My parents would see vanity as a trap for a girl. Sometimes my mother would say, “You look very nice in that colour” or “with your hair like that,” but more often her comments on my appearance were critical: “Don’t slouch”; “Go and brush your hair”; “You look ridiculous with your belt pulled in so tight.” Roxane had made envious remarks about my looks, but because of her sweet nature and her affection for me I hardly felt they counted. At sixteen the things I knew about my appearance were that my hair was straight, that my hands and feet were too big, and that I had horrible, pale eyes. In my family blue eyes were considered the most beautiful, and I myself admired dark eyes – there was an Indian girl at school with eyes so dark that pupil could not be distinguished from iris, and she was the most beautiful person I knew. I have never seen anyone else with eyes of so pale a grey as mine. They would indeed be horrible if my hair was fair. I know now that they are saved – made an “asset,” as the women’s magazines say – by the darkness of my eyebrows and eyelashes, and that when they startle people it is with pleasure rather than with distaste, but when I was sixteen I still hated them. At the time of my first visit to the Weavers my looks were wasted on me.