Life After Life Read Online Free PDF Page B

lawn. Maurice laughed extravagantly at Bridget’s misfortune, and Sylvie said, ‘Maurice, stop playing the fool.’
    She watched as Bosun and Ursula picked up the jettisoned sugar lumps, Bosun with his big pink tongue, Ursula, eccentrically, with the tricky tongs. Bosun swallowed his quickly without chewing. Ursula sucked hers slowly, one by one. Sylvie suspected that Ursula was destined to be the odd one out. An only child herself, she was frequently disturbed by the complexity of sibling relationships among her own children.
    ‘You should come up to London,’ Margaret said suddenly. ‘Stay with me for a few days. We could have such fun.’
    ‘But the children,’ Sylvie said. ‘The baby. I can hardly leave them.’
    ‘Why not?’ Lily said. ‘Your nanny can manage for a few days, surely?’
    ‘But I have no nanny,’ Sylvie said. Lily cast her eyes around the garden as if she was looking for a nanny lurking in the hydrangeas. ‘Nor do I want one,’ Sylvie added. (Or did she?) Motherhood was her responsibility, her destiny. It was, lacking anything else (and what else could there be?), her life. The future of England was clutched to Sylvie’s bosom. Replacing her was not a casual undertaking, as if her absence meant little more than her presence. ‘And I am feeding the baby myself,’ she added. Both women seemed astonished. Lily unconsciously clasped a hand to her own bosom as if to protect it from assault.
    ‘It’s what God intended,’ Sylvie said, even though she hadn’t believed in God since the loss of Tiffin. Hugh rescued her, striding across the lawn like a man with a purpose. He laughed and said, ‘What’s going on here then?’ picking up Ursula and tossing her casually in the air, only stopping when she started to choke on a sugar lump. He smiled at Sylvie and said, ‘Your friends,’ as if she might have forgotten who they were.
    ‘Friday evening,’ Hugh said, depositing Ursula back on the grass, ‘the working man’s labours are over and I believe the sun is officially over the yardarm. Would you lovely ladies like to move on to something stronger than tea? Gin slings perhaps?’ Hugh had four younger sisters and felt comfortable with women. That in itself was enough to charm them. Sylvie knew his instincts were to chaperone, not to court, but she did occasionally wonder about his popularity and where it might lead. Or, indeed, have already led.
    A détente was brokered between Maurice and Pamela. Sylvie asked Bridget to drag a table out on to the small but useful terrace so that the children could eat their tea outside – herring roe on toast and a pink shape that was barely set and quivered without restraint. The sight of it made Sylvie feel slightly queasy. ‘Nursery food,’ Hugh said with relish, observing his children eating.
    ‘Austria has declared war on Serbia,’ Hugh said conversationally and Margaret said, ‘How silly. I spent a wonderful weekend in Vienna last year. At the Imperial, do you know it?’
    ‘Not intimately,’ Hugh said.
    Sylvie knew it but did not say so.
    The evening turned into gossamer. Sylvie, drifting gently on a mist of alcohol, suddenly remembered her father’s cognac-induced demise and clapped her hands as if killing a small annoying fly and said, ‘Time for bed, children,’ and watched as Bridget pushed the heavy pram awkwardly across the grass. Sylvie sighed and Hugh helped her up from her chair, bussing her cheek once she was on her feet.
    Sylvie propped open the tiny skylight window in the baby’s stuffy room. They called it the ‘nursery’ but it was no more than a box tucked into a corner of the eaves, airless in summer and freezing in winter, and thereby totally unsuitable for a tender infant. Like Hugh, Sylvie considered that children should be toughened up early, the better to take the blows in later life. (The loss of a nice house in Mayfair, a beloved pony, a faith in an omniscient deity.) She sat on the button-backed velvet nursing