Life after life

August 1926

IL SE TENAIT devant un miroir long, appliqué au mur entre les deux fenêtres, et contemplait son image de très beau et très jeune homme, ni grand ni petit, le cheveu bleuté comme un plumage de merle.

She could barely keep her eyes open to read. It was beautifully hot and time treacled past every day with nothing more to do than read books and go for long walks – mainly in the vain hope of bumping into Benjamin Cole, or indeed any of the Cole boys, who had all grown into darkly handsome youths. ‘They could pass for Italian,’ Sylvie said. But why would they want to pass for anything other than themselves?

‘You know,’ Sylvie said, discovering her lying beneath the apple trees, Chéri drowsily abandoned on the warm grass, ‘long, lazy days like these will never come again in your life. You think they will, but they won’t.’

‘Unless I become incredibly rich,’ Ursula said. ‘Then I could be idle all day long.’

‘Perhaps,’ Sylvie said, unwilling to renounce her newly habitual dysphoric stance. ‘But summer would still come to an end one day.’ She sank down on the grass next to Ursula. Her skin was freckled from working in the garden. Sylvie was always up with the sun. Ursula would have been happy to sleep all day. Sylvie leafed idly through the Colette and said, ‘You should do more with your French.’

‘I could live in Paris.’

‘Perhaps not that,’ Sylvie said.

‘Do you think I should apply to university when I finish school?’

‘Oh, really, dear, what’s the point? It won’t teach you how to be a wife and mother.’

‘What if I don’t want to be a wife and mother?’

Sylvie laughed. ‘Now you’re just talking nonsense to provoke.’ She stroked Ursula’s cheek. ‘You always were such a funny little thing. There’s tea on the lawn,’ she said, rousing herself reluctantly. ‘And cake. And, unfortunately, Izzie.’

‘Darling,’ Izzie said when she saw Ursula coming across the lawn towards her. ‘You’ve quite grown since I last saw you. You’re a woman now, and so pretty!’

‘Not quite,’ Sylvie said. ‘We were just discussing her future.’

‘Were we?’ Ursula said. ‘I thought we were discussing my French. I need more of an education,’ she said to Izzie.

‘How serious,’ Izzie said. ‘At sixteen you should be head over heels in love with some unsuitable boy.’ I am, Ursula thought, I am in love with Benjamin Cole. She supposed he was unsuitable. (‘A Jew?’ she imagined Sylvie saying. Or a Catholic, or a coalminer (or anyone foreign), a shop assistant, a clerk, a groom, a tram-driver, a school-teacher. The unsuitable males were legion.)

‘Were you?’ Ursula asked Izzie.

‘Was I what?’ Izzie puzzled.

‘In love when you were sixteen?’

‘Oh, tremendously.’

‘What about you?’ Ursula said to Sylvie.

‘Goodness, no,’ Sylvie said.

‘But at seventeen you must have been in love,’ Izzie said to Sylvie.

‘Must I?’

‘When you met Hugh, of course.’

‘Of course.’

Izzie leaned towards Ursula and dropped her voice to a conspirator’s whisper. ‘I eloped when I was about your age.’

‘Nonsense,’ Sylvie said to Ursula. ‘She did no such thing. Ah, here comes Bridget with the tea-tray.’ Sylvie turned to Izzie. ‘Was there a particular reason for your visit, or have you merely come to annoy?’

‘I was driving nearby, I thought I’d drop in. I’ve got something I wanted to ask you.’

‘Oh, dear,’ Sylvie said wearily.

‘I’ve been thinking,’ Izzie said.

‘Oh, dear.’

‘Would you stop saying that, Sylvie.’

Ursula poured tea and sliced cake. She sensed a battle. Izzie was rendered temporarily speechless by a mouthful of cake. It was not one of Mrs Glover’s airier sponges.

‘As I said’ – she swallowed with difficulty – ‘I’ve been thinking – and don’t say anything, Sylvie. The Adventures of Augustus is still wildly successful, I’m writing a book every six months. It’s quite crazy. And I have the house in Holland Park, and I have money, but of course no husband. Nor do I have a child.’

‘Really?’ Sylvie said. ‘Are you sure?’

Izzie ignored her. ‘No one to share my good fortune with. So, I was thinking, why don’t I adopt Jimmy?’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘She’s unbelievable,’ Sylvie hissed at Hugh. Izzie was still out on the lawn, entertaining Jimmy by reading from an unfinished manuscript she had in her oversized handbag. ‘Augustus Goes to the Seaside’.

‘Why doesn’t she want to adopt me?’ Teddy said. ‘After all, it’s me that’s supposed to be Augustus.’

‘Do you want to be adopted by Izzie?’ Hugh puzzled.

‘Good lord, no,’ Teddy said.

‘No one is being adopted,’ Sylvie said furiously. ‘Go and have a word with her, Hugh.’

In the kitchen, Ursula went looking for an apple and found Mrs Glover thumping slices of veal with a meat tenderizer. ‘I imagine that they’re the heads of the Boche,’ she said.

‘Really?’

‘The ones that sent the gas over that did for poor George’s lungs.’

‘What’s for dinner? I’m starving.’ Ursula had grown rather callous about George Glover’s lungs, she had heard so much of them that they seemed to have a life of their own, rather like Sylvie’s mother’s lungs, organs that seemed to have more character than their owner.

‘Veal cutlets à la Russe,’ Mrs Glover said, flipping the meat over and pounding again. ‘The Ruskies are just as bad, mind you.’ Ursula wondered if Mrs Glover had ever actually met anyone from another country.

‘Well, there are a lot of Jews in Manchester,’ Mrs Glover said.

‘Did you meet any?’

‘Meet? Why would I meet them?’

‘Jews aren’t necessarily foreign, though, are they? The Coles next door are Jewish.’

‘Don’t be daft,’ Mrs Glover said, ‘they’re as English as you and me.’ Mrs Glover had a certain fondness for the Cole boys, based on their excellent manners. Ursula wondered if it was worth arguing. She took another apple and Mrs Glover returned to her pounding.

Ursula ate the apple sitting on a bench in a secluded corner of the garden, one of Sylvie’s favourite hideaways. The words ‘Veal cutlets à la Russe’ drifted sleepily through her brain. And then suddenly she was on her feet, her heart knocking in her chest, a sudden familiar but long-forgotten terror triggered – but by what? It was so at odds with the peaceful garden, the late-afternoon warmth on her face, Hattie, the cat, washing herself lazily on the sunny path.

There were no terrible portents of doom, nothing to suggest all was not well in the world but nonetheless Ursula flung the apple core into the bushes and fled from the garden, through the gate and into the lane, the old demons snapping at her heels. Hattie paused in her toilette and viewed the swinging gate with disdain.

Perhaps it was a train disaster, perhaps she would have to rip off her petticoats like the girls in The Railway Children to signal the driver, but no, as she reached the station the 5.30 to London was drawing quietly alongside the platform in the safe stewardship of Fred Smith and his driver.

‘Miss Todd?’ he said, tipping the brim of his railwayman’s cap. ‘Are you all right? You look worried.’

‘I’m fine, Fred, thank you for asking.’ Just in a state of mortal dread, nothing to fret about. Fred Smith didn’t look as if he had ever suffered a moment of mortal dread.

She walked back along the lane, still drenched with the nameless fear. Halfway along she met Nancy Shawcross and said, ‘Hello there, what are you up to?’ and Nancy said, ‘Oh, just looking for things for my nature book. I’ve got some oak leaves and some tiny baby acorns.’

The fear started to drain from Ursula’s body and she said, ‘Come on, then, I’ll walk back home with you.’

As they approached the dairy herd’s field a man climbed over the five-bar gate and landed heavily among the cow parsley. He tipped his cap at Ursula and mumbled, ‘Evening, miss,’ before carrying on in the direction of the station. He had a limp that made him walk rather comically, like Charlie Chaplin. Another veteran of the war perhaps, Ursula thought.

‘Who was that? Nancy asked.

‘I have no idea,’ Ursula said. ‘Oh, look, there on the road, a dead devil’s-coach-horse beetle. Is that any good to you?’