Consequences by Penelope Lively Page B

hear his voice: “ I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your house down…’” She did not like that story, tried to steer Molly away from it, which was perhaps why it had been chosen.
    The nights were an ecstasy, as though they were the first, as though they had never made love before. They did not want to sleep, to lose a moment of this rationed time.
    Lorna said, “After the war, shall we have another baby?”
    “Half a dozen, if you like.”
    “We’ll have to find a bigger place.”
    “That could be done. I’ll have plenty of work. People will be crying out for art, and the good things of life. Wait and see.”
    “Do you miss it—work?”
    “Don’t have time to, on the whole. I do some sketching, when I get a chance. Try to bank a few images. You’d be surprised what you can do to a machine gun. Let alone tanks on Salisbury Plain. A far cry from spiderwebs and chestnut leaves. My postwar exhibition will have a rather different flavor.”
    They walked up the hill. There was a concrete pillbox up there now, squat and stern, staring down toward the Bristol Channel. Molly was entranced: “A little house!” She went inside, and reported empty cigarette packets and a beer bottle. Matt and Lorna sat outside it; the harvested fields were bleached golden, tractors crept to and fro, unfurling the red Somerset earth.
    Matt said, “My parents want you to go to them, if it gets too difficult here.”
    “It’s kind, but I’d rather stay.”
    The Bradleys had fled Brunswick Gardens and were living in a hotel in Cheltenham. Marian had sent a card: “We are quite comfortable, but I miss my own things desperately. One can only pray the house does not get hit.” Matt had smiled: “I don’t see your parents as evacuees, but no doubt it is being done in style.”
    “Actually,” said Lorna, “I sometimes imagine staying here forever.”
    “That’s fine by me. Forever has a good sound to it, right now.”
    Time ran out. Suddenly he was putting his uniform on again. He had been offered a lift to the station in the farm truck. They waited at the gate, Molly now bewildered: “Why does he come, and then go away again. Why doesn’t he stay here?”
    And then he was gone. The truck rattled away down the lane and everything became very quiet, and still. And empty.
     
    Lucas wrote: “Well, I am in action at last, if you can call it that. The bombers turned their attention to our patch of London last week—we have had incendiaries, several direct hits, and a couple of UXBs—unexploded bomb to you. We Wardens are rushed off our feet, and I am thankful for it. I can’t exactly look the armed forces in the eye, but at least I am doing something, and thank goodness that myopia and astigmatism don’t keep you out of the ARP. Any old crock can be a Warden, and plenty are. There’s one chap at my Post who’s only got one arm; he copped it last time around, in Flanders. The Posts are a melting pot, you meet all sorts, it’s an eye-opener, frankly. Classy girls, and old lags—all in it together. If this war does nothing else, it’s given us a good shake-up. Makes you pull out all your own stops, too. As you’ll be aware, I’m not exactly a figure of authority, but there are points when you damn well have to pull rank: put out that light! Get into that shelter! You’d be surprised at me. But by and large it’s a question of running hither and thither, and taking each crisis as it comes. A girl started to have a baby in one of my shelters last week—we got an ambulance just in time, but it was a near thing. I’m a dab hand with incendiaries now, if they’re on the ground—it’s the roofs that scare me, they can be smoldering away and you can’t see. And I don’t like land mines; they float down like great black coffins, and you can’t hear them, but you’ve got to see where they fall, and dash to get people into action. I go through bike tires like nobody’s business, and spend half my time off mending