The Journal of Dora Damage (28 page)

‘Din. Would you mind stopping what you are doing for a while, and helping me with the leather?’

‘Sure, ma’am.’

He came over to the bench and placed his hands on two opposite corners of the leather while I worked the paste into it. It
was important that the leather did not slip, which would smear the paste onto the good side of the leather. I tried to concentrate.
Din’s head was bowed, and he appeared nonchalant, but to me it was unbearable.

I could smell him. He smelt of smoke and soil, not like dirt but the soil of the earth itself, sweet and damp, like the smell
that lurks between moss and bark, or bark and tree-flesh. I was drawn by the smell of him, mixed with the sweet, dusty odour
of leather and sawdust around us. I wanted to sniff him deeply, to bury my nose into his flesh and breathe him noisily in.

Instead, I held my breath. Half of what I desired? I was doing the exact opposite of my desires. And then I knew that he was
holding his breath too, and he was answering me, and smelling me too, and I felt a stirring inside me, and my secret longing
urged like a vapour towards him and pressed itself into him without me, as I stood still, and rigid.

‘Din. Please, repeat for me the quotation from Ovid’s
Amores
. I have been struggling to remember it.’

‘ “
Suffer and endure, for some day your pain will be of
benefit.
” ’

‘ “Suffer and endure . . .” ’ I repeated, quietly. ‘Is that a particular philosophy of yours?’

I felt him smile, although I did not look up into his face, for it was too close to mine.

‘It is indeed, ma’am. My favourite motto. For it is about hope. You see, before, ma’am, since my people were first enslaved,
there was no hope. Instead, you had to defer your hope to the kingdom o’ heaven that was meant to await you in the next life.
You know the song. You’d be escorted there by bands of angels, on winged chariots. It was the only hope we had, and you had
to believe it, or despair. Without hope, how can a man live? But now I don’t believe in that no more.’

‘Why not?’ I was growing hot from the fire in his eyes as he spoke.

‘Because I am startin’ to believe in something else. I am startin’ to believe that there may be hope in my lifetime. There
are signs round every corner that the end of enslavement is near. I have more hope than ever before, that the kingdom o’ heaven
can indeed be now, and that today can be the day o’ change, for ever. But then again,’ he conceded, ‘a boy may have strange
opinions about all things Christian when he come from a country that says slavery is the will o’ God.’

He chuckled, and kept talking, but I had stopped hearing his words and was just listening to the music of his voice, knowing
as I did all the while that the leather was fully pasted, that I could keep him at my table no longer, and that I didn’t know
how to tell him.

So I listened to him talk again, until he had talked himself out, and we lapsed into silence, and I eventually said, ‘Thank
you, Din,’ and released the pressure on the leather, and didn’t dare watch him as he returned to the sewing-frame.

Later that day Pansy came up to me again.

‘I’ve remembered it now. I know where’ve seen ’im before. ’E’s a fighter, mum.’

‘A fighter?’

‘Yeah. Dahn the tanners. ’E brought Baz back one night, all cut up and bleedin’. ’E couldn’t even walk. It was ’im what brought
’im back.’

‘Back from where, Pansy?’

‘It’s a fighting-gang. They’re all at it. Dahn the tanners, at the weekend. Well, used to be the tanners’ yard, now they do
it in a drill-shed somewhere. Or outside.’

‘Who does it? Is it a prize-fight?’

‘Nah, nuffin’ so legit. They just beat each uvver senseless.’

‘Why? Is it sport?’

Pansy shrugged. ‘It was the tanners what started it. Now it’s anyone. Men from the barracks, costermongers, all sorts. Roughs
and bruisers, all of ’em. They get well mashed up.’

‘Bare-knuckle?’

‘Mostly. Only they sometimes do a challenge with the tanning tools. Leather-ligging’s Baz’s favourite, when they do it with
leather straps. Metal bands, they use, too. Or worse. They use all sorts, the tanners; they’ve got these big metal triangle
pins, and all them pokes and knives. But they don’t do it all the time, or it’d be murder. Baz once had to fight this big
Irish fella, who was a shedman.’

‘A shedman?’

‘The one whose job it is to pummel the leather, to soften it. And d’you know what they use to do that?’

I shook my head.

‘This bloody great stave with two ’eads on. Baz couldn’t walk for a month. ’E got whipped that night.’

‘Whipped?’

‘Yeah. There’s this bloke with a long leather whip, who whips ’em if it all gets out of hand, before one of ’em gets killed
good and proper. You sing small for a while if you’ve been whipped.’

‘Are you telling me that Din gets involved with all this too?’

Pansy shrugged again. ‘Far as I know. ’E brought Baz back, I remember that much, the night ’e got whipped. Does ’e come in
’ere lookin’ all mashed sometimes?’

‘Yes, he has done. Pansy, could you find out for me?’

‘What?’

‘Well, if there’s anything about Din I need to know. Anything that . . . doesn’t reflect too well on him.’

‘All right, mum. Only, it don’t reflect well on all of ’em, if you don’t like that sort of thing.’

‘But is it legal?’

‘Oh, it’s legal enough. Wouldn’t get any rozzer down there, at any rate.’

‘It’s just . . . I need to know more about him, something he might not tell me if I ask. Do you understand me?’

‘I think so,’ she said doubtfully. ‘’E’s a lucky fella, ’e is, landing this job with you.’

‘Maybe. But he hasn’t had much luck before that.’

‘It’s a sight better than anyfink I’ve ever ’ad. Wish some royal bird would have bought me and landed me a job when I was
down on me luck at Lambard’s.’

‘Peter?’ I whispered. He was lying in bed, staring with glassy eyes at the ceiling. ‘Peter. We must get you out of bed today.
Pansy wishes to change the sheets.’ I spoke slowly, hoping some of it was going in. ‘Peter. You have not been out of bed for
days.’ I took a flannel from the press, dipped it in some water, and wiped his chin, his cheeks, his brow.

He muttered something, but I could not hear him.

‘I don’t understand,’ I said, and held one of his ravaged hands. He turned and looked at me through rheumy, yellow eyes, streaked
with blood. Even his tears seemed to be red.

‘I have not been good to you,’ he said slowly.

‘Oh, but you have,’ I replied merrily. ‘You have been a fine husband. It is I who has not been the best wife a man can hope
for.’

He stroked my hand, then raised his head.

‘Your ring. Your wedding ring. It’s gone.’

I started at my hand, and for a moment felt like a drunk woman who wonders where she has left her baby.

‘Did you sell it?’ he asked sadly.

Then I remembered it was still in pawn.

‘It’s . . . it’s . . . I take it off to do the work.’ I wondered if it was too late to redeem it. But then again, I still
had nothing to redeem it with as I was yet to be paid.

Peter started to cry, low and soft. ‘You are no longer my wife. You no longer sport the sign of our marriage.’ He was not
accusing, or angry, just resigned.

‘No, Peter,’ I said quickly. ‘The work is the sign of my true commitment to you. I have saved your name.’ But I knew I had
soiled it. ‘Is that not the greatest way a wife can serve her husband?’ I hated myself for these lies. I wanted to apologise
to him, and ask his forgiveness, but possibly the lie was better for one in his condition. I did not know any more what was
right or wrong. I simply wanted to wrap him up in a blanket and carry him to a place where there was great beauty, where he
could lie down in a field, smell the corn, and watch the butterflies flutter colour through the air, and know that he was
safe.

‘Am I dying, Dora?’ he asked.

‘We all are, Peter,’ I said quietly. ‘Only some will get there sooner than others.’

He placed his other hand over mine, and closed his eyes. ‘A pearl of a wife,’ he said. ‘A pearl.’

I leant forward and kissed his wet lips, then sat next to him with my ringless hand on his chest for a while. His body never
twitched or turned, but weighed the mattress down like a rock. Silence was better than lies, at least.

I let him sleep a while longer while I worked in the bindery. Then Pansy came in to tell me he was stirring so we went upstairs
together, and helped him out of bed and into Lucinda’s room, where he lay down on her cot and moaned for some more Drop.

‘I’ll bring it for you when I’ve helped Pansy make the bed.’

‘Now,’ he groaned. ‘Now!’

So I descended for the bottle, and when I brought it up he grabbed it from me and swigged. I had never insisted on the measuring-spoon;
it would have been impossible to start now.

I joined Pansy in the bedroom where she was stripping the bed. ‘Anything to tell about Din?’ I asked quietly.

‘Nuffink. Not a jot. Baz told me nuffink. They’re all as bad as each other, seems. If you’re wantin’ to shop ’im to the coppers
. . .’

‘That’s not my intention, Pansy. I just need to know a bit about the side we don’t see at work. You know what it’s like.’

She looked doubtful again, and slightly suspicious. I decided I would have to take a different approach. But I was sure there
was something about these fighting nights that would serve my purpose. It was getting urgent, too.

My troubling was interrupted by a noise from Lucinda’s bedroom. I rushed in to find Peter lying flat on his back, clutching
at her bedclothes with claws of terror, and staring at the ceiling.

‘What is it?’ I asked.

Beads of sweat clung to his face. The bottle was on the floor. I picked it up quickly, fearing it had spilt, but it was empty
and there was no mess.

‘Peter. Have you drunk the lot? Peter?’

I tried to remember how full it had been. His eyes were closing. I let him sleep.

Chapter Fifteen

Friday’s a day that will have its trick,

The fairest or foulest day of the week.

T
he volume of work was abating as we got closer to Christmas. Soon we had precious few books to get up into leather, except,
of course, for the photographic catalogues, which remained in a stack by the wall, a tower of Babylon taunting me in tongues
I could not and did not wish to understand. I had achieved no victory over Diprose – they still had not paid me – and I wondered
how desperate I would have to become before I would give in to the work they proffered. I had thought that working like this
would save us, that I was being the best wife I could be, but in truth, I wondered if I were any better than a prostitute.
I felt like the ghost of Holy-well-street, trapped in endless gas-lit labyrinths of vice and filth, and unable to find a way
out into daylight.

It was when Mr Skinner arrived again, and with only the curtest of greetings and a ‘thankin’ ya werry much’ pocketed our remaining
proceeds, leaving us with nothing to buy food even, let alone stretch to a little extra Christmas spending, that I started
to worry. I took a meagre bag of gold-dust to Edwin Nightingale, who offset it against my outstanding debts with him, but
would not give me cash. I became angrier in the workshop; I snapped at Din, and at Jack, and I shouted at Pansy.

‘You know your hours,’ I reprimanded Din one day. ‘They are less than Jack’s, and still you cannot keep them.’

‘I know.’

‘Why do you leave me every Friday?’

‘I have other business.’

‘Which is?’

‘I cannot tell you.’

Oh but you can, I thought. And I know anyway. Other business, indeed. I tried to find another way to pry.

‘Din, sometimes, you come in here . . .’ How was I to say this tactfully? ‘You look . . . You look . . . as if you have been
hurt. You come in here all black and . . .’ Oh my, what a turn of phrase.

‘. . . blue, ma’am? Yes, we folks do bruise, but it’s harder to see.’ He continued working. A curse on my haste.

‘So where do you go then, of a Friday, Din? What is your other business?’ But I was not getting anywhere, so I added, ‘Or
are you ashamed of it?’

He said nothing.

‘Are you happy here, at the bindery?’

‘Happy, ma’am?’

I could not stop myself. ‘Are we not enough for you, that you have to take on “other business”?’ He stayed silent. ‘Aha! Then
it is us you are ashamed of! Are we too shameful for you, Din?’

‘Shameful, ma’am?’

‘Is it not degrading for you – to be working on –
this
?’ Still I did not know if he knew the true nature of the work here, but my anger pushed me. But still he did not react. It
provoked me further. I was what was shameful here. ‘And for a
woman
as well?’

He lifted his head from his work, and met my gaze. ‘Shame?’ he answered. ‘There is no
shame
here. You run a highly respectable business, ma’am.’

‘Do not mock me!’

‘I do not.’ He tilted his head, and closed one eye, as if to scrutinise me with the open one. He looked amused. ‘Respectable,’
he repeated. ‘
Respicere
. To look back at. To regard. To behold.’ He was grinning now, and I was confounded. ‘Respectability is only how folk see
you. I only know how I see you, not how they do. To me, ma’am, you are indeed respectable, for here I am beholdin’ you.’

His words winded me, and I paused, unable to go back to what I had said, or forward to what I wanted to say. This was not
where I had intended to be. Finally, I replied, ‘Then you cannot worry that I may not think you respectable. Am I not beholding
you too?’

A moment passed between us, like the air that waits between the bell and the clapper as the clock strikes the hour, before
I turned away. If words were nothing more than dressings on our true selves, then the not-saying, the silence, was an undressing,
and I was shivering. But I dared not allow the man’s beholding warm me up, although I knew it would. It would stoke fires
that would rage beyond my control, and consume me in their heat, all for the sake of a bit of warmth. No. How dare he behold
me. How dare he ridicule me, mock me, play with me, undress me. I was his employer; he was my slave.

If the man would not tell me where he went, all I had to do was follow him. I would know, then, and I would have power over
him. I believe now that that was what I wanted most: power over the man. For in the face of those strange feelings within
me that he engendered, I was powerless.

I also had the leisure to undertake this plan, given the troubling lack of crates descending on us from Holywell-street. But
it would require some preparation, so I ambled up Ivy-street, plotting my pursuit of Din, and knocked at Mrs Eeles’s door.
She opened it quickly, only to discover to her disappointment that it was the whore of Ivy-street. She left the door open,
as a sign that I was to continue my supplication, but hid herself entirely behind it.

‘Mrs Eeles,’ I said to the empty space. ‘I beg your forgiveness for broaching you on such a sensitive issue, only I have today
received news of the passing of a business acquaintance of my husband . . .’

I had not appreciated how little she would be able to resist. Her head poked round the door, so she could show me how well
her brow was knitted out of concern. ‘Oh, you poor, dear girl. Did you know him well?’

‘Passing well, yes. But I do not ask for pity. It is his widow for whom I feel sorrow, and his eighteen children.’

‘Eighteen!’ Now a hand appeared, raised heavenwards. ‘The Lord giveth, and yet He taketh away. May He bless the poor, bereft,
little ones!’

‘The funeral is on Friday and . . .’

‘. . . you wish for weeds?’

‘Sadly, yes. I am in need of a mantle, and the weeping veil I gave you in lieu of rent back in December last. Just for one
night. I shall be leaving around five o’clock on Friday, and walking to my destination. I will return it to you clean and
fresh on my return.’ I could see she was noting the timing in her head, and I hoped she felt it would not be worth sending
Billy to follow me. I knew not where I could give him the slip on the way to the tanneries.

She went back inside for a moment, and left me on the threshold. I did not turn around, but could feel I was being watched
by Ivy-street. Eventually her hand wound its way around the door, holding a large black bundle of crêpe and wool. I took it,
and bobbed a curtsey, even though the hand couldn’t see.

‘I am ever so grateful, Mrs Eeles. Thank you.’

‘And here are some gloves for you,’ came the unexpected words, and the other hand thrust out two limp black gloves at me.
I half-expected a third hand to appear with a jet cameo, and a fourth with some ribbons, but I was grateful for what I had,
and fled with them back to the workshop.

My time in the bindery with Din on Friday was fraught with tension. I trembled constantly at the thought of what I was to
undertake that night, and how best to explain myself should he catch me. But in truth, my trembling was for other reasons.
For I was starting to worry that my desire to touch him was not out of any intellectual fancy – which is what I had told myself
– but from a compulsion born within the pit of my being, which threatened to stretch my fingers out without any intercession
on behalf of my brain. Each time I passed him a folder or buffer, it was as much as I could do, as I withdrew my hand, to
will my fingers to clench into a fist, as if I were deliberately trying to hammer the air instead of impress his flesh onto
their tips.

Idle fantasy arising out of our irreconcilable, innate differences, I kept trying to convince myself as I struggled to work.
That much I knew from the literature Diprose had supplied me with, which declared that black men want white women because
they are everything they have been told they can’t have. The argument reversed would imply that I only wanted him because
he was black; Lady Knightley and her Ladies were proof enough of that. No, books were no help to me here. The only book that
showed the lust of white women for a black man was
The Lustful Turk
, but then, he was a Turk, not an African, and the Dey at that, and so prodigiously endowed that, allegedly, no woman brutally
awoken to her sexuality by such a weapon could ever resist, once pain had transmuted to pleasure. So I could hardly look to
it for guidance. Nowhere could I find a book that would help me: this was not the sort of thing one would find on the shelves
of Mudie’s Select Libraries. A delusion of love, Dora, I told myself over again. An unrighteous lust, Dora.

I announced, very publicly, to Jack that I would be leaving the bindery early, that he must lock up, and that I expected he
would leave on time. At a quarter to five I went into the house and put on the long black mantle, the veil and Mrs Eeles’s
gloves. I put on my boots, but beneath the finery their sorry state was more evident than ever: my toes were completely exposed,
and there was hardly enough left of the eroded sole to keep in the pages of
The Illustrated London
News
. In haste I pulled my new brown boots from under the bed, and persuaded myself that tottering in heels would be preferable
to freezing in ruins. I laced them tightly, then bid farewell to Pansy and Lucinda, all the while listening for the door of
the bindery, and then it came, and I sensed Din’s shadow passing the house as he left.

I could not see Billy the Nose anywhere, and by the time we got to Waterloo Bridge I knew I was not being tailed, which left
me free to concentrate on following Din at a distance, and to worry about where we were going, for it was clear we were not
heading to Bermondsey. Besides, I was worrying about the weather. Crêpe did not like getting wet. The gummy, tightly wound
silk threads would shrivel in the rain, and the veil would be ruined, along with my plans, and Mrs Eeles’s pleasure.

But then I had another thing to worry about. I could hardly count the times I had crossed this bridge watching my toes go
in and out under the hem of my skirts, and each of those times I had longed for smart new boots to keep the rain out and my
toes warm. Now I had them, and their efficient clip clip clip gratified my spirit but grated my feet, which were soon blistering
all over.

As we reached the Strand, Din stuck out his arm, and a green omnibus marked ‘BOW and STRATFORD’ ground to a halt, so I quickened
my sore pace to reach the vehicle before it pulled out again. I fretted about whether I had the exact fare in my purse, so
as not to draw attention to myself when paying, and where I was to sit: not on top, in this fine mantle, but if I sat inside,
I risked being cheek-by-jowl with the man I was stalking.

I could not hear what Din said to the driver as he paid his fare, but afterwards he placed his hand on the wheel rim and leapt
on top of the bus, as if he were hurdling a gate, which meant I could comfortably and appropriately ride inside.

‘Same as him,’ I whispered to the driver, and proffered a shilling.

‘You what?’ the man shouted.

‘Same as him,’ I repeated. ‘I’m getting off where that man’s getting off.’

‘The nigger?’ he said loudly.

‘Yes,’ I hissed. ‘Please, be quick.’ He took my coin, and I climbed across the knees of the bowler-hatted clerks on their
way home, and sat where I could see the movements of Din’s legs on the knifeboard, so I would know where to dismount.

The other passengers stared at me as if I were a pickpocket. But I remembered from before that this was indeed how people
looked at you if you were wearing a veil; their inability to see your eyes offers a false reassurance that you can’t see theirs.
I forgave them their insolence; there was precious little else to look at on this grey Friday evening, other than the strangers
with whom one was sharing a space that was even smaller than our box-room. I could not see much in the fog outside, except
the shapes caught in the yellow pools of gaslight, so I spent the journey keeping half an eye out for Din, and half an eye
out for maltoolers. Clerks descended; clerks got on again.

Finally Din’s legs straightened: he had stood up, and was about to descend.

‘Excuse me, excuse me,’ I whispered, and ‘I beg your pardon,’ until I was at the top of the precarious steps and, even though
the bus was still moving gently, I had to jump or lose my prey. I staggered on the curb from the unfamiliar heel height, and
clutched onto a lamppost for support. But where was Din? I spotted him turning the corner into another street, and I hastened
after him. I had not thought this far ahead, of the folly of tottering on cobbles, wearing a long mantle and fine boots through
streets where there were no sweepers for what lay in my path. It disguised me insomuch as it was not my usual costume, but
it drew attention to me too.

I lost him here and there in the misty gaps between streetlights, but I could hear him whistling, and when I could not, a
couple of women standing by a shop, arms folded, shouted out, ‘Scrub your gob, Uncle Tom,’ and I caught up once more with
his springing stride, which had not faltered. Then an urchin skipped alongside him for a bit, singing ‘nigger, nigger, nignog’
at him, before chancing upon a puppy to stop and torment. Occasionally someone nodded at him; a few greeted him openly. ‘Dinjerous!’
an older black man with a grizzled beard said to him, slapping him on the back. I noted the wider range of complexions than
I was used to; there were more black people, more Indians, more Orientals, and indeed more women on the streets of wherever
we were now.

Then Din strode over a large stretch of cobbles to a public-house that stood in the centre where two roads forked. I could
only stand and watch as he disappeared into a space next to the main door, and down a stairwell. I could not go in alone.
I was rooted to the spot, and suddenly conspicuous.

I tried to pretend I was waiting for someone. I pulled the mantle more closely around me, and noticed the cold. I could not
go home yet, but I had not found anything out. ‘A-ha, Din! So you went to a public-house!’ It wouldn’t really suffice.