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yanked back horrible Terrapin from the window in the Peeping Tom business three years ago. He looked very strong and clean and clear-skinned—a creamy sort of complexion like a pale Spaniard. A bit like hers. His eyes were brown like hers, too, but where hers were round and moist and wandering his were small and watchful. I have a thing about brown eyes. I don’t mean that I dislike everyone with brown eyes but whenever I feel that I want someone to matter to me I am slightly relieved if their eyes are blue. Paula says I’d be lonely in India or Wales.
    Noticing Jack Rose’s eyes now was a very curious experience. I thought
    1. They’re brown
    2. They’re little
    3. But it’s Jack Rose. Jack
Rose
. My life and my love.
    And then in a mighty rush came
    4. He is in the park with Mrs. Gathering and they have just come out of a lavender bush!
    I have said that those two Terrapin things taught me some things about myself. I have said that all my long quiet life with only grown ups has taught me about maturity. What I discovered now was a surge of excitement and distaste and interest and misery and curiosity and a sort of envy about something in common with both. I was seeing something I didn’t understand and did not want to.
    No I wasn’t. I was seeing something I had always understood and wanted to understand better.
    What did I want to know? I Iooked at Jack Rose’s hands, long white, medical hands, stroking Mrs. Rose’s library books and then, looking quickly away found myself gazing at the deep V of Mrs. Gathering’s lilac crêpe morning dress. Her neck down to the V was rather red and the skin thickish with minute raised pimples all over it. It was an
old
neck. I looked back at Jack Rose’s unlined beautiful blank pale face high up above the pair of us. I could have wept. I don’t know why.
    Oh yes I do.

C HAPTER 4
    A move had been afoot at the Comprehensive to make me do my A levels in one year instead of two. I had got my O levels to everybody’s surprise and had even managed to get a pass in English, as the set book had been a very easy one,
Under the Greenwood Tree
. I didn’t particularly like
Under the Greenwood Tree
except that it sounded like Dorset and had traces of Paula in it now and then which made me grin, though Paula had a bit more fire and brimstone about her. I got Paula to read me the whole book right through one night and didn’t bother with the English mistress’s notes at all. In the Greenwood Tree lessons I just sat thinking of this and that, and not feeling superior as I knew Miss Bex the English mistress thought I was. I don’t know why Miss Bex was so sure I hated her. I wouldn’t have come across a lot of things without her.
    One day for instance she read out something that was most astonishingly interesting. It was something Hardy said about novels. A novel, said Hardy, should say what everybody is thinking but nobody is saying.
    A novel must be true.
    I dare say it doesn’t sound very extraordinary to most people but it did to me. Think of it— TRUE . True like a theorem. True like an equation. Naked and unashamed. I said it aloud, “Naked and unashamed,” I said and Miss Bex said, “Hullo? Yes? What? Was that
Marigold
?” I couldn’t think of anything else to say but I was still so enchanted by what Hardy had said that I gave her a big grin and nodded my head, and then I sort of waved my hand at her.
    She looked very uneasy and the rest of the class began to splutter and cough and make a great to-do with handkerchieves. Miss Bex said that will do now, and turned with a flurry to the board which she tapped with the chalk and I think because she was playing for time she wrote on the board:
The novel should express what everybody is thinking but nobody is saying
. Then she turned and glared at me menacingly and for a long time, even after the words had been rubbed off and covered up by