Free Consequences by Penelope Lively

by farm laborers, by boys out rabbiting, by landowners, by postmen, by the driver of the milk lorry.
    “I am the local oddity,” he said to Lorna. “Fiddling away while others work. Grasshopper and the ants. Sitting around drawing things is pure self-indulgence—that’s the view, though people are too polite to say so.”
    “How do they think you earn a living?”
    “I’m a man of substance, presumably.”
    “But living here, like this?” She laughed.
    Time was, she had not thought much about how people earn a living. At Brunswick Gardens, you did not talk about money—that was vulgar. Patently, money underpinned the life that was lived in that house; her father’s departure every morning to the place known vaguely as The Office had some eerie connection with money, but that was not a matter for discussion. Occasionally, others were referred to as “not well off,” in lowered tones, as though perhaps they suffered from some chronic ailment.
    Nowadays, she knew all about money. She knew the price of everything in the village shop, she knew how to budget, calculate, scrimp, save. She was a connoisseur of jumble sales and thrift stalls. She enjoyed the triumphant discovery of a pair of old curtains that could be cut up and made into a skirt for herself, a dress for Molly. Money had become interesting: a challenge. In these parts, people talked much about money; vulgarity was not an issue. They talked about the price of hay, of rents and rates, of wages and leaseholds. The local paper was full of fatstock prices over which Lorna pored in fascination, and could then see the populated fields as money on the hoof. This fractured vision became intriguing—a flock of sheep as part and parcel of the landscape, its living expression, white shapes against the green slope of a hillside, but also a sober statement of rural economy—someone’s income, someone else’s meal.
    The farmer’s wife had given her an old chicken coop and some pullets which, in the fullness of time, began to lay. Now, they had a few eggs. There was a daily hunt in the hedge, which the hens preferred as a nest site. They had their own vegetables, too, in season. Lorna found all of this intensely satisfying.
    “Before, I had never in my life done anything useful,” she told Matt. “Now there is a point to everything.”
     
    “Spring at last,” wrote Lucas. “I suppose you have primroses and lambs and all that. Here, we have our urban version, but it’s hard to feel uplifted, isn’t it, with all the papers all gloom and doom. I heard Herr Hitler on the wireless, last September, ranting. A beastly sound—it keeps coming back to me now. And we thought we were spared. Oh, well—one feels oddly resigned, this time around. On a happier note, sales of Lamb’s Tales continue on their steady way. And I hear the gallery is just about sold out of engravings now. I saw the Curwen Press book, and I have to admit—through gritted teeth—that it is pretty nice. I was much taken with the new Spiderweb print, Matt. Marvellous. One of a series, you say—nature studies. Basis of a new exhibition, maybe, in a year or two? If the world holds still.”
     
    “If there’s a war,” Matt said. “I shall have to go.”
    “I know.”
    “You couldn’t stay here alone.”
    “I could,” she said. “If I have to. And I’m not alone. There’s Molly.”
    “Your parents…or mine.”
    “ No. Don’t talk about it. Not till we have to. If we have to.”
     
    On Molly’s third birthday, they cycled down to the coast, the little girl in the pillion seat that Matt had made. On the beach, she pottered among the rock pools while they sat and watched. She came to them with small trophies—a ribbon of seaweed, a brightly banded pebble. She was intent, serious, busy—bustling to and fro, wearing cotton knickers and a sunbonnet.
    “I want to know what she will be like when she’s twenty,” said Matt. “I want a sudden quick glimpse into the future.”
    “I