me out, but I seem to be all right.”
“But you’re right there,” Lorraine objected, loudly enough that Miss Carroll glanced over at us.
Lorraine, naturally, doesn’t know about Mor. I haven’t mentioned her because firstly it’s personal, secondly I can’t stand sympathy, and thirdly I can’t stand teasing about it even more. People teasing me about Mor could cause me to lose my temper with them. “Oh, really?” I said, and reached for the picture. “I hadn’t looked at that one yet. Usually it’s me she burns. But I’m protected. It would be awful if she started going after my friends.”
Lorraine gasped and moved away from me to sit on the other side of the library, pretending to read Gone with the Wind . For the rest of today, “Let them fear me as long as they obey me” has been working even better than normal, but Deirdre and Sharon have been keeping their distance too, which is going to get awfully lonely.
T UESDAY 16 TH O CTOBER 1979
You know, class is like magic. There’s nothing there you can point to, it evaporates if you try to analyse it, but it’s real and it affects how people behave and makes things happen.
Sharon probably has more money than any of the other girls in our form. We’re the Lower Fifth, which is so meaningless in any normal context that it makes me cross to think about it. They start counting at “Upper Third.” In theory, there exists some platonic Lower School that starts at First, with seven-year-olds. In fact, there’s no such thing, and I deduce it only from the existence of these ridiculous numbers. By the time they get to the sixth, lower and upper, they’re on the same system as the rest of the world that goes from one to four in Junior School and one to six in Secondary School. Arlinghurst is, you notice, running from one to six like an ordinary Secondary School, just counting stupidly.
We’re specifically Lower VC. There’s an A and a B too, but we’re not streamed, heaven help us, that would be wrong. Only in fact we are, because Gill and the whole chemistry group is A, and they are definitely brighter. I should be in A on my marks, but they don’t move people except at the end of term. Miss Carroll, the librarian, has told me they have said I would be moved to A at Christmas, except for having upset the timetable, which means I’ll stay where I am with the dunces until next September. She said this as if I’d learn a valuable lesson about keeping my place, but I’m glad I fought for chemistry. I wish I’d held out for biology as well.
The house system is separate from the forms. The forms run horizontally, the house systems run vertically. Girls from all three forms in each year are in all four houses. The houses compete with each other for cups—perfectly real silver cups that are kept in the Hall. The houses are called after Victorian poets. I’m in Scott. The others are Keats, Tennyson and Wordsworth. No Shelley and no Byron, I suppose because they have faintly disreputable auras. Gramma was fond of all of those poets except, ironically, Scott. The form system controls lessons, and the house system everything else—games particularly, but also the system of points gained or lost for behaviour. We’re supposed to care intensely about our houses and their relative standing, and look out for other people in our houses, whatever their form. Needless to say, I do not give a damn about this. It’s a granfalloon in the purest sense, and I am enduringly grateful to Vonnegut for giving me the word.
Anyway, I was trying to talk about class. In Lower VC, which are the only girls I know well, Sharon’s family have the most money. She goes on foreign holidays more often than most girls, her father is a surgeon, they have a big house and a big car. But classwise, she rates quite low, because she’s Jewish and that makes her different, and because of the other intangible class thing that’s like magic. She doesn’t have a pony, though they could
“But you’re right there,” Lorraine objected, loudly enough that Miss Carroll glanced over at us.
Lorraine, naturally, doesn’t know about Mor. I haven’t mentioned her because firstly it’s personal, secondly I can’t stand sympathy, and thirdly I can’t stand teasing about it even more. People teasing me about Mor could cause me to lose my temper with them. “Oh, really?” I said, and reached for the picture. “I hadn’t looked at that one yet. Usually it’s me she burns. But I’m protected. It would be awful if she started going after my friends.”
Lorraine gasped and moved away from me to sit on the other side of the library, pretending to read Gone with the Wind . For the rest of today, “Let them fear me as long as they obey me” has been working even better than normal, but Deirdre and Sharon have been keeping their distance too, which is going to get awfully lonely.
T UESDAY 16 TH O CTOBER 1979
You know, class is like magic. There’s nothing there you can point to, it evaporates if you try to analyse it, but it’s real and it affects how people behave and makes things happen.
Sharon probably has more money than any of the other girls in our form. We’re the Lower Fifth, which is so meaningless in any normal context that it makes me cross to think about it. They start counting at “Upper Third.” In theory, there exists some platonic Lower School that starts at First, with seven-year-olds. In fact, there’s no such thing, and I deduce it only from the existence of these ridiculous numbers. By the time they get to the sixth, lower and upper, they’re on the same system as the rest of the world that goes from one to four in Junior School and one to six in Secondary School. Arlinghurst is, you notice, running from one to six like an ordinary Secondary School, just counting stupidly.
We’re specifically Lower VC. There’s an A and a B too, but we’re not streamed, heaven help us, that would be wrong. Only in fact we are, because Gill and the whole chemistry group is A, and they are definitely brighter. I should be in A on my marks, but they don’t move people except at the end of term. Miss Carroll, the librarian, has told me they have said I would be moved to A at Christmas, except for having upset the timetable, which means I’ll stay where I am with the dunces until next September. She said this as if I’d learn a valuable lesson about keeping my place, but I’m glad I fought for chemistry. I wish I’d held out for biology as well.
The house system is separate from the forms. The forms run horizontally, the house systems run vertically. Girls from all three forms in each year are in all four houses. The houses compete with each other for cups—perfectly real silver cups that are kept in the Hall. The houses are called after Victorian poets. I’m in Scott. The others are Keats, Tennyson and Wordsworth. No Shelley and no Byron, I suppose because they have faintly disreputable auras. Gramma was fond of all of those poets except, ironically, Scott. The form system controls lessons, and the house system everything else—games particularly, but also the system of points gained or lost for behaviour. We’re supposed to care intensely about our houses and their relative standing, and look out for other people in our houses, whatever their form. Needless to say, I do not give a damn about this. It’s a granfalloon in the purest sense, and I am enduringly grateful to Vonnegut for giving me the word.
Anyway, I was trying to talk about class. In Lower VC, which are the only girls I know well, Sharon’s family have the most money. She goes on foreign holidays more often than most girls, her father is a surgeon, they have a big house and a big car. But classwise, she rates quite low, because she’s Jewish and that makes her different, and because of the other intangible class thing that’s like magic. She doesn’t have a pony, though they could
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