The Glamour

Part I

I have been trying to remember where it began, thinking about my early childhood and wondering if anything might have happened that made me become what I am. I had never thought much about it before, because on the whole I was happy. I think the reason for this was that I was protected from knowing what was really going on. My mother died when I was only three, but even this was a blow that was softened; her illness was a long one, and by the time she actually died I was used to spending most of my time with the hired nurse.

What I remember best was something I enjoyed. When I was eight I was sent home from school with a letter from the medical office. A viral infection had been attacking many of the children at the school, and after we had all been screened it was discovered or decided that I was the carrier. I was placed in home quarantine, and was not allowed to mix with other children until I ceased to be a carrier. The outcome was that I was eventually admitted to a private hospital, and my two perfectly good tonsils were efficiently removed. I returned to school shortly after my ninth birthday.

The period of quarantine had lasted nearly six months, coinciding with the best part of a long hot summer. I was on my own for most of this time, and although at first I felt lonely and isolated I quickly adapted. I discovered the pleasures of solitude. I read a huge number of books, went for long walks in the countryside around the house, and noticed wildlife for the first time. My father bought me a simple camera, and I began to study birds and flowers and trees, preferring their company to that of my friends. I constructed a secret den in the garden, and sat in it for hours with my books or photographs, fantasizing and dreaming. I built a cart with the wheels of an old pram and skittered around the country paths and hills, happier than I had ever been before. It was a contented, uncomplicated time, one in which I built up personal reserves and internal confidence, and it changed me.

Returning to school was a wrench. I had become an outsider to the other children because I had been away so long. I was left out of activities and games, groups formed without me, and I was treated as someone who did not know the secret language or sighs. I hardly cared; it allowed me to continue with a reduced form of my solitary life, and for the rest of my time at school I drifted on the periphery, barely noticed by the others. I have never regretted that long, lonely summer, and I only wish it could have lasted longer. I changed as I grew up, and I am not now what I was then, but I still think back to that happy time with a kind of infantile longing.

So perhaps it began there, and this story is the rest. At the moment I am only “I” although soon I shall have a name. This is my own story, told in different voices.