Life After Life Chapter 6 Summary

How It All Goes Down

A man named Mr. Winton is painting a beach landscape, but he decides to put some figures into his painting when he sees two little girls playing in the surf.
When the girls wander too far into the ocean, Mr. Winton jumps in and saves them.
They return home, and Hugh has a surprise for them: an engine in the basement, which generates electricity. Let there be light.
Later, Sylvie sits with her friends who have come to see her new baby, Teddy.
Maurice, the oldest, is a troublemaker, and Sylvie is glad that he'll be sent away to boarding school soon.
Hugh comes out, and they all have tea together, when the topic of conversation has turned to war: Austria has declared war on Serbia.
A few days later, Sylvie, Bridget, and the girls walk across the fields to watch the harvest be brought in.
The cook, Mrs. Glover's son George, is helping, and Bridget has a crush on him.
They bring him a pork pie for lunch and eat their own lunch on the grass while they watch him harvest.
He brings them two baby rabbits to take care of, and they return home, tired and a little sunburned.
Their neighbor's boy, Benjamin Cole, found a bird's nest, and Maurice breaks open the eggs.
Pamela tries to break open her stupid brother's head with a rock.
While Old Tom, the gardener, digs a trench for asparagus, Pamela and Ursula make a nest in the corner of the garden for their little bunnies.
The bunnies don't last long, though, and are soon eaten by foxes.

Hugh is away at war, and he sends Sylvie letters as often as she can.
At home, Bridget has a crush on Sam Wellington, who sends her postcards while he's at war, too.
All the women have been knitting furiously for the cause.
Rumors are spreading that the Germans are eating babies as the war closes in on England.
The family has to spend Christmas without Hugh, so they send him a large care package full of cakes, peppermints, cigarettes, and whisky. What else could a man need?
Ursula gets a knitting doll for Christmas, named Queen Solange. (Bow down.)
Maurice, pretending to be a "Red Indian" (racial sensitivity not being a thing in 1915), chucks Queen Solange out a window.
Ursula climbs out the window to retrieve her, slips on the ice, and falls to her death.
And guess what? "Darkness fell" (6.159).