Life After Life

by Kate Atkinson

  ‘And dreams and nightmares,’ Sylvie tempted.

  There was something comforting about being in this room, Ursula thought. The oak panelling, the roaring fire, the thick carpet figured in red and blue, the leather chairs, even the outlandish tea-urn – all felt familiar.

  ‘Dreams?’ Dr Kellet said, duly tempted.

  ‘Yes,’ Sylvie said. ‘And sleepwalking.’

  ‘Do I?’ Ursula asked, startled.

  ‘And she has a kind of déjà vu all the time,’ Sylvie said, pronouncing the words with some distaste.

  ‘Really?’ Dr Kellet said, reaching for an elaborate meerschaum pipe and knocking the ashes out on to the fender. It was the Turk’s-head bowl, as familiar somehow as an old pet.

  ‘Oh,’ Ursula said. ‘I’ve been here before!’

  ‘You see!’ Sylvie said, triumphant.

  ‘Hm …’ Dr Kellet said thoughtfully. He turned to Ursula and addressed her directly. ‘Have you heard of reincarnation?’

  ‘Oh, yes, absolutely,’ Ursula said enthusiastically.

  ‘I’m sure she hasn’t,’ Sylvie said. ‘Is it Catholic doctrine? What is that?’ she asked, distracted by the outlandish tea-urn.

  ‘It’s a samovar, from Russia,’ Dr Kellet said, ‘although I’m not Russian, far from it, I’m from Maidstone, I visited St Petersburg before the Revolution.’ To Ursula, he said, ‘Would you like to draw me something?’ and pushed a pencil and paper towards her. ‘Would you like some tea?’ he asked Sylvie, who was still glaring at the samovar. She declined, mistrustful of any brew that didn’t come out of a china teapot.

  Ursula finished her drawing and handed it over for appraisal.

  ‘What is it?’ Sylvie said, peering over Ursula’s shoulder. ‘Some kind of ring, or circlet? A crown?’

  ‘No,’ Dr Kellet said, ‘it’s a snake with its tail in its mouth.’ He nodded approvingly and said to Sylvie, ‘It’s a symbol representing the circularity of the universe. Time is a construct, in reality everything flows, no past or present, only the now.’

  ‘How gnomic,’ Sylvie said stiffly.

  Dr Kellet steepled his hands and propped his chin on them. ‘You know,’ he said to Ursula, ‘I think we shall get on very well. Would you like a biscuit?’

  There was one thing that puzzled her. The photograph of Guy, lost at Arras in his cricketing whites was missing from the side table. Without meaning to – it was a question that raised so many other questions – she said to Dr Kellet, ‘Where is the photograph of Guy?’ and Dr Kellet said, ‘Who is Guy?’

  It seemed even the instability of time was not to be relied upon.

  ‘It’s just an Austin,’ Izzie said. ‘An open-road tourer – four doors though – but nowhere near as costly as a Bentley, goodness, it’s positively a vehicle for hoi polloi compared to your indulgence, Hugh.’ ‘On tick, no doubt,’ Hugh said. ‘Not at all, paid up in full, in cash. I have a publisher, I have money, Hugh. You don’t need to worry about me any more.’

  While everyone was admiring the cherry-bright vehicle, Millie said, ‘I have to go, I have a dancing exhibition tonight. Thank you very much for a lovely tea, Mrs Todd.’

  ‘Come on, I’ll walk you back,’ Ursula said.

  On the return home, she avoided the well-worn shortcut at the bottom of the garden and came the long way round, dodging Izzie speeding off in her car. Izzie gave a careless salute in farewell.

  ‘Who was that?’ Benjamin Cole asked, skidding his bicycle into a hedge to avoid being killed by the Austin. Ursula’s heart tripped and skipped and flipped at the sight of him. The very object of her affection! The reason she had taken the long way round was on the unlikely chance that she might engineer an ‘accidental’ meeting with Benjamin Cole. And here he was! What luck.

  ‘They lost my ball,’ Teddy said disconsolately when she returned to the dining room.

  ‘I know,’ Ursula said. ‘We can look for it later.’

  ‘I say, you’re all pink and flushed,’ he said.

  ‘Did something happen?’ Did anything happen, she thought? Did anything happen? Only the most handsome boy in the entire world kissed me and on my sixteenth birthday. He had walked her back, pushing his bicycle, and at some point their hands had brushed, they had blushed (it was poetry) and he said, ‘You know I do like you, Ursula,’ and then right there, at her front gate (where anyone could see), he had propped his bicycle against the wall and pulled her towards him. And then the kiss! Sweet and lingering and much nicer than she had expected although it did leave her feeling – well, yes … flushed. Benjamin too, and they stood apart from each other, slightly shocked.

  ‘Gosh,’ he said. ‘I’ve never kissed a girl before, I had no idea it could be so … exciting.’ He shook his head like a dog as if astonished by his own lack of vocabulary.

  This, Ursula thought, would remain the best moment of her life, no matter what else happened to her. They would have kissed more, she supposed, but at that moment the rag and bone cart appeared round the corner of the lane and the rag and bone man’s almost incomprehensible siren moan of Enraagnbooooooone intruded on their budding romance.

  ‘No, nothing happened,’ she said to Teddy. ‘I was saying goodbye to Izzie. You missed seeing her car. You would have liked it.’

  Teddy shrugged and pushed The Adventures of Augustus off the table and on to the floor. ‘What a load of rot it is,’ he said.

  Ursula picked up a half-drunk glass of champagne, the rim of which was adorned with red lipstick, and poured half of it into a jelly glass that she handed to Teddy. ‘Cheers,’ she said. They chinked their glasses and drained them to the dregs.

  ‘Happy birthday,’ Teddy said.

  What wondrous life is this I lead!

  Ripe apples drop about my head;

  The luscious clusters of the vine

  Upon my mouth do crush their wine …

  ‘What is that you’re reading?’ Sylvie asked suspiciously.

  ‘Marvell.’

  Sylvie took the book from her and scrutinized the verses. ‘It’s rather lush,’ she concluded.

  ‘“Lush” – how can that be a criticism?’ Ursula laughed and bit into an apple.

  ‘Try not to be precocious,’ Sylvie sighed. ‘It’s not a pleasant thing in a girl. What are you going to do when you go back to school after the holidays – Latin? Greek? Not English literature? I don’t see the point.’

  ‘You don’t see the point of English literature?’

  ‘I don’t see the point of studying it. Surely one just reads it?’ She sighed again. Neither of her daughters bore any resemblance to her. For a moment Sylvie was back in the past, under a bright London sky, and could smell the spring flowers newly refreshed by rain, hear the quiet comforting clink and jingle of Tiffin’s tack.

  ‘I might do Modern Languages. I don’t know. I’m not sure, I haven’t quite worked out a plan.’

  ‘A plan?’

  They fell into silence. The fox sauntered into the silence, insouciant. Maurice was forever trying to shoot it. Either he was not such a good shot as he liked to think or the vixen was cleverer than he was. Ursula and Sylvie tended towards the latter view. ‘She’s so pretty,’ Sylvie said. ‘And she has such a magnificent brush.’ The fox sat down, a dog waiting for its dinner, her eyes never leaving Sylvie. ‘I haven’t got anything,’ Sylvie said, upturning her empty hands to prove this fact. Ursula bowled her apple core, gently underarm, so as not to alarm the creature and the vixen trotted off after it, picking it up awkwardly in her mouth and then turning tail and disappearing. ‘Eats anything,’ Sylvie said. ‘Like Jimmy.’

  Maurice appeared, giving them both a start. He was carrying his new Purdey cocked over his arm and said eagerly, ‘Was that that damned fox?’

  ‘Language, Maurice,’ Sylvie reprimanded.

  He was home after graduation, waiting to start his training in the law and irritatingly bored. He could work at the Hall farm, Sylvie suggested, they were always looking for seasonal workers. ‘Like a pea
sant in the field?’ Maurice said. ‘Is that why you’ve given me an expensive education?’ (‘Why have we given him an expensive education?’ Hugh said.)

  ‘Teach me to shoot, then,’ Ursula said, jumping up and brushing off her skirt. ‘Come on, I can use Daddy’s old wildfowler.’

  Maurice shrugged and said, ‘May as well, but girls can’t shoot, it’s a well-known fact.’

  ‘Girls are absolutely useless,’ Ursula agreed. ‘They can’t do anything.’

  ‘Are you being sarcastic?’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Pretty good for a novice,’ Maurice said reluctantly. They were shooting bottles off a wall, near the copse, Ursula hitting her target many more times than Maurice. ‘You’re sure you haven’t done this before?’

  ‘What can I say?’ she said. ‘I pick things up quickly.’

  Maurice suddenly swung the barrel of his gun away from the wall and towards the edge of the copse and before Ursula could even see what he was aiming at he had pulled the trigger, blasting something out of existence.

  ‘Got the damned little blighter at last,’ he said triumphantly.

  Ursula set off at a run but long before she reached it she could see the pile of ruddy-brown fur. The white tip of her beautiful brush gave a little flicker but Sylvie’s fox was no more.

  She found Sylvie on the terrace, leafing through a magazine. ‘Maurice shot the fox,’ she said. Sylvie rested her head back on the wicker lounger and closed her eyes in resignation. ‘It was always going to happen,’ she said. She opened her eyes. They were glistening with tears. Ursula had never seen her mother cry. ‘I shall disinherit him one day,’ Sylvie said, the idea of cold revenge already drying her tears.

  Pamela appeared on the terrace and raised a questioning eyebrow at Ursula, who said, ‘Maurice shot the fox.’

  ‘I hope you shot him,’ Pamela said. She meant it too.

  ‘I might go and meet Daddy off the train,’ Ursula said when Pamela had gone back inside.

  She wasn’t really going to meet Hugh. Ever since her birthday she had been seeing Benjamin Cole in secret. Ben, he was now to her. In the meadow, in the wood, in the lane. (Anywhere out of doors, it seemed. ‘Good job the weather’s been nice for your canoodling,’ Millie said, with much clown-smirking and raising up and down of eyebrows.)

  Ursula discovered what an excellent liar she was. (Didn’t she always know that, though?) Do you want anything from the shop? or I’m just going to pick raspberries in the lane. Would it be so dreadful if people knew? ‘Well, I think your mother would have me killed,’ Ben said. (‘A Jew?’ she imagined Sylvie saying.)

  ‘And my folks, too,’ he said. ‘We’re too young.’

  ‘Like Romeo and Juliet,’ Ursula said. ‘Star-crossed lovers and so on.’

  ‘Except we’re not going to die for love,’ Ben said.

  ‘Would it be such a bad thing to die for?’ Ursula mused.

  ‘Yes.’

  Things had started to get very ‘hot’ between them, a lot of fumbling fingers and moaning (on his part). He didn’t think he could ‘hold back’ much longer, he said, but she wasn’t sure what he had to hold back from exactly. Didn’t love mean they shouldn’t hold back anything? She expected they would marry. Would she have to convert? Become a ‘Jewess’?

  They had made their way to the meadow where they had lain down in each other’s arms. It was very romantic, Ursula thought, apart from the timothy grass that was tickling her and the ox-eye daisies that made her sneeze. Not to mention the way Ben suddenly shifted himself until he was on top of her so that she felt rather as if she were in a coffin filled with earth. He went into a kind of spasm that she thought might be a prelude to death by apoplexy and she stroked his hair as if he were an invalid and said, with concern, ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Didn’t mean to do that.’ (But what had he done?)

  ‘I should be getting back,’ Ursula said. They stood up and picked off grass and flowers from each other’s clothing before walking home.

  Ursula wondered if she had missed Hugh’s train. Ben looked at his watch and said, ‘Oh, they’ll have been home for ages.’ (Hugh and Mr Cole travelled on the same London train.) They left the meadow and climbed over the stile into the dairy herd’s field that ran alongside the lane. The cows hadn’t returned from milking yet.

  He gave her a hand down from the stile and they kissed again. When they broke free of each other they noticed a man making his way across the field, from the other side where it led into the copse. He was heading towards the lane – a shabby creature, a tramp perhaps – hobbling along as fast as he could. He glanced round and when he saw them he hobbled even faster. He stumbled on a tussock of grass but quickly recovered and was up again, loping towards the gate.

  ‘What a suspicious-looking fellow,’ Ben laughed. ‘I wonder what he’s been up to?’

  ‘Dinner’s on the table, you’re very late,’ Sylvie said. ‘Where have you been? Mrs Glover has made that awful veal à la Russe thing again.’

  ‘Maurice shot the fox?’ Teddy said, his face a picture of disappointment.

  And so it went on from there, a bad-tempered argument between everyone at the dinner table just because of a dead fox, Hugh thought. They’re vermin, he felt like saying but didn’t want to fuel the furore of emotions that had been unleashed. Instead, he said, ‘Please, let’s not talk about it over dinner, it’s difficult enough trying to digest this stuff.’ But talk about it they would. He tried to ignore them, ploughing his way through the veal cutlets (had Mrs Glover ever tasted them herself, he wondered?). He was relieved that they were interrupted by a knock at the door.

  ‘Ah, Major Shawcross,’ Hugh said, ‘do come in.’

  ‘Oh, goodness, I don’t want to interrupt you at table,’ Major Shawcross said, looking awkward, ‘I just wondered if your Teddy had seen our Nancy.’

  ‘Nancy?’ Teddy said.

  ‘Yes,’ Major Shawcross said. ‘We can’t find her anywhere.’

  They didn’t meet any more in the copse, or the lane or the meadow. Hugh imposed a strict curfew after Nancy’s body was found and anyway both Ursula and Ben were stricken with guilty horror. If they had come home when they were supposed to, if they had crossed that field even five minutes earlier instead of lingering, they might have saved her. But by the time they meandered ignorantly back Nancy was already dead, lying in the cattle trough in the top corner of the field. So, indeed, just like Romeo and Juliet it had ended in death. Nancy, sacrificed for their love.

  ‘It’s a terrible thing,’ Pamela said to her. ‘But you’re not responsible, why are you behaving as though you are?’

  Because she was. She knew it now.

  Something was riven, broken, a lightning fork cutting open a swollen sky.

  In the October half-term she went to stay with Izzie for a few days. They were sitting in the Russian Tea Room in South Kensington. ‘A terrifically right-wing clientele here,’ Izzie said, ‘but they do the most wonderful pancake things.’ There was a samovar. (Was it the samovar that set her off, with its shades of Dr Kellet? It would seem absurd if it was.) They had finished their tea and Izzie said, ‘Just hang on a sec, I’m going to powder my nose. Ask for the bill, will you?’

  Ursula was waiting patiently for her to return when suddenly the terror descended, swift as a predatory hawk. An anticipatory dread of something unknown but enormously threatening. It was coming for her, here among the polite tinkle of teaspoon on saucer. She stood up, knocking over her chair. She felt dizzy and there was a veil of fog in front of her face. Like bomb-dust, she thought, yet she had never been bombed.

  She pushed through the veil, out of the Russian Tea Room on to Harrington Road. She started to run and kept on running, on to the Brompton Road and then, blindly, into Egerton Gardens.

  She had been here before. She had never been here before.

  There was always something just out of sight, just around a corner, something she could never chase down – someth
ing that was chasing her down. She was both the hunter and the hunted. Like the fox. She carried on and then tripped on something, falling straight on to her nose. The pain was extraordinary. Blood everywhere. She sat on the pavement and cried with the agony of it all. She hadn’t realized there was anyone on the street but then from behind her a man’s voice said, ‘Oh, my, how awful for you. Let me help you. You have blood all over your nice turquoise scarf. Is that the colour, or is it aquamarine? My name’s Derek, Derek Oliphant.’

  She knew that voice. She didn’t know that voice. The past seemed to leak into the present, as if there were a fault somewhere. Or was it the future spilling into the past? Either way it was nightmarish, as if her inner dark landscape had become manifest. The inside become the outside. Time was out of joint, that was for certain.

  She staggered to her feet but didn’t dare to look round. Ignoring the awful pain, she ran on and on. She was in Belgravia before she finally flagged completely. Here too, she thought. She had been here before. She had never been here before. I give in, she thought. Whatever it is, it can have me. She sank to her knees on the hard pavement and curled up in a ball. A fox without a hole.

  She must have passed out because when she opened her eyes she was in a bed in a room painted white. There was a big window and outside the window she could see a horse-chestnut tree that had not yet shed its leaves. She turned her head and saw Dr Kellet.

  ‘You broke your nose,’ Dr Kellet said. ‘We thought you must have been attacked by someone.’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I fell.’

  ‘A vicar found you. He took you in a taxi to St George’s Hospital.’

  ‘But what are you doing here?’

  ‘Your father got in touch with me,’ Dr Kellet said. ‘He wasn’t sure who else to contact.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Well, when you arrived at St George’s you wouldn’t stop screaming. They thought something terrible must have happened to you.’

  ‘This isn’t St George’s, is it?’

  ‘No,’ he said kindly. ‘This is a private clinic. Rest, good food and so on. They have lovely gardens. I always think a lovely garden helps, don’t you?’