Free Westwood by Stella Gibbons

and their population almost doubled. But there was a heartening note among all the sad sallow faces and unfamiliar accents; there were many young mothers with ringing voices, each pushing a pram with one fat baby in it like an acorn in its cup; hailing each other cheerfully across the turbaned heads of the aliens and asking each other what luck they had had with the biscuits or the fish.
    Margaret asked several people where Lamb Cottage in Romney Square was, and at last an old gentlewoman with a stick, who was wading through the refugees with the air of one traversing a malarial marsh, crisply informed her that it was the first turning on the left, up – and she pointed with the stick. Margaret thanked her carefully, and turned up the hill on the left. The clock on the tower opposite the tube station said three o’clock.
    Romney Square was not a square; it was a number of old houses and their gardens, grouped irregularly about a triangle of grass, and standing of course on the slope of a hill. Beyond one of the houses, a charming one made of white weatherboarding which prolonged itself into long galleries and little towers, Margaret saw an avenue of ancient lime trees leading on into the blue distance. She looked about her, and at once saw Lamb Cottage: it was directly opposite to where she stood. It was a cottage; it was unimposing, and built of small bricks that were darkened by age, but it had a wonderful scarlet front door, and behind it, rising to three times its height, was a lofty building with three long uncurtained windows which admitted the full light of the autumn day. Margaret’s heart beat faster. It was a studio.
    She decided to knock at once, because it would look odd if anyone shold see her loitering and staring at the house; so, clasping the ration book firmly in one hand, she crossed the road and approached the brilliant door (it had surely been freshly painted) and rang the bell.
    Her sensations as she stood waiting there were as confused as they were strong; she was nervous, hopeful, defiant, and expecting wonders to befall even while assuring herself that in another moment she would see the door opened by a maid, make her explanation, hand in the ration book, be thanked and told that Mrs Niland should be given the message, and then turn away, and the whole incident would be over.
    But even as she waited a child began to cry loudly in the house, and then she heard footsteps hurrying down a passage, and the next instant the door was opened violently and a voice exclaimed ‘Grantey! Thank goodness you’ve come! Wherever –’ and a young woman stood there, staring at her, with a child in her arms and another standing crying at her feet.
    ‘Oh –’ she said blankly, looking very cross. ‘I thought you were someone else. What is it, please? (Barnabas, darling ,’ to the crying child, touching him sharply with her knee, ‘do you think you could stop making that ghastly and hideous noise for just one instant, please? )’
    ‘I’m sorry,’ stammered Margaret, holding out the ration book and bewildered by the suddenness of the young woman’s appearance, and the noisy crying of the little boy, ‘I think this must be yours. I found it nearly a month ago on the Heath and I’m so sorry, I forgot to send it back to you. I’m very sorry. I –’
    ‘Oh, my ration book,’ and suddenly she smiled and the cross expression vanished as she gave Margaret a full look from her beautifully shaped light-grey eyes. ‘I’m always losing it – though actually this time it was my husband. Where did you find it?’
    Margaret explained, and the girl listened, moving the child in her arms on to her hip as she did so, and still keeping Margaret fixed with that soft, amused, attentive stare. What with that, and a similar stare from the eyes of the baby which were identical in shape and colour with those of its mother, Margaret felt her cheeks slowly growing hot, and hastened to end her story. The little boy had