Consequences by Penelope Lively

those looks. Not quite the same as a white feather, but not far off.”
    “You can’t help it,” she said.
    “No, but try telling that to gimlet-eyed matrons from the home counties.”
    There was an awkwardness; Matt’s absence hung over them as though they both kept looking for the third person who should be there.
    “When Himself comes back,” said Lucas, “will you go on living here, do you imagine?”
    She shrugged. “Maybe. I can’t…look ahead.”
    “He’s getting quite a name as an engraver, you know. He’s in the top flight now.”
    She smiled, delighted.
    “I hope he won’t get too grand for the Heron Press.”
    “Don’t be an idiot, Lucas.”
    Suddenly, they were at ease. Lucas told stories of his blitz experiences; he played snap with Molly, read her a story. When she had been put to bed, Lorna turned the wireless on. The news was all about Crete; German parachute landings. She looked up at the map, and then flushed.
    “I didn’t know where any of these places are. I felt a fool.”
    “A crash course in geography,” said Lucas. “Good idea. Do you know where he is?”
    “Egypt—the last letter. He could say as much as that, apparently. Not where, exactly.”
    “Well, it’s one way to see the world. Very inspirational—no doubt he’ll make good use of it.”
    “Yes,” she said. “Yes, of course he will.”
     
    In June, the start of June, she is outside the door, filling the bucket from the tap, when she hears the gate whine on its hinges. She turns, and there is the postman, so she smiles, and waves. But the postman is neither smiling nor waving. He has a new look on his face, a look she does not recognize.
    The man is beyond apology; he is felled by what he has to do, made speechless. He simply holds out the telegram, avoiding Lorna’s eye. He has seen these before. He knows. And his knowledge leaps to Lorna. She knows, too, at once. She stands there in the sunshine, knowing, and takes the envelope, and the postman gives a sort of shake of the head, and turns away, and goes. A thrush sings piercingly, nearby.
     
    The farmer’s wife came, alerted by the postman. She put her arms around Lorna, a thing unheard of, and her eyes were red. “My dear,” she kept saying. “My dear.” She was there, and then others were there, stepping diffidently into the cottage, and Molly stood wide eyed, and Lorna sat at the kitchen table, a cup of tea in front of her that someone filled and refilled, and the day seemed to go on forever, the hours stalking by, while she waited for this to have been a mistake, some monstrous error, a dream.
    And then night came, and the people went, and everything was still the same. She gave Molly her supper, and put her to bed, and read her a story, and then she came down and sat in the armchair, and she began to cry. She cried in a way that she had never known, would not have thought possible, so that she was gasping; she shook; her tears were relentless; she felt that grief was scouring her, draining her empty. She sat there hour by hour, sometimes rigid, staring at the walls, at the ducks and the willows, sometimes crying, unstoppably crying. And then at last she crept up the stairs and into bed, and lay there, wide eyed, as dawn came into the room.
     
    After a few days, a week, she did not know how long, she went to the farm, and told them she had to go. She asked to use the telephone. Then she returned to the cottage and began to dismantle it. She packed away Matt’s tools, and his blocks, and any prints and sketches that were left. She took his clothes to the village hall, and asked them to give them to the Red Cross. She packed up the china from the dresser, the teapot, the Victorian jug and basin, the patchwork bedcover, the books, Matt’s portrait of her, and her own clothes and Molly’s. Everything else she left, including an old box under some sacking in the shed, which she had not noticed, and a chunk of pink alabaster from the beach, carved into a