2

They were days of happiness.

I went out shopping, and when I came back I ran up the stairs to try on the things I had bought. I went into shops and bought clothes, and sometimes I went into shops and came out without buying anything. I would have liked to spend after­noons in fitting rooms trying on all the dresses in the shop, but I could not risk that.

It was queenly to sit while a girl put my feet into shoes.

One girl suggested that I had rather a long foot to please. I was not in the least upset. I knew that long feet were fashionable. I left the shop as a lady who has been affronted by an ignorant menial.

Every day I was laughing to myself and thinking how clever I was. I was delighted with myself.

‘Madam may find this more suitable. . . . What does madam think? Would madam care to look at these? They are quite the latest thing in panties. . . . I’ll just get your change, madam. . . .Yes, madam, we have this style in blue. . . .’

‘Would madam care to try it on in our fitting room?’

‘I haven’t really got the time, I’m afraid. Could I take it away and bring it back if it doesn’t fit?’

‘Of course, madam.’

They were so respectful that I felt that I really had begun life in Cottingham.

I bought an expensive skirt of orange-yellow tweed and an expensive grey-green jumper, and when I wore them I felt that I must have lived in comfort with a well-bred mother. Certainly I could never have fried chips in a fish-and-chip shop.

I was Madam.

I was tall and slender and making myself more elegant. The fringe had been a mistake.

Hour by hour and day by day I was pleased.

Those who attempted to reconcile human beings to limitations always maintained that there could only be happiness when the human being lived in a way that was good for others. Thus they would have everybody good to everybody else and nobody good to himself. Their ideal was selflessness and loss of per­sonality. The aim of general moralities was socialization.

I was selfish and I was establishing my personality. I was not living as a social unit. I was living consciously.

I was conscious of the clothes I was wearing. I was selfish. It was an extreme and exquisite selfishness to be wearing women’s clothes. To be dressed as a woman, to behave as a woman, that was to be myself. I was not a social insect. I was Wendy, a large mammal that owned clothes. I had bought them. They were mine.

Their effect was so personal that it seemed strange that they had been made in factories that were part of prosaic industrial organization.

Somewhere there were men who cut skirts so that they could get money to buy trousers.