he was marvelous. He employed a lawyer, who took a statement from my mother’s sister, which confirmed that our father was belligerently drunk that day, had threatened my aunt with violence, and we sisters all testified that he had hit Ruth first and had fallen onto the knife.”
I wondered whether that part was true.
Sam threw the clump of grass she was holding into the air and the breeze took it away. “Anyway, our father’s death left our mother free to marry Sir Mortimer. She did, but not immediately and even then quite quietly, on a ship, and after he had paid for the three younger girls to be sent to boarding school, and from where I won a scholarship to teacher training college.”
“I’m relieved the story has a happy ending.”
She looked at me without blinking. I noticed that her eyes were watering. “My mother and Sir Mortimer were married by Captain Edward John Smith, master of the Titanic”.
Pause.
“You mean—?”
She bit her lip and nodded.
So much for a happy ending.
We had come to a fence, an iron fence with a kissing gate.
“Shall we turn back?” I said as softly as I could.
She nodded.
I gave her my handkerchief to dry her tears.
We walked most of the way back in silence. Halfway along the bank, however, she slipped her arm through mine. Now, what did that mean? Affection? Too early. More likely she just needed some human contact after the emotional effort involved in telling her story. I squeezed her arm with mine.
I didn’t say much until we were sitting in the train, waiting for it to leave Stratford station. “What happened between teacher training college and Middle Hill?”
“The college was in London, and in 1913 I came to a Shakespeare conference in Stratford.” She bit her lip again. “Shakespeare’s tragedies were my thesis subject at college. At the conference I met two teachers from the Middle Hill school, we got on, they mentioned there was a vacancy—and here I am.”
“So it’s your first teaching job?”
“Oh yes. I’m not… you know… that ancient.”
I grinned. “Do you like it?”
She didn’t say anything for a moment. Then the whistle sounded, the train juddered forward, and we were leaving the station. Amid all the steam and smoke and fuss of leaving, my question was never really answered.
The train wasn’t so empty on the way back, it was difficult to talk about personal things, and we both dozed off for a bit. The sunny day was turning cloudy and my mind, even when I dozed, was fastened on whether or not I could risk kissing Sam on the cheek when we parted. Was it too soon? I didn’t want to be rebuffed.
I walked her home from Middle Hill station, but when we turned off the bridge on to the canal towpath, Sam actually offered her cheek to be kissed. It was a dismissal but I was thrilled, and didn’t attempt to go further.
“Will you be at church in the morning?” I asked.
She shook her head.
“How about a walk in the afternoon?”
She nodded. “I’d like that. I’ll meet you at two-thirty in front of the school.”
Once again she didn’t seem to want me to pick her up.
She turned and walked on down the towpath.
I touched the cheek where she had kissed me.
So, there we have it. I had not mentioned Wilhelm and now had no intention of doing so. I was, so far as I knew, in love with Sam and at that point would probably have concealed any inconvenient fact, told any untruth—any lie—to have ingratiated myself with her. To be honest, I didn’t go into the rights and wrongs of it all very much, not then. The war might last a long while.
The moment Sam and I parted, by the canal, that Saturday, I missed her. Though I had just spent hours in her company, I wasn’t sure that I remembered her features properly. Yes, I recalled her smell exactly and vividly, the characteristic way she bit her lip, the way her Alice band shaped her face, how she held her knife and fork, the way the muscles in her throat moved when she swallowed her shandy. But I needed to see her face again, and soon.
The next day it rained. It rained as if it were winter, with a cold, insistent intensity, as if it were trying to stunt the growth of all the vegetation rather than make it possible. I went to matins, to help pass the time, because although I had no faith