The English Descendants

43

Rose takes the summer semester off from school and flies to England with Eddie. The weather is beautiful when they land in London. They check into a hotel and, while Rose sleeps, Eddie drinks excessive amounts of coffee and spends the day pouring through genealogical records searching for references to Allerdale Hall or the Sharpe family. She has the documents from The British Clay Mining Corporation with her. By the time the library closes, she has a rough idea where the house sat and she knows the names of a few small villages nearby. She sits down with a map over supper and charts their journey. She asks for Thomas' help, but he does not answer.

After one more day of rest, they set off on buses and trains to the farther reaches of the country. Both women expected to see more development in the villages they pass, but some of them look very much like they must have in Thomas and Lucille's time. They find the mine first and approach the offices, explaining who they are and why they are there. The manager is kind and lets them go through the old maps and photographs. The story of how they acquired this land is, according to the manager, a bit of a legend in the company. The woman who sold it to them, the widowed Lady Sharpe, set the whole thing on fire just after she signed the deed. Her version of disposing of her possessions still on the property. Rumour has it, he tells them, that there had been murders in the house. Eddie grins at him and tells him the rumours are true- she knows this because they are descendants of Widow Sharpe. His eyes grow as wide as tea saucers.

From the mine, they move from village to village, searching church registries for the Sharpe graves. They also look for the names of his first three wives. Pamela Upton, Margaret McDermott, Enola Sciotti. But they find nothing. They stay the night in the fourth village and start again in the morning. Rose, ever the librarian, wants to reorganize all their record keeping systems to more efficient methods. Eddie tells her to knock it off more than once.

In the fifth village, which would have been the closest to Allerdale Hall before the mine, they find what they are looking for. Eddie goes to the little drug store and asks where she can buy flowers. He has some in a bucket on the back stair that he hasn't yet arranged. He asks what they are for and when she tells him they are for the graves of her ancestors, he offers them to her. She pays him and carries out an armload of flowers.

Eddie and Rose sit on the church steps and bundle stems while eating their lunch. Rose does not understand why there is one for Lucille.

"Because she was just acting out of all the horrible things that had happened to her. Even people with severe trauma in their lives need flowers. Sometimes even more."

"You're too damn nice, Ed. She deserves a dead squid."

"No. No squid. We're doing this right."

"For her, a squid would be right."

Eddie rolls her eyes, picks up her bag, and takes the bundles of flowers with her into the churchyard, "Come on. We've got graves to find." They wander amongst the headstones, reading names, reading dates. They find the women's stone first- it is shaped like three arches and spans the width of three narrow grave-sites, one name on each. A worn little lamb sits in front of Enola's section of the stone. She chooses three large bundles of flowers and places one at the base of each stone and ties a small posy around the neck of the little lamb.

"Now, Edith's diary said they buried the Sharpe's as far from the wives as they could, and also as far from each other- so Thomas and Lucille should be this way and this way." She points to the opposite corners of the cemetery. Rose trots after her, wary.

They find Thomas' headstone first. Simple, a single white slab with his name and dates of birth and death, "You stay here. I'm going to go look for Lucille's over there," Eddie says.