12

‘Wherever you go,’ Hilda whispered to Praxis, pressing a small black square into her hand, ‘you have to take yourself with you.’

The square, unfolded, proved to be a black chiffon scarf, frayed to grey along the folds, which Lucy had worn in the old days, the good days. A small group had gathered at Brighton Station to say goodbye to Praxis, as she set off for Reading University, a course in political science, of all things, and the world. Praxis’ senses were finely tuned to the first disparate chords of the dance of Hilda’s madness, and knew from the whisper, and the gift, that she was being ill-wished.

You may think you are leaving, but you are wrong. You will never be free. Childhood is never over. Thank you, Hilda, bad fairy, for this gift.

One by one the others stepped forward, good fairy godmothers, to undo the harm.

‘Have a lovely time,’ said Mrs Allbright, ‘I’m sure you deserve it.’ Her waist was already thickening: her eyes were bright with satisfaction. Her elder step-daughter was back at boarding school, her husband back to normal, and life was serene. Mr Allbright, she was sure, would find a renewal of youth, in this their own new baby, and that was all that was required. Baby Mary Leonard lay in a pram at the other end of the platform and cried. ‘Shouldn’t you pick her up?’ Praxis enquired, anxiously. ‘Certainly not,’ said Mrs Allbright. ‘Babies must learn discipline. It’s the root of all morality.’ Mrs Allbright was sorry to lose Praxis in one way, since she was useful about the house, but glad in another – for Praxis would keep picking up Baby Mary, and staring into her wide, serious eyes, as if searching there for God, or the Devil, or at any rate some trace of momentous events, and spoiling her.

‘Don’t get in with the wrong crowd,’ said Mr Allbright. ‘Join the Students’ Christian Movement: you’ll meet some nice young men there.’ His hair was white with lime and plaster-dust, and his nails horny and cracked. He had come straight to the station from the building site where he and his parishioners were rebuilding the church with their own hands. ‘I’m going to study,’ said Praxis, but clearly no one believed her. She only barely believed it herself.

‘Be careful of the ex-servicemen,’ said Elaine. ‘Or rather don’t be careful. Who wants little boys?’ Elaine was off to secretarial college. While she waited for term to begin she helped in her father’s shop. She had parked his bread van in the station yard, in order to say goodbye. Her parents would not let her go to University; they feared for her virtue, rightly.

‘Don’t worry about your mum,’ said Judith. ‘I’ll go and visit.’ Judith had two of her nameless, swarthy children by her side. She was in mourning for her husband, and it was as if, with his death, her resentment against the Duveen family had evaporated.

‘You’ll write if anything happens? If she seems unhappy?’ begged Praxis, as the train left.

‘Nothing you can do about it if she is,’ called Judith after her. ‘You have to live your own life, not hers.’

It seemed a supreme benison, leaving Hilda black, shrivelled and meaningless in the retreating station. Praxis had her head out of the window, waving, and placed the chiffon scarf on her head to calm her hair: but the wind whipped it away and it vanished into someone’s vegetable allotment.

It seemed a good omen; a further confounding of Hilda’s ill-wishes.

Hilda had been staying at the Allbrights’, too. They were kindness and generosity itself, everyone said so. But Praxis felt uneasy. She took care not to be alone with Mr Allbright: he spoke sensibly but looked strangely. Mr Allbright’s elder daughter, a big bouncy bosomy girl, would sit in her father’s lap after supper and nibble his ear while Mrs Allbright played the pianola with too many stops out, and she and Hilda washed up. It had been hard work: Baby Mary to be cared for, and her nappies and clothes to be washed, for now Mrs Allbright was pregnant she seemed to have little strength or desire to do it herself: and, moreover, seemed to believe that even a small baby could tell the difference between right and wrong, unselfish and selfish behaviour, and should be punished accordingly.

Hilda had become obsessive about the stars. Praxis would wake in the night to find her sister staring sadly out of the window at the night sky. Perhaps she missed the searchlights, and the drama war is never over,’ said Hilda. She had a gift for making such statements: meaningful in general of battle. Now the war was over the sky was boring. She said as much.

‘The, but in detail meaningless. It was a gift which was to stand her in good stead in later life.

‘Miss Leonard is that star over there,’ said Hilda, pointing. ‘The reddish, twinkling one. She must be suffering terribly.’

‘That’s Betelgeuse,’ protested Praxis. ‘It’s a red dwarf.’ Praxis read books on popular astronomy.

‘A dwarf? I sometimes believe you’re mad,’ said Hilda. ‘Stars are souls burning in hell: that’s why they flicker.’

Baby Mary slept in the room with them. When she woke and cried, Hilda would wake first and get to the crib while Praxis still struggled with sleep. She would take the baby to the window, rock her in her arms, and point out the stars. Hitler, Mussolini, her own father, Miss Leonard: the strange black patches in the milky way were spaces waiting for new arrivals. The baby would find her thumb, and suck, and stare, and stare and suck, and finally consent to be put down, and sleep again.

Praxis knew that presently she would have to rescue Baby Mary, and did not doubt but that she could do it.

At college Praxis lived in a Ladies’ Residence some half a mile from the campus. She shared a room with a large, strong, red-haired girl. The hair was wiry, mangey and curly, not the deep smooth and sultry kind: and her complexion patchy and freckled. She seemed unaware of these misfortunes: she fell on her knees at night and thanked God for her blessings. She wore a strong white nightgown; scrubbed her face and hands at night with carbolic soap, and her smell was high but not unpleasant. She was friendly and noisy, was studying German, played a good game of hockey, ate heartily, and regarded college as a continuation of school life. Her name was Colleen; ‘Just call me Collie.’

Praxis half-despised, half-envied her her ordinariness; taking for the person what was only the crackly shell, grown in self-defence in a world in which to be fragile and pretty was to be valued, and to be cheerful and practical the best a girl could do, if not blessed by nature. The first time Praxis heard Colleen cry in the night, she was astonished. Later, she became accustomed to it. It was years before she was to consider it.

Praxis, mind you, studying herself in the mirror (as she frequently did) saw little to indicate that she herself had been particularly blessed by nature. Two eyes, a nose, a mouth, all regularly placed. Brown, short, curly hair, complexion rather pinker than she would have liked, but at least clear. A white, solid neck. Praxis feared that there was no distinction about her face at all; on the other hand perhaps she was merely over-used to what she was in the mirror. As for her body, other people’s clothes seemed to fit it well enough, so presumably it was in no way bizarre. By virtue of clothes rationing and shortage of money – Praxis lived on a local authority scholarship grant of £120 a year, paying £105 of that to the Ladies’ Residence – she wore mostly second-hand clothes.

The pride of her wardrobe was Miss Leonard’s leopard skin coat, blown into the street when the bomb fell. Praxis had also salvaged a string of bold metal beads which Miss Leonard so often wore, taken from her dead body by rescue workers and placed in a canvas bag with other bits and pieces for the family to go through at their leisure. Waste not: want not: it was the motto of the war: and Praxis was sure, besides, that Miss Leonard would not mind. She had taken two of Lucy’s dresses and three of Lucy’s skirts, one black wool, one brown rayon, one green silk, which she had found at the back of a wardrobe at home, and which more or less fitted, although still smelling strongly of mothballs. Hilda had given her two spotted blue and white blouses which were too large for her: and she had a great quantity of the first Mrs Allbright’s underwear – stout white cambric knickers and brassieres, woollen vests, and beige lisle stockings, which the second Mrs Allbright had given her. Washing and drying the latter took a long time. On her feet, Praxis wore the black court shoes which Judith had bought to go to her husband’s funeral; but bought too small, her judgment clouded by her distress. They fitted Praxis very well.

Praxis did feel that there was perhaps something odd about her appearance: a feeling made more pronounced by the existence in the next room of a girl called Irma Henry, who would wander idly down the corridors towards the bathroom – while others scurried, if immodestly dressed – naked beneath a clinging wrap made out of parachute silk: the shape of her breasts, and even her nipples, clearly visible. She had no parents, but a guardian, and some distant cousins in Sussex: she had been to Roedean, a girls’ public school, and spoke the language of the privileged. She painted her nails scarlet, studied French, and made long-distance telephone calls from the booth outside the dining-room, while the other girls waited about for the toad-in-the-hole to be served. When it arrived, she would push aside the soggy batter – the best part – and disdainfully eat a morsel or so of the sausage. She was pretty, in a hollow-eyed, bad-tempered kind of way. No one liked her: everyone admired her. For some reason she made a friend of Praxis, shaking her head in wonderment over the white cambric knickers.

Irma dressed and undressed in front of Praxis, who was relieved to find that other girls too had a triangle of hair where their legs started. Praxis’ body seemed as much of a mystery to her as ever. She bled once a month, regularly, but barely knew why, and had ceased to wonder. She neither felt nor investigated the area between her legs, and certainly never took up a mirror to look, imagining that an area so soft, private and forbidden was better left alone. Irma seemed to have no such inhibitions.

Irma was accustomed to going to the weekly students’ dance, and asked Praxis to go with her. Colleen advised against it.

‘The ex-servicemen will be there,’ said Colleen.

‘They’re like animals,’ said Colleen, ‘they’re men, not boys any more, and they’ve seen and done terrible things. They go to the dances and just lie in wait for nice girls.’

‘They can’t do any harm,’ said Praxis. ‘What harm could one come to?’

‘But they’ve been abroad,’ said Colleen, ‘and their passions have been inflamed by hot climates and spicy foods. Don’t you understand, Praxis? Men like that can’t control themselves. They’re like animals. If you dance with them you’re just asking for trouble.’

‘If you’re interested in boys,’ said Colleen, ‘they have nice socials at the Students’ Christian Movement, with free coffee and cakes.’

Praxis went to the dance with Irma. Nothing would stop her. She wore Lucy’s cerise satin dress and hoped that no one would notice how unevenly the hem had dropped. Over the dress she wore the leopard skin coat. ‘You’d do better to go in your ordinary clothes,’ said Irma, but Praxis couldn’t agree. Irma abandoned her at the door.

Irma wore a low-cut black sweater and a full pink skirt; her hair was swept up in a pony tail, one of the first to be seen in the West. Irma danced all evening, abandoning one partner, choosing another. She was all candid eyes, laughing mouth, and pressing breasts.

‘Cock-tease,’ someone muttered in her ear, and did not mean it pleasantly. Irma had heard it often enough before; she took no notice.

Praxis danced the first dance; then her partner took her to the bar. She had learned dancing at school. This felt different. He gave her gin and lime. She was unused to drink.

‘That’s a funny dress,’ he said. ‘Is it very fashionable?’ She did not care for her partner, or his opinion. He was no taller than she: he wore no tie: his hair needed cutting: his chin needed shaving. His face was flat and shiny and seemed a matter of planes and angles, like a piece of cut glass. His eyes were small but bright behind thick spectacles: his arms were hairy: his cuffs were frayed: he wore ex-army boots. His hand upon her arm trembled with nervous energy. His name was Willy. He was, he told her, doing political science and economics.

‘So am I,’ said Praxis.

‘It’s a men’s option,’ he said, surprised.

‘They thought I was a man,’ said Praxis. ‘I have an odd name. But once they accepted me they could hardly throw me out. They tried, but I wrote a letter.’

He wasn’t listening. His eyes were on her breasts. Her dress was without straps: it kept up by virtue of whalebones, which had escaped their padding and now dug into her flesh.

It was, perhaps, too large for her. She became aware that anyone taller than she, looking down, could see more than he ought.

Fortunately, Willy was not tall: and besides, she reckoned, his opinion of her hardly counted. She accepted another drink and then another. It seemed preferable to dancing. She did not like the feel of his arm around her waist. It seemed very familiar. At school girls had danced with girls.

‘Why do you look so odd?’ he asked. ‘Is it policy, or accident? I look odd, but then I mean to. I don’t believe in washing, for one thing. It reduces the body’s natural defences against disease; soap is a needless expense. I’m very mean, I warn you. I got in here tonight through the back door. It’s very easy. All you have to do is just walk in: there’s no one to stop you.’

His eye had strayed further down, contemplatively. His trousers, she observed, were held up by string.

‘Why wear a belt when string will do?’ he remarked. ‘Belts are a waste of money, if you come to think of it.’

‘Don’t you care what people think?’ she asked.

‘Depends who,’ he said. ‘I saw a lot of people die. I was in D-day. I don’t like to waste my time, my money, or my life. Am I wasting my time with you? Or my money?’

She was not quite sure what he meant. His breath was sweet: it smelt of slightly fermented honey.

She shook her head.

He bought her two more gin and limes, counting the change carefully.

He was joined by his friend, who was tall, clean-cut with a soft voice and wide, innocent eyes. His skin was as clear and soft as Baby Mary’s, and his hair the same fine silver yellow colour. He stared and stared, as speculatively as Willy did. His mouth was full, pink and curved. Praxis fell in love at once. His name was Phillip. He drank a good deal of beer but his shirt was crisp and white and his tie stayed straight.

‘Does she have a shape under that dress?’ he asked.

‘I believe so,’ said Willy. ‘You’re drunk.’

‘Never,’ said Phillip, staggering. ‘Is she willing?’

‘Of course she is,’ said Willy.

‘But how do you know?’

‘I have a fine instinct for these things. On the other hand she’s in our department. It might be complicated.’

‘Not science?’

‘No.’

‘I could have sworn she was in science,’ said Phillip. ‘They’re so easy to lose.’

He bought the next round of drinks. Presently they all went out on to the downs. Praxis left her mother’s handbag behind, and all her money, her comb and her orange lipstick, but didn’t care.

‘It’s going to be a good term,’ said Phillip. ‘I can feel it in my bones. A good year for available girls.’ He took off his shoes. Willy took off his boots. He wore no socks and his toes were dirty.

‘If you loved me,’ said Willy, sadly, ‘you’d wash my toes.’

Praxis wouldn’t. Phillip said she shouldn’t, in any case. If Willy was too mean to buy soap, he must put up with the consequences. Praxis was no substitute for soap.

‘What is she then?’ enquired Willy.

Phillip studied Praxis, contemplatively.

‘You can’t tell, in that dress,’ said Phillip.

Ceremoniously they removed the dress: one on each side they raised her arms to study the marks left by the whalebones.

‘I suppose,’ said Willy, ‘it’s an engineering problem.’

‘I was in the sappers,’ said Phillip. ‘It would be nothing to me.’ He ran his finger over the weals and round her breasts.

‘You take your hands off her,’ said Willy. ‘She’s an object lesson, not a body.’

‘She’s better without the dress,’ said Phillip. ‘Her face isn’t so green.’ He stood back and offered Praxis a swig from his beer bottle, which she accepted. She was beginning to feel sick. Phillip offered to sell Willy a swig for a shilling. Willy argued that friendship entitled him to two swigs for sixpence.

Phillip pointed at Praxis’ white bloomers: and asked her what they were. She told them: they listened with reverence.

‘Poor lady,’ said Phillip. ‘This is no place for a dead clergyman’s wife.’

‘A clergyman’s dead wife,’ said Willy. ‘Take them off.’ Praxis took them off.

‘It’s not respectful to the Church,’ said Phillip. ‘My father was a clergyman.’

Phillip kissed the elastic marks round Praxis’ thighs. Lower down he found the marks left by her suspenders, and helped her take those off too, and then her stockings.

His lips were fresh and moist, as he helped heal her various wounds. She felt he was very kind, and simple.

Willy, on the other hand, seemed unreasonably sober.

‘She’ll only catch cold,’ he said. ‘You’re drunk. I met her first. Do go away.’

‘But I love her,’ said Phillip. ‘If anyone’s to go, you should. Though it doesn’t seem necessary to me. It’s all quite friendly. See! Nothing hidden.’

‘She doesn’t know what she’s doing,’ said Willy.

‘Yes she does,’ said Phillip. ‘She loves me.’

‘Yes I do,’ said Praxis, as distinctly as she could.

Phillip’s mouth moved upwards and settled in what she felt to be a strange and woolly place. His arms were placed warmly and comfortably round her waist, and both steadied her – which she needed, being never quite sure whether it was she who was rocking, or the ground – and warmed her. The wind, she was remotely aware, was cold. Her arms were goose-pimpled; rough to her own touch: she kept them clasped round her bosom with some remnant of modesty.

Phillip bore her down upon the ground. The grass was damp and chilly, but his body was warm and welcome. His belt and buttons scratched her. As if in the interests of her comfort, he removed the belt and undid his trousers, scarcely rising from his prone position; unaware that his shirt buttons were making severe indentations on her right breast. As fast as he assuaged one wound, it seemed he created another. His knee came between hers, forcing them apart.

Never mind. Only Willy seemed to mind, and who cared about him?

Praxis had a clear vision of the Reverend Allbright, on the occasion when she had gone running to him with news of Judith’s pregnancy: and of his member, rising from the dark grave of his clerical trousers, to new life. This was that, brought eventually to fruition, via the first Mrs Allbright’s stout knickers. Pregnancy! The thought alarmed her. Perhaps she should have kept them on? Perhaps they were the talisman, meant to preserve her? Weren’t men supposed to wear something? Why was Phillip not?

She struggled.

‘I think I’d better go,’ said Praxis as best she could. ‘I think I’d better get back.’

She had a strong vision of Colleen’s strong, disapproving face.

‘Let her go for God’s sake,’ said Willy. ‘She’s drunk and so are you. Supposing she gets pregnant? She’s in our department.’

‘Never met her before in my life,’ said Phillip, entering secret, undisclosed places. Praxis, her head turning from side to side, saw Willy leave, staggering over the turfy hillocks. The night was moonlit; Willy’s body was silhouetted for a moment against a starry sky. The souls of the damned burned; and Willy seemed to sink down into nothingness, and was gone. She was conscious of the sound of her own quickened breath, and Phillip’s harsh panting. Without Willy she was frightened: no element of choice remained. Phillip’s body was powered by a force she could not understand. It occupied, moreover, a space she had always considered her own; but which apparently total strangers could enter with impunity.

He cried out: he seemed to have finished whatever he was doing: he had lost interest. He lay on top of her and fell asleep. Presently his weight became unbearable; she rolled him off her. Nothing of him now remained behind: he had slipped out of her easily: some moist foreign body, inadvertently inside her own, now back in its own place. He lay where she had pushed him. He snored. She tried to shake him awake; but still he slept.

She wandered the hillocks, finding stocking here, dress there, Mrs Allbright’s knickers yet beyond. She dressed unsteadily, and went back to the hostel, and there, to her relief, for it was long past curfew time, found a little group of locked-out girls, scaling the walls via each other’s shoulders, and joined them and got back to her room, and bed, and slept.

‘I didn’t hear you come in,’ said Colleen, suspiciously, in the morning, but Praxis could only groan. Gin and beer combined to make her ill as she could never remember having been ill before – staggering between wash-basin and lavatory bowl, wishing for death.

‘Serve you right,’ said Colleen, nevertheless folding away Praxis’ clothes, wiping Praxis’ brow, cleaning up Praxis’ vomit.

In the afternoon Praxis felt better: the bruises on breast and thigh pleased her. She was getting a cold in the nose.

‘Your brother wants to see you,’ said Colleen, presently. ‘He was here this morning but I didn’t let him in. He doesn’t look like your brother.’

Men visitors were only allowed in the hostel if they described themselves as close male relatives. Popular girls had many brothers. Praxis was gratified to find she had one. She had hoped for Phillip, but Willy came.

‘I came to apologise,’ said Willy. ‘Phillip can’t even remember leaving the dance. It’s very embarrassing. I should have looked after you better.’

‘You mean if I met him in the street,’ asked Praxis, ‘he’d think I was a perfect stranger?’

‘I suppose that’s so,’ said Willy. What yesterday had seemed unshaven stubble, today seemed rather more like a beard; it gave him an almost patriarchal air. Since she was lying down and he was standing, Willy no longer seemed so short. He was, in fact, altogether less negligible than she had originally supposed. Or was she just becoming accustomed to the scale of his existence?

‘Well, you know what drink is,’ he added.

‘I don’t,’ said Praxis. ‘Beyond a glass of sherry at Christmas.’

He seemed taken aback.

‘Or sex?’ he asked, more nervously still. ‘I suppose you were familiar with that.’

‘No,’ said Praxis, and cried, from sentiment more than distress, at the notion of how very unshared an experience the loss of her virginity had been.

Willy got into bed beside her, to comfort her; cold, white skinned, hairy limbed. His body was bony, strong and wiry. His muscles vibrated, as if he were some kind of taut string which she plucked, alive with pent-up energy. Praxis was conscious of physical pleasure, as she had not been with Phillip; but also that Willy was in some way distasteful to her. She feared that he was laying claim to her, impaling her for further investigation, marking out some kind of territorial boundary inside her, which he would from now on feel entitled to occupy and defend. He did not take off his glasses: he watched her expression carefully, and with a dispassion which did not fit with the urgency of his body. His nails, none too clean, dug into her upper arms: she would have bruises there tomorrow. So long as the skin was not broken she supposed she would be safe from germs.

Germs. Lucy had feared germs, the contamination of sin.

Praxis, her body impaled, found her mind agreeably free to wander. She thought it perhaps ought not to be so. Moreover, was there not some danger of pregnancy? Remember what had happened to Miss Leonard. Last night had been bad enough: this was doubling the risk. But how could she give voice to her fears without insulting Willy, and indicating her failure to be carried away by desire, love, gratitude, or whatever it was he expected of her?

The impalation ceased. His struggles continued. He cried aloud, a haunted, eerie cry. She was amazed. It seemed to mean a great deal to him.

‘Coitus interruptus,’ he said, eventually: breathless. ‘It does terrible damage.’ His body was hot now, not cold.

‘I hope you didn’t worry,’ he said, kindly. ‘I’ll look after you.’

He liked to look after people. She settled for that. He lived out of college: he shared a room with Phillip: a dirty basement room. But it was Phillip she wanted to see, and be near, not Willy.

When she cooked Willy’s meal – mostly sausages and mash –she cooked for Phillip too. It was enough. She could not wash Willy’s socks, for he had none, but she could, and did, wash Phillip’s shirts, although he protested that he could do them himself. She smuggled soap out of the hostel for Willy’s use, and induced him to use it, and Phillip was amused. Phillip smiled at her in a vague and friendly and totally unlustful way, and talked around her, to Willy, about Beowulf and Kant. He was engaged to a doctor’s daughter in London, Willy said. He would marry her when he had his degree. Only occasionally did he drink too much beer: and then he always forgot what had happened.

‘He wants to be pure for his virgin bride,’ said Willy, marvelling more at the ambition than the self-deception.

Willy and Praxis went to bed together between lectures: that, at any rate, was how they described it. They seldom actually reached the bed. No sooner were they inside the door then he would bear down upon her, pressing her on to the floor, table, chair, anywhere, in his urgency. The sheets of the bed were filthy, in any case: the dusty, greasy floor, the littered table, the ripped chair, were really no worse. He liked the dirt: he took pleasure in it, and dissuaded her from too much cleaning. There were better things to do with life, he told her. Phillip did not seem to notice the dirt. He merely bathed a good deal, and moved in an aura of soap, reminding Praxis, rather painfully, of Baby Mary. She tried not to think and worry about anything: about Baby Mary, Hilda, or her mother. Willy helped.

At a quarter to seven in the evening Praxis would return to the Ladies’ Residence and to Colleen, moodily cleaning sports-shoes, or polishing medallions, or pressing the pimples which now erupted between her freckles; and to Irma, painting her toe-nails, shaving her legs, complaining of the predatory nature of men; and to supper. Praxis did not eat with Willy: since her year’s board at the Residence had been paid for in advance, to do so would clearly be a waste of money. Willy urged Praxis to eat as much as she could, to be sure of getting her money’s worth. The staple Residence diet, toad-in-the-hole, baked in nameless grease in slow ovens, and cabbage, put on to simmer at midday by the morning staff, strained, compacted, and cut into wedges by the evening staff, sickened her but did not seem strange to her.

Willy told Praxis about the war: how he had been called up at eighteen, seen two years active service in Burma, then spent a year rounding up the Japanese in Siam, clearing the dams formed by, at best, human bones, at worst, dead bodies, which stopped the flow of rivers in those parts, and held up the return of the countryside to normal agricultural life. He had four expensive wristwatches and five gold fountain pens in a secret place, which Praxis felt privileged to be shown. He fingered them with mixed honour and pride.

‘I couldn’t just leave them to rot, could I? There was no identification on the bodies. Mostly parts of bodies. If it was an American watch, it was probably on a Japanese, anyway, and vice versa. I hate waste. I really hate waste.’

Praxis told Willy about Brighton, and school, and Hilda, and her mother, and Miss Leonard, and her horror of madness. He listened attentively and she felt, with him, the same kind of relief that had attended her conversations with Miss Leonard. She almost, likewise, came to expect his sudden death; half dreading it, half hoping for it, as a relief from the drudgery, sometimes six or seven times a day, of politely, kindly and affectionately responding to his sexual needs.

‘Thank you,’ he would say: and he was fond of her and she of him: the nakedness of his need touched her: but neither he, nor she herself, seemed to expect a female response in the least equivalent to the male. She never cried out, or thought she should, or knew that women did, or why they would.

She typed Willy’s essays though, and found books for him in the library, getting there early so as to be first in the queue when work was set. After Willy’s essays were completed and typed, she would then begin on her own. She typed slowly, using only two fingers. It was assumed by both of them that this was the proper distribution of their joint energies. He got A’s and she got C’s.

‘Well and truly snapped up,’ said Irma, ‘more fool you. It’s war, you know. They lose and you win, or vice versa. It’s vice versa for you. Mind you, they’re all like that in the Humanities Department. They talk virtue and practice vice.’

Irma often got A’s, but always pretended she got C’s. To look at her, as Colleen remarked, you wouldn’t think she had a brain in her head, and that was the way Irma wanted it. Irma was looking for a husband. She’d tried to get into Oxford and had failed – there were few places available for women – and so had missed out, she felt, on her chances of marrying a future Prime Minister. She was, perforce, now prepared to settle for an embryo famous novelist, atomic scientist or Nobel prize winner, of the kind who could presumably be found at the lesser provincial universities. Provided, of course, one could spot a winner. Irma was certain she could.

Skirts were narrow and calf-length and split up the back. Irma wiggled her bottom, pouted her orangey-red lips and wriggled out of goodnight kisses and away from groping, futureless hands.

‘If you want to waste your time at college,’ said Colleen to Praxis, ‘that’s up to you. If you want to be soiled and second hand, so you’ll never find a husband, just carry on the way you are.’ But Colleen dyed her white Aertex shirt bright red, and bravely went to the weekly students’ dance, unescorted. No one asked her to dance. She didn’t go again: and the next week was penalised for cracking the ankle of a Cardiff College left wing with her hockey stick, and grew another crop of spots. Sometimes, Praxis, stiff and sore about the thighs, trying to sleep in the airless room, strong with Colleen’s body odours, would hear her friend crying in the night. Colleen cried from loneliness and bewilderment, and the sense of life slipping by, of time already running out, her own negligible place in the world so suddenly and disappointingly marked out.

One week Praxis got an A for her essay, on political establishments in the USA in the eighteenth century, and Willy got a C for his on the same theme. Praxis could not understand why he was so cross, or why he felt obliged to hurt her. But he certainly did. He claimed that Phillip had remembered the Night of the Downs in every sordid detail, but had been so unenthusiastic about her sexual attractiveness that they had agreed to toss a coin as to who should have her, for her domestic and secretarial services. Willy had won, gone to the hostel to stake out his claim, and now wished he hadn’t. Praxis, said Willy, was a neurotic, a bore, a rotten cook, and a slow typist.

Praxis reeled, at the sudden presentation of the malice which underlies love; the resentment which interleaves affection between the sexes, of which she had until that moment no notion. She was shocked; she would not cry. Willy looked at her with Lucy’s eyes. As with Lucy, they hated: they feared: they wanted to hurt: they had learned how, and all too well. Now Willy, too. Praxis went home to the hostel.

‘What did you say to him in return,’ Irma enquired, briskly. ‘Did you tell him he was a dwarf, a sex maniac; that he smells? That he’s a looter of dead bodies?’

‘Of course not.’

‘Well, he is, he does, he did.’

‘I’d never say so to his face.’

‘But you’ve thought it. You must have. He just said the things he thought about you in his worst moments. I don’t suppose he means them. They’re not nearly as awful as the things you’ve thought about him.’

She could be very kind. Praxis, relieved, cried herself to sleep in a rather comforting and comforted way.

‘If you behave like a whore,’ said Colleen, ‘you get treated like a whore. Would you like to borrow my red shirt?’

‘No thank you.’ Praxis’ clothes had become more orthodox. Willy picked her out garments from church sales, excellent bargains all, and more in keeping with the times, albeit somewhat washed-out.

The next day Willy came round and apologised, and even bought her a half of shandy and paid for it himself. She was vastly relieved. Her main fear had been that she would presently find Willy in the students’ bar investing in the gin and lime which would buy him his next term’s sex, comfort, company and secretarial services.

Praxis made sure that her next essay was poorly executed and badly presented, and she inserted a few good extra paragraphs of her own composition into Willy’s essay while typing it out for him; this time he got a straight A and she a C minus and a sorrowful note from her tutor.

The earlier A had been a flash in the pan, her tutor could only suppose. One of the tantalising little flashes girls in higher education would occasionally display: for the most part flickering dimly and then going out, extinguished by the basic, domestic nature of the female sex, altogether quenched by desire to serve the male. Indeed, the consensus of the college authorities was, not surprisingly, that girls seldom lived up to early promise: were rarely capable of intellectual excellence; seemed to somehow go rotten and fall off before ripening, like plums in a bad season. The extension of equal educational facilities to girls had been a hopeful, and perhaps an inevitable undertaking, but was scarcely justifiable by results. He had hoped it was not true, but was beginning to believe it was.

For Praxis, Willy’s A’s and her own C’s seemed a small price to pay for Willy’s protection, Willy’s interest, Willy’s concern; for the status of having a steady boyfriend.

Red-lipped Irma, red-haired Colleen, had to do without. Irma through choice, Colleen by necessity.

Praxis, in the meantime, with Willy around, about, and into her body, loved Phillip with her head. She had secret knowledge of him: she dreamed of him: of the mature male that lurked behind the childish eyes, and boyish lips: the soft voice that murmured easy endearments over the telephone to his virgin, distant love. She saw the look of distracted boredom on his face as he replaced the receiver: before the permanent half-smile returned. Praxis knew: Praxis knew what his boring fiancée did not, the harsh grip of his hands on her shoulders, male and digging, the savagery in his eyes, the obscenities from his mouth. She remembered.

If she had known how to seduce: she would have. But she had no conception of herself as temptation. She was a slice of bread and butter on the table, not a cream eclair just out of reach; but Phillip was clearly not hungry for bread and butter, or thought he wasn’t. He found it easier to yearn romantically after the unavailable: lick his lips over imaginary scented cream.

Praxis hated being alone with Phillip. She did not know what to say to him: nor, she suspected, did he know what to say to her. It did not stop her loving him. It was almost as if she associated love with embarrassment.

Christmas was coming. Hilda wrote to say she would be staying at Holden Road for the vacation: that Butt and Sons had written to offer the freehold of the house as final settlement of their (purely voluntary) obligations to Miss Parker’s family; that Lucy had accepted the offer, and so was now back in a National Health Service hospital, but a very nice one, with modern equipment; that the Holden Road house was in a very bad state, riddled with woodworm, charred by the stars (what did that mean? Praxis shuddered), that Baby Mary had developed pneumonia as a result of Mrs Allbright’s habit of leaving her out under the night sky, and would Praxis please come home at Christmas to help clear up the house – Why should everything be left to Hilda?

‘What does modern equipment mean?’ Willy asked. Praxis shook her head, unable to speak, afraid to think. There were tears of shock in her eyes.

‘A new form of strait-jacket, I daresay,’ said Phillip, blithely.

‘What a superb film could be made inside a mental asylum. Do you think they’d let me in? If only cameras were smaller, I could go in as your brother and no one would be the wiser. What a scoop it would be.’

Phillip had started a film club. He had a cine-camera. He seemed to think only of films. He would form his two hands into squares and look at the world through them: first this way, then that. Sometimes he looked at Praxis, framing her with his hands. It made her uneasy. Sometimes, nowadays, he would come home between lectures and surprise Willy and Praxis on the floor, or against the cooker, or wherever, and would appear surprised, which surely by now he couldn’t be, and take his time to leave. Her breasts would tingle at the thought of his observation: the back of her mouth go dry: her eyes blacken: her buttocks tighten: the centre of her body shrink, oddly, away from him, not towards, as if desiring yet fearful of too overwhelming an experience. Her body acquiesced to Willy: yet crept round him, through some darkening of vision, some fusing of matter into magic, reaching out to Phillip.

But he was nothing, nothing. Something trivial in herself called out to the trivia in him: she knew it was no more than that. Listening to him speak now, using the griefs of the world as if they were bucketfuls of oats to be fed to some lively horse he was determined to mount and spur on to personal victory, with the sound of popular applause ringing in his ears, she knew that he was not really to be taken seriously. It was an intuition she would have done well to recall, in later years.

Willy kicked Phillip. She saw it and was grateful. Willy at least recognised personal pain when he saw it. Phillip, who did not, looked puzzled, as people do when they are woken from hypnosis, and are obliged to travel from early childhood to maturity in the space of seconds.

‘Not if it upsets you, of course, Praxis,’ Philip said, politely. ‘But the more people can be persuaded to turn private grief into public good the better. Film is the way ahead. Photographic images of recorded time. We must hold up a mirror to the world, so it can see itself, and reform itself. Everything else has failed. Religion, literature, art, war, mass education and political systems. Film is what we need.’

Photographs!

Lucy had relegated the beach photographer, her lover, to the cupboard under the stairs: had sent him there from her bed. Years later, when clearing out the cupboard, Praxis was to come across an envelope of nude photographs, showing her mother, Lucy, in her prime, posing for the camera, oddly coy, with one hand over her breasts, the other one over her crotch, head thrown back, enticing. The white of her eyes showed unnaturally. And why was that? Was it from madness, lust, embarrassment or despair? And why had she destroyed the innocent photograph of Hypatia and Praxis on the beach, but not these? Was there a significance in it? Had it been a struggle between decency and indecency, the maternal nature and the erotic, that had in the end destroyed poor Lucy? Or none of these: just the piling up of chance on chance, episode on incident; the wrong enzymes in the brain; a faulty heredity; the accumulation of loss, trouble and social humiliation, which had sent her storming so angrily and destructively back into the inner refuge where she huddled for the rest of her days, safe from reality.

‘No one’s going to take pictures of my mother,’ said Praxis unduly bold, out of instinct, if not knowledge. ‘It won’t do her any good.’

‘It might do society good,’ Phillip persisted. His eyes were soft and large. He rarely spoke to Praxis directly.

‘Anyway,’ said Praxis, ‘I’m not going back home for Christmas.’

Baby Mary would have to look after herself, suffer from starlight as she might.

Praxis spent Christmas with Willy and Willy’s mother, sleeping in the spare room for appearance sake, waylaid by Willy in pantry and corridor. Willy’s mother was a slight, nervous, tidy woman who spoke only of practicalities, and then only briefly, and hid behind spectacles even thicker than Willy’s own. She walked about her chilly, spotless house, reading books on philosophy, politics or economics: anything so long as it was removed from the day-to-day actualities of life, which she found boring. Sometimes she would stumble, so engrossed in her book would she be, and cry out, but rejected help or comfort. Her husband had died of lung cancer when Willy was twelve: it seemed to her, thereafter, that life was something which had to be got through, rather than enjoyed, whilst observing the proper formalities. Or so Willy related it.

Willy had been a mere accident: an afterthought: a by-product of the marriage. His mother was polite to him, even interested in his welfare and progress, but still surprised by his existence. So Willy said.

Praxis saw Willy’s eyes, large behind his thick glasses, dilated with hurt, and believed him.

Praxis found her arms creeping round Willy (as they had never used to) as he penetrated her, in the greenhouse, or the bathroom, or wherever, her own bottom cold against the shiny Christmas surfaces of his mother’s house, trying to warm him, and make up for what he had never had.

Christmas dinner was served formally in the unheated dining room. A pair of candles were lit, placed in saucers to catch the drips. There was roast chicken: a sliver each. The remainder was served cold on Boxing Day, as a fricassee the day after, and the carcass boiled for soup the day after that. There was an agreeable sense of ceremony, properly and frugally performed.

Willy’s mother smiled, as she pecked Praxis goodbye. Praxis went to London and was fitted with a contraceptive device at the Marie Stopes clinic. It was a rubber cap which fitted over her cervix. Willy was relieved of the conflict between his dislike of coitus interruptus and his reluctance to spend good money on French letters.

The new term started. Willy was in his final year at Reading, Praxis in her first: part of his course and hers overlapped. Willy had a plan for Praxis’ future. After he had taken his final examinations he meant to do statistical research at London University. If his degree was good enough he could get a grant: otherwise, he could scrape together only a certain amount by way of bursaries, but if Praxis was earning, and they lived simply and economically enough, there should be no difficulty in his managing. He did not mention marriage, and Praxis did not presume to do so.

‘You’re mad,’ said Irma, ‘to even think of it.’

Irma had temporarily settled for a young man with a future, or so she predicted, in back-bench politics. His name was Peter; he belonged to the young Conservatives; he bought her flowers and chocolates and she kissed him goodnight on the doorstep, regulating the length and passion of the kiss according to the value of the gifts he had bought her that evening, and the quality of the attention he offered. (Willy and Praxis seldom kissed. There seemed no need.)

‘You have to send your life in the direction you want it to go,’ said Irma. ‘You can’t just let things happen. You can’t just live with men because they’re there. You know Willy’s there because he smells.’

Praxis didn’t speak to Irma for a good week. If Willy smelt she had long since ceased to notice it.

‘You’ve got to make him marry you,’ said Colleen.

Colleen’s life had changed, along with the fashions. Skirts had become full, waists nipped, shoulders dropped, hair softened. Colleen had abandoned sport and taken to sex. She frequented the cafe where the Rugger set hung out, and on a Saturday, after closing hours, could be seen making for the downs, laughing heartily and noisily in the company of one or other of the brave, who clearly deserved the fair. In her New Look Saturday dress, Colleen at last felt herself one of the fair. She serviced Irma’s Peter once a month or so, secretly, when the balls ache, as he described it, brought on when Irma’s doorstep goodnights became too much for him to bear. Colleen suffered badly from guilt on this account: and still cried herself to sleep at nights, though nowadays for a different reason; she lived in constant fear of being pregnant.

Victory and beer made the Rugger boys fearless: defeat and beer made them invite disaster: French letters were expensive, embarrassing to procure, and tended to be kept back for special occasions, special girls. Not just Colleen on a Saturday night. Peter was of course always gentlemanly, and withdrew, politely, turning away to use a handkerchief. Colleen loved him. Irma didn’t. It hardly seemed fair.

‘It’s different for you,’ said Praxis to Colleen, ‘you’ve got a home. You don’t understand. I’ve got nothing, no one. Only Willy.’

‘I wish I had nothing and no one,’ said Colleen, gloomily. She’d had a letter from her mother. Her father, a parish councillor and church warden, had, for many years, been on the verge of leaving her mother for a gentle spinster lady who arranged flowers on the altar for Sunday services. The affair had finally become public knowledge. Colleen’s mother, jolly and stoical to the end, threw the information out in a paragraph, and expressed the hope that her daughter would be bringing home a really magnificent show of sports trophies to join her own array of cups and shields, won in the good old pre-marriage days. Colleen was her mother’s hope and consolation, Colleen’s mother made that clear. All else had failed her.

‘What can I possibly take home now? I’m out of all the teams,’ moaned Colleen.

‘A baby and VD,’ said Praxis. ‘Give her something to think about. It’s the kindest thing.’

Colleen barely spoke to Praxis for a week. They were hard-hearted with each other. A sense of desperation seemed to afflict them: as if whatever path they took, whatever new avenue opened up, it would narrow and block, and they would be turned round once again, to face their own natures.