Fallen Grace - Mary Hooper [9]
Lily turned away and trudged home, too traumatised to cry, while Mr Morrell and Ernie the candlestub seller admired the Meissen teapot, safe on the secret shelf below the pawnbroker’s counter.
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Chapter Four
‘The great garden of sleep,’ Grace murmured to herself, reading the notice on the station platform. Then she added, ‘My baby will be safe with Miss Susannah Solent in the great garden of sleep.’ Said like that, it was almost bearable. As if those who’d died were merely resting themselves in the ground until a spring when they would all rise up again, which Grace knew she was supposed to believe but could not quite manage to.
The train drew into the station amid billows of steam and, as it came to a standstill, the top-hatted representatives of the funeral companies disembarked and made ready, with many obsequious bows, to guide the bereaved families to the allotted burial places of their loved ones. As the mourners grouped and regrouped themselves ready for the final stage of their journeys, Grace drew a little closer to the van which held the coffins. Out of public view, these were now being nailed down (this little ceremony being left as late as possible to guard against anyone being buried before they had breathed their last), following which the van’s doors were opened and the coffins removed. Most of the first-grade funerals had their own individual hearses waiting, with a priest or black-clad mute to lead the way, while the pauper burials made use of a handcart and the willing labour of any friends and family who could afford the train ticket out of London. The poor were glad to give their custom to Brookwood because its many acres ensured that, although the pauper funeral service would be a communal one, there was space enough for everyone to have individual burial plots; the bodies would not be tumbled together in a pit as they would have been in London.
When the coffins were moved out of the hearse van, Grace, viewing it from some way off, knew exactly which one was Susannah Solent’s – the pale oak casket in the final section. She watched it being taken out and placed on to the shoulders of the undertakers’ men, then slid gently into the waiting glass-topped hearse, where it lay shrouded in white flowers. Keeping at a safe distance, she followed the black-plumed horses on their slow journey through the trees and shrubs, wanting to know exactly where it was to be buried so that later, if she ever was in possession of enough money for the journey, she could come and pay her respects.
There were about twenty mourners walking behind the cortège for Miss Solent, and of these only one was a woman, and she was so wrapped and shrouded in veils and black crêpe that very little about her could be discerned. Was it Miss Solent’s mother? Her sister, her aunt, a great friend? There was no way of telling.
The procession halted. Miss Solent’s grave was to be in a cleared space behind a row of newly planted cedars – so newly planted, in fact, that until the arrival of that morning’s train the gardeners had still been digging there. On hearing the train arrive, they had moved off quickly so as not to compromise the privacy of the mourners but had left a heavy fork in the ground. Grace tripped on this, hurt her ankle and couldn’t help crying out, but only one of the nearby mourners heard her, the rest being intent on the priest’s words and their own sorrow.
Mr James Solent, standing at the back of the group of people around his sister’s grave, thought the noise must have been made by a woodland animal caught in a trap, and it was only when he turned and looked through the undergrowth that he saw a girl slowly getting to her feet. He couldn’t see her face, but she appeared very young, with loose curly hair (for her shawl had slipped off her head) the colour of the crisp beech leaves underfoot. He hesitated a moment, then silently removed himself from the funeral service to see if he could do anything to help. His