When Aunt Hatt walked into twenty-six Chain Street, much later that night, she sank down at the table in her wet coat, laid her head down on her arms and quietly began to weep. Margaret and Annie were soon crying as well, having held back their tears until they reached home, but needing release after the awful sadness of the evening that had just passed. Aunt Hatt had come back to Pope Street from the police station with Mary Poole, and then the three of them had walked home in a heavy silence.
Uncle Eb, who had in the first instant been highly indignant, wondering where on earth they had all got to, melted at the sight of his wife’s grief.
‘Eh, my little pet – whatever’s the matter?’ He hurried to her and stroked her back. ‘Where’ve you all been? You’re wet through, Hatt – you must get out of these clothes or you’ll catch your death!’
But Aunt Hatt was not ready to be budged so quickly. Margaret, with tears on her own cheeks, managed to explain. Annie had her hands over her face.
‘They got the right feller then?’ Uncle Eb asked.
‘Yes.’ Aunt Hatt sat up, wiping her face with her hands. She looked dazed. ‘There was no doubt. Oh, it was so horrible, Eb . . .’ Her face creased again. ‘That terrible gloomy room in the police station – and the poor man laid out stiff . . . That poor little wife of his – howled like a dog, she did. I thought she was going to go and throw herself in as well after she’d seen him.’
‘You don’t think she will, do you, Aunt?’ Annie said.
‘No – I don’t suppose so. She’s still got all those children. But . . .’ She shook her head. ‘He was . . . Well, he was dead, of course. No one knows how it happened for sure. But apart from that, he was such a poor, thin sort of specimen. You’d wonder how he’d managed in the world at all, by the look of him.’
‘He didn’t,’ Annie said, wiping her tears away. She sounded utterly exhausted. ‘Not really – not after the accident.’
Aunt Hatt nodded. She looked up at Eb and reached a hand out. He took it, raising it to his lips in a way which made Margaret feel even more tearful. She found herself longing for a pair of arms about her. If only Philip Tallis were here! She was startled by the strength of her longing for him.
‘Oh, Eb,’ Aunt Hatt said. ‘That poor family . . . And the way they live . . . I had no idea . . . We’re so fortunate.’
Eb, more sober than they had ever seen him, nodded, his eyes wide with sorrow. ‘We are, that’s for sure.’ There was no hesitation. ‘We must pay for that poor feller’s funeral.’
Mary kept saying it was all an accident, though no one would ever know for sure exactly how Wilfred Poole died, whether by his own hand or another’s. Mrs Blount came and sat with Mary and listened, as Annie and Margaret did, to her shock and her fears for the future. They helped support Mary through the funeral, once more at Key Hill cemetery. Neighbours helped deck the house in black crêpe.
Wilfred Poole’s body was buried in consecrated ground, close to that of his children, on a day so raw and cold that Margaret felt her own heart might burst with sorrow. It had been a similarly desolate morning when they buried their own mother, and for some moments she was a heartbroken thirteen-year-old again, her body aching with loss. But as she stood with Annie and Aunt Hatt behind Mary Poole and her children, Lizzie carrying Nellie and holding little Ivy’s hand, it was the sight of Den that tore at her heart most of all. Now the man of the family, not yet ten years old, he stood stiffly upright beside his mother in a jacket of his father’s, far too big for him, and his big boots, staring dry-eyed ahead of him as the vicar’s voice carried words to them, thinly in the wind.
Wilfred Arthur Poole
Born, 5th June 1871
Died, 25th November 1904
Rest in Peace