Free Consequences by Penelope Lively Page B

traveling, for many hours, all of whom must be allocated billets before nightfall. Matt joined those helping to escort and identify the evacuees; Lorna was put onto the distribution of tea and sandwiches. First, there was the bustle of expectation, instructions, queries, the assembling of trestle tables, chairs—an almost festive atmosphere. Then suddenly they were here, and the place was full, lines of people spilling out into the road, ranks of drab, tired women clutching babies, toddlers. The hall became hot, smoky, ripe with the smell of sweat, and children. Lorna gave tea to a richly pregnant girl, and found her a chair. The voices all around were those of strangers, alien, not the soft Somerset voices to which she had grown accustomed; these people came from a London that she never knew existed. “I’m a Londoner too,” she said, trying to make contact, and the women stared at her with skepticism. There were so many of them, and the rumor was that there would be more trainloads tomorrow and Monday. Suddenly, the cruel black print of newspapers, from which you shied away, was turned into an awful reality, in which the certainties of the world that you knew were swept aside; it was like being plunged into the irrationalities of dream, of nightmare. This bemused mass of women and children, who should not be here, who did not want to be here. What was it that was expected? What annihilation? What Armageddon?
     
    There were many blackberries that year, wortleberries up on the hill, mushrooms, hazelnuts. The hedges glowed with hips and haws. The sunshine reached far into October, the leaves turned, the first frosts came, and an autumn gale or two. The oak tree beside the cottage rattled acorns onto the roof and shed a small branch.
    Everything had happened, but also nothing. London was not burning; nor Liverpool, nor Birmingham, nor Manchester. Things went on as they had before, except that they were different. You must obey remote, draconian regulations: comply with the blackout requirements, stick sheets of cardboard over the cottage windows, eat what you were told to eat, go to Williton to register for a ration book. People grumbled and complied, laughed and negotiated. In a trickle, then a stream, the London women got on the trains and went back; they were homesick, they couldn’t be doing with the food, the quiet, this foreign land.
    You stood at the gate and watched for the postman, holding Molly’s hand. What did he have in his bag today? He had taken on a new significance, and he knew it—now he was half apologetic, half portentous. “Just a letter for you—nothing for him. Young Ted Moult had his papers, though. They’re taking the boys first. They always do that, don’t they? Your husband’ll be in the clear for a while. Maybe they won’t want him at all, the way things are going.”
    When the winter arrived, it bit sharp. On New Year’s day the frost was deep into the ground, the ploughlands ice hard, the trees stiffly white. The tap had to be unwrapped from a cocoon of sacking each morning before they could get water. The privy was a test of endurance. It was February when at last the thaw came, and then the spring was one of tranquil beauty; days as warm as summer, everything rushing into growth, birds nesting in March.
    At first, this time seemed simply like an extension of life before, though infected by all the dictates of the day—the restrictions, the regulations. Matt bought a wireless; it crouched on the kitchen dresser, an alien presence that became insistent each night, as they turned on the nine o’clock news and that clipped voice filled the room. And Matt himself began to change; he was often silent, he found it hard to work, his state of unrest was grimly apparent. When March came, he offered himself to the farmer, and helped out with lambing and other jobs. “I have to be up and about,” he told Lorna. “If I sit here, working, I feel…pent up.” Many of the local young men were