I wore a uniform. I was the same as countless others. My feet, which had gone bare all summer, were bound by socks and shoes. My body, which was a child’s body still, was caged in a blouse; under the collar of the blouse snaked a tie; the tie slashed the neck of a box-pleat tunic. I wore a blazer pocketed with a gold speck that was a bird — that hovered a blue hoop — that could have been a bridge, but was a rainbow. Under the bird and the rainbow was more gold that said build TOGETHER.

(And so, in February, when secateurs click and lilies die in vases, I leave the garden and the lane and summer. As my grandmother stakes chrysanthemums to wear on Mother’s Day I go to another school.)

I was afraid. I waited on the verandah until I saw Joan Stott on her bicycle (I see myself: blouse, tunic, blazer, rainbow, bird). We walked to school together; went in at last year’s gate. We met faces from last year too, and made a hasty raft of friendship that proved flimsy; clung together falsely in a sea of blouses and tunics and blazers and rainbows and birds.

And some of us, to show we were at ease, and that the pepper-trees and the tree with the scalloped flowers and the benches and the grey playground were still ours, dodged and hid and jumped and ran (Betty Smith falls by the lavatory, Bev King gets hit on the head). Our game stopped when a lady appeared and blew a whistle. The lady told us that we were young ladies (young ladies do not play).

We all stood still, almost as if we were frozen. (The sun is hot, my straw hat hurts my head, but I feel cold.) Even the badges and the pocket (no gloves, no stockings) and the hat did not seem to merit that. I didn’t want to be a tame young lady. I was still a child. I looked at the others to see if they felt the same. They just stood still.

The lady was the headmistress. She wore ashes-of-roses, powder-blue. She had a monkey-face with round blue eyes, a chin that quivered, a mouth that let out spit. Her voice sounded full of marbles. She had golden fairy curls and crystal embroidery on dresses called ensembles; she wore lots of little buckles on her shoes. The headmistress was different from the other teachers. She had an office by the Book Room. She sat at a desk with papers and a telephone. Tea monitors took her tea on a silver tray, and there was a vase with a rose, and nursery-rhyme biscuits and a teapot that was silver. There were china ladies and a picture of a galleon; there were curtains made of lace. I knew she was a lady — she cocked her finger when she drank her tea, and pronounced lingerie in a funny way.