CHAPTER 8
The school day passed far more easily than it ever had at Bowness. I was, for the moment, the centre of attention, and classmates were queuing up to ask me about Singapore, my running, all sorts.

There were more questions about my size, of course, but it was all wide-eyed interest rather than the questions the predators at the other place had asked. If the whole school was like this, Miss Graham’s words might actually mean something concrete.

We had school dinners now, and Iain joined me in the dining room with the traditional complaint “No chips?”. It wasn’t actually too bad, a large tray-baked minced beef pie, with those round scoops of mashed potato, followed by dead fly sandwich and custard. Almost perfect. We sat together outside in the playground till Iain spotted a game of football starting up and ran off to ruin his school shoes. I took out “Gift” and found my place, and soon I was lost in the wonders of Mount Lookitthat.

“Hello…can I sit by you?”

It was Emily.

“Oh, yeah, sorry, I was reading, miles away”

“What book is it?”

“It’s SF. The librarian recommended it to me, it’s very good”

It was, too, because among other things I found in the book, Matt Keller’s eyes were the thing I lusted after. To be able to make other people fail to see you, to forget you were ever there…how that would have saved my life in Bowness. I kept that from Emily, though. She seemed a little lost, and very shy, and I didn’t want to scare her.

I caught myself at that. Me? Scaring somebody apart from myself? This was definitely a new world.

“Do you read, Emily?”

She smiled. “Oh yes, I love books. My room is full of them”

“Who’s your favourite?”

Now, I was a rather isolated boy. To me, SF was everything, and everything was SF. The various standard publishers’ logos, such as NEL or Gollancz, were etched into my mind. I just had to spot the cover style to know that I was on home ground. It had never occurred to me that there might be other…realms. Emily showed me that afternoon.

“I collect Mills and Boon”

Now, I was thirteen, I had no idea what she was talking about.

“I’ve not heard of them, what have they written?”

She giggled, her hand covering her mouth. “No, silly, they’re publishers”

She pulled out a paperback with a cover showing a moustached man in some sort of overblown uniform, clutching some woman with more hair than necessary in a sort of elaborate dress with a laced-up top, and I finally twigged.

Mills and Boon publish slushy romances, by the yard, in which, typically, men’s dark eyes burn hypnotically into those of women fainting from passion, as their bosom heaves within their bodice and…you get the picture. Something less interesting to me, apart from football, I could hardly imagine. Still, Emily obviously loved them, and snobbishly I thought “at least she’s reading something”

She was blushing again. “Steve…we all thought you were a girl when you came in this morning….you are a boy, aren’t you?”

No, not any more, you stinking butchers. “Yes, Emily, I’m all boy”

“Well, are there any girls you….like?”

Er, yes, actually, one I was definitely worshipping, along with half the literate population of Maryport, but I realised that that might be the wrong thing to say just then.

“No, not really, I’ve always been a bit sick, so….”

She looked a little worried. “But you do…like...girls? You’re not, you know, one of them? You know, a puff? I mean, you were sitting with that other boy at dinner, and…”

I laughed. “That was my little brother Iain! Yes, I know he’s bigger than me, but he’s two years younger”

Sometimes, even as children, we get little moments of clarity, of seeing beyond our horizons, and that came to me just then. Emily, chubby, pimple-ridden, bespectacled Emily, was lonely. Living in her dreams of flashing eyes and passionate romance, she had seen a new boy enter class who was obviously not first-class stud material, and she was sounding me out before any other girl could. I was, for the first time in my life, being chatted up. Her sense of relief was palpable.

“Well, I have to go…but there are some nice bits of town, and…if…you know…you wanted to sort of look around, and you wanted someone to sort of show you….”

Poor, sweet girl, my first true friend in years. “Yes, that would be great. Thank you. I just tend to go to the library so far”

She grinned. Suddenly I saw a hint of a sharp wit behind the shyness. “So you’ve met Karen Patterson, then? Oh dear, you are blushing!”

“Yes, well, she is just a bit gorgeous, and very nice”

“What I would give….she’s odd, you know? Girls at school, who look good, they’re usually nasty, but she is just, I dunno, nice?”

“Is she, you know…?”

“Spoken for? Oh dear, you and half of Cumberland, Westmorland and Lancashire! She’s seeing some footballer”

I must have looked wounded. She laughed, but there was no nastiness in it. “I do have to go, but thank you for being nice to me. You are easy to talk to, Steve Jones, and I’m not good at it. It’ll be fun; looking forward to showing you my home”

She suddenly blushed bright red as she realised the double meaning. Off she ran, and I sat for a while trying to order my mind. I didn’t fancy her, she was, to my freshly teenaged mind, too fat, too spotty, and I fancied Karen, of the tumbling red curls, pert breasts and endless legs, but she was sweet, and I was flattered. More than that, though, I had a friend. Or, perhaps, a girl friend.

Iain walked back with me after school, and gave me a look. “What was t like, Stevie? Were they as nasty as that other school?”

I felt my face grow warm, half from a smile and half from a blush at my earlier thoughts about girlfriends.

“They were great, Iain. I did the standing up at the front thing, and they all asked questions, but it was all, well, interested, like, not was I a wog or a puff”

Well, I had been asked both questions, but not in the same way as had happened before. Iain would just be confused, though, so I kept it quiet. We were passing more boarded up shops, two of the doorways occupied by tramps, one of them swigging a can of Special Brew, the other just staring into space.

We dropped in to Mam’s work, just to see what she wanted us to do, and she sent me round the shelves to get some pork chops and a packet of instant mashed potato for our tea. I let us in with the key, and after making us both drinks settled down in my window nest to finish the saga of the Sons of Earth.

Niven had the concept of robot colony ships that would select a world for habitable conditions, even if those were only in one place, so the story’s planet had a poisonous atmosphere with just one spot humans could live, at the top of a miles-high mountain. I thought that seemed to match my life: if the rest of it was hell, at least I had today to cling to and remember. I had to remember to thank Sid, for he had really given me a new world to explore, even though it made my old books seem a little stale.

Just before Mam was back I started the dinner, frying the chops in a little lard till their own fat started to come out. They were my favourites, long since banned by Brussels, where each chop had a slice of kidney attached. heated a tin of marrowfat peas, and as Mam set the table as Iain was glued to Blue Peter I poured boiling water onto the powdered potato and whisked it up with a fork.

We ate at the table, Iain at the head so he could continue watching the telly as he ate. It was still what I consider the classic line-up, of Valerie Singleton, John Noakes and Peter Purves, and I lent it half an eye as I ate. We worked through the meal in silence till the programme was finished, and then Mam dropped the bombshell.

“Dr Mitchell wants to see you again”

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I was off round the library that evening, after the dishes were done and Mam had settled down with the News and a glass. I wanted to know what other authors might still be unknown to me, what delights I was missing. I smiled hello to Sid and Karen, and felt my knees wobble as she turned her smile on me like one of Niven’s sunflowers.

“Finished ‘Gift’, Sid, thank you, it was very good!”

He laughed. “You’ll be after some more, then. Have you read any Linebarger?”

“Who?”

“Sorry, it’s a fan in joke. Cordwainer Smith. Real name Paul Linebarger…that gives me another idea, Harlan Ellison. These books are a little darker than the Niven, so you may not like them”

Karen laughed. “He’s been ordering in all these books, and he’s the only one who ever seems to read them. He’s going to hang onto you like grim death, lass–er, lad. Sorry. Look, who else lives with you? Parents, brothers?”

“My Mam and my brother. My Dad got killed in Germany”

“Oh, I’m so sorry. Sid, are either of them registered here?2

“I don’t believe so, Karen”

“Well, why don’t we sort of register both of them, and give our young friend here their tickets for safekeeping? Then he could take a few more books rather than just the one”

“Ah, Karen, and you are still refusing to marry me!”

“Sid…you know you have no interest in girls like me! Now, six more tickets, then. I hope you’ve brought a bag!”

I had indeed, and with a bundle of fresh SF books and a couple of guides to the local fells I was off home with a smile plastered to my face. My goddess had spoken to me.

It would have been so much better if she had remembered I was a boy.