The Journal of Dora Damage (13 page)
Then he drew a small map of the back alleys on a scrap of lining paper. ‘Go here, then turn – here – and – here. Look sharp,
head down, and quick pace.’ The route he was suggesting would take me out into the daylight of the Strand rather than back
into Holywell-street. ‘You must return this way too.
En cachette
. Three sharp knocks only on the back door. It is preferable for you that way.’
I ran through the twisting lanes as instructed, and blessedly did not meet another soul, living or otherwise. I told Peter
little of the day’s events on my return, only that Mr Diprose had decided to furnish us with more books. I did not wish to
burden him with the details, for they troubled me, and I was stalked in my dreams that night, not by the rangy Sir Jocelyn
and his stiff Mr Diprose, but by an animated, malevolent anatomy model. It chased me around the benches and presses of the
workshop, its pink open throat cackling at me and issuing threats, until, at the door to the kitchen, I turned and stood my
ground. The model became still and calm too, and let me stroke its painted skin, and I placed my hands inside onto the organs,
which were not cold and hard, but soft, warm and wet. It giggled as I fingered them, weighed them in my hands, held them up
to the light.
To know the inner workings, to understand the inside, to see within: I would put up with the cigar smoke, and the men who
looked, and the animal heads, and the back alley-ways, for that. Or so I believed, in those days.
Speak when you’re spoken to,
Come for one call,
Shut the door after you,
Turn to the wall.
Dear Mrs Damage
These choice materials are not meant as a replacement
for your creative eye, whose cleverness and ingenuity
at selecting unusual yet appropriate
couvertures
has
already been noted and appreciated. I bestow upon
you the final freedom to choose, whether it be silk,
skin, fur, feather, or
que voulez-vous
. I entreat you,
notwithstanding, to select with care. Just as some
colours flatter particular complexions, and some
bonnet styles suit certain shapes of head, so too
must you consider the colours and styles of your
binding according to the nature of the book. Sometimes
I will require the most excellent bindings, in
hue, texture and execution, to arouse and induce a
primitive –
c’est à dire
, carnal, rather than cerebral –
reaction. Sometimes, on the contrary, I will
command the most plain, unobtrusive binding to act
as shackle and protector for the more mischievous
literature, to prevent it leaping off the shelf at the
less knowledgeable reader. I trust we have an understanding;
that it is the responsibility of you, the
binder, so to clothe the texts for me, the bibliophile,
in suitably pleasing
habillé
, and that you will prove
quick to instruct.
As an aside, it is with some
ennui
that I must inform
you that our visitation to Berkeley-square did not go
unnoticed by Lady Knightley, who labours under the
illusion that her husband’s activities do not escape her.
She has sent me word that she wishes to meet with the
little lady bookbinder with an eye for sentiment and
fingers for finery; my speculations are that this is an
innocent invitation without any basis in that green-eyed
mistrust a lesser woman might display for a less-adoring
husband, but that you are female is evident to her, and I
propose to you that it would be
contra bonos mores
not
to attend to her request as soon as possible. She receives
on Tuesday and Thursday in the afternoon.
Most sincerely yours, &c.
Charles Diprose
Encs.
Assorted leathers: 4 x alum-tawed pigskin, 1 x
black sealskin, 2 x maroon crocodile skin, 2 x grey
and white snakeskin, 4 x Japanese embossed leather
(2 x floral, 2 x seaweeds and sea creatures)
Assorted silks, silk brocades and silk satins
Gold eyelets: sizes, various
2 oz gold
The paper may have been perfumed with vetivert, but the writing was spiky and stiff like the man himself, and unlike the soft
wonders awaiting me inside the treasure chest. I unpacked the contents, and laid them out on the bench.
‘Ooh, Mama, show me, show me!’
‘Where have you been?’
‘Playing in the street with Billy.’
‘Billy?’
‘Mrs Eeles’s boy.’
‘So your hands won’t be clean.’
She held them out to me, and flapped them over and around. ‘Spotless.’
‘Black as a pickaninny. Come and let me wipe them.’ I took her through the curtain back into the kitchen, dipped a sponge
into the pail, and cleaned right into the lines of her palms and under her finger-nails. Then she dried them on a towel, and
followed me back into the workshop.
‘Oh, Mama! It’s like the elves and their shoemaker! Can we be the shoemaker, can we? Can we cut little patterns out and leave
them for the elves to make by morning? Look, this would make a fine jerkin for a goblin king. And he could have breeches of
this, and boots of that. And he would marry a royal elfin queen, and she would be draped in this!’
‘That’s enough now, Lucinda. I am as excited as you, but we must be careful with Mama’s work materials.’
‘But can I help you?’
‘Yes. You can help me choose the right ones, and tell me how I can cut them, and combine them, and inlay them, to make the
most beautiful clothes, but for our books, not for any elves or goblins.’
‘But Mama, what if they’re goblins
disguised
as books? And when we go to bed they leap up off the workbench and go to the goblin ball?’
‘Wouldn’t that be exciting? Only I hope they would promise to be home by midnight and not soil their breeches in the mud before
I get a chance to give them back to Mr Bookseller.’
‘But what if they don’t?’
‘Then we must rap their bottoms with an emery strop and tie them to the bench with trindles.’
‘I’m tired, Mama.’
‘Perhaps you should lie down and have a little rest. Are you feeling peculiar?’
‘A little. But not too much.’
‘Would you like to sleep in your bed?’
‘I’d like you to put me in front of the fire in the parlour.’
So I carried her through, and made a space for her on the rug in front of the fire, at the feet of her father sleeping in
the armchair. She rested her head on the cushion which I took off the Windsor chair, and I brought a blanket down from her
bed and wrapped it around her. Her eyes started to sink into her, and it looked as if she was starting to doze off. I was
impatient to get back to the leathers and silks, and to get Jack started on the backing boards. I kissed her on the forehead;
in retrospect I should have waited longer, but she seemed drowsy enough.
In the workshop I re-read the letter, and pulled the manuscripts out from the bottom of the box. And then Peter shouted from
the sitting room, and his shouting was pained and anxious, and I knew what had happened even before I heard her small body
writhing on the floor and hitting the table legs.
‘Where are you, woman? For the love of – !’
I rushed in and moved the two dining chairs away in one gesture, and kicked the table towards the wall with my foot, before
rolling Lucinda on to her side and placing my hand on the small of her back in the slow wait for her to find calm. Past experience
should have taught me that she always would, but each time it felt as if she had cast off into the unknown, and might never
drift back to my shore. Her skin was grey, and her breathing fast. But eventually she fell into a deep slumber, and her breathing
grew more regular, and I picked her up in my arms and buried my head into her neck, and wished I never had to let her go from
this hold again.
Peter uttered a couple of ‘humphs’ before picking up an old newspaper. He considered it improper to fuss over anybody else’s
health, except, perhaps his own. All that he wanted, always, was for Lucinda to keep herself quiet and out of his way, and
he had neither the energy nor the inclination to engage with her childish whims; if the needs of others were not subordinated
to his own, he sulked. But this was ever the wife’s challenge: to look after her children, while making it seem as if she
put her husband first.
I took Lucinda to bed, and sat darning clothes by her bedside for an hour, until I could be sure she was safe. Her fitting,
coming so soon after the excitement of the parcel in the workshop, felt like a bad omen. I wondered if I should simply repackage
the box and instruct Jack to take it back to Holywell-street, with the announcement that Damage’s would have nothing more
to do with Diprose’s, but we were in no position to look this particular gift horse in the mouth.
I kissed her hot cheek, and descended. Peter was agitating his crimson fingers and muttering ungodly curses beneath his breath;
it had not escaped me that the seams of his moral suit of clothes were becoming somewhat unstitched as his health deteriorated,
abandoned as he must have felt by the good Lord.
Back in the workshop, as I wondered what to do with the dangerous contents of the crate, I discovered something I had overlooked
beneath them all. It was a large apothecary’s bottle, with a hand-written label, which read, ‘Patient: Mr Peter Damage, 2,
Ivy-street, Waterloo. Under Specification of Dr Theodore Chisholm, Harley Street. Triple Strength Formula. Not for General
Sale.’ I uncorked it and examined the contents: it was a brown, syrupy liquid, which I took to be a laudanum nostrum, not
unlike Battley’s, Dalby’s or Godfrey’s. I took it back in to Peter and read him the label.
‘I’ll get a spoon,’ I said, and left it on the table next to him, but by the time I returned, he had already swigged from
the bottle. I re-corked it and put it on the dresser, but only a few minutes later I noticed a strange smile creep across
his lips, and his eyelids were heavy. Unlike me, he slept soundly that night.
* * *
The illustrations to the
Decameron
were indeed unusual. At first I could not work out what they were about, but when I did, I said ‘oh!’ and quickly closed the
book. I paced around the workshop for several minutes. I arranged the papers in a more perfect pile. The tools, always left
in neat rows, were made neater by my agitated hands. I chipped the wax drippings off the candles and laid them in the melting
tray. Only when there was nothing left for me to straighten and order did I return to the unusual volume with great trepidation
and care. But as I still was unable to view the pictures for long, I turned to the relative safety of the text, and did what
I normally did when I felt flustered: I read.
I read of creatures – I could not yet consider them people – who performed acts without shame such as that they would be sent
straight to hell, and with good reason. I trembled at the wantonness within and searched for shelter for my soul against the
certain apocalypse that would befall them for doing it and me for bearing witness. My shame would protect me, I believed.
At least, it always had done; we women wear it like a veil.
I read into the night, a hundred marvellous tales of fortune and the plague and truth and lying – and the other kind of lying.
And oh! The women dressed as men! And my! The heart consumed! And then when I could feel my place in the text encroaching
upon the stiff paper of an engraving, I was at least prepared, and could accept that the illustrations made sense in the context
of the whole, and were another way into, or a different angle on, the startling feelings elicited by Boccaccio’s masterful
tales.
And I could feel the familiar sensation of a design for the binding forming in my head. As the public face of this very private
volume, it had to be something ambivalent, sensual and evocative, which only hinted at the surprises inside. My yearnings
that night were not for the strange joys Boccaccio wrote of, but for the skill to execute a binding that would do them justice.
In the morning, Peter, dull of temper, instructed me somehow to raise eighteen shillings, as Skinner was due to call later
that day. So Lucinda and I took his Sunday suit to the pawn-shop, and got a solid pound in return, which felt satisfactory.
As we rounded the corner of New Cut, two half-sovereigns in my purse, we passed the theatre, where a group of the better-to-do
ladies and gentlemen of Lambeth idly watched a performance by some minstrels blackened with burnt cork.
‘Look, Mama! Let’s go see.’ I was going to lift Lucinda up to get a better view over the crowd, but her wily smallness wheedled
its way through the skirts and trouser legs almost to the front, and I found myself in the midst of the crowd some way behind
her. A lady stood in front of me whose golden curls shook about her ears as she laughed at the musical jokes. A gentleman
had his arm around her tiny waist, and when the songs became maudlin she leant her head on his shoulder, crushing her perfect
curls on that side.
Something fell to the ground between us. I waited for a moment, then cast my eyes down, and slowly stooped to pick it up,
hoping she wouldn’t notice the movement to her right side. It was a fine gold earring, inlaid with four garnets. I hesitated
for a moment, and looked at my lady’s ears. They were graced with simple diamond studs. I scanned the rest of the group to
find the lady with the naked ear to whom I should return it. I saw her; she was directly by my left arm, but she had not cared
to look at what I had collected from the pavement. In an irreparable instant, I curled my fist over the earring. I waited
a few moments until the end of the song, and then in the midst of the applause I reached forward between two gentlemen and
tugged gently on Lucinda’s braids.
‘Come now, little one,’ I hissed.
‘But Mama,’ she wailed.
‘Hush your moaning, child. We must be off. Hurry, or I shall tell your father.’
The garnets would be perfect for my design. I had become a thief.
I showed the earring to Peter, who did not ask me how I had come by it, but straightways set himself to troubling how to provide
a firm setting for the garnets. I bit my lip as he held the piece on the palm of one hand, and prodded it with a bloated finger-pad
of the other hand. It was going to be a painstaking piece of work for him, and I meant that literally.
That afternoon, after Mr Skinner had come and gone with one half-sovereign and eight shillings and very little trouble else,
Peter found solace for his resultant nerves in the laudanum bottle again. I put Lucinda to an early bed, wiped the brown spittle
off Peter’s chin, and stayed up until midnight disbanding and cleaning off the backs of the sections of the old binding of
the
Decameron
, and mending the holes in the folds with pared paper. It was an arduous and fragile process, but I trusted that the mends,
which seemed invisible by candlelight, would be likewise barely perceptible in the light of day. My eyes were heavy by the
time I rigged up the sewing-frame, but it was a simple enough layout – octavo, with blank first recto, engraved frontispiece
on first verso, title page on second recto – and I sewed all the sections together and left them on Jack’s bench in time for
his half-past-seven start. Despite my empty stomach, I slept soundly at last, well nigh oblivious to Peter’s moans of pain
and fitful snores.
