by Mary Hooper
To one side of the pit stood a donkey and cart. This held three ragged, clumsily rolled bundles, for none of the paupers had been afforded even the most basic of coffins, but were carelessly wrapped in mean pieces of cloth provided by the Parish. A hank of human hair and an unwrapped leg protruded from one of these bundles, and Grace, noticing these, shuddered. At least, she thought, Mama had been spared the awful fate of a pauper’s grave, for there had been money enough when she’d died to give her a proper funeral and private burial space. Kindly neighbours had arranged this, although she could barely remember it. Grace silently thanked Mrs Smith the midwife for her guidance, too, for without this and the fare to Brookwood, her own baby would have gone into a mass grave such as the one before her.
At midday the gravediggers stopped to eat their newspaper-wrapped hunks of bread and cheese and, with no one to consider, didn’t hesitate to throw the paper, discarded rind and apple cores into the burial pit after. (‘Did you see that?’ Grace asked her companion, shocked, but Jane remained silent, staring dutifully ahead.) Their rough dinner finished, one of the men disappeared to the nearby tavern, The Fox and Grapes, and came back with a jug of ale which he balanced on top of the dug-up skull, causing the other man a great deal of merriment. The jug being emptied, work resumed and, having dug deeply enough, the pauper bodies were thrown in the pit, covered with earth and a light sprinkling of lime, and the gravediggers went back to the tavern to drink their wages.
Grace and Jane carried on waiting. Waiting, Grace thought, was not altogether agreeable, for it afforded too much time for worrying about her plight and, more especially, that of Lily. Her sister had always been protected, first by Mama and then by Grace; she’d had allowances made for her simplicity and been sheltered from the harsh truths of life. Who was looking after her welfare now? Was she being treated kindly at the Unwins’? Grace had asked Mrs Unwin several times how her sister was faring, but had only been told ‘The girl is doing as well as one might expect’ and ‘You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear’ – statements which did nothing to allay her concerns. Grace knew that she’d feel easier in her mind if she could visit Lily and see for herself, but so far she’d been unable to get to the Kensington house. The Unwins allowed their servants to have Sundays reasonably free, but on this day they were expected to go to the public baths, do their personal washing, darn their stockings, make repairs to clothes, press and brush down their mourning clothes and attend church morning and evening. However, Grace had calculated that it would take about an hour to walk to Kensington, and decided that she would get up very early the following Sunday, complete all her chores before the church service at noon and set off for Kensington straight after.
In the weeks that she’d been working for the Unwin family she’d learned a lot. The first few days had been deeply miserable while she tried to come to terms with all that had happened and endeavoured to accept that, from now on, this was how her life was going to be: she’d be separated from Lily; working long, hard hours (for when not attending funerals she was busy making shrouds, sewing coffin linings or embroidering mourning souvenirs); sharing a tiny room with Jane and having neither privacy nor a life of her own. But at least she had no concerns about the rent, she kept telling herself, or where the next crust was coming from, or about dying of cold on the London streets. Life at the Unwins’ wasn’t hard in the way it had been hard before, with starvation, destitution and the workhouse always at her shoulder, but hard in that she worked fourteen hours a day in miserable conditions and had no one she could call a friend.
She had a feeling, too, of something like homesickness. This didn’t make sense when her last home had been a bare and awful room and she and Lily had near starved to death in it, but that was the only word that came close to her feeling of being lonely and dispossessed.
All of it was that man’s fault, she knew that for certain; the man with one hand who’d come in the night and destroyed everything. If that hadn’t happened then she wouldn’t have run away; she would have stayed at the training establishment with Lily, learned to be a teacher and in time, perhaps, made a good marriage. Now that decent and ordinary life had slipped from her grasp, and what lay ahead seemed dark. She was a fallen woman, and would remain so.
Cold and weary from standing for such a long time, Grace wriggled her feet in her cheap black boots to try and warm them.
‘Aren’t you freezing?’ she asked Jane, still motionless beside her. ‘Don’t you long to be sitting in front of a good coal fire?’
Jane stared ahead.
‘Or placed under a parasol in the sun?’ Grace said recklessly. ‘Or in a boat on a lake, being rowed along, with a picnic basket beside you? Oh, do answer me, do!’
By way of reply, Jane altered her expression very slightly and gave a nod towards the street, where the slow roll of carriage wheels on gravel and the sound of drumbeats heralded the arrival of the funeral procession. Following the feather-bearer and just ahead of the mourners on horseback, Mr George Unwin led the dead man’s riderless stallion, his leather boots reversed in the stirrups to illustrate his demise. This was followed by several empty carriages owned by important families who, being out of London, had sent their landaus as a mark of respect.
As the coffin carriage passed them and went into the church, Grace noticed a neatly folded Union Jack lying on the expensively fringed pall, together with the great man’s feathered tricorne hat, which had been part of his official uniform when he was Lord Mayor of London some years previously. The family had requested that this hat, together with the flag, should be buried with the corpse, but Grace had spent enough time with the undertakers now to know that these would miraculously escape the grave and, come the next grand funeral, rise again and be charged for, as both items were worth a considerable amount.
None of these underhand goings-on surprised her. The Unwins were crooked, but no more or less than any of the card sharps, pawnbrokers, bird duffers or child kidnappers who populated the city of London. So what if they showed the client top-quality mahogany for their coffin but actually used cheap board? Who cared if they used tin nameplates instead of the promised silver? What did it matter if they stripped a corpse naked and took his gold watch instead of burying him, as his nearest and dearest had requested, dressed for an evening on the town? None of it was her concern. She couldn’t afford to worry about rich people who had money enough to spend on fancy funerals. Not if she wanted to keep her job.
Grace kept her eyes down as, following the coffin, the bereaved’s family, friends and acquaintances entered the church. A great number of those who considered themselves important members of society were there, for, since leaving the army, the dead man had been a shining example of a good citizen; maintaining charities, opening homes for unfortunates, even putting himself at risk by going about the London alleyways at night handing out blankets. He’d had a special interest in homeless and fallen women and worked tirelessly to try and reform them, sometimes even taking them into his own home to train them for domestic service.
Grace watched from under lowered lids as, two by two, the mourners went into the church: the ladies who were able to overcome their grief sufficiently to attend the funeral wearing the very latest in Parisian-style mourning gowns (full bishop sleeves, vast wide skirts over boned crinolines, impenetrable black veils falling from head to floor). The men were no less fashionable in their own way, for stockists of mourning wear put it about as certain truth that it was unlucky to keep mourning clothes in the house; they should be purchased afresh with each death. Thus, as George Unwin was fond of saying, the dark clouds of bereavement had silver linings.
It was when nearly all the mourners had entered the church that Grace experienced a strange and unpleasant frisson. Thinking about it after, she couldn’t determine which of her senses had caused the unease; had she sensed a faint aroma, an icy finger down her spine, a sudden dizziness, or merely that shiver which is usually described as someone walking over your grav
e? Whatever it was, the person who’d been walking past her at the precise moment she’d felt it went straight into the body of the church and sat down in the last pew. Knowing that the mourners were inside now and it was safe to move her head, Grace looked in his direction and saw the back view of a man in late middle age, immaculate in full mourning clothes, holding a hymn book in one black-leather-clad hand and carrying his top hat in the other. She didn’t know him, and there was nothing at all to distinguish him from any of the other gentlemen mourners.
Perhaps, she thought as the great doors closed, she had imagined it . . .
x
On Sunday, as she’d planned, Grace made the walk across the park to Kensington and knocked at the back door of the Unwins’ home. She had spent some time wondering about her outfit, for although she’d been issued with new black boots and clothing suitable for a mute (the cost, of course, to be deducted from her wages), people might have stared to see her dressed in veils and mourning bonnet in the street. However, Rose had kindly given her an old brown velvet jacket and bonnet and these, worn with a dark bodice and black crêpe skirt, did not look too funereal.
‘The mistress doesn’t allow visitors below stairs,’ Mrs Beaman said, standing four-square across the tradesmen’s entrance, arms folded. ‘Not without permission.’
‘But please could you ask?’ Grace pleaded.
‘I can’t do that. All the family are out visiting.’
‘But I’m Lily’s sister.’ Grace looked at Mrs Beaman beseechingly, the way she’d once looked when starving and trying to sell watercress. ‘Please may I come in for just one moment to reassure myself that she’s all right? She and I have never been parted before and I’d be so grateful to you.’
Mrs Beaman looked at Grace’s solemnly beautiful face (‘Like one of them angels on a monument,’ she told Blossom later) and relented. ‘Just for ten minutes, then,’ she said, moving away from the doorway to allow her inside.
Grace was not really surprised to be shown into a freezing cold scullery instead of the servants’ parlour, where a lady’s maid might normally have been found on a Sunday afternoon. Here she found Lily cleaning knives, rubbing their blades with abrasive paper and emery powder rather fiercely, for she’d already done them twice, and twice they’d been rejected by Mrs Beaman.
On seeing Grace, Lily ran to her, clasped her around the neck and began to cry so heartily that Grace feared her ten minutes would be up before they’d even exchanged a word.
‘Sshhh . . . sshh . . . Is it really so bad?’ Grace asked, brushing emery powder from her shoulders. ‘Do tell me that you’re all right.’
Lily choked out several more big sobs and then fell to sniffing. ‘I am all right.’ She heaved a great sigh. ‘But I do miss you!’
‘What’s it like here? Are you being trained?’
Lily nodded. ‘I’m allowed to clean boots and do the knives. Although Mrs Beaman usually says they’re not good enough.’
Grace looked down at Lily’s hands, which were red and raw. It was just as she’d known really, deep down: Lily was not the sort of girl to make a lady’s maid and Mr Unwin had only pretended she was in order to help the situation. How curious the world was! To think that someone like Mr Unwin – penny-pinching, seemingly cold-hearted and insensitive – had not only been kind enough to employ Lily, but had been especially thoughtful about the way he’d done it.
She asked, ‘But are they good to you?’
‘They feed me well enough,’ Lily said, wiping her face on her sleeve. ‘We have meat every day.’
‘And have the other servants made you welcome?’ her sister continued, for this point had been particularly troubling her: that Lily might be an outcast. ‘Do they include you in their conversations and so on?’
‘Oh, the servants don’t!’ said Lily. ‘Blossom and Lizzie are too high and mighty for that. But Ella speaks to me sometimes – and the young lady of the house is very kind.’
‘Miss Charlotte?’ Grace asked, most surprised. She hadn’t met the young lady, but rumour had it that she was a selfish and spoilt flibbertigibbet.
‘Yes, Miss Charlotte. She likes me,’ Lily said with some pride. She gave a gasp. ‘You should see the parlour and the drawing room! They have a jug with bluebirds on it!’
‘Do they really?’ Grace said, stroking Lily’s work-worn hands. ‘But when is it that Miss Charlotte finds time to speak to you?’
‘Oh, she sometimes comes into the garden when I’m out there on my own, or talks to me in the kitchen when the others are busy upstairs.’
‘Really?’ Grace asked. Stranger and stranger. ‘And what do you talk about?’
‘Oh, funny things. Sometimes she makes up stories – like you used to.’
‘Does she? How kind of her,’ Grace said. Perhaps the tales she’d heard of Miss Charlotte were not true, then. ‘What are the stories about?’
‘Oh, about Mama and so on,’ Lily said vaguely. ‘All sorts of things. She’s really interested in me.’
Grace thought to herself how kind it was of Miss Charlotte to bother to make conversation with the lowest of their servants. ‘Then she must be a true lady,’ she said to Lily.
x
Chapter Sixteen
‘I’m sure you want the best, so I suggest nothing less than highest-quality swansdown for your dear mother’s coffin mattress,’ said George Unwin.
‘Oh,’ said the bereaved woman. ‘We were thinking of wadded wool.’
‘Never!’ said Mrs Unwin.
Grace, hands in a mute-like position of prayer and eyes lowered, gave no indication that she’d heard a word, or even that she was a living, breathing person. It was a week after she’d gone to Kensington to see Lily, and she’d been summoned into the red room as an indication of the type of mute available for a high-cost funeral.
‘Swansdown is expensive, but reassuringly so,’ chimed in Mrs Unwin, ‘and of course one wants the very best for one’s venerable parent, doesn’t one?’
There came a sigh. ‘Well, if you deem it necessary,’ said the woman.
‘Swansdown it is,’ said Mr Unwin.
They paused in front of Grace. ‘Have you thought of mutes?’ asked Mrs Unwin.
‘Well, no . . .’
‘This is Grace, who is one of our most respectful and passive mutes. She can be supplied by the hour to stand, bereft and grieving, outside a door or by a graveside.’
‘Surely that isn’t . . .’
‘Grace would be especially appropriate for an elderly lady’s grave,’ said Mrs Unwin. ‘It would look very caring.’
‘Well . . .’
‘And to complement Grace, your mother would surely appreciate having a candle lantern kept alight on the grave for a whole month,’ added Mr Unwin.
‘But who would benefit from that?’
‘Her memory would,’ Mrs Unwin admonished gently. ‘You must remember that old people don’t like the dark.’
And so it went on, until, mutes, monuments and mourning flowers chosen, Grace returned to the small sewing room, took off her bonnet and veiling and set her stool beside the meagre fire.
How quickly we become used to things, she thought, picking up the piece of embroidery she’d been working on earlier. How soon she’d adjusted to a life without Lily, to sharing a room with a stranger, to being confined within four walls and to measuring out her life in a series of shrouds sewn, funerals attended and embroideries completed. And, strangely, although she was living this life and growing accustomed to it, it didn’t seem to be her life so much as that of someone whose identity she’d assumed by mistake. What would happen next? When would her new life start – the life she’d promised herself the day she’d gone to Brookwood?
She picked up her sewing. That day she was embroidering a tiny picture using human hair with a needle so fine that if she put it down on the workbench she knew she’d never find it again. The picture would show a tombstone under a weeping willow tree and would be put into a small gold frame and wor
n as a brooch. The customer had wanted her husband’s name embroidered on the tombstone, but Mrs Unwin had said that this was impossible, for the man’s name was William Wilkins-Boyes-Haig and even if anyone could have embroidered it, it would have been too small to read.
Before she began sewing, Grace paused for a moment and looked around her, marvelling anew at the size of the Unwin empire. Through the glazed door she could see the entrance to the coffin workshop where the carpenters worked around an engraver embellishing the brass or (highly recommended for the more discerning) silver coffin plates. To the right was a new workroom with a long bench where Mrs Unwin, having realised what a profit could be turned on everlasting flowers, was now teaching some of the girls how to make immortelles. Outside in the yard, the stonemasons could be heard chipping memorials, and beyond these was a smithy with a blacksmith and grooms in attendance. Close to hand, to the right of the space where Grace was sitting, was a flight of steps down to the enclosed and cool area known as God’s waiting room, where – although it was more usual for a deceased loved one to remain at home – one or two bodies always lay awaiting burial. During Grace’s first week at the Unwins’, two of the seamstresses, jealously presuming from Grace’s looks that she was going to become a favourite with the grooms, shut her in with two bodies overnight and hoped for hysterics. Grace, however, after acquainting herself with the cadavers and discovering nothing to be scared of in two old women who’d had a peaceful death, merely went to sleep on the floor. Besides, she’d not become a favourite of the grooms, for she didn’t join in with any of their larks and rather kept herself to herself. She never forgot that she was fallen.