‘I don’t deny that he’s very clever,’ she said, ‘but clever people are very delicately balanced.’ The implication, intended to be flattering to myself, was, of course, that I was not clever and therefore quite sane. Cleverness was not something she hoped for in her daughter. Prettiness was what girls required, and I was quite pretty enough, though I became less and less so in her eyes as I strove to please Roger, who let it be known that he disliked the clink of silver bracelets on the wrist and preferred unpainted faces.
