Life after life

August 1926

ALS ER DAS Zimmer verlassen hatte wusst, was sie aus dieser Erscheinung machen solle …

Bees buzzed their summer afternoon lullaby and Ursula, in the shade of the apple trees, drowsily abandoned Die Marquise von O. Through half-open eyes she watched a small rabbit a few yards away nibbling contentedly on grass. He was either unaware of her or very bold. Maurice would have shot it by now. He was home after graduation, waiting to start his training in the law, and had spent the entire vacation being thoroughly and noisily bored. (‘He could always get a summer job,’ Hugh said. ‘It’s not unheard of for vigorous young men to work.’)

Maurice was so bored in fact that he had agreed to teach Ursula to shoot and even agreed to use old bottles and cans as targets rather than the many wild creatures that he was forever taking potshots at – rabbits, foxes, badgers, pigeons, pheasants, even once a small roe deer, for which neither Pamela nor Ursula would ever forgive him. As long as they were inanimate, Ursula rather liked shooting things. She used Hugh’s old wildfowler but Maurice had a splendid Purdey, his twenty-first-birthday present from his grandmother. Adelaide had been threatening to die for some years now but ‘never came good on her promises’, Sylvie said. She lingered on in Hampstead, ‘like a giant spider’, Izzie said, shuddering, over the veal cutlets à la Russe, although it may have been the cutlets themselves that caused this reaction. It was not one of the better dishes in Mrs Glover’s repertoire.

One of the few things, perhaps the only thing Sylvie and Izzie had in common, was their antipathy towards Hugh’s mother. ‘Your mother too,’ Hugh pointed out to Izzie and Izzie said, ‘Oh, no, she found me by the side of the road. She often told me so. I was so naughty that even the gypsies didn’t want me.’

Hugh came to watch Maurice and Ursula shooting and said, ‘Why, little bear, you’re a real Annie Oakley.’

‘You know,’ Sylvie said, appearing suddenly and startling Ursula into full wakefulness, ‘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, ‘but summer would still have to come to an end one day.’ She sank down on the grass next to Ursula and picked up the Kleist. ‘A suicidal romantic,’ she said dismissively. ‘Are you really going to do Modern Languages? Your father says Latin might be more useful.’

‘How can it be useful? Nobody speaks it,’ Ursula said reasonably. This was an argument that had been rumbling genteelly all summer. She stretched her arms above her head. ‘I shall go and live in Paris for a year and speak nothing but French. That will be very useful there.’

‘Oh, Paris,’ Sylvie shrugged. ‘Paris is rather overrated.’

‘Berlin, then.’

‘Germany’s a mess.’

‘Vienna.’

‘Stuffy.’

‘Brussels,’ Ursula said. ‘No one can object to Brussels.’

It was true, Sylvie could think of nothing to say about Brussels and their grand tour of Europe came to an abrupt halt.

‘After university anyway,’ Ursula said. ‘That’s years away yet, you can stop worrying.’

‘University won’t teach you how to be a wife and mother,’ Sylvie said.

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

Sylvie laughed. ‘Now you’re just talking nonsense to provoke. There’s tea on the lawn,’ she said, rousing herself reluctantly. ‘And cake. And, unfortunately, Izzie.’

Ursula went for a walk along the lane before supper, Jock happily trotting ahead. (He was a wonderfully cheerful dog, it was hard to believe that Izzie could have chosen so well.) It was the kind of summer evening that made Ursula want to be alone. ‘Oh,’ Izzie said, ‘you’re at an age when a girl is simply consumed by the sublime.’ Ursula wasn’t sure what she meant (‘No one is ever sure what she means,’ Sylvie said) but she thought she understood a little. There was a strangeness in the shimmering air, a sense of imminence that made Ursula’s chest feel full, as if her heart was growing. It was a kind of high holiness – she could think of no other way of describing it. Perhaps it was the future, she thought, coming nearer all the time.

She was sixteen, on the brink of everything. She had even been kissed, on her birthday at that, by the rather alarming American friend of Maurice’s. ‘Just one kiss,’ she told him before batting him away when he got too fresh with her. Unfortunately he stumbled over his huge feet and fell backwards into a cotoneaster, which looked rather uncomfortable and certainly undignified. She told Millie, who hooted with laughter. Still, as Millie said, a kiss was a kiss.

Her walk took her to the station where she said hello to Fred Smith, who doffed his railwayman’s cap as if she were already a grown-up.

The imminence remained imminent, receded even, as she watched his train huff-huff-huff off to London. She walked back and met Nancy, grubbing for things for her nature collection, and they walked companionably together before they were overtaken by Benjamin Cole on his bicycle. He stopped and dismounted and said, ‘Shall I escort you home, ladies?’ rather in the way that Hugh might have done and Nancy giggled.

Ursula was glad that the heat of the afternoon had already made her cheeks pink because she could feel herself blushing. She grabbed some cow parsley from the hedgerow and fanned herself (ineffectually) with it. She had not, after all, been so wrong about the imminence.

Benjamin (‘Oh, do call me Ben,’ he said. ‘Only my parents call me Benjamin these days’) walked with them as far as the Shawcrosses’ gate where he said, ‘Goodbye, then,’ and climbed back on his bicycle for the short ride home.

‘Oh,’ Nancy whispered, disappointed on her behalf, ‘I thought maybe he would walk you home, just the two of you.’

‘Am I so obvious?’ Ursula asked, her spirits drooping.

‘You are rather. Never mind.’ Nancy patted her on the arm as if she were the elder by four years rather than Ursula. And then, ‘I’m late, I think, I don’t want to miss dinner,’ she said and, clutching her foraged treasure, she skipped along the path towards her house, singing tra-la-la. Nancy was a girl who really did sing tra-la-la. Ursula wished she was that kind of girl. She turned to go, she supposed she was late for supper too, but then she heard the mad ringing of a bicycle bell announcing Benjamin (Ben!) zooming towards her. ‘I forgot to say,’ he said, ‘we’re having a party next week – Saturday afternoon – Mother said to ask you. It’s Dan’s birthday, she wants some girls to dilute the boys, I think that was her phrase. She thought maybe you and Millie. Nancy’s a bit young, isn’t she?’

‘Yes, she is,’ Ursula agreed quickly. ‘But I’d love to come. So would Millie, I’m sure. Thank you.’

Imminence had returned to the world.

She watched him cycle away, whistling as he went. When she turned round she nearly bumped into a man who seemed to have appeared out of nowhere and was hovering, waiting for her. He tipped his cap and muttered, ‘Evening, miss.’ He was a rough-looking fellow and Ursula took a step back. ‘Tell me the way to the station, miss?’ he said and she pointed down the lane and said, ‘It’s that way.’

‘Care to show me the way, miss?’ he said, moving closer to her again.

‘No,’ she said, ‘no thank you.’ Then his hand suddenly shot out and he grabbed her forearm. She managed to tug her arm away and set off running, not daring to look behind until she reached her doorstep.

‘All right, little bear?’ Hugh asked as she flung herself into the porch. ‘You look all puffed out,’ he said.

‘No, I’m fine, really,’ she said. Hugh would only worry if she told him about the man.

‘Veal cutlets à la Russe,’ Mrs Glover said as she put a large white china dish on the table. ‘I’m only telling you because last time I cooked it someone said they couldn’t begin to imagine what it was.’

‘The Coles are having a party,’ Ursula said to Sylvie. ‘Millie and I are invited.’

‘Lovely,’ Sylvie said, distracted by the contents of the white porcelain dish, much of which would later be fed to a less discerning (or, as Mrs Glover would have it, ‘less fussy’) West Highland terrier.

The party was a disappointment. It was a rather daunting affair with endless games of charades (Millie in her element, needless to say) and quizzes to which Ursula knew most of the answers but was left unheard, beaten by the ferociously competitive speed of the Cole boys and their friends. Ursula felt invisible and the only intimacy that she shared with Benjamin (he no longer seemed like Ben) was when he asked her if she would like some fruit cup and then forgot to come back with any. There was no dancing but piles of food and Ursula comforted herself picking and choosing from an impressive selection of desserts. Mrs Cole, patrolling the food, said to her, ‘Goodness, you’re such a little scrap of a thing, where do you put all that food?’

Such a little scrap of a thing, Ursula thought as she tramped dejectedly home, that no one even seemed to notice her.

‘Did you get cake?’ Teddy asked eagerly when she came in the door.

‘Masses,’ she said. They sat on the terrace and shared the large slice of birthday cake doled out on departure by Mrs Cole, Jock receiving his fair share. When a large dog fox trotted on to the twilit lawn Ursula tossed a piece in its direction but it regarded the cake with the disdain of a carnivore.