Life After Life

Pamela and Ursula discuss Maurice’s family. His wife, Edwina, is very Christian, and Pamela thinks their children, Philip and Hazel, are dull. Pamela has three sons—Nigel, Andrew, and Christopher—but hopes for a girl. Maurice says the war won’t last long. Ursula is part of the Air Raid Precautions department in the Home Office, where incident reports come across her desk in buff-colored folders. Ursula attended a secretarial college run by Mr. Carver and rebelled when he wanted the girls to wear blindfolds. Ursula thinks about a yellow dress she wishes she’d bought. She is involved with Crighton, a man from the Admiralty who had been at Jutland. He is married with three daughters, and Ursula thinks of him as having “a cryptic self” (257). Maurice, Pamela says, is himself and will never change. Pamela remarks that this might be the last ordinary day they have in a long time.

Ursula lies on her back in a shallow pool of water. She realizes her apartment on Argyll Road has been bombed. Ursula has heard people speak of “Blitz spirit” and wonders, “really, what was the alternative?” (264). Since the end of her affair with Crighton, Ursula has been seeing a young man from her German course, Ralph.