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‘Should there be censorship?’ to girls whose parents read detective stories and best-selling sex novels while in her home banned books about South African life and laws were passed around and discussed. She even managed to have approved for debate ‘Should there be different standards of education for black and white children?’ though most of the girls had not heard that ‘Bantu Education’ had been introduced in the country, and there was a better attendance for ‘Should we have sex education at school?’ A self-service canteen had replaced the black waiters, for reasons of economy. Carole and Hillela, at Pauline’s suggestion, arranged to have black children invited to a special performance of the school’s production of
Peter Pan
; still schoolgirls themselves, Carole and Hillela were so advantaged (as Pauline reminded them) by their educational opportunities at school and by home background that they were able to help coach black students who came in from the townships to the centre run by Pauline’s supplementary education committee, KNOW. The two girls were kept occupied on Saturday mornings in a red-brick church that once must have been in the veld outside the black miners’ compounds but was by then hemmed in by workshops and industrial yards. Its ivy hung ragged from its porch and in the bushes that had been a garden were trampled places where, Pauline told, homeless black people slept. Their rags and their excreta made it necessary to watch where you set your feet; but the black boys and girls who came up singing in harmony—now mellow, now cricket-shrill—between the broken ornamental bricks of the path gave off the hopefulness of sweet soap and freshly-ironed clothes. It was in return for their lessons that they sang, and whenever they sang those whose enviable knowledge subdued the children into shy incomprehension in class became the uncomprehending ones: Mrs Pauline andher colleagues, and the two white schoolgirls, smiling, appreciative. Pauline asked what the songs meant and wrote it down for quotation in the committee’s letter of appeal for funds. (—Look at this tip left under the plate.— She waved before her family Olga’s response: a cheque for ten pounds.) Hillela was heard singing the songs in the shower. Recalled—by this sign of musicality he had not had the chance to develop in himself—from absorption in documents of the treason trial whose level of reality made all other aspects of the present become like a past for him, Joe bought her a guitar.
    â€”Where on earth’d you find time to look for that?—
    He answered Pauline gravely as if under oath. —In Pretoria. During the lunch adjournment. In a music shop.—
    â€”And now?— Pauline’s smile quizzed gestural asides; she was the one who had to complete these for their initiators. Hillela and her uncle came together and hugged—people who have fallen in love for a moment; but it was Pauline who arranged for Hillela to have lessons with the folk-guitarist son of one of Pauline’s friends. Hillela was soon accomplished enough to play and sing in a language she understood, performing Joan Baez songs at protest meetings to which Joe and Pauline gave their support: against the pass laws, apartheid in the universities, removals of black populations under the Group Areas Act. Carole, like her cousin, was under age to be a signatory to petitions but could take a turn at manning tables where they were set out. The two adolescents were absorbed into activities in which a social conscience had the chance to develop naturally as would a dress-sense under Olga’s care.
    Family likeness was to be recognized in Pauline, for one who had once been the daughter Olga never had. A girl younger than Hillela was brought to the house by Joe; but a schoolgirl with the composure of someone much older. On her the drab of school uniform was not a shared