Life after life

11 November 1918

EVERYTHING FAMILIAR SOMEHOW. ‘It’s called déjà vu,’ Sylvie said. ‘It’s a trick of the mind. The mind is a fathomless mystery.’ Ursula was sure that she could recall lying in the baby carriage beneath the tree. ‘No,’ Sylvie said, ‘no one can remember being so small,’ yet Ursula remembered the leaves, like great green hands, waving in the breeze and the silver hare that hung from the carriage hood, turning and twisting in front of her face. Sylvie sighed. ‘You do have a very vivid imagination, Ursula.’ Ursula didn’t know whether this was a compliment or not but it was certainly true that she often felt confused between what was real and what was not. And the terrible fear – fearful terror – that she carried around inside her. The dark landscape within. ‘Don’t dwell on such things,’ Sylvie said sharply when Ursula tried to explain. ‘Think sunny thoughts.’

And sometimes, too, she knew what someone was about to say before they said it or what mundane incident was about to occur – if a dish was about to be dropped or an apple thrown through a glasshouse, as if these things had happened many times before. Words and phrases echoed themselves, strangers seemed like old acquaintances.

‘Everyone feels peculiar from time to time,’ Sylvie said. ‘Remember, dear – sunny thoughts.’

Bridget lent a more willing ear, declaring that Ursula ‘had the second sight’. There were doorways between this world and the next, she said, but only certain people could pass through them. Ursula didn’t think that she wanted to be one of those people.

Last Christmas morning, Sylvie had handed Ursula a box, nicely wrapped and ribboned, the contents quite invisible, and said, ‘Happy Christmas, dear,’ and Ursula said, ‘Oh, good, a dining set for the dolls’ house,’ and was immediately in trouble for having sneaked a preview of the presents.

‘But I never,’ she insisted obstinately to Bridget later in the kitchen, where Bridget was trying to affix little white-paper crowns on the footless legs of the Christmas goose. (The goose made Ursula think of a man in the village, a boy really, who had had both his feet blown off at Cambrai.) ‘I didn’t look, I just knew.’

‘Ah, I know,’ Bridget said. ‘For sure, you have the sixth sense.’

Mrs Glover, wrestling with the plum pudding, snorted her disapproval. She was of the opinion that five senses were too many, let alone adding on another one.

They were shut out in the garden for the morning. ‘So much for victory celebrations,’ Pamela said as they sheltered from the drizzle beneath the beech tree. Only Trixie was having a good time. She loved the garden, mainly because of the number of rabbits which, despite the best attentions of the foxes, continued to enjoy all the benefits of the vegetable garden. George Glover had given two babies to Ursula and Pamela before the war. Ursula convinced Pamela that they had to keep them indoors and they hid them in their bedroom cupboard and fed them with an eye-dropper they found in the medicine cabinet until they hopped out one day and frightened Bridget out of her wits.

‘A fait accompli,’ Sylvie said when she was presented with the rabbits. ‘You can’t keep them in the house though. You’ll have to ask Old Tom to build a hutch for them.’

The rabbits had escaped long ago, of course, and had multiplied happily. Old Tom had laid down poison and traps to little avail. (‘Goodness,’ Sylvie said, looking out one morning at the rabbits contentedly breakfasting on the lawn. ‘It’s like Australia out there.’) Maurice, who was learning to shoot in the junior ATC at school, had spent all of last summer’s long holiday taking potshots at them from his bedroom window with Hugh’s neglected old Westley Richards wildfowler. Pamela was so furious with him that she put some of his own itching powder (he was forever in joke shops) in his bed. Ursula immediately got the blame and Pamela had to own up, even though Ursula had been quite ready to take it on the chin. That was the kind of person Pamela was – always very stuck on being fair.

They heard voices in the garden next door – they had new neighbours they were yet to meet, the Shawcrosses – and Pamela said, ‘Come on, let’s go and see if we can catch a look. I wonder what they’re called.’

Winnie, Gertie, Millie, Nancy and baby Bea, Ursula thought but said nothing. She was getting as good at keeping secrets as Sylvie.

Bridget gripped her hatpin between her teeth and lifted her arms to adjust her hat. She had sewn a new bunch of paper violets on to it, especially for the victory. She was standing at the top of the stairs, singing K-K-Katy to herself. She was thinking of Clarence. When they were married (‘in the spring,’ he said, although it had been ‘before Christmas’ not so long ago) she would be leaving Fox Corner. She would have her own little household, her own babies.

Staircases were very dangerous places, according to Sylvie. People died on them. Sylvie always told them not to play at the top of the stairs.

Ursula crept along the carpet runner. Took a quiet breath and then, both hands out in front of her, as if trying to stop a train, she threw herself at the small of Bridget’s back. Bridget whipped her head round, mouth and eyes wide in horror at the sight of Ursula. Bridget went flying, toppling down the stairs in a great flurry of arms and legs. Ursula only just managed to stop herself from following in her wake.

Practice makes perfect.

‘The arm’s broken, I’m afraid,’ Dr Fellowes said. ‘You took quite a tumble down those stairs.’

‘She’s always been a clumsy girl,’ Mrs Glover said.

‘Someone pushed me,’ Bridget said. A great bruise bloomed on her forehead, she was holding her hat, the violets crushed.

‘Someone?’ Sylvie echoed. ‘Who? Who would push you downstairs, Bridget?’ She looked around the faces in the kitchen. ‘Teddy?’ Teddy put his hand over his mouth as if he was trying to stop words escaping. Sylvie turned to Pamela. ‘Pamela?’

‘Me?’ Pamela said, piously holding both of her outraged hands over her heart like a martyr. Sylvie looked at Bridget, who made a little inclination of her head towards Ursula.

‘Ursula?’ Sylvie frowned. Ursula stared blankly ahead, a conscientious objector about to be shot. ‘Ursula,’ Sylvie said severely, ‘do you know something about this?’

Ursula had done a wicked thing, she had pushed Bridget down the stairs. Bridget might have died and she would have been a murderer now. All she knew was that she had to do it. The great sense of dread had come over her and she had to do it.

She ran out of the room and hid in one of Teddy’s secret hiding places, the cupboard beneath the stairs. After a while the door opened and Teddy crept in and sat on the floor next to her. ‘I don’t think you pushed Bridget,’ he said and slipped his small, warm hand into hers.

‘Thank you. I did though.’

‘Well, I still love you.’

She might never have come out of that cupboard but the front-door bell clanged and there was a sudden great commotion in the hallway. Teddy opened the door to see what was happening. He ducked back in and reported, ‘Mummy’s kissing a man. She’s crying. He’s crying as well.’ Ursula put her head out of the cupboard to witness this phenomenon. She turned in astonishment to Teddy. ‘I think it might be Daddy,’ she said.