Fallen Grace - Mary Hooper [75]
As she neared the Strand there was a decision to make, for Waterloo and the Necropolis station were on the other side of the river and she didn’t know whether to try for a ferry boat or to head for Hungerford Bridge, still some distance off. This little iron bridge had recently been bought out by a consortium wanting to use it for trains, however, and she didn’t know if it was open for pedestrians. If she got there and it was closed, it would mean a long walk downriver to cross at London Bridge and this would delay her considerably. After an anguished moment trying to decide, she made her way to the waterfront to see if there were any ferries going across.
As she had feared, there were none, so – becoming very anxious – she made her way to the Sailors’ Rest to look for a ferryman. She found a dozen or more men ‘resting’ in the tavern, all roaring drunk, and went from one to the other, asking if anyone would take her across the river for a matter of life or death. She was refused throughout the tavern, with much jeering and derision, and was despairing that she’d have to go to London Bridge after all, when a ferryman, younger than the others and sober enough to appreciate a pretty face, said he’d take her across for two shillings.
‘Though I don’t promise we’ll get there, mind,’ he said, slurring his words.
‘I’ll give you another shilling if we do,’ Grace said recklessly, mentally thanking James Solent for the loan of his money.
‘Very well. And if we is run down by a barge, then that’s too bad for us.’ He gave a bellow of a laugh. ‘Though I feels luck in me bones today, so I think we’ll survive.’
Grace had now reached a state of mind where she was ready to risk all. As she saw it, she would travel across the river in fog and either they would be run down by a barge, or they would not. Subsequently she would get the certificate, triumph over the Unwins and find Lily, or she would not. It was all in the lap of the gods.
She climbed on to the boat, settled the white muslin more firmly around her nose and mouth and closed her eyes. With a violent shove which sent the boat rocking sideways and sent stinking water over her skirts, they set off.
The ferryman’s method of avoiding other boats seemed to be to put his head down and go as quickly as possible, cutting up the water with short strokes of his heavy oars.
‘I goes like old Nick, as fast as can be,’ he said to Grace. ‘If I gets into trouble, I quickly gets meself out again.’
Grace was so frightened that she kept her eyes closed the whole way across, and so missed seeing the other two craft on the water: a huge coal barge that was so mighty and untouchable that it sailed regardless, and the small coracle of the old man who rowed the river day and night, fog or no, searching for drowned bodies in the water to relieve them of their clothes.
After landing safely and paying the ferryman his dues, Grace found her way to Westminster Bridge Road fairly quickly, getting lost once but luckily discovering a peeler with a lantern at the York Road junction who was directing anyone who’d become disorientated. Reaching Waterloo and the ornate gated entrance to the Necropolis Railway, she saw a man sitting in an office and checking over some paperwork, but he was only watching out for hearses and didn’t notice Grace as she slipped through the iron gates.
The coffin depository had been built as a normal warehouse for goods in transit and only later had been transformed, with sober paint and fittings, into a holding bay for the dead. This had proved necessary because London traffic, especially in the mornings, was so bad that a body setting off five miles away could often take more than two hours to reach Waterloo, thus causing some to miss the train and their own funerals. It was for this reason that the Necropolis Company insisted that all bodies destined for burial at Brookwood should be collected, ready for boarding as it were, the evening before.
Grace had been inside the depository before, and knew what to expect. What she didn’t know was if Sylvester Unwin had got there first.