by Alex Reeve
This was foolishness. ‘Maria’s mother is dead.’
Audrey shook her head. ‘No, that’s her all right. Maria took her to church most Sundays. She used to set off at dawn and walk all the way to Bow, and half the time she’d get there and Mrs Mills would be too sickly. She still enjoys a drink or two, or five or six, even now.’ Audrey confided the last words in a whisper. ‘She’s more mould than bread these days, is the truth.’
‘Are you sure that’s her mother? Not an aunt or a friend?’
‘Course. It’s tragic really. Who’ll take her to church now?’
I couldn’t believe what she was saying. I’d spent hours comforting Maria about her mother’s death. I tried to make sense of it.
‘Did you say her name is Mills?’
‘Yes, Maria’s name was Mills. Maria Mills. Milanes was just her stage name, if you like. She was a proper actress, that one. Brought up that way, she said, and I think she really might’ve been. Not like me, I never had the knack. Too honest, I s’pose. But Maria came in one day, rabbiting on about this shop she’d been in called Milanes, selling purses and shoes and such, and how exotic it sounded.’ She smiled sadly, clasping her hands together. ‘She called herself Milanes ever afterwards, and the gentlemen seemed to like it. I could never bring myself to do the same. Plain old Audrey Kerry, me.’
‘But she told me her mother was dead.’
‘Don’t think too ill of her.’ Audrey wiped her eyes with her sleeve, as Mummy used to tell me off for doing when I was seven. ‘She couldn’t help what she was.’
I edged closer to Mrs Mills. Now I had a good look at her, the family resemblance was striking – the same triangular face and curly hair, the same sharp nose and small hands, just transposed to an older and considerably more florid form. She was all that was left of Maria, a link to her past and a ghastly warning about her future, if she’d had one.
I felt churlish, being angry with Maria at her own funeral, but I couldn’t help it. Why had she lied, to me of all people? She knew I wasn’t born with the name Leo Stanhope. She knew everything about me.
The carriage with the pall-bearers arrived; six young men dressed identically in funeral garb. They were cheerful, whispering and smirking behind their hands. The driver spoke sternly to them, but they continued to grin apishly as soon as his back was turned.
And finally, the hearse, a glass box on wheels pulled by two horses. It was progressing slowly, and our little group had grown quite restless by the time it reached us. The casket was so small I couldn’t believe she could be within it. Even having seen her in death myself, I was still wishing there had been some terrible mix-up, and she was sitting at home in her room wondering where everyone had gone.
Some passers-by on the pavement stopped and removed their hats, and the driver of a carriage slowed respectfully. I could see shadowy faces pressed up against the windows, fascinated by it all: the solemnity, the ceremony, the weeping, the death.
The lads slid out the casket and hefted it clumsily on to their shoulders. For a second I feared she would be hurt.
The hearse driver and the reverend led the way into the cemetery, followed at a stately pace by Mrs Brafton, the Colonel and Mrs Mills, the latter tottering uncertainly, and then the girls and the ladies. I was last, on my own.
Elm trees lined the pathway on either side, and beyond them lay little beds of purple shrubs and patchy lawns awaiting the dead. In the distance, the chapel’s domed roof stood out against a cloudless sky.
This is it, I told myself. They’re going to bury her now. Maria will be put into the ground in this place. What am I to do then?
After perhaps five minutes of walking, the grass on either side became punctuated by tombstones, statues and crosses, clean and stark, casting shadows over one another. The further we went, the denser and more weathered they became, a memorial forest with green lichen and moss creeping up from the roots, shrouding the names and dates of the deceased.
We turned left at the crossroads towards an empty area, damp in the shade of the trees, where an oblong hole was already sliced out of the ground. The lads placed the casket on a wooden bier on the further side. Mrs Brafton and Mrs Mills took up prime positions at the head of the grave, next to the reverend. I was shoved down towards the other end.
The reverend cleared his throat, but at that moment there was a sound behind us. A gentleman and a lady were approaching from the chapel. He was finely dressed, in a top hat and fashionable frock-coat, carrying a rolled-up umbrella which he was twirling in his hand. As he came closer I could see he was broad and plump, with a ruddy face and a well-groomed beard, scattered with grey.
Beside him, or just a step behind, she was a dainty miniature, listening attentively as he spoke. Her dress was black and made of the finest silk, far outshining even Mrs Brafton’s, and soft enough to show the outline of her legs as she walked. It was lacy at the neck and pinched in at the waist, sweeping up behind her in a confection of folds and layers that seemed to float in the air. Her mouth was broad and her skin was pale with just enough years to have fostered smile lines. I couldn’t help but stare at her, even here, even now. Any man would.
‘Good afternoon everyone! What a turnout, eh?’ the gentleman called to us, in the sort of tone you might hear any day in the better parts of Mayfair. And yet there was something in how he pronounced the ‘r’ in ‘turnout’ that echoed rolling fields and bubbling brooks rather than England’s better public schools. Jane, far more attuned to social dissonances than I, could doubtless have placed his accent to a specific county, but even I knew it was a long way west of here.
I had never seen Mrs Brafton look so gratified. ‘Mr Bentinck,’ she said, shuffling the girls and Mrs Mills along to make room for the gentleman by her side, leaving no gap for the lady. ‘How wonderful that you’ve come.’
‘Oh no, you should stand at the head, Mrs Brafton,’ said Mr Bentinck, indicating the spot with his umbrella. ‘Miss Gainsford and I will do quite well over here.’
Mrs Brafton edged uncomfortably back towards the reverend, half-turned away from him as if to deny it was any longer her proper place, while Miss Gainsford moved between the group, kissing the girls on each cheek in the Continental style, and even allowing the Colonel to raise her hand to his dry lips. When she reached me she gazed into my eyes and I kissed her hand also, amazed at the softness of her glove and the lightness of her touch.
‘Nancy Gainsford,’ she said, and even through her air of bookishness there was a hint of the docks. The whiff of cockles never quite washes out. ‘And you are?’
‘Leo Stanhope,’ I replied, feeling awkward that I didn’t have a formal invitation. She frowned slightly, as if trying to remember something.
When she’d greeted everyone, she took her place among the ladies, who fidgeted like mallards next to a sleek, white tern.
‘Carry on, my dear chap,’ Bentinck said to the reverend, who began to speak, or rather, deaf as he was, he began to shout.
He explained to us that Maria was a good, Christian woman and had lived a decent life. A couple of the girls – I counted seven of them, although it seemed like more – exchanged glances at this. He continued, yelling that Maria had been cruelly taken from us in an act of violence that could only come from the devil, and that the perpetrator – at which point he paused and, I thought, might have glanced at me – would come to judgement, probably in this world and certainly the next. Then he leafed through his Bible while I dug my nails into my palms. He found his place and started up again, raising the pigeons from the trees above us. I had heard the reading many times before – it was a favourite of my father’s – and I could easily have recited it alongside him, but I barely heard the parts about a time to heal, to embrace and to laugh, and fixated instead on the time to kill, to rend, to hate and make war. That was where old Solomon really struck a chord.
The girls and Mrs Brafton were openly weeping, and even Miss Gainsford was dabbing her eyes. Only Mrs Mills seemed unaffec
ted, grinning like an imbecile and humming to herself.
The pall-bearers started threading ropes into the handles of the casket. The corners of my mouth twitched downwards and my chin start to tremble. I clamped my teeth together hard. Of course, I knew men were capable of tears – I’d watched husbands identify their wife’s remains, and had once had to lend a tactful handkerchief to Alfie when he reached the final chapters of The Old Curiosity Shop – but not me. Never me. I mustn’t draw attention.
The pall-bearers paid out the ropes hand over hand, lowering the casket into the ground, and I noticed something out of the corner of my eye. A woman was standing aside from the rest of us, eighty or more yards away. She wasn’t wearing black, and was hesitant, pacing up and down as if she wanted to join us but didn’t know whether she’d be welcome. She found a bench and sat down to watch from a distance.
Mrs Brafton noticed her too, and whispered loudly to Mr Bentinck, and then pointed at her. He nodded and strode off, but the woman hurried away towards the chapel before he could reach her.
The reverend closed with a blessing, and then announced there would be beer, sandwiches and cake served in the Station Tavern on Lillie Road, kindly paid for by the estimable Mr Bentinck.
I stayed at the graveside. I didn’t want to be first into the pub, although I would’ve had to run full pelt to overtake a couple of the pall-bearers, who had shot off in that direction as though launched from catapults. The laggards waited gallantly for the girls, offering comforting arms around their shoulders.
I looked down into the hole, and had a fleeting fear of falling in. There were brush marks on the lid of the casket. I had thought it was made of mahogany or teak, but in fact it was a soft, pallid wood dyed darker to appear more expensive. I felt a sudden fury – with Mrs Brafton for not buying something befitting Maria, and with Maria herself for lying, for dying, for being in that box instead of here with me.
There was a sound behind me. An old fellow was standing there, propped up by his shovel.
‘I’ll be wanting to fill that in,’ he said, indicating the pile of earth on the grass.
‘Just give me a few minutes, please.’
‘Aye, I’ll give you five, but no more.’ He put his shovel on his shoulder and wandered off to fill in some other hole, or dig one, or have a cup of tea in his shed. I didn’t give a damn as long as he left me alone.
I sat down on the grass under a tree, remembering Maria’s voice, and her laugh, when I noticed the woman who’d been there earlier, who’d watched us from the bench. She was walking towards the grave, the sun behind her forming a saintly halo. As she came closer, I saw she was perhaps fifty years old, with a moon-shaped face and hair that might once have been black, but was faded now, white-streaked and flamboyantly swept underneath her hat. Her clothes were plain, but not fraying or patched.
She lowered her head at the graveside, and crossed herself in the manner of Roman Catholics. As I stood up, she startled, not having noticed me before.
‘I shan’t be staying,’ she said hastily. ‘I just wanted to pay my respects.’
‘It’s quite all right. How did you know Maria?’
‘Why do you ask?’ There was a keen intelligence in her gaze, which rested for an instant on my chest and hips, and then my eyes. I felt as if she was totting me up like a column of figures, and I’d been found slightly short.
‘I just want to know more about her. It turns out … I didn’t know her as well as I thought. Are you a friend of her mother?’
‘Like I said, I’m not staying.’ She squinted in the direction the others had gone. ‘I’m not welcome.’
‘Why not?’ I’d had enough of mysteries. ‘I’m curious to know, if you don’t mind.’
She rolled her eyes and fished into her purse. ‘Not here. Come to my house, if you must.’
She handed me a card and stalked away towards the entrance without waiting for a reply. The card was thin and messily hand-stamped:
Madame Louisa Moreau
3 Finsbury Street
Midwife
Suddenly I didn’t feel like staying. I wiped my eyes and took a fistful of the soil piled up on the grass, mixing my tears with it so part of me would always be with her. I let it pour into the grave and watched it skittering across the lid.
The pub was packed. The hearse driver turned out to be the funeral director as well, a Mr Atkins, the younger Mr Atkins he proudly announced, having been given this task by his father as an act of trust, so he’d be obliged for any appreciative comments we might have, preferably in writing.
He’d arranged for the wake to take place in the back bar of the Station Tavern for just the price of the victuals, and the landlord had lined up sandwiches and half-pint glasses of porter on the counter. I took one and sipped from it, relishing the sourness in my throat. There was a cake too, which the landlord was cutting with a long, bone-handled knife. I drained my glass and took another. Blessed numbness; it was the only way I could stop myself from running off down the street.
All around, the noise was rising and falling like waves at the seashore. Audrey was on the far side of the room with Mrs Brafton, who spoke closely into her ear. Audrey nodded, and they broke off their conversation as one of the other girls joined them.
I didn’t know why I was there. I should have gone home. The burial was over, and no one wanted to talk to me; word seemed to have got round, and I kept getting strange glances, as though I might suddenly turn rabid and butcher everyone.
I decided to finish my drink and leave, but one of the ladies, who was showing her respects by eating a plate of sandwiches and quaffing a third glass of porter, cornered me to ask, with a leering expression and wet lips, whether I’d ever spent any time in a mental asylum. I was about to tell her that I had not, but I did sometimes feel a strange madness upon me, finding myself grovelling on all fours, snatching and growling like a wild animal, when someone tapped on a bottle several times. Gradually, the talking ceased until only the Colonel and the reverend were still going, as deaf as one another. They were prodded and nudged into baffled silence.
Mr Bentinck gazed around the room with a sort of benign smile, as if he was about to bless us. He seemed like a kindly uncle who spends his spare time building model ships out of matchsticks.
‘A tragedy,’ he said. ‘A loss to us all. Let’s raise a glass to Maria.’
He sat down abruptly and there was a smattering of polite clapping. He had already recommenced talking to Mrs Brafton, gesturing with the stem of his pipe, when Miss Gainsford stood up and clinked a fork against her glass.
‘Thank you, James,’ she began, so quietly I had to strain to hear. ‘So very kind, but I feel more needs to be said. Maria was such a special person. We all loved her.’ For a second her voice cracked and she took a sip of porter. ‘I knew Maria for such a brief time. Just a few short years. She was a light in our lives though, wasn’t she? A light that has gone out, but I know we won’t ever forget her. She was a kind person, and as pretty as a picture.’ Her hand went to her cheek, as if involuntarily recalling Maria’s stain. ‘She came from nothing, you know. It was one of the things we had in common. She grew up penniless and did what she had to do to survive, for herself and her mother.’ She nodded towards Mrs Mills, who was perched by the bar with her back to us. ‘And she never complained, which is unusual in this modern age, isn’t it?’ She surveyed the room, her eyes resting longest on Mrs Brafton. ‘She was the best of us, I think. And now we have to carry on without her, though I don’t know how we shall.’
She sat down and sipped her drink, white-faced. Mrs Brafton exited in the direction of the privy.
The cake was just yellow crumbs now, but the knife was still on the plate. I picked it up, and it weighed nicely; not too big, not too small. I could see my face reflected in the steel, fogged by a smear of sponge. I thought about its sharpness, the ease of a scalpel parting the flesh. I thought about deep water, the weightless sensation of sinking down into it. I wasn’t af
raid of these thoughts. They gave me a kind of relief. I could leave at any time. I could leave and be with Maria.
‘Mr Stanhope?’ I turned and there was Miss Gainsford. She was standing very close, disconcertingly so, so that I could have seen down the front of her dress if I’d chosen to, which I didn’t, quite. I put down the knife. ‘I was very sorry to hear you were inconvenienced before, by the police. They really don’t have a clue about anything, do they?’
‘No indeed.’
‘We live in a topsy-turvy world, don’t you think?’ She seemed to have a practice of phrasing everything as a question, forcing me to agree with whatever she said. I wondered what she would do if I didn’t. ‘You were fond of Maria, weren’t you?’
‘We were fond of each other.’
‘Of course. She was special, and I adored her. I always used to give her first choice of things, dresses and jewellery and the like, although I couldn’t be too open about it because you don’t want to cause jealousies, and girls can be so petty.’ She wiped her eyes and stared at the floor, gathering herself. ‘The dress she’s in now was one of mine. Silk and lace. I had it made for a trip to the Continent and only wore it twice. I never guessed it would end up being used for this. Well you don’t, do you?’
‘It’s a kind thing to have done.’
‘It’s the least I could do, the very least. Not just as her employer, but as her friend.’
‘Oh, I thought –’
‘What?’ She angled herself even further forward. I could smell her hair.
‘I thought Mrs Brafton was her employer.’
‘Well, yes, of course.’ She appeared surprised that I didn’t know. ‘Elizabeth runs the place on Half Moon Street, but Mr Bentinck owns it. That place and some others as well, although it’s the … let’s say it’s the ruby in the crown of our empire. I help him with this and that, ledgers and accounts and so forth.’
‘So Mrs Brafton’s just a kind of manager?’
‘You might say that, I suppose.’ She placed her hand on my shoulder and whispered into my ear. ‘She’s just staff really, more of a housekeeper. She’s a fearful snob and acts like the lady of the manor, but it’s a place of business at the end of the day, and businesses have to make a profit, don’t they?’ She flashed me a brief smile. I inhaled her perfume and watched her lips. The way she angled her head and looked straight into my eyes almost invited a kiss. ‘Did Maria never mention me?’