42

I spent much of the time in bed. It was easy to sleep.

June noticed the difference in me.

‘What’s the matter, Wendy? You do look miserable.’

‘I’m all right.’

‘But you look miserable every day. And what’s that slice of bread doing up there?’

‘Where?’

‘Up there. There’s a slice of bread stuck to the ceiling.’

‘I threw it up there.’

‘What for?’

‘I got bored with it.’

‘Are you going crazy?’

‘I went crazy long ago.’

I climbed up onto the table and peeled the bread off the ceiling. A rectangle of butter remained.

June, looking up at me, said, ‘There’ll be a mark. The grease will have gone right into the plaster. You won’t get it off. You’ll have to paint the whole ceiling to cover it.’

Next day I bought a large tin of emulsion paint and a brush and painted the ceiling pink. It made my arms ache, but I kept working, and when it was finished I felt better.

June came in and said, ‘It’s superb, Wendy! I wonder what Mrs Cartwright will say about it.’

That night June and I went to the pictures. We brought fish-and-chips back with us, and we sat up until late agreeing that money was an important test of a man.

‘That’s the trouble with Frank,’ I said. ‘He hasn’t any money. He talks a lot, but there’s nothing to show for it. That’s why I’ve finished with him.’

‘Have you finished with him, Wendy?’

‘Yes.’

‘He’s very good-looking in a barbaric way,’ she said thought­fully.

There’s no such thing as a good-looking man,’ I told her. ‘They’re all ugly.’

‘You have to think of security,’ said June seriously. ‘After all, Wendy, you are alone in the world.’

‘As alone as a leper on a desert island,’ I said.

When I got into bed that night I told myself that it was possible to go on living. I was not as happy as I had been with Frank, but I had myself. Most women had to be content with themselves. There were not enough barbarically hand­some men to go round.

I must lie still and alone in my pretty nightdress. It was a white, waltz-length nightdress. There was an embroidered yoke at the top and then it was very full and there was a flounce at the hem. I must lie still like a gentle girl.

Even if there were no Frank, I would still want the operation more than anything. I would give up Frank to have the operation.

Two things in my mind would not meet. There was a gap that stopped my thinking. My mind was a woman. My body should be made the same. The difference between mind and reality made me sweat and yearn to be a woman. I could not understand. I could only want and want to be a woman. My desire made me strain my body forward. I was in madness.

I was glad that I was suffering. It was a woman’s suffering. I was a bitch.

And then I lay still again. It was right that I should be stopped and frustrated. I was female.

I was Wendy lying still in her nightdress, secret in the darkness. I could not do anything to get Frank back. I was a girl. There were many actions that I could not do.

I wished that I had no choice but to be a girl. An operation would make it so that one had no possibility of choosing; one would always have to sit down when one used the lavatory. I always did sit down, but I had the possibility of choosing. If I were bound to one way, I would be one person. I would be a woman.