Page 123 - What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

guide them (“We’ll just wait in the kitchen,” the waiters said) and they searched each room on the
first floor and found no one there. When they filed back into the dining room, however, it was full
of uninvited women, each of whom had taken seats emptied by the Bettencourters and were
tucking into the platefuls of food the Bettencourters had temporarily abandoned. “Sit down, sit
down, join us,” cried Moira Johnstone, number one Homeliest Wench. The Bettencourters looked
to Rutherford to see how they should proceed; he decided the only sporting response was a
good-natured one, so he and his brethren had another table brought into the room, had the
waiters set places at it and sat there and ate alongside all the Wenches. Their plan had been just
as you must’ve guessed by now: Earlier that evening the last of the “most attractive” women to
enter Bettencourt headquarters had lingered at the door and let the first of the “homeliest
wenches” into the building.
As far as we know, the Bettencourt Society never compiled another list of homely wenches.
The Homely Wenches Society flourished for a time, and then membership dwindled as ensuing
generations of female Cantabs saw little need to label themselves or to oppose the Bettencourters
(whose numbers remain steady). The activities of the Homely Wench Society mainly come under
the banner of “Laughs, Snacks and Cotching,” but in response to advice from Homely Wenches
who’ve since graduated, the society produces a termly journal. Mostly for the purpose of posterity;
we have no real readership other than ourselves.
So if you want to join, our questions to you are:
Who are the homely wenches of today?
What makes you think you’re one of us?
Your answer is a key that will unlock worlds (yours, ours), so please make it as full and as
bigarurre as it can be.

Hope to hear from you soon,

Willa Reid (third-year History of Art, Caius)
Ed Niang (second-year NatSci, Clare)
Theo Ackner (second-year History, Emma)
Hilde Karlsen (third-year HSPS, Girton)
Grainne Molloy, (second-year Law, Peterhouse)
Flordeliza Castillo (first-year CompSci, Trinity)
and
Marie Adoula (third-year MML, King’s)
—

IT TOOK DAYANG SHARIF (second-year Eng. Lit, Queen’s) days to think up an
answer that was full and bigarurre. As soon as she read the e-mail she wanted in
—actually as soon as she’d met Willa and Hilde on the train she’d wanted in—
but as with all groups the membership hurdle wasn’t so much to do with
convincing the Wenches that she was one of them as it was to do with
convincing herself. She looked the word bigarurre up and found that it meant

both “a medley of sundry colors running together” and “a discourse running
oddly and fantastically, from one matter to another.” “Medley of sundry colors