The Journal of Dora Damage (26 page)
‘I do not understand,’ I eventually said. I had certainly read that term in one of Diprose’s books, but I struggled to remember
what it meant.
‘Well, then, I shall call it by its blunter term. Masturbation. Does Lucinda masturbate?’
I remained silent. I was not going to speak on this subject.
‘Do answer me, Mrs Damage,’ Lord Glidewell urged tetchily. ‘We are most fortunate to have such a renowned expert in his field;
it is an interesting and credible theory which is shaking the world of medicine.’ He was getting exasperated. ‘Has she confessed
to any sexual fantasies? Has she made any untoward advances to her father, or to Jack, or to any other men? Does she
frig
herself, Dora? Dora, I ask you to be vigilant, for it may bring your daughter closer to a cure for her condition.’
‘A cure?’ For certain, I wanted to know about a cure, but I could not fathom how this course of questioning would lead us
to one. ‘Which is?’
‘First, we must diagnose such an excess, as well we might, given the apparent success of her bromide therapy. Bromide reduces
sexual desire,
ipso facto
, if bromide treatment is effective, the cause was likely to be sexual excess. We then – or rather, Sir Jocelyn – will have
no choice but to carry out the requisite operation. It is termed a
cli-tor-i-dec-to-my
, a clitoridectomy, and is, quite simply, the excision or amputation of the clitoris. Constitutional symptoms such as Lucinda’s
are increasingly traceable to its irritation and abnormality –’ I think I stood up at this point, trembling as the lecture
continued ‘– and the necessity for its removal when much enlarged is increasingly recognised by eminent surgeons in such widely
differing cases as dysuria, hysteria, sterility and epilepsy. She will, of course, be thoroughly chloroformed throughout the
whole procedure.’ I sat down again, then stood once more. ‘It will positively cure Lucinda of her epilepsy and render her
immune to further convulsive episodes. Have you not seen Sir Jocelyn’s treasures?’
‘Treasures, Lord Glidewell?’ I managed to say, my mind reeling.
‘Why, I imagined you two to be more intimately acquainted. He has an entire collection of clitorises pickled in glass jars,
along with the renowned “Hottentot apron”. I am sure he will reveal them to you should you wish to peruse them.’
If what Lord Glidewell was telling me were true, then all Sir Jocelyn’s questing for a better world had disappeared up his
own fundament.
‘Lord Glidewell –’ I was shaking, ‘Lord – Glide –’ I spat, ‘– well, if you – or he – or any of you! – lay one finger on Lucinda
– I will go straight to the police! You can threaten me all you like, but you will keep Lucinda out of this!’ I was shouting
now.
Lord Glidewell, on the other hand, stayed unnervingly calm. He was even able to smile at me, as he said, ‘And the police will
be convinced of the necessity of the operation, when they discover her mother’s fascination with sordid texts, and will make
the appropriate equation that heightened sexuality must be an inheritable trait.’
I could not say a word; I feared I would swoon.
‘Good evening, Dora.’ He seized my hand and raised it to his lips, staring into my eyes all the while. He led me out into
the corridor, and made to go back into the dining-room, but the door opened before he reached the handle.
A man I did not recognise, in a blue smoking-jacket, with slick black hair, stood at the door. He looked me quickly up and
down, before addressing Lord Glidewell. ‘Ah, Valentine. I trust you have remembered to impress upon our guest that we are
still waiting for an assurance of the loyalty of her mahogany journeyman.’
I knew not which of the Noble Savages this man was, but I had ceased listening. For behind him I caught a glimpse of a long,
hazy room, a shining table, men in jewel-coloured velvets, a flame lighting a cigar, a flash of gold. It felt tremendously
improper for me to witness this male occasion; it somehow felt more shameful than anything I had seen in any book to date.
But I could not avert my gaze, and the men within, too, stared back out at me, laughing in a fraternal code that sneered at
outsiders.
I had known these men’s inmost desires for months, and yet I was only now seeing them for the first time. My gaze flitted
promiscuously from one to the next, as if it were possible to match their countenances with their proclivities. They all held
glasses, thick with bloody liquid, and while Bacchus danced amongst them on the table, Priapus, I knew all too well, pranced
beneath. Who was it, then, who was hooded like a king cobra? Which of them had been disrobed by the knife at birth? Whose
was the fat purple bishop? And whose the spotted dick? Whose curved like a walking stick? And who inched the pipe-cleaner
down into the eye of the snake, and who boasted of preferring a goose-feather quill, bony end first, even, and no trimming
of the feathers beside?
Which one rampaged for little boys? And who for young maidenheads? Which ones gave, and which received, and who was the lucky
one who always found himself in the middle? Who had fucked what of the feast that spread between them? Who had impaled the
turkey while its neck was wrung, and who preferred stuffing the ducks? Which one lowered horses onto his ladies, and which
one had watched the breath pressed out of one poor unfortunate by a pot-bellied pig?
I exaggerate not. They were all here, I knew, for I had read their diaries, their letters, their stories, and they knew it
too, as they watched me watching them. Who wrote the diaries, and who the treatises? Who was tickled by
galanteries
, and who the prints and photographs?
The only one I could place with any certainty now was Valentine. He was the one who hung himself nightly on a silken rope
above his desk, in order to elicit forth an orgasm of especial violence, while a valet stood by with a sharpened knife ready
to cut the cord at the critical moment.
And was that a woman in there with them, and if so, how many other dusky-eyed houris trembled in the shadows? But no, I was
mistaken. It was a man, with flowing, oiled, yellow locks and rouged lips, but he looked so young, and had not the supercilious
air of the Noble Savages, that I had to surmise that he was, like me, nothing more than hired help.
And standing in the midst of them all was Sir Jocelyn Knightley, glass still in hand, staring directly at me, surrounded by
smoke. When my eyes finally came to rest, they came to him, and I held his gaze with defiance, like an angry, betrayed lover,
until and beyond the closing of the door.
The vision of the smouldering room disappeared, and I was alone in the hall, until the butler came for me and deposited me
on the doorstep outside, where no cab awaited me, and none troubled me either on my journey home to Lambeth. I may have been
leered at, propositioned, threatened, followed even; I knew someone was chasing me, but I outran him, and gave him the slip
after Westminster Bridge. But it was as a ghost floating above the streets themselves that I navigated the horrors of London
at night. The poisons that coursed through the veins of our society from its crown to its very toes seemed to run through
my body too; I felt drugged, and dazed. The king is sick, I wanted to cry, but I had no breath for it, and besides, so are
his attendants.
I ran up Ivy-street, oblivious to twitching curtains, and pushed my own front door open. Greeting me was the improbable sight
of Jack in my apron, pan in hand, serving hashed meat to Peter, who sat at the table; Lucinda was carrying the milk jug to
the table in her nightdress. They broke off the moment they saw me and rushed at me with words of concern – all except Peter
– and Lucinda and I embraced in a moment of peace amid the hubbub.
When she had had enough of being held, the child led me to a chair, and Jack brought me a glass of warm milk.
‘There’s brandy in it for you, Mrs D.’
‘Where’ve you been, mama? Where’ve you been?’
‘Oh child,’ I cried, and stroked her hair. ‘Are you well? Your health? Are you well?’
‘I’m very well, Mama.’
And I could see that she was. Despite the strains of prolonged absence from her mother, Lucinda had not fallen fitting. For
that, I had to be grateful to the man responsible for my absence and pains: Sir Jocelyn Knightley. But I swore that night
that I would die before I let that man take his knife to her; his were idle threats only, nothing more, I told myself over
and over, and that such brutality would remain the stuff of fantasy in the fictions of his books in such a gloriously free
country as ours, under Her Majesty’s rule. This was London, not the barbaric outer reaches of her Empire where mutilating
little girls was considered normal. This was London; fine, clean, noble London. Wasn’t it?
I could not sleep for what was left of the night. I watched Lucinda breathing far away in her dreams for an hour or so, and
then I glided into our bedroom. I pulled back the bedclothes at the corner, so as not to disrupt the portion that covered
Peter’s body, and I lay next to him, trying not to touch him, and to keep my breathing quiet. But I stared at his face in
the moonlight, pitted and red like the complexion of a lover of the bottle, so misshapen was it, and I tried to remember what
it was like to feel in love with him. Then I got up again and went back to Lucinda, and kept watch, as if I knew my love was
not enough to protect her, and that I would have to be vigilant now too.
Hey diddle dout,
My candle’s out,
My little maid’s not at home;
Saddle the hog,
And bridle the dog,
And fetch my little maid home.
I
wouldn’t have noticed her through my bleary eyes if I hadn’t let the milk boil over again. The smell was so horrible I thought
it was worth letting a bit of London’s stink and cold in to compensate, so I went over to the parlour window, took the plants
off the ledge, and opened the sash. And there I saw her little urchin face, and her stick-and-bones frame perched on the door-step,
as dirty as the step itself which I had not whitened for weeks. She had no coat, no shawl, no scarf even, and her skin was
grey and cracked.
‘Good morning,’ I said to her, half-choking with the dust descending from the window struts.
‘Mornin’,’ she replied. ‘I’m ’ere for the job.’
‘The job?’ I had all but forgotten in the cruel events of yesterday. ‘Oh, the job!’
The poor little scrap scarcely looked older than Lucinda, but I reckoned she must have been about fifteen. She stood up quick
as a rake that had been stepped on, and I unbolted the front door and let her in. She hovered on the door-mat as I closed
the door behind her.
‘You’d better follow me in to the kitchen,’ I said, waving my hand in front of my nose. ‘Sorry about the smell. I forgot to
scald the milk from yesterday. I’m a bit preoccupied, so I’ll have to ask you some questions as I work, if you don’t mind.’
She moved forward the length of one room, and stood in the door-way of the parlour, watching as I wrung out a cloth to clean
up the top of the range. I scrubbed with one hand; with the other, I threw the pan into the corner where the beetles and spiders
were winning their siege.
‘Now, something clean to make the breakfast with. What’s your name, dear?’
‘Pansy.’
‘Pansy. That’s a nice name.’
She said nothing, but watched as I busied myself in the kitchen. Unused to a witness at this hour, I muttered under my breath
like an old forgetful woman. ‘Now where’s the . . . ah there it is . . . Put some water in . . . mustn’t forget the . . .’
As usual, within a trice I had the water boiling, the laundry steeping, the floor swept, and a few bugs moderately intimidated.
I thought of going to wake Lucinda, but I knew it was to calm my own fears, and not for her sake.
‘Beg pardon, mum, but I was wonderin’ if you could say if I ’ad the job or no.’
‘Oh, Pansy, forgive me, but you’ll just have to wait until I’ve got the house going a bit. It is early, love, and I was awful
late last night.’ I poured the boiling water on to the tea-leaves.
‘Yes, mum, sorry mum, only I got to go now or as I’ll be late for the day shift so as I need to know now.’
‘The day shift? Where?’
‘Remy’s. I need to go now and I’ll still be late most like.’
I saw Lucinda standing behind Pansy, clutching Mossie, and eyeing the new arrival. Her hair was still tangled, and her feet
were bare.
‘Good morning, lovely.’ I crouched down and held out my arms to her. She came to me and kissed me, then went to play in the
parlour.
‘Well, I’ll try to keep this brief then. Do you have any references?’ I started to butter some bread for Lucinda, and pour
her some milk.
She shook her head.
‘How long have you been at Remy’s?’
‘Six months. Three months on nights, now I’m on days.’
‘Is this your first employ?’
She shook her head. ‘Nah. I was at Lambard’s before then.’ I knew them; a very large industrial bookbinders, larger than Remy
& Rangorski.
‘Bible work?’
She nodded. I whistled through my teeth as I took Lucinda’s breakfast through and placed it on the dining table. Everybody
knew Bible contracts paid woefully, and treated you even worse. It’s a rum world, I thought, where white men preached the
Bible to chained folk and free, in America, in the colonies, across the Empires. They might say slavery is bad, or they might
turn a blind eye, but in order to press a Bible into the hands of the heathen they relied on slave labour back home. Frederick
Douglass, I remembered, had words to say on this matter.
‘Eat up, Lou. Your bread and milk’s here.’ I turned back to Pansy. ‘What did you do there?’
‘Days, first. Then days and nights.’
‘Both?’
‘Christmas. They make you do it all when it’s Christmas. Or just busy.’
‘I meant, what work did you do for them?’
‘Oh. Sewin’.’
‘And at Remy’s?’
‘Sewin’.’
‘Why did you leave Lambard’s?’
‘I had to, mum. They was bringin’ in them new sewin’-machines, an’ I din’t knah how to use ’em.’
‘Why couldn’t you get a reference from them?’
‘Wouldn’t give me none. Said they could pay a girl less than they could pay a woman, so I had to go.’
‘But what did they mean by that? You are a girl, Pansy.’
She was twisting one of her feet round on the ball of her foot, and her knee was pointing inwards beneath her flimsy skirt.
She looked like a little child. She bit her lip, and looked down at the floor. She was flushing.
‘They said I wasn’t. See, mum, I got in trouble there.’
I raised my eyebrows.
‘It weren’t my fault, mum, and I won’t be causing trouble for you ’ere. I’m not like that, honest. It weren’t my fault, and
it were me first time, an’ if I was strong enough I’d never’ve let ’im near me, mum.’ We both looked down at the same time,
to see that Lucinda had come in. She was holding her plate out to Pansy. She had torn her bread in half and dipped it in milk.
‘Is this for me? In’t you kind?’
Lucinda looked at me. ‘Mama hasn’t given you any tea yet, and I thought you looked cold.’
‘I am, dearie, I am. Bless yer ’art. But you eat it. I can get meself summink later.’
My head was telling me she had ‘whore’ written all over her, but Lucinda was forcing me to listen to my heart. Whatever questions
I was going to ask – her background, if she’d been in trouble with the police, if she’d ever been thieving or the like – sounded
brittle in my ears. My daughter had trusted her straightways, and that was worth more than any reference. I started to lay
out Peter’s breakfast things, and added an extra cup for Pansy.
‘So what happened to you?’
‘They made me work the night shift. Them respectable girls never would, but they never believed me when I said no, cos they
knew I needed the money, what with me mam dead and ten of us at home. ’E was a backin’-machine op’rator, and ’e made me do
it, and got me chavvied up, but I told the foreman, only ’e told me I was a liar, but his auntie knows how to do away with
it, if you get my meanin’, an’ he took me to ’er, and I bled for a month and ’ad the doctor’s bills to pay, and I ’aven’t
bled since, if you beg my pardon, and they told me I never would again, never ’ave me own babies, which they said I ’ad them
to be grateful for, no more mouths to feed. I don’t mean to tell you this all, only so as you know I’m not gahn to be causin’
you trouble. It ain’t nice, people thinking you’re like that, and doctors comin’ and checkin’ you fer disease an’ that, an’
Sally an’ Gracie too, and the women in the tenement upstairs, like bein’ a whore was infectious.’
‘Was that when you left?’
‘No, mum. But they don’t like a blower, do they? They never asked me to do the night shift again, but I needed the money,
so I started to do nights at Remy’s. Twelve hours at Lambard’s, eight hours at Remy’s. Until they said they wanted me “replaced”,
they said. It was slack time, anyway. Always is, March through July. Now I’m at Remy’s.’
‘What do they pay you?’
‘Eight shillings a week. I’d’ve got twelve if I coulda used one of them machines.’
I poured her a cup of tea, and cut her a slice of cake. As she sat and ate, I took Peter’s tray up to him, then returned,
and told her everything: how the workshop ran, about Peter’s illness, and Lucinda, and about Jack, and Din, and the terms
of employment. I left nothing out; nothing, except the nature of the work that went through the workshop. I outlined what
work I needed her to do, and that she could hand in her notice at Remy & Rangorski today if she chose.
Pansy shrugged, and said with a mouth full of crumbs, ‘If I’m not there by now, me place will have gone anyway.’
There were so many things I could have started Pansy working on immediately, that it was hard for me to choose where she would
be best placed. Eventually I decided she needed to begin right where she was: in the kitchen. As the centre of operations
for the household and workshop, it was relative squalor, but I wondered how it compared to where Pansy lived. I showed her
where the water came in, and told her the hours that it ran, and how the range worked, and where I kept the salts and soaps,
and with that, I slipped behind the curtain into the workshop. I was alone for once: Din had taken some gold-dust back to
Edwin Nightingale, and Jack was delivering our trade-card up along the Strand.
At least, in amongst the offensive literature, Diprose still sent me the occasional Bible, or prayer-book, or Sir Walter Scott,
so today I could occupy myself with those. I selected a Bible, to pretend for a while that I was back in the early days, when
I was still the innocent. The binding would be pale blue satin, and I was working it in coloured silks and silver and gold
threads. I planned to depict scenes from the Song of Solomon surrounded by an elaborate border of beasts, birds and fruit,
and I turned to the right page and read.
Song of Solomon:
I am black but comely,
O ye daughters of Jerusalem,
as the tents of Kedar, as the curtains of Solomon.
Look not upon me because I am black,
because the sun hath gazed upon me.
I was interrupted by a stern rapping at the outside door. I opened it to find Bennett Pizzy standing outside, looking remarkably
well recovered from the previous day’s troubles and exertions. A large, bruised man loomed on either side of him, neither
of whom I recognised from the
razzia
. They pushed past me, although I was gratified to watch them all check at the smell of the workshop.
‘Her name?’
‘A pleasure to see you too, Mr Pizzy, so soon after our last delightful meeting.’
‘Her name?’
‘Pansy, Mr Pizzy.’
‘Pansy what?’
‘Pansy I don’t know yet.’
‘From?’
‘Don’t know.’
‘Family?’
‘Don’t know. Mother dead, ten siblings, I think she said.’
‘Father?’
‘Don’t know. You really should . . .’
‘Age?’
‘Don’t know.’
‘Previous employment?’
Here I paused. ‘Don’t know,’ I finally said.
‘Don’t you ask questions before you hire someone?’ he asked scathingly. ‘Don’t you have any sense of responsibility? If not
for yourself, for Mr Diprose, for Sir Jocelyn Knightley? Have you quite taken leave of your senses? Have you not even asked
if she can read?’
‘Course she can’t,’ I snorted. I stared Mr Pizzy defiantly in the eye. ‘Ask her yourself,’ I said quietly, and pulled the
curtain aside.
With less resolution, as if he were not quite prepared for this, Pizzy walked through into the kitchen, followed by his thickset
friends. Pansy was on her hands and knees in the fireplace, with black smeared on her face and neck. She sat back on her haunches
as they came in, and looked at me for reassurance.
‘You are Pansy, correct?’ Pizzy asked. She nodded, her hazel eyes wide and bright in the hearth like a frightened cat on a
dust heap.
‘Mr Pizzy, beg pardon, but may I – may I tell her who you are first?’
He nodded.
‘Pansy, love, these gentlemen are clients of the workshop. They’re not from Remy’s or Lambard’s or anywhere like that. They
just want to ask you a few questions about yourself, so as they’ll know who’s helping where they get their books done up.’
‘Your surname?’
‘Smith.’
‘Address?’
‘Six Granby-street, top floor.’
‘With?’
‘There are thirteen of us.’
‘They are?’
‘Me auntie Grace and uncle Raymond, their lodger Dougie, then let’s see, Baz, Sally, and Alfie, and Hettie, Pearl, Willie,
Frank, Ellie, and Sukie.’
‘Brothers and sisters,’ I interjected to Pizzy.
‘Nah, not all of ‘em,’ Pansy explained. ‘Sally’s married to me brother Baz, and Alfie’s their baby.’
‘And you all live together? Separate tenements in one house?’
‘Nah, one tenement, three rooms. There’s twelve on the floor below us.’
‘Where did you work before?’
‘Remy’s.’
‘Why did you leave?’
‘Saw the notice in the winder.’
‘The notice?’ Pizzy looked at me. ‘What did it say?’
‘It asked for a girl, to do sewing and folding and nursing an invalid and – and – domestic chores.’ Pizzy was still staring
straight at me. I held his gaze, but I could not keep the horror from my face.
‘Thank you, Miss Smith. Good day.’ And with great charm, and a raise of his hat, Pizzy marched back into the workshop, and
without so much as a click of his fingers, his two henchmen picked me up by the arms, and dragged me behind him, and threw
me on the floor, and one of them yanked my arms behind my back, and I saw Pizzy out of the corner of my eye unravel a piece
of rope from the pocket of his coat, and then he crouched down, and ripped off my cap, and pulled my hair upwards so hard
my head came off the floor.
‘You told me she couldn’t read,’ he hissed into my ear. One of his men took the rope and tied it tight around my wrist. ‘You
told me, you little bitch, that she couldn’t read. What else have you lied about, hmmm?’
I tried to shake my head, but it was impossible, and my throat was so stretched that I could scarce get a word out, only tiny,
high-pitched squeaks. Pizzy stood up, and with the point of his flashy leather boots started to kick me, in the ribs, then
in the stomach, then in the hips, and I cried out from each as if they were the stab of a knife. Then he pulled my head up
higher by the hair, and my chest and back hurt from the angle and the tension, and I knew he was waiting until I could bear
it no more and only then would he slam my head down into the sawdust and floorboards.
