Life After Life (2022) s01e04 Episode Script

1
NARRATOR: Again and again and again,
Ursula thought about how much
she loved her brother Teddy,
how sweet he'd been.
Got you!
After war was declared,
Teddy joined the Air Force.
Ursula was grateful
to be rising through the ranks
in the civil service.
It meant she could get up every day
and actively fight Hitler
..if only from a chair
in the office.
She would never be in charge.
That was still for
the Maurices of this world.
A quick word with you, Ursula.
Do you want some tea?
I was about to seek some out.
That sort of day. No tea, thank you.
Listen, I'm sorry, but I can't meet
Tedders and Jimbo tonight.
Maurice! Erm,
"Mr Todd" while we're working.
We agreed. Mr Todd,
plans have been made.
Yes, and they have to change.
Although it seems to have escaped
everyone in our family's notice,
I'm rather important round here.
Then say you have to leave early.
Oh! For goodness' sake!
You realise it might be
the last time you see them?
Why do you always have to be
so macabre?
Because there's a war on!
Yes, there is,
which means I don't have time to gad
around town with Teddy and Jimmy.
MAN WHISTLES ALONG TO PIANO
ALL: # Show me the way to go home
# I'm tired and I want to go to bed
# I had a little drink
about an hour ago
# And it's gone
straight to my head #
Woo!
I just want him dead.
I think about it all the time,
how I would love to be the one
that just kills him.
Not to worry, my lovely.
We will do it for you.
See, I will shoot him,
Teddy will bomb him,
and then we'll bring you home
his moustache.
And do what with it? Burn it.
No, donate it to the British Museum.
THEY LAUGH
I keep thinking I'll wake up
and it was all a dream,
that I'm not trapped
in this endless nightmare.
Oh, chin up. It won't last forever.
Nothing does.
I wish I could go instead of you.
I really do. It isn't fair.
It would take one of his generals
being awfully heroic.
They'd have to shoot him
in the back.
And then they'd be shot.
And would it even make a difference?
Goebbels would just run things.
I think it WOULD make a difference.
It's Hitler
that people are obsessed with.
Maybe you will bomb him, Teddy.
Get one of his houses or something.
You know, squash him. I'll try.
It would be wonderful to be the chap
who gets to shoot him
right between the eyes. Bang!
I'd like to buy you all a drink.
People have been buying us drinks
all night.
I'm starting to see double.
Beautiful boys.
Full of life.
But evil's evil, isn't it?
And the gods have always enjoyed
a bit of sacrifice.
Same again? Same again.
HE CHUCKLES
Don't you wonder sometimes,
if just one small thing
had been changed in the past -
I mean, if Hitler had died at birth
or if someone had kidnapped him
as a baby and brought him up in,
I don't know, a Quaker house
THEY CHUCKLE
..surely things would be different.
Do you think Quakers
could kidnap a baby?
If they knew what was going
to happen, they might.
But nobody knows
what's going to happen.
And, anyway, even if they did,
could you kill a baby?
Yes,
if it would keep you safe.
Jimmy, this was a poor choice
of establishment. Depressing.
What? No, no, no, no, no.
There's music downstairs.
Excellent fun.
Wanted to show it to you.
Oops! Oops!
HE LAUGHS
Come and see. But you have to shhh.
WHISPERS: It's a secret.
THEY LAUGH
I suppose we should follow him.
Yes, he seems in danger
of becoming unwieldy.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
BAND PLAYS JAUNTY TUNE
Oh!
# Kiss me goodnight, Sergeant Major
# Tuck me in my little wooden bed
# We all love you, Sergeant Major
# When we hear you bawling,
"Show a leg!"
# Don't forget to wake me
in the morning
# And bring me round
a nice hot cup of tea
# Kiss me goodnight, Sergeant Major
# Sergeant Major,
be a mother to me #
Evening, soldier. Just enjoy it.
It's story time, everyone!
CHEERING
Let's go! Shall we?
# Private Jim came in one night
Full of cheer and very bright
# He'd been out all day
up on the spring
# He bumped into the Sergeant's man
# Pops his arms around his neck
# And in his ear
he whispered tenderly
# He said, "Kiss me goodnight,
Sergeant Major" #
Were we wrong to leave Jimmy there?
Is he going to be all right?
He seemed in his element.
Did you have any idea that he likes
to frequent places like that?
No! Do you care? No.
He could be dead in a week.
He should do what he wants.
Izzie will be thrilled.
HE CHUCKLES
"Noble tradition, all that.
"All the best poets and so forth."
This is me.
You should leave me here.
Be as safe as you can.
Will do.
Fly very carefully.
Try not to die. I'll do my best.
Teddy?
AIR-RAID SIREN BLARES
Oh, bad luck to cross
on the stairs, Miss Todd.
You're going the wrong way.
I forgot my knitting.
NARRATOR: Ursula's nightly ritual
involved gathering in the basement
with the other tenants
of the boarding house.
Miss Todd. Sorry. Hello.
BABY CRIES
EXPLOSION, BABY SCREAMS
Ursula thought of Teddy
in his plane
..somewhere over Germany right now.
VIOLENT RUMBLING
Shall I take Emile for a moment?
Why don't I take Emile? I'm sorry.
Hello!
SHE SINGS
You're very good with babies,
Miss Todd.
You shouldn't wait much longer.
WHISTLING OVERHEAD
SMASHING, RUMBLING
HIGH-PITCHED TONE
MUFFLED: Hello?
Hello there, my love.
We'll get you out of here
in a jiffy.
SHE MUMBLES INDISTINCTLY
What's that, my darling?
Baby. Oh, we'll find your baby.
Don't you worry about that, my love.
Don't go.
So glad I'm not going to die alone.
You're going to be fine, my darling.
Stay awake. Keep talking.
You know
..I saw Hitler once.
Did you? Really?
I was in the mountains.
I waved.
Should have stayed in Germany.
Tried to get him.
Well, someone's going to get him.
Don't you worry about that,
my darling.
I don't know why we live.
We just die. You're not going
to die. Squeeze my hand.
It's so kind of you to be with me.
I just want a good death.
How do you have a good death?
Hurry! Over here!
I want my Ted.
NARRATOR: Ursula worked
at the Home Office by day,
cataloguing
London's injured and dead,
and at night, she volunteered
as an air-raid warden,
seeing the casualties of the
relentless bombing raids first-hand.
If they can't tell you their name,
then you call them "my lovely",
"my darling", "my dear" -
any term of endearment like that.
It comforts them. Yes, all right.
You're doing superbly.
It's just a little trick. Course.
Apparently, there's quite a lot
of people unaccounted for.
Get down!
RUMBLING
Thank you. Go and see if there
were some lucky ones in there.
AIR-RAID SIREN BLARES
Hello?
MOANING
Hello?
Hello. I'm coming.
Hello, my lovely. My name's Ursula.
I'm with the volunteer
Air Raid Precautions department.
What's your name, sweetheart?
SHE MUMBLES INDISTINCTLY
Again?
Baby. Baby?
His name is Emile.
Emile?
We'll find him. We'll find him.
But, first, I'm going to get you to
a stretcher, all right?
WHISPERS: Oh, God.
There's a woman in there,
alive, only just.
We should hurry.
I didn't get her name.
I was looking for her baby.
Did you find her baby?
Deceased, I'm afraid.
I'll take you to the mother.
Hurry! Stretcher here, now!
Oh, shit. Sorry.
PLANE DRONES OVERHEAD
NARRATOR: Surrounded by death,
Ursula had never wanted
to live more.
If only this were the world.
Cigarette?
I don't really smoke.
I don't really fuck strange women
in posh houses.
I like it, though.
THEY LAUGH
Is this the real world?
Bombs falling? You and me?
Probably not.
If we win this war, do you think
we'll build a better world,
like the politicians keep saying?
I don't know. I don't think so.
We have to.
Otherwise, what's it all for?
What's the point in anything?
Don't think too hard.
You'll hurt your head.
Have you got any food? No.
There's only wine in the cellar.
Very good wine, I might add.
This is my aunt's place.
She's wonderfully rich.
Well, let's go get some, then.
NARRATOR: They drank wine in bed.
For some reason,
there was no air-raid siren
that night
when the first bombs fell.
They both died instantly.
SHE MOANS
The cord's around her neck.
Strangled before she had
a chance to live.
God wanted her back.
He wanted her back.
I have sewing scissors.
SHE GROANS
SCISSORS SLICE, BABY CRIES
In this life, Ursula was
frequently lost in thought.
From an early age, she wondered
about the meaning of life,
which at first amused
and impressed her parents,
and later became concerning.
No. Why not?
What is the point
in studying philosophy?
Where to begin?
To discover life's purpose.
Intellectual curiosity -
dangerous in a woman, and thrilling.
Shut up, Izzie. Sylvie, can you not?
I'm so sorry.
Izzie, cease to speak.
Ha-ha! Very witty.
Looking for the meaning of life,
are you, little bear?
Seems a good enough question
on which to pin a degree -
the meaning of life,
the purpose of life.
Are we alive? Do we exist?
Teddy, leave cake
for everybody else, please.
The cake no longer exists.
When you've got some answers,
tell the rest of us, would you?
Oh, who bloody cares?
The meaning of your life
is to have a baby,
which is exactly
what you'll end up doing.
Why Oxford should waste
a degree on you, I can't imagine.
You're a repulsive human being.
You repel me.
I happen to know
the meaning of life,
in case anyone is interested.
Take care of each other.
That's all I ask.
Women going to university -
in my day, it wasn't done.
I was packed off
to finishing school.
Not terribly useful. I envy you.
But you've done so well.
You make your own money.
You drive your own car.
I admire you.
That's the nice thing about time,
isn't it?
The more it moves forward, the
better this silly old world gets,
especially for us girls.
You study
whatever you want to study,
and you give it your all.
You're a clever girl
and a pretty girl.
The deck is stacked in your favour.
You could do great things.
CAR ENGINE STARTS
NARRATOR: She was spending
the summer in Germany.
Here it comes! She was drawn
to Germany, for some reason.
EXCITED CHATTER
GIRLS CHEER
Mein Fuhrer! Mein Fuhrer!
The hysteria
among her female friends
surrounding the dank and
puffy Austrian confused Ursula
..but she fell in
with a more intellectual crowd,
who all agreed Hitler
was tremendously flawed.
The only question was
how and when he might be deposed.
THEY ARGUE IN GERMAN
A clever and ambitious German lawyer
called Jurgen
had fallen in love with her.
He made her happy.
Within a year, they were married,
and her plans for the future
took a different turn.
Hello, little one.
Frieda.
Hello, Frieda.
Welcome, Frieda.
Well done.
Well done, well done,
well done, well done.
Frieda, slow down!
She's all right.
She's enjoying herself.
No, she has weak lungs.
She has to be careful.
Can I ask you something?
When you're in Germany, and you hear
people say things against the Jews,
do you speak up at all?
The people I know
don't talk that way.
And when you see shops owned by Jews
with their windows shattered
and graffiti all over them,
as we see here in the press,
do you do anything?
Like what?
Get into a fist fight?
No, I don't.
And you wouldn't either.
I wouldn't live there.
No fighting, please.
This is supposed to be
a special time.
Ursula's only here for the week.
I wish Jurgen could have come.
They keep him very busy.
"They"
..meaning the Nazi Party.
He had to join the Party
or he couldn't work,
and we need people in the Party
with cooler heads.
I need to put Frieda down
for her nap.
How's everything?
I don't know how receptive
she'll be to the conversation.
We still have to have it.
Frieda! Mm. Come on!
Your father and I
are worried about you,
and so are your brothers and sister.
If there's going to be a war
..we wondered if there was any way
for all of you
to come to Fox Corner.
Maurice could find work for Jurgen.
Jurgen will never agree to that.
Just you and Frieda, then.
Choose my country over my husband?
I don't know. I don't know
what the right thing is.
Let's see how things develop.
Jurgen's fairly confident
that there'll be no war.
Oh, good. So is Maurice.
You have to pay
very close attention,
because if they're wrong,
you have to get out
before the borders close.
I will, Dad.
I'll pay very close attention.
I'll try to get out and visit you
in the next few months.
Yes, all right.
Would you like that -
if Grandma came to visit?
NARRATOR: The day war was declared,
Ursula ran to the British embassy,
dragging Frieda by the hand.
The gates were padlocked
and there were no lights on
in the building.
"They've gone,"
the passer-by told her.
"You've missed them."
Jurgen had died
in a bombing raid in '44
..and later that year,
Teddy was shot down over Berlin.
Why is it there?
The British bombed the zoo.
Lots of the animals escaped.
Ursula was astonished daily
that she and her daughter
were still alive.
Their stomachs were empty
..except for two half-raw potatoes
eaten the day before.
If Frieda hadn't been sick,
they might have joined
the exodus of people heading west,
away from the Russians
..but there was no way
she would survive such a journey.
AIR-RAID SIREN BLARES
Get up. You have to keep moving.
We have to.
SHE COUGHS
Just sit.
Sit.
I know.
BOMBING IN DISTANCE
Oh, yes.
I was going to tell you
about the chickens.
Your grandmother got chickens
during the last war
..because we were also worried
about food.
We thought we could eat their eggs.
But she kept the chickens
even when the war was over,
I think because
she fell in love with them.
Then, one day, young Uncle Teddy,
young Uncle Jimmy
opened up the chicken coop
when they weren't supposed to
..because they wanted to surprise
everybody with a chicken parade.
BOMBING CONTINUES IN DISTANCE
NARRATOR: As she drifted
into sleep
..Ursula had the terrible sense that
she'd forgotten to do something.
She found herself trying to remember
why she had come to Germany
in the first place.
There had been some task.
What was it?
I hear the baby nearly died.
"Fragile" was the word
they used for her.
What's wrong? I don't know.
It's melancholia. It's melancholia.
It's nothing to be frightened of.
Teddy? Excuse me.
Ursula, a word.
No. What?
Please don't do this.
Please don't what?
I don't know. What?
What is it? What?!
It's about Teddy.
He caught one.
No.
Yes.
Very tough. Very tough.
This war is
..very evil.
HE CLEARS HIS THROA
Go ahead - take the rest
of the day off. I'll clear it.
Do you need someone
to take you home?
No.
Ooh! You all right?
Let me help you.
SHE SCREAMS
SHE SOBS
SHE SCREAMS
Ursula?
Ursula Todd? Remember me?
Dr Kellet?
Your father hunted me down,
thought you might enjoy a visit.
I do remember you.
I was quite young. Yes,
but very bright and interesting.
You thought you'd been here before.
Do you believe me?
Or are you pretending?
Anything's possible.
That's what gives me hope.
I heard you
..lost a brother in the war.
I didn't misplace him.
I didn't put him down
and forget where.
He was murdered
by some other poor chap
in a killing machine.
I lost my son in the war.
I do feel as though I misplaced him,
and he's liable to show up again
any minute.
But as you said
..he was killed.
How do you go on?
Amor fati - a love of fate.
Nietzsche was drawn to the concept.
Did we ever talk about that?
I hope not. I was ten.
HE CHUCKLES
It means simple acceptance
of what comes to us,
regarding it as
neither bad nor good.
"Werde, der du bist,"
as he would have it.
Do you know what that means?
It means "become who you are".
Nietzsche got that from Pindar
..who put it rather better.
"Become such as you are,
having learned what that is."
I'll tell you who I became.
Yes, why don't you?
A corpse.
A corpse
..among corpses.
But you're breathing,
so your analogy
is highly inaccurate.
If I have been here before
..and if I'm coming again
..next time, I'll do so much better.
I keep thinking,
"If I could just remember"
It's maddening not to remember.
But if I could just remember,
if I could just get there
soon enough
Get where? Munich.
If I could have gone to Munich
soon enough,
I could have changed everything.
You couldn't. Why?
Because the world is the world.
I hate it.
I hate it here.
I miss my brother.
I miss my son.
But we have no choice.
You have no choice.
I'm coming, Teddy.
Good shots for a girl.
My little bear,
you're a real Annie Oakley.
TRAM BELL DINGS
GUNSHOTS, SCREAMING
She has bad dreams often,
and a kind of deja vu all the time.
Really?
She has said to me more than once
that she thinks
she's been here before.
Perhaps she has.
Dr Kellet,
you came highly recommended.
I hope I wasn't misinformed.
Her reality is her reality.
Perhaps it's a neurological blip
in her brain.
Perhaps it's objective truth.
Does it matter?
What she feels is what she feels.
Well, fine.
Ah! Very good.
What is that?
It's a snake
with its tail in its mouth.
It's a symbol representing
the circularity of the universe.
What?
The idea is that there is
no such thing as linear time.
We're always in the past,
we're always in the future,
which is to say, neither exists.
There is only the now.
I just want her to be happy.
She seems to find the world
such a frightening place.
But it is a frightening place.
That makes perfect sense.
That being said, amor fati. What?
Have you read any Nietzsche?
I'm ten.
TEDDY: What if we could come back
and live it all over
..again and again and again?
Wouldn't that be fantastic?
They're the two best words
in the English language
when you put them together.
"What if?"
This is me.
You should leave me here.
Teddy?
Love you.
Ursula? What?
Thank you.
Ursula, a word.
Looks delish. I'll dish it up.
Why is everyone so quiet?
This is a party.
I think I might have to lie down.
Don't lie down. Stay for the cake.
You haven't even had cake.
If she wants to lie down,
she can lie down.
Teddy used to say,
"Wouldn't it be great
"if we could do it all again?"
Do it all again? Yes.
Come back and try to put right
all the things we did wrong. Yes.
Live our favourite moments again.
You couldn't pay me
to do this again.
What about you?
I'd do it again.
I love being alive.
Well, you have your children intact.
You have most of yours,
and grandchildren,
a wonderful husband, a house,
Jimmy's on his way home.
You have plenty to be thankful for
in spite of everything.
Easy on your mother, dear.
Thank you, Izzie.
Hugh, it's your birthday.
You're very elderly now.
All right! Would you do it all again
in spite of everything?
Oh, my God, yes.
I'd do it all again just to see
Ursula take her first steps.
I understand
I've never been a favourite,
but I do feel everyone could be
more subtle about it.
I'd do it again to see Pamela
beat Maurice at tennis
for the first time.
The look on his face.
CHUCKLING
HE GROANS, SHE LAUGHS
THEY GROAN, LAUGH
Oh, I would definitely return.
Return in many guises.
That wasn't an option.
I don't care.
I'd be a spy.
I'd be an ardent lover
of an entrapped Bulgarian princess.
That sounds like something
you might have already done.
Not yet, but you're right -
never say never.
What about you, little bear?
Would you do it all over again?
I told Teddy I would.
I told Teddy it would be wonderful.
Got any inside information for us,
little bear?
When's the bloody war
going to be over?
Oh, you know, by Christmas.
Are we winning?
We choose to believe we are.
I don't suppose
you'd consider leaving work,
stay with us at Fox Corner?
London is so dangerous now.
I'm very careful.
I knew a chap in the trenches
who lit a match.
Bob's your uncle - German sniper
shot his head clean off.
Good chap. Name of Rogerson.
Same as the baker's in the village.
No relation.
Poor fellow.
You know what I took from it?
You keep your head below the parapet
and your light beneath a bushel.
I know you don't mean that.
Not really. Yes, I do.
I do. I would rather you were
a coward than dead, little bear.
I couldn't bear it
if anything happened to you.
You never talk about your war,
what you did, what you saw.
I saw the same thing
every soldier sees.
God and the devil.
God and the devil.
Death everywhere
..and an extraordinary amount
of human kindness.
# Again
# This couldn't happen again
# This is that once in a lifetime
# This is the thrill divine
# What's more
# This never happened before
# Though I have prayed
for a lifetime
# That such as you
# Would suddenly be mine
# Mine to hold
# As I'm holding you now
# And yet never so near
# Mine to have when the now #