Free Consequences by Penelope Lively Page A

don’t.”
    “Why not?”
    “It would be appalling to know the future. You couldn’t live, knowing the future.”
    “I don’t want the entire narrative. Just a few interesting snapshots. Molly in some other incarnation. What will she be? What will she do?”
    “We’ll find out, won’t we? We’ll be watching.”
    “Middle-aged fogies,” said Matt. “Making noises of disapproval, just like our own parents.”
    “Only if she wants to live in Kensington, and play bridge. Which she won’t.”
    “Perhaps that will be her form of rebellion. Each generation kicks out at the one before. Artists always do that. It’s obligatory.”
    “Do you?”
    “Engravers are a law unto themselves. We all think we’re innovators. Doing it differently.”
    The tide was out. The sea seemed to be retreating to the distant coast of Wales, leaving a great expanse of glittering Bristol Channel muddy sand, fingered by long slicks of water. Behind them, the cliffs were veined with pink and gray; rock falls had brought down chunks of the alabaster. Matt picked up a large pink piece. “This is going to be a Henry Moore maquette—one of those earth mother figures.”
    Lorna had brought a cake, and three candles. They found a flat rock at the foot of the cliff, and she set out the birthday tea. The candles guttered in the breeze, and had to be relit before at last Molly blew them out. Then she became intent once more upon beachcombing, while Matt and Lorna sat looking out at the far-off sea, at the white glimmer of the Welsh coast, at a skittering dog, at a row of gulls lining the rock pools. There were scarves of cirrus cloud against a clear blue sky; the late afternoon sun was warm on their faces.
    “Actually,” said Lorna, “I am not remotely interested in the future at this moment. I want to stay here, like this, as we are, forever. I want it to be now, always.”
    Molly comes staggering over the pebbles toward them, holding a shell. “More cake?” she inquires. “Blow the candles again?”
     
    Marjorie Sanders, from Roadwater, leaned her bike against the wall of the cottage, and stepped inside. “Thank you, Lorna—cup of tea would be nice, after the hill. In fact, I’m not me today, I’m the billeting officer. Ever so important, I am. Power of life and death. If I say so, you get an East End mother and four children. In your case, I doubt it. Now, you’ve got just the two rooms up and this—is that right? And you’ve not got running water or electric? I’m going to be putting you on the reserve list. We know how many billets we’ve got to find, for Williton rural district, and we won’t need to scrape the barrel, far as I can see. I’m not being rude, you’ve made this place a nice home, but you’d be hard put to it to squeeze any extra in. So I’ll just tick you off, and be on my way, when that kettle’s boiled. Heaven knows how they’re going to settle in, when they come. If they come. I mean, town people are different, aren’t they?”
     
    “It’s going to happen, isn’t it?” said Lorna. “The war.”
    “I suppose so.”
    They were in the shed. Matt was taking the first print from a newly engraved block. He eased the back of a spoon to and fro over the paper, back and forth, across and across, picked the paper off and there was the proof print: an intimate scrutiny of dandelion clocks, which made them into something startling, unique.
    He stared at the print: “It makes me wonder what the hell I’m doing, fossicking away.”
    “Don’t,” she said. “Don’t wonder. You wouldn’t have, before. It’s just that everything’s gone wrong. Look—I found the first ripe blackberries.”
     
    When it came, it came in the form of tea urns, the train, and crying children. They cycled down to Roadwater, alerted to the need for helpers at the village hall, leaving Molly with the farmer’s wife. Eight hundred women and children from London were anticipated at Washford, who would have been waiting, and