I knew, of course, was the Baltic Wharf, but I wasn’t about to tell Sam that. I did wonder if Crimson was still there.
Bristol proper was smaller than I expected, and hillier. Walking was quite arduous, especially when I had to push Will, which was normally the case after about half an hour under his own steam, when he conked out.
The next day we found the building where Sam’s parents had rented their flat, we found the school the girls had attended, the church they went to on Sundays, and we found the tailor’s shop where their mother had worked as a needlewoman. Nothing seemed to have changed.
Sam stood outside the school, slowly shaking her head. “Look how small it is. I remember it as a huge place—a cavernous hall, big heavy doors, a vast playground. As, of course, it seemed to a tot like me.”
She recognized some of her erstwhile neighbors and school friends, but no one seemed to recognize her—she’d been gone from their lives for too long, and of course had grown up. It was only because they hadn’t moved that she recognized them. And she didn’t introduce herself.
She showed me a river nearby where the sisters used to go bathing in summer, an orphanage where the boys would chase them, and the warehouse where imported sherry was stored, with a back entrance the girls could sneak through to sample the “angel’s share,” the faint smell of fortified wine that escaped through the corks.
“As young girls we could get a little tipsy on the angel’s share,” she said with a guilty smile.
She was pleased we had come, I think. “I wondered, in the train on the way down, if all I would remember was our father.” She looked serious for a moment. “But no. It has brought back my sisters in an earlier time, when we were all together. Before … before we grew up.”
On the way back into the center of Bristol, where the hotel was located, we stopped off at a cemetery.
“I want to show you something,” said Sam softly.
She found the grave she was looking for without any trouble— her memory was good.
“Look at that,” she said.
From the names on the gravestone, which we could read only with difficulty, because it was so overgrown, there were about half a dozen people buried in this one plot, some of them named Ross, but not all.
“My father’s parents and grandparents are here, and my mother’s parents, and one of her aunts.” She looked up at me. “We used to come here a lot, with my mother. She wasn’t maudlin, or anything like that. She would come here, tidy the grave, clean it up, put fresh flowers in the vase, all the while singing to herself and talking to her mother and father as though they were still with us. No one thought it odd— everyone did it, and us girls would sit and have a picnic on the grass. It was what everybody did in those days; at weekends the cemetery was quite crowded, and there were picnics all over the place, children playing, making a noise, laughing.” She smiled. “It sounds odd, but when I was growing up this cemetery was quite lively. Visiting the cemetery was part of our life, we did it every week, and in a way it was healthy. It showed us girls that death was a natural part of life, that life went on afterward, that grief eventually passes. We learned not to be afraid of death.”
She made no attempt to tidy the grave but turned away, back toward the entrance and the road that led into the center of town. “Where will we be buried, Hal? And who with? That sounds crazy— right? What does it matter who you are buried with—you’re not going to know it, are you? But I think a family grave is right, I think a family grave is a natural ending. With this war … with all those men, boys, being buried abroad, in some foreign field, with strangers, it’s not right.”
“Not strangers, Sam. Or not necessarily.” Will had been poking around other graves and I lifted him back into his pushchair. “I agree it’s not the same as being buried in a family grave, but many of the men killed on the battlefield will be buried with colleagues, comrades, others they knew, laughed with, smoked with … many will have come from the same town. And it’s not dishonorable, is it, to be