Praxis by Fay Weldon

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 re-building 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 of battle. Now the war was over the sky was boring. She said as much.
    ‘The war is never over,’ said Hilda. She had a gift for making such statements: meaningful in general, 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