Life After Life: A Long Hard War, Nov 1940 Summary & Analysis

The rescue squad now has two additional members: Mr. Emslie, a grocer who had been bombed out of his house, and Stella, a striptease artist. One evening, Miss Woolf treats the squad to a piano recital. Mr. Armitage sings along with her accompaniment, and then Herr Zimmerman plays Bach for them on his violin. The performance is beautiful, and Ursula finds herself thinking about Hugh’s death. She is gripped by melancholy, and Miss Woolf takes her hand, almost vibrating with emotion.

At the end of the concert there is “a moment of pure, profound, silence,” and then the “peace [is] broken” by a warning—“bombers within twenty minutes.” The barrage begins; by the time Ursula and the team arrive at Argyll Road, all the various rescue squads have assembled. All around them fires are blazing, and the presence of the Bomb Disposal Squad indicates that a bomb might go off at any moment. Ursula has a premonition that things are not going to go well.

They are greeted by a “grisly tableau”: many limbless torsos. Ursula sees a dress before she realizes there is a woman wearing it, her head and legs blown off (Lavinia Nesbit). Ursula spots a woman (Mrs. Appleyard) covered in dust. When she tries to comfort the woman, she asks where her baby Emil is. Ursula looks around; when she returns to Mrs. Appleyard, her head is lolling limply and Ursula is unable to find her pulse.

Mr. Emslie is in the cellar of a house, and Miss Woolf instructs Ursula to bring him a morphia tablet for a girl who is screaming. When the girl pulls out a gold cigarette case, Ursula realizes she knows the girl—it is Renee Miller. As the morphia starts to kick in, Renee convulses. Mr. Emslie tries to coax her back to consciousness, but Renee shudders a final time and dies. Ursula picks up the gold cigarette case, which had fallen from Renee’s purse.

They discover more dead: men, women, and even a dog. Ursula is reminded of Pompeii, which she had visited on a tour of Europe she had taken, and she begins to think about that period in her life. On her return, she realized how little she wanted to teach and instead took a typing course with a man named Mr. Carver, who had later been arrested for exposing himself in public. Ursula had gone to Europe a virgin, but didn’t return that way. The man, Gianni, had been studying at Bologna and made the rite of passage less embarrassing and awkward than she feared.

Mr. Emslie shakes Ursula from her reverie. As they move forward on their knees, Ursula realizes that she is kneeling on top of a mound, under which she finds a tiny hand belonging to Emil. She thinks it is better for Mrs. Appleyard to have died rather than know about this.

When Ursula emerges from the cellar, she spots a dog cowering in a doorway. When she approaches it, however, it runs off. Eventually she catches up with it, holding its trembling body to her chest and trying to calm it. She starts to sob for all of the innocent people who had died. At that moment, there is a tremendous noise, and when she turns she sees the wall behind her had fallen. She discovers that Mr. Emslie has been crushed by the wall. Miss Woolf starts to cry, and Ursula comforts her.

Just then, Ursula runs into Fred Smith, who is enraged rather than grieving over the needless deaths of the rescuers crushed by the wall. The sun starts to come up, and Ursula says that she should to go home. She lives just around the corner, and she remarks that she’s lucky her building wasn’t hit—and that she ran after the dog, which she has named Lucky.

Fred offers to walk Ursula home. They set out, hand in hand, the dog walking behind them, but instead of walking to Ursula’s apartment, she walks Fred to Izzie’s apartment (Izzie has gone to Cornwall). Fred kisses her and wraps his arm around her; they then fall asleep together on Izzie’s bed, dead tired. Hours later they wake and make love—"the kind of love” that “people who are anticipating disaster” practice, “free of all restraint.”

Ursula returns home, telling Millie about her time with Fred. She says she is a bit disappointed, though; she wanted something “transcendent,” but instead she and Fred had an unpleasant conversation and simply parted ways. Millie then runs Ursula (and the dog) a bath, as she’s still covered in dust and dirt.