The new fence that Elisabeth and her mother encounter, a “mass of chainlink metal” slicing across a familiar path (56), is a physical manifestation of the novel’s central political concerns. This barrier, topped with razor wire and monitored by cameras, introduces the symbol of fences, which extends beyond the literal object to represent the broader societal fractures of the post-referendum UK. Its sudden appearance on what was once common land mirrors the abrupt imposition of new social and political boundaries described in Chapter 9, where “the country [is] split in pieces” with “a fence here, a wall there” (61). The fence embodies The Alienation Caused by Political Division, transforming an abstract national vote into a tangible obstacle that disrupts community and movement. This theme is further reinforced by the xenophobic graffiti that Elisabeth sees on a cottage, a direct reflection of the documented rise in hate crimes following the 2016 Brexit vote. Her mother’s litany of exhaustion articulates the deep emotional toll of this divisive climate, where public hostility invades private life: “I’m tired of the vitriol. I’m tired of the anger. I’m tired of the meanness” (56).

The narrative structure deliberately disrupts linear time, placing historical events and personal memories in direct conversation with the present moment. This technique highlights The Fluidity of Time and Memory, suggesting that the past is an active force within the world of the present. A minor disagreement between Elisabeth and her mother over whether Daniel is “bowed with age” or “lithe” reveals the subjective nature of personal recollection (56), while the chapter’s larger chronological leaps make a deeper argument about historical resonance. The narrative jumps from the divided village in 2016 to Hannah Gluck’s arrest in Nazi-occupied France in 1943, creating a disquieting parallel between state-sanctioned persecution and the xenophobia of the present. Hannah’s quiet act of defiance in the back of the truck, supported by the collective action of other women, offers a historical model of resistance that contrasts with the passivity and exhaustion of Wendy in 2016. By juxtaposing these timelines without transition, the novel collapses the distance between them, implying that historical patterns of division, othering, and resistance are continually re-enacted.

Through the flashbacks to Elisabeth’s childhood, Daniel emerges as a figure who teaches her to interpret the world through an unconventional lens, driving the theme of Art as a Subversive Record. When young Elisabeth asks a pointed question about adult deception, Daniel sidesteps it by playfully redefining formal education, suggesting that “collage is an institute of education where all the rules can be thrown into the air” (71). This redefinition transcends the status of pun into being a pedagogical statement. He teaches Elisabeth to see the world as a collage, a collection of disparate elements that can be reassembled to create new and strange meanings. This leads directly into the introduction of Pauline Boty into the narrative, as Daniel recalls her artworks from memory, foreshadowing the influence that her artistic vision has on his worldview even though her work has, for the time being, sunk into obscurity. By recounting Boty’s forgotten art, Daniel preserves a subversive history that challenges official narratives, a skill he passes on to his young pupil.

The conflict between Elisabeth and her mother over Daniel reveals a deep generational and ideological divide concerning art, friendship, and interpretation. When Elisabeth enthusiastically shares the worldview that Daniel has imparted on her, Wendy can only process them through a lens of fear and suspicion. She interprets the description of a woman whose body is “made up of pictures” as a sign of Daniel’s unhealthy influence (82), unable to grasp the metaphor that the artwork embodies. Her reaction, culminating in her forbidding the friendship and labeling it “[u]nnatural” and “[u]nhealthy,” represents an attempt to impose a rigid, literalist order on Elisabeth’s imaginative world. This domestic act of censorship mirrors the larger social impulse toward division seen in the present-day narrative. Wendy’s fear of what she can’t understand leads her to build a wall between her daughter and Daniel, ironically echoing the public impulse to erect fences against perceived threats. Elisabeth’s defense of the friendship and her sophisticated understanding of the art demonstrate that Daniel’s tutelage has already equipped her with a different way of seeing, one that values complexity, metaphor, and the unconventional connections that her mother fears.

The brief, lyrical Chapter 13 is a coda to this section, using the seasonal transition into autumn to crystallize the novel’s atmosphere of change and melancholy. The description of a world where “the days are still warm” but “the nights are sooner, chillier” captures a sense of a pleasant era ending and a harsher one beginning (85). This seasonal shift provides a natural-world metaphor for the political and social changes detailed in the preceding chapters. The migration of the swifts, birds that are now “hundreds of miles from here” (85), evokes a sense of departure and irreversible loss, echoing the national mood of bereavement and fracture. The golden crops, poised to be cut, symbolize a moment of ripeness just before decline. This imagery grounds the human drama of political division and personal memory in the larger, inexorable cycles of nature, suggesting that the “autumnal” mood of the nation is both a specific political moment and part of a timeless pattern of change and decay.