Fallen Grace - Mary Hooper [30]
The building bore a small, tactful notice:
The Unwin Undertaking Establishment
(Proprietor: Mr George Unwin)
Discretion is our Byword
The substantial two-storey red-brick house with decorative plaster and fancy brickwork had been built for a wealthy industrialist some forty years earlier. When the Unwins had purchased it with an inheritance from Mrs Unwin’s parents a dozen years past, they’d changed the house from a family dwelling into a commercial concern. As the undertaking business became more successful, they had bought up the large mews area behind it, which included several stables, and over time had built a carpentry workshop, a stonemason’s yard and garaging for hearses, together with various workrooms. Following this, the attic rooms in the house were made into makeshift bedrooms for those females who worked for the Unwins and needed accommodation, while the blacksmith, stable boys and carpenter’s lads bunked in the hayloft above the stables.
The front two reception rooms of the house were where relatives of the departed were taken to choose what sort of farewell they intended to give their loved ones. One room had an entire wall made up of squares of different coffin wood, plus examples of brass and silver nameplates, while the other, larger room (painted a deep and soothing red) was where they decided more delicate matters, such as what type of mattress, pillow and interlining was wanted for the coffin interior. An alcove in this room served as a study and contained a substantial mahogany desk with various brochures from which the bereaved could choose funeral flowers, marble memorials, the type of procession and number of horses, what mutes and plumes and palls to use and other essential items. Behind these two reception areas were the various workrooms, a private parlour and a kitchen. A comforting fire burned in the red room summer and winter, and this perhaps calmed the mourners and lessened the shock of finding out how much the funeral was going to cost.
Everything the newly bereaved family might require could be supplied here – apart from clothing, so when a family came to arrange a funeral they were warmly recommended to visit Mr Sylvester Unwin’s Oxford Street warehouse for their mourning garments. Mr Sylvester Unwin, of course, returned this compliment, and the substantial profits from the two businesses were shared.
Grace did not know the extent of the vast empire fronted by the shiny, black door, or she may have felt more nervous than she did about knocking on it. She made an effort to brush Lily’s skirts clean of dust, then straightened her shawl around her head and pushed the more unruly of her curls out of view. If she kept her hands clasped in front of her it would hide the muddy streak at the front of her gown, she thought, and if she did not sit down, then perhaps the fact that she didn’t have shoes would escape notice.
‘Do I look passable?’ she asked Lily.
‘Of course.’ Lily hardly glanced at her, for she was staring at a nearby pie shop and sniffing the air like a dog. ‘If they let us be mutes, will they give us some food?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Grace, distracted. What if she were turned away; what if this business card proved as useless as the other? She tapped at the door, but so quietly that the noise was swallowed by the sound of the traffic and she had to tap again before a housemaid opened it. She had been about to bob a curtsey, but she stopped at the sight of Grace and Lily, for they were not at all the sort of persons who normally called at the Unwins and their appearance didn’t seem to merit this courtesy.
‘I’m afraid we don’t do pauper funerals,’ said the maid, whose name was Rose. She spoke kindly enough, thinking that by the look of the two girls