Life after life

February 1947

WONDERFUL! LIKE A Red Cross package, she wrote and propped the old postcard of the Brighton Pavilion on the mantelpiece next to Sylvie’s clock, next to Teddy’s photograph. She would put the card in with the afternoon post tomorrow. It would take for ever to reach Fox Corner, of course.

A birthday card for her had made it through eventually. The weather had prevented the usual celebration at Fox Corner, instead Crighton had taken her to the Dorchester for dinner, by candlelight when the electricity gave out halfway through the meal.

‘Very romantic,’ he said. ‘Just like old times.’

‘I don’t remember us being particularly romantic,’ she said. Their affair had ended with the war but he had remembered her birthday, a fact which touched her more deeply than he knew. For a present he gave her a box of Milk Tray (‘It’s not much, I’m afraid’).

‘Admiralty supplies?’ she quizzed and they both laughed. When she got home she ate the whole box in one go.

Five o’clock. She took her plate over to the sink to join the other unwashed dishes. The grey ash was a blizzard in the dark sky now and she pulled the flimsy cotton curtain to try to make it disappear. It tugged hopelessly on its wire and she gave up before she brought the whole thing down. The window was old and ill-fitting and let in a piercing draught.

The electricity went and she fumbled for the candle on the mantelpiece. Could it get any worse? Ursula took the candle and the whisky bottle to bed, climbed under the covers still in her coat. She was so tired. Being hungry and cold created the most awful lethargy.

The flame on the little Radiant fire quivered alarmingly. Would it be so very bad? To cease upon the midnight with no pain. There were worse ways. Auschwitz, Treblinka. Teddy’s Halifax going down in flames. The only way to stop the tears was to keep drinking the whisky. Good old Pammy. The flame on the Radiant flickered and died. The pilot light too. She wondered when the gas would come back on. If the smell would wake her, if she would get up and relight it. She hadn’t expected to die like a fox frozen in its den. Pammy would see the postcard, know that she’d been appreciated. Ursula closed her eyes. She felt as though she had been awake for a hundred years and more. She really was so very, very tired.

Darkness began to fall.

She woke with a start. Was it daytime? The light was on but it was dark. She had been dreaming she was trapped in a cellar. She climbed out of the bed, she still felt quite drunk and realized it was the wireless that had woken her. The power was back on in time for the shipping forecast.

She fed the meter and the little Radiant popped back into life. She hadn’t gassed herself after all then.