but she’d cut herself with it once, and ever after it wanted more of her blood. If I rummaged through the kitchen drawer, I could feel it brooding. After she died, that faded. Then there were the coffee spoons, rarely used, tiny, a wedding present. They were made of silver, and they knew themselves superior to everything else and special.
None of these things did anything. The coffee spoons didn’t stir the coffee without being held or anything. They didn’t have conversations with the sugar tongs about who was the most cherished. (We always felt they might at any moment.) I suppose what they really did was psychological. They confirmed the past, they connected everything, they were threads in a tapestry. Here there is no tapestry, we jangle about separately.
Another letter. I haven’t opened it. I really notice it though, because of this stuff. It’s pulsing with significance—malign significance, but significance all the same. Everything else is muted around it.
Thursday 11th October 1979
Miss Carroll agreed to write a library letter without any hesitation. “I saw you were reduced to reading Arthur Ransome,” she said.
Actually, I like Arthur Ransome. I wouldn’t call it reduced. I’ve read them all before, of course, years ago, but I’ve been enjoying them. There’s something nice about out-and-out children’s books with no sex and a happy ending—Ransome, Streatfeild, that kind of thing. It isn’t very challenging, and you know what you’re getting, but what you’re getting is a nice wholesome story about children messing about in boats, or learning ballet or whatever, and they’ll have minor triumphs and minor disasters and everything will work out fine in the end. It’s cheering, especially after reading Chekhov yesterday. I’m so glad I’m not Russian.
Still, anything that’ll get me closer to a library ticket, so I just smiled. If only he‘d send the form back, I could get one this weekend. I shouldn’t call him “he” that way. But it’s difficult to know what to call him. What do you call your father when you’ve only just met him? “Dad” would be ridiculous. But though it’s his name, it feels a bit odd to call him Daniel.
Friday 12th October 1979
The letter from my father came first post, with ten pounds (!) and the form, signed. He says the money is to buy books, but I’m also going to buy some buns.
I had a talk with Sharon about Jewish food. She says it’s what God told them to eat, or not to eat, and it’s special but it wouldn’t harm anyone else. She says the trays she gets are nice. She gets lots of roast beef and fish, and it’s well cooked but always cold, because it can’t even be heated up with our food. She says the bread she gets is lovely, but always slightly stale because it comes all the way from Manchester. It seems like being Jewish is a lot of trouble, and I’d hate not being able to spend money on Saturdays, especially when it’s the only 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.