Consequences by Penelope Lively Read Free Book Online Page B

have a place at the edges of this charmed alliance. He was a diffident man rather than a humble one, conscious that a gawky body, extreme myopia, and a stammer could make him off-putting. Resigned to a degree of social isolation, he compensated for this with tenacious fostering of the Heron Press—his concept, his creation. All he wanted in life was to design and produce superlative examples of the bookmaker’s craft. In the basement of the ramshackle house in Fulham he labored at the press, setting type, printing, packaging, while in the office upstairs Miss Kelly, a middle-aged lady of stern demeanor but the requisite energy and efficiency, dealt with most of the paperwork and helped out generally when the pressure was on.
    Today, on the Somerset hillside, Miss Kelly and the Heron Press were relegated. He felt marvelously conscious of the moment, of here and now, of this day. Of his companions. One will always remember this, he thought: probably when I’m a hoary old chap in…Christ, in nineteen-eighty-something…I’ll still see today. The valley, and Matt’s blue checked shirt, and her in that pink frock. And I’ll hear their voices.
    But all he said was, “Q-quite a place, this. I’m game for another mousetrap sandwich, if that’s in order.”
     
    After Molly’s birth, Lorna lay on her side and gazed at the baby, and Molly stared back with wide-open eyes and the strange unearthly look of the newborn, as though, Lorna thought, she had arrived from some mysterious place. But when Lorna got out of bed and crept over to the chest to get a glass of water, she glanced at herself in the mirror and saw that she too had that look, she was not the person that she had been yesterday, she had changed her skin. The district nurse clattered up the stairs and scolded her for moving about. Lorna got back into bed and resumed her silent communion with this small being who was no longer a part of her but a wonderful extension. The preceding hours fell away, that timeless tunnel of pain, and she simply lay there, sore, exhausted, and heard the cadenced exchanges of wood pigeons outside and the voice of the district nurse downstairs talking to Matt. She lay still, and around her on the walls the figures of Matt’s fresco danced—in celebration, it seemed. Presently Matt came up with a cup of tea and said, “I have this feeling that she is called Molly.” He put his finger on the baby’s cheek: “Molly?” Then he went over to the window, opened it, and more bird sounds floated in, with the smell of grass after a shower, and the faraway whistle of the train. Lorna said, “Molly will do nicely.” And then she went to sleep, plunging at once into blissful unconsciousness, while Matt sat on the bed holding her hand.
     
    By that second winter at the cottage, they were hardened, braced for the tussles with the oil stove, the icy trips to the privy, Matt’s labor of log splitting, Lorna’s daily servitude at the washing copper. In wet weather, Molly’s nappies fumed alongside the kitchen range. On one dark January day, she developed croup; this awful harsh barking noise came from her crib, and Matt in a panic cycled down to the farm to ask them to telephone for help. The district nurse came, brisk and reassuring, summing up the situation at once; she was used to very young mothers, and croupy babies were two-a-penny. She sat on the couch in the snug, Molly propped over one shoulder, and gave instructions. “You’re learning all the time, with your first,” she said kindly to Lorna. “Most girls have their mum breathing down their neck, telling them what to do.”
    Lorna doubted that her mother had ever confronted a nappy, let alone croup. She said, “My mother’s rather a long way away,” and the nurse nodded tactfully, scenting some dark disorder, some unspoken drama. They were not your run-of-the-mill young couple, this pair.
    She said, “I used to come here to the Turners. Four children—bit of a madhouse, it