The lanky sixth-former put a book on the desk. 'I brought back The Sea Priestess – I didn't quite get all of it but it was terrific. Have we got the other one, Moon Magic?… Claire say it's not quite as good but I'd like to read it anyway.'

Felicity answered before thinking: 'By all means – I agree with Claire, actually, but if you liked The Sea Priestess it's still…' She broke off, suddenly realizing.

'Miss – you all right?'

The irrelevant thought came to her, unreasonably inflaming her anger: He couldn't even take the trouble to put them in alphabetical order… She picked up the list, so fiercely that she almost tore it. 'I'm sorry, Don. You can't have Moon Magic. Or anything else by Dion Fortune.'

'But, miss-why?'

Claire Evans joined Don, drawn away from her shelf-browsing by the unwonted sharpness in the teacher's tone. Felicity looked up at them. Don, Claire, the inseparables – two of her favourites; she had been midwife to their blossoming minds, their probing intelligence; even indirectly to their love.

'Are you two busy for an hour?'

Surprised by the question, they glanced at each other and said, 'No, miss,' together.

Felicity knew she was breaking the rules by involving them in her own anger against the headmaster but she could not help herself. 'You see this list? It contains all the authors the headmaster considers to be dangerously pagan-oriented. I've go to remove them all from the school library shelves and lock them in a cupboard. I suppose I'm lucky I haven't got to make a bonfire of them in the playground…Will you give me a hand?'

They stared at her and then they stared at the list.

'Miss Holroyd – you can't do it!'

'Are you asking me to disobey the head, Claire?'

'I…' The girl changed her tack, asking suddenly: 'Miss, are you a pagan?'

'I'm a Quaker.'

'I don't know much about Quakers, but I know you, miss. And I know what you've always told us. People got a right to say what they believe and write about it – and we ought to look at 'em all, an' then decide what we believe. Not have anyone tell us what to believe or think. Right?'

Felicity sighed. 'Right.'

Don held out the list to her and asked almost shyly: 'Well?'

Claire followed up immediately with: 'You want us to help you with that thing?'

There was a long moment while anger, love, and professional habit struggled within Felicity Holroyd. Then something broke. She took the list calmly from the boy's fingers and tore it in two. 'Will you please take a note to the head for me? It won't take me a minute to write it.'

'You're not resigning, are you?'

The alarm in Claire's eyes strengthened her, overcoming the instant of panic her decision had sparked in her. 'No, Claire. I'm going to lock myself in this library and refuse to budge. And I'm not removing a single book. You can tell the others – Miss Holroyd's staging a protest sit-in.'

'We'll stay here with you!'

'You will not. Thanks for offering but no. A sit-in's one thing – inciting pupils to join it's another. Put me in the wrong straight away. Just take the note for me – and remember you don't know what's in it if he asks you.'

Claire hesitated, then nodded. 'All right. But while you're writing it, I'm going to get you some sandwiches and a bottle of coke. Two or three bottles. No point in making it a hunger-strike.'

'And a sleeping bag,' Don said. 'Don't lock up till we're back, will you?'

'I don't like it, Mr Barker,' the police sergeant said. 'There must be about a hundred and fifty kids out there picketing and another hundred blocking the corridor to the library. We've tried reasoning with them but they just start chanting and drown us. The library door's very solid and she's got heavy steel filing cabinets jammed against it – we can see that through the window. The windows are all steel-barred, too. What is this place, Fort Knox?'

'My predecessor put them in, during the vandalism wave in the eighties,' the headmaster told him. 'Look, Sergeant, I want that woman out. She's been there all last night and this morning. I gave her an ultimatum for eight o'clock this morning to come out or be dismissed. She said she would stay there till my instructions about the books were withdrawn. There was no question of that, of course, so at eight-fifteen I told tier she was dismissed and pushed her formal letter of dismissal under the door. That was while I could still reach the door. A few minutes later the pupils started arriving – with banners, Sergeant! The whole thing's a conspiracy. She must have told them what she was going to do and they got ready for this – this outrage, overnight.'

'You're their headmaster, sir. Surely they'd listen to you before they'd listen to the police?'

'Do you think I haven't tried, damn it? And my staff? – or most of them, anyway. I strongly suspect that one or two of the other teachers are in sympathy with her though none of them have said so to my face… First I reasoned with the pickets, and all they said was, "Sorry, sir, but we think Miss Holroyd's right." They simply refused to move. So then I threatened them. I had no alternative.'

'Threatened them with what exactly, sir?'

With you, Sergeant. I told them they had one hour to clear the corridor and the playground and assemble in their classrooms. After that I would call in the police to clear them.'

'Did any obey you?'

The headmaster snorted. 'About a dozen. Out of two or three hundred. So, you see, my threat has to be made good. Otherwise we face total breakdown of discipline – how permanent, God alone knows.'

'Have you called on parents for help?'

'Sergeant, this is a working weekday and our pupils come from an area of about forty square kilometres… I've managed to contact a few and get them here. One father persuaded his son to go home and that's all.' The headmaster frowned nervously. 'Another unfortunate factor -Miss Holroyd is popular with parents… One husband and wife arrived together and told me flatly that if Miss Holroyd had felt driven to this extraordinary action there must be something wrong with my attitude. They refused to help. In fact, they smiled and waved at the children in the playground on the way out – and the children cheered them. It was intolerable.'

The sergeant seemed to be about to ask something, and then to think better of it. After a moment or two he said, 'Look, Mr Barker, you're asking me to take my men and clear a way through those kids – boys and girls – by force, and then to smash down the door, or do the same thing from outside and cut through the window-bars. And then to bring their heroine out under arrest, right through the middle of them. The mood they're in, we'd have little chance of doing all that without kids getting hurt. If you ask me, no chance… Why don't we just play it cool? Keep my lads in sight and let the kids wonder what we mean to do. By this evening, they'll start being hungry and bored…'

'Sergeant, there are reporters outside. They've been pestering me all morning. Television news have been on the phone – BBC and ITN – and if this thing isn't cleared up pretty dam' quick there'll be cameras in the street. And you think those youngsters will drift away through boredom?'

The sergeant said, cxpressionlessly: 'I think I'd better call in my superiors, sir.'

'Yes,' the headmaster told him. 'I think you'd better.'

Few newly elected Members of Parliament can have had such heaven-sent material for a maiden speech as Quentin White. House of Commons etiquette decrees that maiden speeches be received with special sympathy and tolerance whether one agrees with them or not, but in the present climate of the House White commanded even closer attention than that laid down by parliamentary good manners.

Virtually every member, of course, had read the Evening News edition which White brandished in his hand as he spoke, and those who had not were hurriedly scanning copies borrowed from their neighbours.