Life After Life

Content Warning: The source text and this guide discuss instances of sexual violence, domestic violence, death by suicide, termination of a pregnancy, and child loss.

Ursula enters a warm German café, joins a table full of men, and comments on the rain. She pulls a gun from her handbag—her father’s service revolver from the Great War—and points it at the Führer. Ursula knows she has “One breath. One shot” (4). She pulls the trigger, and “Darkness [falls]” (4).

A baby is born, and “All the world [came] down to this. One breath” (7). But the baby does not breathe. Sylvie is giving birth early, without Dr. Fellowes, helped only by her maid, Bridget. The cord is wrapped around the neck, and the infant is blue.

Dr. Fellowes arrives at Fox Corner and cuts the cord from around the baby girl’s neck. He reports that the midwife was caught in the snow at Chalfont St. Peter. Bridget is 14, from Ireland, 10 years younger than Sylvie. Sylvie’s father was a society artist and her first love was her pony, Tiffin. She holds her third child lovingly.

The cook, Mrs. Glover, brings Sylvie a breakfast tray and reports that Dr. Fellowes was called away. “Such a fine line between living and dying” (18), Sylvie thinks, reflecting how her father died by slipping on a rug. When his debts were discovered, the family sank into poverty. Her mother, Lottie, died of consumption. At 18, Sylvie married a banker, Hugh, and they settled in a house near Beaconsfield. Sylvie spotted a fox in their yard and named the house Fox Corner. She introduces the new baby, whom she names Ursula, to her other children, Maurice and Pamela.

Hugh receives a telegram from his sister Isobel (Izzy), who has given birth to a baby in Germany. Hugh went to Paris to retrieve Izzy when she ran away with her married lover, which is why he was away for Ursula’s birth. Adelaide, their mother, refused to take Izzy in. She was sent abroad and her baby boy has been adopted by a German family. Ursula watches the changing seasons from her baby pram, which has a charm shaped like a tiny silver hare dangling from the hood. She is left outside in her pram often and once is nearly forgotten overnight. Maurice pours leaves into the baby carriage, and Hugh rescues Ursula.

The family vacations in Cornwall. Sylvie and Bridget sit on the beach, reading. Pamela persuades Ursula, now five, to go into the water, and Ursula drowns.

Sylvie cradles her newborn and thinks of what she should telegram to Hugh, who is fetching his sister from Paris. “They had triumphed over death this night,” and Sylvie wonders “when death would seek his revenge” (31). Sylvie sings to the baby and thinks, “One could lose everything in the blink of an eye, the slip of a foot” (32).

An artist, Mr. Winton, is painting the little girls on the Cornwall beach. He sees them in distress and rescues them. Sylvie thanks him by inviting him to tea.

Sylvie’s school friends visit to see the new baby, Edward. Sylvie calls Ursula and Teddy her two little bears. Ursula plays with their dog while Maurice and Pamela fight over tennis. Sylvie thinks of motherhood as her destiny. Hugh announces that Austria has declared war on Serbia. The friends are impressed that the house has electricity.

Sylvie and Bridget take the children to watch the harvest being brought in. Sylvie admires George Glover, Mrs. Glover’s golden-haired, handsome son. He sends home two baby rabbits for the girls. Sylvie and Hugh discuss their next-door neighbors, the Coles, who are Jewish. Ursula and Pamela make a nest in the garden for the baby rabbits and are distressed when foxes eat the babies.

Hugh is at the Front. He left thinking of war as an adventure, but his letters have changed of late. Bridget’s sweetheart, Sam Wellington, also enlisted. Bridget reports that zeppelins dropped bombs on Norfolk. Izzy visited for Christmas; she never speaks about her baby. Ursula is trying to learn how to knit with a knitting doll she received for Christmas. Maurice throws the doll out the attic window, and when Ursula tries to retrieve it from the roof, she falls.

Dr. Fellowes eats some of Mrs. Glover’s piccalilli and stays overnight at Fox Corner, snowed in.

Ursula is about to go out on the roof after her doll when “something made her hesitate. A little doubt” (67). Instead, she joins her siblings for tea. Sylvie has begun raising chickens. George Glover was injured in a gas attack. Ursula had brought the rabbit George gave her inside for a time, where it lived in her dollhouse. Bridget learns that Sam Wellington has been killed.

It is Teddy’s birthday, and Teddy is Sylvie’s favorite, so she plans a party. Bridget takes the younger children to visit Mrs. Dodd, the mother of Clarence Dodd, Bridget’s new sweetheart, who wears a tin mask on half his face due to injuries from the war. Clarence shows them the gardens of the Hall where he once worked, which are now overgrown by weeds. All three sons of the family who lived at the Hall were killed in the war.

Because of the victory, the children have the day off school and play in the yard, trying to get a glimpse of the five Shawcross daughters who have moved in next door. Hugh is still away at the Front, along with Izzy, who drove an ambulance in the war. Mrs. Glover reports that George isn’t George anymore. Bridget and Clarence are going to London to celebrate the armistice, but Mrs. Glover fears the influenza epidemic. Ursula visits with them when they return, and the next day wakes with a fever. She has caught influenza from Bridget, and she soon dies.

Mrs. Glover wakes Mr. Fellowes to tell him he’s needed: A farmer has been trampled by a bull.

Ursula hears Bridget coming home from the armistice celebrations, and “a wave of something horrible washed over her, a great dread, as if something truly treacherous were about to happen” (91). She had the same feeling when she followed Pamela into the sea in Cornwall and they were rescued. She knows they mustn’t go downstairs and see Bridget. The next morning, Bridget is sick, and Sylvie keeps the children home. The butcher’s boy, Fred Smith, delivers a hare. They notice Teddy is missing. Ursula finds him with Bridget, who is dead. Both Teddy and Ursula contract the flu and die. Sylvie is more concerned about losing Teddy than Ursula.

Sylvie, holding Ursula, looks out the window to see George Glover riding one of his great Shire horses. He looks magnificent.

Ursula posts a note on the door telling Bridget not to come in. The next morning, Pamela is missing, and Sylvie says she sent her to Mrs. Dodd’s to fetch Bridget. Ursula, panicked, runs to get her. The chapter ends with “Darkness soon fell again” (106).

Bridget and Mrs. Glover talk in the kitchen. When Dr. Fellowes’s car could not be dug out, George Glover came over with one of his horses. Mrs. Glover tells Bridget to find a flower for Mrs. Todd’s breakfast tray.

Bridget has a sprained ankle and says she was pushed down the stairs. She is determined to go to the celebrations anyway. Darkness falls once more.