Bungalow on the outside of town with the trade winds going like mad. 1965 and 1966 soon to be born.
Grandmother gone but the house shut up since. The little house rented out to tourist people but the big house empty. Down for Christmas and Mother opening up the closet in the hall.
Things needing to be gone through and given out. A brass box covered with maharajahs hunting elephants from the old days. Grandfather’s own grandfather the one on the top must be.
So rich and a palace with gems the size of a tennis ball or so they say. Dancing girls around every corner and who knows what else.
Grandmother, too. A governess, the aunties say, swept off her feet under a different tropical sun by a gentleman with a wild look in his eye and a diamond the size of a plum stuck to his shirt.
That lost in a poker game and everyone off to somewhere in Empire. India to Uganda and then Singapore. Grandmother always wanting to get back to Wales but no. Had to be somewhere warm.
Time and more time. The closet done and the rest begun. Pictures to take down with each one kissed. Pictures of aunts and uncles from wherever they ended up. Left behind in different places, no life left at home and a new home somewhere where whoever it is in Buckingham Palace still reigns. A real home wherever one was born and the others not.
But the last picture with another inside. Flowers it is. But the English country garden kind in the pale colors places with pale suns always have. Great grandmother’s it must have been from the big house they had to sell.
Everything gone but still. . . . . things scattered around to remember with . . . forever to remember them in.
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