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family.’
    ‘She does have his two children,’ demurred the elder Butt. ‘That’s her story,’ said Butt Junior. ‘How could one ever be sure?’
    Nevertheless Butt Senior wrote back to Lucy saying how pleased he was to hear of Hypatia’s success; hoping that Praxis might follow suit: and adding that the matters of rent and allowance and maintenance could be deferred until Praxis’ eighteenth birthday and possibly even longer.
    Lucy felt bolder and returned Henry to the kitchen. The coarse hair of his nostrils repelled her: so did the pallid trembling of his hands. She was glad when he went.
    On the first day at the girls’ grammar school the form mistress read out the register, while the girls murmured their presence.
    ‘Hilda Duveen,’ she said. Silence.
    ‘When I say your name, Hilda,’ said the form mistress to Hypatia, ‘you say present. Shall we try again? Hilda Duveen?’
    ‘Present,’ said Hypatia. It was her mother’s doing. Lucy had never liked her childrens’ names, and the Reverend Allbright had undertaken to talk to the grammar school head-mistress about changing them. The news had been late in reaching Hypatia, that was all. When it was Praxis’ turn to move on to the grammar school she found that her name was now Patricia.

6
    W E CAN’T BE STRONG all the time; I comfort myself with that notion. We can’t stick to our principles, act as we ought, fight for our causes, not non-stop, all our lives. We must surely be prepared to take shifts in our fight for utopia, or failing that, to hand over entirely the burden of our conscience to those who are younger, fresher and less afflicted by experience than ourselves. Then, our task done, we can sink back with a clear conscience into selfishness and apathy. Our righteousness wears out long before our bodies do.
    I ought to rejoice for the girl who stood upon my toe in the bus. I ought to be glad, for her beauty, her freedom, her dignity, her pride. But I don’t; I’m not. She has injured me, and I can see no further than that: my eyes are dimming with age. I ought to be thankful, and take some credit myself, for the fact that she will never have to live in such a prison of shame and hypocrisy as the one in which my mother found herself. Poor mother. Of course she should have struggled. My father’s people in Germany should have struggled too. But she did not, as they did not. We see the world as we are taught to see it, not how it is. Our vision since has widened. And of course she should have kept her misery to herself, not handed it on to her children. For a time I hated her for her weakness, until I saw what I did to my children through my strength. Then I forgave her.
    I am not strong at the moment. If the social worker comes knocking at my door I shall certainly let her in. I cannot hobble as far as the cooker to make so much as cup of tea. I cannot, worse, reach the drawer which contains the pain-killers. Am I Praxis or Patricia? Patricia, without a doubt. Pat, for short, for convenience. Everyone’s convenience. A dismissable, neutral name, jolly at best, unerotic at worst. Others seem quite happy with it, but then they were born with it. I wasn’t. The name a vengeful, if practical, mother would choose for a sensible child, the better to give orders to. Pat, fetch my bag, clear the table, weed the garden. Pat, do your homework, find Hilda’s hairgrips. Poor hateful Hilda.
    I called myself Pat in Holloway Prison. The social worker calls me Pat. She feels she has the right to be familiar. She does not regard me as a criminal: I wish she did. She sees me as someone half-mad, who couldn’t cope and covered-up her inadequacy by what she calls an ad hoc justification. She calls me Pat because she pities me, and her nature and training will not allow her to condemn me. To accept that I acted out of principle, and not because it was expedient, would terrify her: would open up questions and considerations she is frankly too busy doing good to