Charles Palliser (79 page)

“Where do I go?” I asked in order to quiet her, for I thought it did not matter what became of her body.

She gave me directions to the house in Leather-lane from which the parish-clerk conducted his business and as she spoke it suddenly came to me that it did matter. It mattered very much. And as I rose to go a thought, a memory rather, occurred to me.

“Will you watch over her?” I asked.

“I will. Set your mind at ease.”

I groped my way down the treacherous stair — still in near-darkness — and found myself in the flooded court. The storm had burnt itself out and the wind had fallen, but the louring sky shed little light and the rain still descended with a relentless malevolence.

The directions I had been given soon brought me to the house I sought where a young skivvy at the kitchen-door rather doubtfully admitted me to the scullery. There I was kept waiting nearly an hour while Mr Limpenny — for the girl had told me his name

— finished his breakfast, for I had not realized how early it still was. At last the servant-girl led me into his presence in the “breakfast-parlour” where he sat over his teapot and the remains of his meal, reading
The Morning Post.

“What do you want?” he asked abruptly, only half-lowering his paper.

I stood before him and tried to speak but no words came.

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“Come, speak out, boy. Don’t waste my time,” he said testily.

“It’s about my mother.”

“I’ll thank you to address me with respect,” he interrupted.

“I beg your pardon, sir,” I said. Then I attempted to go on: “My mother … my mother has just died and I have no money to bury her.”

“That’s very fortunate,” he answered.

As I stared at him in amazement he wiped his hands fastidiously on a napkin and went on: “We bury paupers once a week and by good chance tomorrow is our burying day.”

Without looking at me, he stood up and walked out of the room.

Unsure what was expected of me, I followed him across the passage and found myself in a tiny room that, from the bundles of papers secured with pink ribbon, the old chests, and the tin deed-boxes that were piled in corners or stacked on shelves, obviously served as an office. “There are certain formalities to be discharged,” he said, sitting at a little desk. He pulled out a drawer and removed a printed paper, mended a quill and glanced up at me: “Name of deceased pauper?”

“Mrs Mary Mellamphy, sir,” I said, suddenly not wanting to reveal our true name.

“Mellamphy, female. Irish, I suppose,” he said wearily. “What is the parish of settlement of your mother’s husband?” Then with a sneer he corrected himself: “I should say, your father?”

“I don’t know, Mr Limpenny.”

He sighed. “You people. What makes you think you’re entitled to come here and die at the rate-payers’ expense without so much as a by-your-leave? I suppose it’s nothing to you that you’ve deprived this parish of its right to reclaim the cost of burying your mother from her own parish of settlement? Why, do you realize it would cost two pounds to bury a pauper decently? The coffin alone would come to twelve shillings!”

No answer seemed to be required and I ventured none.

“I suppose you’ll want someone to lay her out?”

“Yes, please.”

“I should think so,” he said indignantly as if I had denied the need for this. Then he added: “And the parish pays for that, too.” lie took another piece of paper and began to fill it in. “Address of deceased?”

“Mitre-court, sir.”

“I might have guessed it,” he said. He passed the second piece of paper to me. “Now take this order to No. 2 Ely-court and ask for Mrs Lillystone.”

“And is that all?”

“What more do you want?” he demanded angrily, ringing a bell that stood on the desk. “Now get off with you.”

The girl appeared at the door.

“Show this boy straight out,” Mr Limpenny said. “Mind, I say straight.”

Back in the street I looked at the piece of paper I had been given and saw that it instructed Mrs Lillystone to wash, lay out, and put into a shroud the body of a “female pauper” at the address given. When I had found my way to the house and knocked at the door, there was a long silence before an upstairs window was raised and the head of a woman appeared.

“What is it?” she said.

“It’s my mother,” I had to call up to her.

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“Where are you from?”

“Mitre-court.”

“] know. Is she near her time?”

“She has passed it,” I said.

She stared at me hard then withdrew her head and banged the window shut. A minute or two later she opened the street-door and I saw that she was a large, slovenly woman in a gown that was none too clean. She was pulling on her bonnet and tying the strings.

“Come,” she said. “There ain’t no time to be lost in sich a case.”

“I don’t think you understand me,” I said and handed her the order.

Without doing more than glance at it she gave it back: “That don’t mean nothing to me. I can’t read.”

“It’s for a laying out.”

She laughed: “I thought it was the other thing,” she said. “I heerd there was a woman there near her time. But then, it’s all one to me, a laying out or a lying in. I sees ’em into the world and I sees ’em out. And more often nor otherwise, the one follows hard upon the other.”

Suddenly she said “Wait!” and shut the door.

I huddled myself into the door-way to try to escape the rain which was still falling steadily. About ten minutes later Mrs Lillystone opened the door again and came out carrying a number of articles: a small copper, a tin bason, and over her arm a shroud of the cheapest material.

As we walked along she asked: “Did you leave her with a relative to watch?”

“Not a relative,” I said. “An old woman.”

She hissed slightly through her teeth but said nothing more until we reached Mitre-court when she exclaimed in distaste at the floods of foul water over which she had to venture on her pattens. She objected strongly to the condition of the stairs as if I were to blame, and made a great business of getting up them with the articles she was carrying, at the same time refusing to entrust any of them to myself.

When we entered the room it seemed to me that a silence fell among the people who were there and I saw to my surprise that while Lizzie was not to be seen, there was a family of strangers seated near our corner of the room. Mrs Lillystone and the middle-aged Irishwoman greeted each other and when I indicated to the layer-out the blanketed form in the corner of the room, she crossed to it and drew back the ragged covering.

“As I thought,” she said. “Everything has gone.”

I covered my face and turned away.

“The old woman stripped her,” said a woman belonging to the strange family. “She said she was her daughter and she was going to lay her out, but she went away with her clothes and hasn’t come back.”

“She’s left nothing but this ring,” Mrs Lillystone commented and raised the hand.

I did not look.

“Aye, she could not get it off,” said another of the interested neighbours.

I did not need to look for I remembered that it was the plain brass ring which my mother had exchanged on the day of the bailiff’s raid for the gold wedding band that she had sold. It had her initials rudely etched upon it and was worth only a penny or two.

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“Well, she’s done some of my work for me,” said Mrs Lillystone, rolling up the sleeves of her gown.

“You’re not going to do it here, are you?” I protested.

“Where else?” she demanded.

“But it’s not decent,” 1 said, and indicated the other people in the room.

Those nearest murmured in agreement and made a point of ostentatiously-turning their backs towards that corner of the chamber, but I saw that I had to submit to this arrangement.

The kind Irishwoman indicated that I should sit with them but as I made to move away, Mrs Lillystone said: “Not before you’ve filled this copper for me.”

So I went down to the pump and when I returned and helped Mrs Lillystone to place the filled copper over the fire, I could not help noticing that she had bound my mother’s face with a rag to keep the jaw closed. Shuddering, I joined the family of poor Irish as I had been invited, and they insisted that I share their pitiful breakfast of bread and herring, and, though barely able to speak more than a few words of English, tried to talk to me in an effort to distract my attention from the other end of the room.

At last Mrs Lillystone announced that she had done and I saw the long shape roughly stitched into the cheap winding-sheet.

“I found this under her,” she said and held out the pocket-book with the letter inscribed with her father’s name still in it.

I took it from her and pushed it into my jacket. Wryly I recalled my legal tutorials: I was her heir-at-law and everything she owned now belonged to me.

“The dead-cart will call early tomorrow,” Mrs Lillystone said.

I expected her to depart but she stayed at the door looking at me strangely: “You won’t want to stay here till then, will you?” She screwed her face into an expression which I realized was intended to express motherly sympathy. “Not with that in the room. Why not come and sleep in my house tonight?”

I don’t know and I never will know how justified I was in suspecting her display of kindliness, but I had the darkest suspicions of her motives, for I had not forgotten Mr Isbister’s allusions to the services of parish searchers. I merely shook my head, and, gathering up the implements of her trade, she left.

I watched beside the body all through the rest of that day and the long night that followed. The Irishwoman had given me a piece of dry bread at midday and a little of their porage in the evening, and I was not hungry. When dusk began to gather, the deputy who kept the room had returned and demanded his tuppence, pointing out that my mother occupied the same floor space and should therefore pay for it, or he would

“catch it hot” from Mr Ashburner if he should happen to look in. However, when the other occupants of the room protested he had backed down and agreed to take only a penny.

Though I was determined to observe my vigil and not to sleep, I could not keep my resolution. My dreams, however, brought me no relief. I found myself in a great empty house, walking from one vast room to another or along passages so lengthy that though I carried a lanthorn their ends were lost in darkness. Then the floor began to creak and to sway and as I ran across it to find safety it crumbled beneath my feet and I crashed into the room beneath. Now there was a huge window before me through which 1 could see nothing but a great white moon in the black sky. Then the head and shoulders of a veiled figure appeared from below, and to my dismay the veil slipped away and revealed a face — and yet it was not a face, for the skin was deeply pitted, the eyes were INHERITANCES

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blank, and the nose no more than a chewed stump. Now it grew larger and to my horror came thrusting at me through the window and I awoke in terror.

The morning dragged itself out and it was several hours before one of the Irish children called out something to me in his language from the window-where he was watching.

I looked out and saw two men climb down from a cart that had halted at the entrance to the court. I went down and met them on the stair and when I had led them into the right chamber, they picked up their burden and carried it downstairs while I followed.

“That’s the last of the outdoors,” the driver called out as they came up to him.

I saw that the cart was laden with six similar burdens and now the seventh was placed

— not very gently — beside the others. The two men jumped aboard, their feet nudging the shapes on the floor, and the driver flicked the horse into movement with his whip.

“Where are you going?” I asked.

“The work’us,” one of them answered without turning to look at me.

I followed the cart in the desultory rain through the narrow streets. Nobody attended to us, except that once, as we passed a gaggle of urchins playing shove-ha’penny in the street, they broke off their game and followed us for a while chanting:

“Rattle his bones

Over the stones.

He’s only a pauper

What nobody owns.”

At last the cart went across Holborn and down Shoe-lane and then turned into a lane beside the workhouse and pulled up in a narrow yard. The driver took the horse from the shafts and led it away, and while one of the men went into the building the other sheltered from the rain under the arch of the gateway to light his pipe.

“How long will it be?” I asked.

He merely shrugged and so I stood waiting by the cart.

After half an hour a parish-beadle appeared: “Cut away, young ’un,” he said on seeing me.

The man who was smoking caught his eye and merely glanced towards the cart.

“Very well,” said the beadle grudgingly and went back inside.

I waited for several hours, and by the end of that time was thoroughly soaked. At last the driver re-appeared with the horse and while he harnessed it to the shafts again, the two men — for the other came back now — carried out four more shrouded objects from inside the building, two of them very small.

The cart moved off again and I found that I was the only mourner to follow it. It went only a few yards along the lane at a walking-pace and entered a small, dark square at the rear of the workhouse. As I looked round at the soot-blackened backs of the buildings, I became aware of a dank odour. Although in the gloom of a stormy winter afternoon before the lighting of the lamps, it was difficult to see clearly, I made out that there was a graveyard in the middle and that !t was raised several feet above the level of the square and surmounted by a

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broken-down wall topped by an ancient and rusted iron railing. There was no church.

The cart drew up at the gate to this yard and one of the men dismounted and went through a door at the back of the workhouse. After a few minutes, during which I became increasingly aware of the smell, he re-emerged with a young curate who stood in the porch sheltering from the drizzle while the man came back to the cart and began to help the other two to lift down the shrouded forms and lay them on the muddy grass beyond the gate. Meanwhile the clergyman was reading aloud from a prayer-book and when I went closer to hear him I realized that he was rattling through a very abbreviated version of the Service for the Burial of the Dead.