Fallen Grace - Mary Hooper [50]
Waiting on the platform for Mr Unwin to give his final instructions, Grace took in the sights and sounds of Brookwood. When she’d been there before she’d been bowed down by grief, bewildered by what had happened to her, and had looked but hardly seen. Now she viewed clearly and sympathetically the dismal sight of a host of newly bereaved people, their expressions fraught, moving about the platform silently and awkwardly, like strange black insects.
She shivered. It was a freezing day, and though she was wearing a new pair of thick woollen stockings under her black skirts and petticoats, she was very much feeling the cold. When she’d bought them she’d also purchased a pair for Lily which she intended to take to her as soon as she possibly could. She hadn’t seen her sister for three weeks now and had a lot to tell her, starting with the night she’d seen the handsome Prince Albert in his carriage.
As the first-class coffins were silently removed from the van, Mr Unwin signalled to Grace to go into position before the hearse. The night before, the dead girl’s family had paid an extra guinea for Grace to keep a silent vigil by the open coffin at her home, while those women of the family whose sensibilities did not allow them to journey to Brookwood came to pay their last respects. Grace, therefore, had knelt by the coffin all night and was not only very cold and hungry now, but also very tired. (And she would not, besides, receive any share of the guinea, or even know that it had been paid.)
The white velvet-covered coffin was carefully placed on to the waiting horse-drawn hearse and, with head bowed and hands clasped together, Grace began to walk before it through the frost-touched glades. She was followed by the usual bag and baggage of the mourning industry: feather-bearers, stave-carriers and two child mutes who’d been taken off the streets for the occasion, followed in turn by the dead girl’s would-be husband, family, friends and servants, all in deepest black, with mourning rings and black leather gloves supplied as funeral favours by her father.
The graveside service seemed interminable, for the two priests – one from the dead girl’s local church, plus the old family friend who would have married her – seemed at loggerheads and could not decide who would have the last word on her life. As one droned a speech about death overcoming all, this was topped by the other giving a sermon on the frailty of life. When, eventually, the service was over and a great many tears had been shed, the mourners made their way to the first-class refreshment room for the cake and a nip of brandy, leaving Grace a little time on her own before the train went back to Waterloo.
She went straight to the resting place of Susannah Solent, and found there the mausoleum which James Solent had told her that his father was having constructed. It was a grand edifice, Egyptian style, with a pyramid roof, two sphinxes on guard each side of the doorway and shiny hammered-metal doors. Grace could not resist peering through the side window and there saw a picture of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, a miniature altar with crucifix and two little tapestry-covered praying chairs such as one might find in a church. There were also marble shelves with spaces for eight coffins, although only the bottom one was filled.
Grace, seeing Susannah Solent’s coffin and knowing what else it contained, began to weep, the force of her grief surprising her. She wept for her lost child, for the unhappiness of her life and because she was