Fallen Grace - Mary Hooper [52]
Grace nodded.
‘I have a very dear friend who lives in a lane just off the high street. Did you live anywhere near?’
‘Quite close. Mama rented a cottage for us on the green – I can just remember it.’
‘How delightful! Not the little white one which is smothered in flowers all summer?’
Grace shook her head. ‘I don’t think it was white. It had a mulberry tree in the front garden, and was named after that.’
‘How lovely!’ said Charlotte Unwin. It seemed, however, that she had got to know this particular Unwin employee quite well enough, for she abruptly bid Grace farewell and said she had to return to her mother.
To avoid walking back with her, Grace pretended she had something to do in the opposite direction and walked under the trees for a while, wondering about what Miss Unwin had said. Surely it couldn’t be true about Lily having a follower?
To try and distance herself from this worrying information, she began to read the epitaphs on the stones, but they mostly seemed to indicate that your time on earth would not be long and that you would be gone before you knew it, which did not make for pleasant reading. After sighing over many young children dead before their time, Grace made her way to the third-class refreshment room in order to drink a bowl of hot soup, for she was feeling almost faint with hunger. She would have to stay out of sight of any Unwins, of course, for eating and drinking were against the rules. Mutes, Mrs Unwin maintained, should not eat or drink any more than they should converse, for they were supposed to be entirely dedicated, almost celestial figures, far above human wants and needs.
Throwing back her veil to drink her soup, Grace had the second spoonful to her mouth when she was tapped on the shoulder.
A woman said, ‘Dear girl, is it really you?’
Looking round she found Mrs Macready standing there, dressed in black from head to toe, and consequently looking much smarter than she’d ever appeared in Seven Dials.
‘Oh, my dear! Who has died?’ Mrs Macready, continued, sitting down and taking in Grace’s weeds. ‘Not your sister?’
Grace assured her that Lily was perfectly well and working as a maid (which caused Mrs Macready to look rather surprised). ‘And I’m only wearing mourning because I’m working for the Unwins as a mute,’ she added in a low voice, ‘and as such, am not supposed to speak with anyone.’
Mrs Macready gasped. ‘Well, I never!’
As there were hardly any mourners left in the refreshment room by this time, Grace went on, ‘But how are you, Mrs Macready? I trust no one too close to you has died?’
‘Yes, well, I’m afraid it was old Mr and Mrs Beale,’ that lady sighed.
Grace gave a little cry. ‘How sad!’
‘They went within a day of each other, God save their hearts, and the Blind Society paid for a third-class funeral here.’ Her eyes gleamed. ‘But bless me, what a place it is, and to come on the train and all! Such a treat to ride in a train with the gentry in the next carriage!’ The old woman suddenly clapped her hand to her mouth. ‘But I’m forgetting – someone came to my son’s house asking for you!’
Grace looked at her in surprise. ‘Really?’
‘A woman . . . now, what was her name?’ Mrs Macready scratched her head under her veil. ‘She knew that you’d once lodged with me and said that if I ever saw you again I was to tell you to get in touch. Gave me her address . . . Her name was a very ordinary one: Smith,’ Mrs Macready said triumphantly. ‘Yes, she called herself Mrs Smith!’
Grace made a business of lowering her veil back into position, hoping that Mrs Macready wouldn’t see that her hands were shaking. ‘I don’t think I know a Mrs Smith.’ She tried to smile. ‘It sounds very much like a false name.’
‘I’ve got her address written down somewhere. I could let you have it if you like.’
Grace patted the woman’s hand. ‘I don’t think I will, Mrs Macready, thank you. No reflection on you, but I’ve left that old life behind me now.’
‘Of course, dear. You please yourself,’ said Mrs Macready.