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Gathering getting hold of one of my hands by the tea trolley and saying “Beautiful hands.” She said it dramatically. I thought she was a bit of an ass. But I remembered the compliment—my first. This one of Terrapin’s was my second.
    My hands and my arms. My hands and my arms. I asked Paula next day if I could have a sleeveless dress and she said “Yes my duck. If ever I get the time.”
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    There is one more unnerving incident. The mention of the headmaster’s wife has reminded me of it. It was the summer before last when I was fifteen and took place in the lavender walk which is a sort of love-nest in the local park much patronised by my form at the Comprehensive late in the evenings. They get in over the railings by the railway bridge with father’s school day-boys. It must be quite crowded in the lavender walk on moonless nights by the way they all talk about it before prayers next day while I am sitting gooping out of the window.
    I Iove the park. It is overgrown and often empty. On weekday summer mornings to wander there is like being in a private garden. It has a high-hedged, mediaeval look. Round a corner might appear tall folk in wimples, veils and scarlet tights and shoes with curling toes, serenading each other with lutes. Down a rose garden you might glimpse a turret with a trumpeter and a fleecy cloud. I was wandering there drowsily one morning after O levels when we had time off and there was no Prep. and there was no one about to talk to at home. The smell of the lavender in the hot morning sun was enough to turn heads much more sensible than mine.
    And Mrs. Gathering came suddenly humping out of a lavender bush.
    She said, “Marigold! Marigold!” and her big soft eyes mooned down.
    â€œMarigold!” she said. I didn’t recognise her at first—what with the house in France and in Wiltshire and a solitary nature she was a woman seldom seen about St. Wilfrid’s. She was given to sofas and thinking. Some people said that she suffered from melancholia, others from her husband, father’s Headmaster, who is a pewsy man, little and plump, like a dynamo in a dog-collar, a great writer of lists, a man of committees. He never does any actual teaching now except for a lesson or two of Theology which he never calls Scripture or R.E. or anything like that. He distributes the Theology to a very favoured few, the ones who are chosen by him for his old Oxford College. It is said that he makes a special trip to Oxford each Autumn, the season of UCCA and mellow fruitfulness. “All my boys,” he says, “are sure of a Place and most of an Award.” This is rubbish as father and the Thursday Club often remark—because it is years now since the school has had a scholarship to Oxbridge and even Places are getting rather few and far between. The school has been on the down with Dr. Gathering. “I make a point of still knowing a
lot
of people,” he says, handing all his work over to father and making for his first class carriage and the best train south. His visits co-incide with his daughter’s half terms at Cheltenham. He goes on to her after Oxford—it is astonishing how she is kept out of sight—and then proceeds to his London Club.
    He returns looking much rested and his wife during his absence looks much rested too. She is even sometimes seen about the town dressed in memorable clothes of a purplish sort and not by any means warm enough for the time of the year. Sometimes she walks along the sea-front and into Boots or a flower shop. Once she was seen carrying a small sheaf of corn and an ornamental bread loaf all the way along the prom, away past the pier to the parish church which was getting ready for its harvest festival. She is rather like a harvest festival herself—an immense storehouse of a woman with a large though indeterminate face. She’s like someone you’ve vaguely heard about in a rather bad