Ellie tightened her lips and, with Dora having crept into their bed, she went to her mother’s room to allow Dora a moment alone to give way to her loss. She stood for a while in the doorway, gazing at the covers under which her mother’s body lay, still and silent, the sheet pulled up over the head.
Somehow it all seemed unreal. The whole room felt cold, dead. She too felt cold and dead. No tears, the only thought that came to her a practical one. First thing in the morning, she must go round to the undertaker’s.
Closing the door gently, as if reluctant any sound might disturb the silence of death, she went to her own room. Quietly she undressed, this time not to disturb the living – Dora asleep, worn out by her loss.
Going over to the washstand she wiped a wet flannel over her face and armpits, dried herself on their shared towel, noting in the washstand’s oval, pock-marked mirror her thin nakedness, which was steadily growing shapely with coming womanhood, that womanhood like all around here seeming to be delayed by poverty and lack of fresh air.
Ellie rinsed her mouth, donned her nightdress, which was old and becoming too tight around the breast, briefly combed her long, dark hair and finally slipped into bed beside Dora.
‘Goodnight,’ she whispered. Dora didn’t answer. But she wasn’t asleep, for Ellie could feel the bed shaking very slightly to Dora’s silent weeping.
After a while it subsided, but rather than falling asleep hersielf more than half the night was spent awake, thinking of how she was going to pay for any decent funeral. In all this time she hadn’t cried. It felt as if she couldn’t – perhaps never would. Her insides felt empty – as though it was her body that lay dead.
Next morning she was up at the crack of dawn, dressed in her one Sunday dress, her hair combed until it shone, a damp rag to clean up her boots a bit.
‘Mrs Sharp said you can go into her,’ she told Dora as she left. ‘I’m off to the undertaker’s and don’t want you staying in the house all on your own.’
‘Can’t I come with you?’ Dora asked plaintively, her eyes still a little puffy from crying herself to sleep.
‘I shan’t be long.’ It was a promise she knew would be kept. Her business with the undertaker wouldn’t amount to much. No fine coffin to be selected, just a plain box wheeled on a handcart to a far corner in the church cemetery where paupers were laid to rest, several together in one grave.
Thankfully she wouldn’t have to descend to that. Like a lot of people, Mum had for some years denied herself by putting away a penny a week into a burial fund which would give her and her husband a piece of ground of their own, if only a cheap plot far from those on the main pathway with its fine tombstones and imposing monuments.
No tombstone for Mum, though. The cheapest stone was around thirty shillings, well beyond the burial fund. Perhaps in time a wooden cross – who knows? – but at least there’d be a personal grave number to identify her, which was more than a pauper’s grave got.
For some reason that last thought caught her suddenly, just as she opened the door to leave for the undertaker’s, as if something in the depths of her heart had burst. Abruptly closing the door again against the outside world, she sank down in the corner in tears, silently weeping as she had seldom wept before, crouched there alone and in privacy, relieved that Dora was still upstairs in bed, most likely nursing her own silent misery.
Finally, her nose blocked and her throat aching, her eyes no doubt reddened, she stood up, wiping her damp cheeks with a not-too-clean handkerchief fished from her jacket pocket, and slipped out into the chill early-morning air, head now held high.
The arrangements didn’t take long, as she knew they wouldn’t, the lugubrious undertaker being interested only in clients with money to spend on a fine funeral with black plumed horses, ornate carriages and caskets, and even a couple of young, professional mute mourners.
On her return home Dora handed her a letter. ‘Came fer you while you was out,’ she said. ‘Seems ter be something wrapped up inside.’
There certainly did seem to be: a single sheet of notepaper folded around something hard. As she opened it, the contents fell heavily on to the floor. On the verge of bending to retrieve it she saw it was a guinea – a golden guinea winking up at her. Ellie heard her sister gasp ‘Oh, Lord!’ but she had frozen, able only to stare down at it in disbelief almost bordering on alarm, not daring even to touch it.
‘Did you see who sent this?’
‘No. Whoever it was, they was gone by the time I found it lying ’ere.’
Reaching out, Ellie forced herself to tentatively touch it, withdrawing her fingers quickly as if it might burn her, while Dora stood by wide-eyed. Still wrapped in disbelief, she finally forced herself to pick the coin up. It lay heavy in her palm. Never in her life had she held a gold guinea. It felt cold, solid, almost evil.
‘What’s the letter say?’ She vaguely heard her sister’s voice. Coming to, she looked at the note again, sure that there must be some mistake – sent to the wrong address, not for her at all. But if this was a mistake, then it was providence. Why go to all that bother trying to trace the right recipient? Why shouldn’t she keep it?
Painfully she scanned the writing. Her reading skills were not vast. Having left school at twelve, teachers having viewed the cane as the
