Hazel could barely listen to what was being said, for a sudden flurry of nerves that she might have forgotten the medal, or mislaid it. She had already decided not to put it in her bag this morning. She had instead zipped it into a money-pocket inside her jacket. While the Colonel was speaking, she pressed the place with her elbow until she sensed its hard little points against her ribs. It was a relief, now, to take it out for what would be the last time. The Colonel saluted, and she and Dawn stood in silence. Hazel wanted to feel something go click inside herself, some sense of a door being quietly latched. But she had lived long enough to know that moments of release came unbidden at the oddest times: when you were brushing your teeth, or walking back to the car with a bag of groceries. Ceremony was grand and stirring, but it didn’t bring anything to an end. It didn’t resolve anything.

Loss, grieving, they made a person tired. It took such a constant effort of will, to keep on your feet.

Hazel placed the medal upon the outstretched cushion. She thought of the words used on Remembrance Day: The legion of the living salute the legion of the dead. It had to be that way around, Hazel understood, but just in this moment she wished it could be otherwise. She didn’t require a whole legion, just three. Her heart was something like that tattered flag behind the glass: battle-scarred, torn all away in places, but with certain names in silver thread still upon it. Her mother’s, her husband’s, Stephen’s, stitched indelibly into the cloth.

Acknowledgements

This book could not have been written without the outstanding research of Diana O’Sullivan, whose Rise and Fall of the Bell Family was a key source. I am only sorry that she did not live to see the publication of the book she inspired. Diana is much missed.

Passages from the letters of William Gale in Part 1 were taken verbatim from the real-life letters of Lieutenant George Frederick Dallas, published as Eyewitness in the Crimea (Greenhill Books, London, 2001). I am extremely grateful to the editor, Michael Hargreave Mawson, for kind permission to quote. The Crimean War is much documented, but Dallas’s account is among the most immediate and fresh.

William Gale’s letters also draw on material recorded in the correspondence of Sir Daniel Lysons, published as The Crimean War From First to Last (John Murray, London, 1895); Betty Askwith, published as Crimean Courtship (Michael Russell, 1985); and Major William Barnston and Major Roger Barnston, published as Letters from the Crimea and India (Herald Printers, 1998).

Thanks to all scholars and friends at the Crimean War Research Society and the members of [email protected].