Life After Life

Another raid is going on, and there are more fires. Ursula’s team watches from the roof of a building as the bombs fall outside their sector, and the scene is nearly theatrical; Ursula thinks, “It seem[s] both grand and terrible compared to their own grubby little labors” (410). Ursula finds it odd to think the men flying the German planes are just like Teddy, doing what their country has asked them to do.

Ursula and Millie go out with Jimmy one night, and Ursula finds a girl crying in the bathroom. The girl identifies herself as Renee and offers Ursula a cigarette out of a gold case initialed with A and C.

Ursula attends her father’s funeral. Izzy has returned from California, reporting that she is bored with her marriage. Teddy is back from Canada with his pilot’s wings, but Jimmy has been shipped off. Ursula finds it hard to feel sympathy for her mother’s shock and grief; she thinks, “There [is] a great deal to be said for fortitude in the face of tragedy” (420). Izzy reveals to Ursula that she had a baby when she was 16, and only Hugh knew where to find him. Izzy asks if Ursula knows what is happening to the Jews in Germany.

Their team has two new wardens. Miss Woolf plays the piano, and the violinist performs, proving that great music transcends all. The noise of bombing and guns begins, a destructive chaos that contrasts with the beauty of the music. The team attends an incident, where Ursula sees a dress hanging from a rail and realizes part of a woman is still inside it. On the dress is a brooch in the shape of a cat, with a rhinestone eye. One woman, covered in dust, asks about her baby.

Mr. Emslie, who calls all the women Susie after a daughter of his who died. soothes a young woman by promising to get her out and get her a cup of tea. Ursula recognizes Renee, who dies of internal injuries. Ursula takes the gold cigarette case. She enters the collapsed cellar, thinking of the ruins she saw on her trip to Europe with her friend Kathy, and crawls over the body of a baby. Back on the street, Ursula sees a dog and walks away to rescue it. A wall falls and crushes several people. Miss Woolf holds the hand of their messenger boy, Tony, as he dies. Normally stoic, she cries for the first time, saying that she can’t bear this.

Fred Smith, now a fireman, reports to the scene, and Ursula takes him to Izzy’s house. Ursula reports later to Millie that having sex with Fred Smith was more disappointing than she had imagined; she was hoping for transcendence.

Ursula continues to see Ralph. She returns his cigarette case to Crighton and they resume their affair. Teddy visits and she can talk with him about what she sees. Ursula is worried about the high casualty rate for pilots but says briskly, “you just have to get on with life […] We only have one after all, we should try and do our best” (446). Teddy responds, “What if we had a chance to do it again and again […] until we finally did get it right? Wouldn’t that be wonderful?” (446). When Teddy returns to Fox Corner, Ursula sends with him Lucky, the dog she rescued. She sleeps with Fred Smith again, then later learns of his death on a fire call.

Maurice, who has an important position in the Home Office, finds Ursula to report that Teddy’s plane was shot down. Ursula is distraught and nearly faints at the news. Teddy is presumed dead, and they have a gathering at Fox Corner. Nancy grieves that Teddy will never marry or have children, that he will never have a middle-class English life like her own Ursula fears that she has lost her hope and her capacity for happiness. She visits a fellow pilot of Teddy’s and he returns Lucky to her.

On VE day, Sylvie dies by suicide, swallowing sleeping pills and lying down on Teddy’s bed. In her will, she leaves Fox Corner to Pamela. Maurice takes what he wants from the house. Ursula takes Sylvie’s carriage clock.

Ursula receives a package of produce from Pamela and writes her a postcard in response. The electricity goes out, as well as the pilot light on the stove. Darkness begins to fall as she is sleeping, but then Ursula wakes and realizes the power has come back on.

Ursula hears on the news that the Jordanians are bombing Jerusalem. Benjamin Cole, her old neighbor, is now a member of the Israeli parliament. She’d had a drink with him during the war, and he had suggested they go someplace, but Ursula demurred, saying, “Catch me next time round” (464). She thinks of Dr. Kellet’s theory of reincarnation and imagines she’d like to come back as a fine, big tree.

Ursula eats her supper off a tray while she watches TV. She had her retirement celebration that day and received tickets to a chorale as a gift. She would have liked to take Miss Woolf, but Miss Woolf was killed in an air raid in ’44. Ursula was supposed to have been with her but was called away at the last moment. Pamela has become a woman who does good works, and Ursula is fond of her niece, Sarah. Jimmy survived the war and is living in California. Young people these days, Ursula thinks, are more confident, but they don’t understand what peace means. When she rises to put her dishes away, Ursula feels a sharp pain in her head.

When she sees Crighton’s obituary, Ursula tells Pamela of Nietzsche’s philosophy of amor fati, simple acceptance of whatever happens. She suggests to her nephew Nigel, a history professor, that Israel and the wars around it would not exist if Hitler had been stopped before he became chancellor. The whole face of Europe would be different. Ursula goes on about Hitler’s charisma, and Nigel asks if she met him.

Ursula walks through the park and stops to doze in the sun. She dreams she is in a meadow, then a garden. She dreams of snow and Hugh saying, “Welcome, little bear” (477).

Hugh paces while the baby is born. He has dragged Isobel back from Europe, wresting her out of her lover’s arms. She is already advanced in pregnancy, and their mother refuses to take her in. Hugh takes Izzy to Fox Corner. She gives birth to a boy, and Sylvie adopts him. The boy, Roland, is sweet-natured but doesn’t develop intellectually as the other children do. When they are at the seaside in Cornwall, Ursula and Pamela build a sandcastle while Roland disappears. Mr. Winton does not rescue him in time. Izzy comes for his funeral and admires George Glover. Ursula lies to Bridget that Clarence Dodd is seeing the girl from the sweet shop. She thinks of these feelings she gets as something tugging at her memory, and she has disturbing dreams. She reflects, “Sometimes it [is] harder to change the past than it [is] the future” (495).

Sylvie takes Ursula to see Dr. Kellet. She draws a snake with a tail in its mouth, what Kellet calls “a symbol representing the circularity of the universe. Time is a construct, in reality everything flows, no past or present, only the now” (496). Ursula asks where he put the photograph of Guy, but Dr. Kellet doesn’t know who Guy is. Ursula meets Benjamin Cole at the bottom of the garden, and they kiss. Ursula asks Maurice to teach her to shoot, and Maurice shoots a fox. Ursula sneaks out to meet Benjamin Cole, and on the way back, they see a suspicious-looking man running away from them toward the train station. Nancy Shawcross is found dead, and Ursula feels responsible.

At lunch with Izzy in London, Ursula has a moment of panic. Her feelings of terror are becoming more pronounced, as if she is being hunted. She falls in the street, and a man introduces himself as Derek Oliphant. She both knows and doesn’t know his voice, and she staggers away from him. Ursula is sent to a private clinic for care. She remembers a quote from Pindar: “Become such as you are, having learned what that is” (509). She decides she will go to Germany and kill Hitler. She leaps out of the window, and she and the dark embrace.

Ursula becomes close with Eva. She meets Hitler at the Munich café and this time says, “It’s snowing.” She takes Hugh’s gun from her handbag, pulls the trigger, and darkness falls.

Bridget is woken when Mrs. Todd raps on her door and says the baby is coming early. The cord is wrapped around the baby’s neck. Sylvie takes her sewing scissors and snips. The narrator says, “Practice makes perfect” (520).

Teddy and his friend Vic are at a pub in Piccadilly. Teddy was shot down in ’43 and expected to die with his plane on fire, but a crewmate snapped a parachute on him. He woke in a hospital, where he was arrested by the Gestapo and sent to a prisoner-of-war camp. In February of 1945, the prisoners were woken up and forced to march away from the advancing Russian army. Teddy calls Nancy. She brings Ursula to the pub, and both women are struck with joy. Teddy embraces Nancy, then mouths something at Ursula across the room. She thinks it is “thank you.”

Mrs. Haddock the midwife, stuck in Chalfont St. Peter with the snow, sips a glass of hot rum.