The Journal of Dora Damage (33 page)

‘The knife sharpener,’ she said, as if that proved it.

‘Lizzie, yes, in theory, yes, he’s right. They repealed the death penalty for – for – that crime only last year. But they
haven’t hung anyone for it since the thirties. Trust me, I know these things. It’s in the books,’ I said, then added hastily,
‘I mean, the books Peter used to bind, when he worked for the Parliament, him and Jack. Don’t you be troubling your head any
further with these things. Ten years, it’s better than the noose. Console yourself with that, Lizzie.’

I sank her down onto the chair at last, and looked around at the misery surrounding her, to see if I could find something
to wrap around her.

‘What do you need?’ I asked, but I knew there could be no real answer to that. She was beyond tears, and sat numb in her shock.

‘Can I visit him, Lizzie?’ I asked. ‘Where is he?’

But she shook her head. ‘’E don’ want no visitors, ever, ’e said as much.’

‘I’ll bring his wages round next week,’ I said quietly, then I squeezed her hand and got up to leave. Three little children,
all with Jack’s red hair, stood in my way.

‘Are you gonna bring Jack back?’ one of them asked me.

‘I wish I could, little one,’ I said.

‘Cos Mama needs him,’ another piped up.

‘An’ he owes me money,’ the third said.

‘Clear orf, all of ya,’ Lizzie shouted, her last burst of action before she slumped down over the back of the chair like she
was dead. ‘You can get me some gin, if you really want to help,’ she uttered miserably, like a guttering candle, as I left.

I cursed my empty head all the way home for not realising. All that time I’d known Jack, and I had chosen not to read the
signs. His lack of care for a sweetheart. His embarrassment at so much of the literature we worked on; and his lack of it
for others. And, just as when one has recently been bereaved one starts to see crêpe and jet everywhere one turns, I started
to see them everywhere, and realised what I had been overlooking. The boys in sailors’ uniforms along the Strand. The post-boys
in Holywell-street. Mary-Annes, all of them. Mandrakes. Inverts. Bin-dogs. Sodomites.

Was I disgusted? A year I ago I might have been. A year ago I might not have struggled so hard to understand. Little Jack.
He was such a loving, good-hearted boy. Jack and his furtive, secret little life. No, I was not disgusted. Ashamed to say,
I was somewhat relieved: relieved that it had only been coincidence that had seen his arrest fall on the same night as Peter’s
departure from this world. Possibly Peter had witnessed it, and heard the charge being spoken to his apprentice. Peter would
have been more than disgusted; he would have been sickened to the core. Possibly that was what tipped him over the edge, into
his last bottle of laudanum and onwards along the final journey to his Maker. It would not have surprised me in the slightest.

And as I saw Peter’s outraged face, I saw Lizzie again in my eye, crushed by her sense of betrayal, wounding herself over
and over by his insult. Mother, I reject your sex, and choose for myself my own.

I met his father, Dan, at the beginning, when they signed Jack’s indenture, shortly before he ran off that night after the
prize-fight when he pocketed ten pounds. Some say he went to sea. Some say he had another wife in Glasgow, where he lived
now. I remember he moved heavily and slowly, like someone who had accumulated grudges since the moment his mother yanked him
off her tired breast. A blacksmith, he was, before he turned to the drink, a rough old man, who beat little Jack with iron
rods, and threatened to brand him with bars out of the forge, and despaired of him, his lean, wiry scrap of a lad who showed
no signs of following his father into the blacksmith’s trade. Jack was the only one in their family who could read, and he
taught himself entirely from the newspapers he collected from the streets. It was a while before Dan accepted he wasn’t going
to toughen up his boy through hitting him, that it only sent him off into the corner where the newspapers were stacked, and
slowly, Dan and Lizzie’s hopes and aspirations developed for him. They grew to encourage his bookishness; they scrimped and
saved for his meagre education. Dan came home one night with two books he had proudly nicked from some men in the pub for
his lad. One was Shelley’s
Prometheus Unbound
(had Dan known it was poetry, he might have taken it back); the other was the 1844 Report of the Metropolitan Commissioners
in Lunacy, which didn’t tell Jack anything he hadn’t already learnt from life by the river, and boosted his confidence in
his own intellectual capacity. When they finally signed the indenture for his apprenticeship at Damage’s, I remember thinking
that Lizzie’s heart would burst with pride. Jack would not have to go and work in the blacking warehouse, or on the river;
Jack was the great hope for the family.

Poor child. It was a wonder he had survived in Lambeth as long as he had.

Chapter Eighteen

Bye, O my baby,

When I was a lady,

O then my baby didn’t cry;

But my baby is weeping

For want of good keeping,

O I fear my poor baby will die.

T
here was a woman, or a lady, I should have said, waiting for me on the door-step when I returned from Lizzie’s house. It
was dark already, but I could see in the gloom someone wearing a bonnet that jutted up above her head like a spoon, with pale
feather trimmings inside, as if the top of her head were a chick hatching from an egg. The bavolet behind was long and cream-coloured,
and around her shoulders was a three-quarter-length dark-grey hooded cloak of softest cashmere. Beneath it was another shawl,
this time of fine Chantilly lace, and underneath it a large bundle of lace and silk. Her face was more pinched and her brow
more furrowed than when I first saw her, but it was clearly the face of Lady Knightley, like a star that had fallen from heaven,
and was troubling itself in the worry of how it could possibly get back up there.

She did not seem to see me, but stood on the pavement, eyes glazed, with several brown leather cases around her feet. She
can’t have knocked, I thought, or Pansy would have brought her inside by now. Then the crying started from within the bundle
of lace at Lady Knightley’s front, and I knew without thinking that I had to get her off the streets and into the warm.

‘Lady Knightley, what a pleasure. Please, come in.’

But she made no move, and the crying escalated.

‘Come in, now.’ The fog and darkness were too great for us to be seen from Mrs Eeles’s house, but she would soon hear this
racket, and be sending Billy off to Holywell-street, or indeed, Berkeley-square. But still she stood, and I started to panic.
‘Please, move quickly, now.’ I grabbed her arm more forcibly than I had intended, and she leapt at the touch and darted past
me into the house.

I ushered her and her screaming bundle away from the windows into the kitchen, where Pansy was cooking griddlecakes. I pulled
the Windsor chair in from the parlour, and waited for Lady Knightley to settle herself gingerly into it. Slowly, as if unaccustomed
to such an action, she unfurled a tiny baby from the yards of lace; he was purple in the face. Once free from his swaddles,
Lady Knightley held him up at arm’s length, and watched him cry. I did not know if she were proffering him to me, or what,
but her face betrayed one who was utterly spent, and that always meant danger to a little one. Lucinda cowered behind me.

I saw Lady Knightley’s lips murmur something which I couldn’t hear, and then, over the din, she shouted, ‘For God’s sake,
take him!’

So I did, and cradled him in my arms, and he was startled into silence for a moment.

‘What’s the matter with him?’ I asked. ‘Is he hungry?’

‘How would I know?’ she snapped at me, and he started to cry once more.

I wiped my little finger on my smock and curled it into his mouth. He sucked frantically on it for a moment, then pulled off
in disgust and rage, and howled worse than before. He scrunched his fists and eyes in fury, and opened his mouth wide, his
tongue tensing along the length of each scream between snatched breaths, and I wondered at how a being could come into the
world with such a quantity of rage.

‘ ’Ere, take it, get this dahn him.’ Out of nowhere, Pansy was brandishing a bowl which looked as though it held milk with
bread crumbled into it. ‘I ain’t ’ad time to warm it, but don’t matter. Get it dahn ’im.’

I perched on the rickety stool, and held the baby as still as I could, while Pansy gently spooned the pap into his mouth.
Lucinda scrutinised her every move. At first he gagged, but some dribbled to the back of his mouth, although much went down
his cheeks and into the collars of his fine lawn smock. I looked over at Lady Knightley, who didn’t seem to care; her head
was resting in the crook of her arm, and I could not see her face.

‘This can’t be the best stuff for him,’ I said to Pansy. ‘Lady Knightley, what do you normally give him?’

She looked up at me with a vapid gaze. ‘What?’

‘The baby. What are you feeding him?’

‘Are you asking me? Ask Fatima.’

‘Fatima?’

‘Fatima!’ she almost shouted, but the exertion was too much. ‘The monthly nurse,’ she whispered.

‘Where is she? Nobody was with you, Lady Knightley.’

‘No. She’s gone. Gone. She wouldn’t come here. Not –’ the word was a struggle for her, ‘– not – south – of the river, not
– to an unknown address. She went. I don’t know where she is.’

‘ ’Is bowels ain’t gonna like this, mum,’ Pansy said to me as she spooned more pap into his mouth. ‘It needs to be goat, at
least, if ain’t gonna be heaver-brew. Oh well. She’ll find aht in his napkins, soon enough.’

The baby did not eat much, but soon his eyes closed, and I was honoured with the sweet sensation of a baby falling asleep
in my arms.

‘Bless you,’ I whispered, and planted a kiss on his wrinkled forehead. It was soft and downy; the skin of someone who hadn’t
lived life yet. Lucinda stroked him nervously. His head lolled back in my arm, his eyes and mouth hung half-open, and his
breathing became slow and heavy.

‘What’s his name?’ I ventured.

‘Nathaniel,’ she said without thought, and without looking over at me or him.

‘How old is he?’

‘A week.’

‘He’s lovely,’ I said, but the silence poured in on my comment, and we sat in the chill of the kitchen as the night fell around
us. I waited for Lady Knightley to say something that might explain her presence here, and give me some indication as to whether
she wished to stay for supper; Pansy, bless her heart, knew that I needed her, and did not leave.

‘Are you – are you passing through, Lady Knightley?’ I eventually proffered.

‘Damn your impertinence!’ she suddenly shouted. ‘You dare not interrogate me! I am to stay here.’

‘Here? Why?’

‘You will not disobey me, Dora!’ But this last was almost a question, and not a statement. Her tyranny originated only from
her own uncertainties; I had no reason to be afraid of her. ‘Not you too. Damn you! Curse the lot of you! I have spent the
entire day driving around with that wretched driver sniggering at me, from Mayfair to Belgravia, to Chelsea, to Kensington.
I have been to Baroness Temple, and Lady Montgomery, and Honora Williamson, and Victoria Hamilton-Wright, and all the other
women of the Society, but Sir Jocelyn has turned them all against me. So now I have come to you.
You
cannot turn me away, it would be the final insult.’

‘I am not turning you away, Lady Knightley. I am just rather surprised. I was not expecting . . . I don’t expect you shall
be comfortable here. Perhaps you have us wrong. Surely there must be somewhere else you can go.’

‘Are you delighting in my injury? I will not suffer it. If only Lady Grenville were still with us – she’d not have spurned
me – she cared not what society thought!’

‘And I’ll not spurn you neither, Lady Knightley,’ I said softly. ‘We shall make you comfortable for the night as best we can.’

‘I’ll sort a bed out for her, mum.’

‘Thank you, Pansy. I suggest you change the sheets on my bed, and I’ll sleep in the box-room.’

‘Very well, mum.’

I did not believe what was happening; it was not possible that we were the only hope for a woman so well connected as she,
and besides, the knock would come at the door soon enough, and Diprose, Pizzy and their men would turn up and take her with
them.

‘Papa warned me not to marry a man who did not have a country seat,’ she sobbed, as if she had not heard me. ‘That would have
been the safe place to go while this all blows over. I’ve never had anywhere to retire to once the season is over.’

‘What of him, Lady Knightley? Can you go to your father?’ I wondered what sort of trouble she could be in.

‘Good Lord, no. It would force him into a most ugly position. And my brothers besides. Everyone has turned me away! I would
not have chosen to come here, Dora, but where else could I have gone?’

‘Lady Knightley, if you don’t mind my asking, why have they turned you away?’

‘Why? I wish I knew too! Jocelyn has told them all I am mad, and that they are not to associate with me!’

‘Why on earth would he . . .’

‘I don’t know,’ she said in a loud, almost bored voice. The hard edge reappeared in her speech when she was not crying. Then
she changed tone again, and asked, ‘You don’t mind, do you?’ and I could see from her face it was a genuine question. ‘It
will not be for long,’ she assured me, and I knew she was right, for Diprose and Pizzy were surely just round the corner.
‘It is mere caprice on Jocelyn’s part, and he will be begging for me to come back. Are we not bonded by the sacrament of marriage?
I am much prized; I have borne him a son! I shall soon be back at my rightful place by his side, and afterwards, we shall
reward you greatly for your pains – and, it goes without saying, your discretion.’

We lapsed into silence. It was getting late, and Lucinda needed to eat and to go to bed, and Nathaniel was stirring in my
arms. ‘Lady Knightley,’ I attempted, ‘what are we to do about feeding him later?’

Lady Knightley was staring around her in a vague daze. ‘How peculiar,’ she mused. ‘You have your store-room as one with your
larder, your scullery as one with your pantry, and just one sink for all four functions.’ After further bemused perusal of
the kitchen, she stood up and paced into the parlour. ‘And your parlour is also your drawing-room, and your dining-room!’
I heard her say between the rooms. ‘Ah, you have a cottage-piano.’ She started to play the opening bars of Schubert’s ‘Adagio
in E major’. ‘Eugh, it needs tuning.’

I made up my mind what I had to do next, difficult though it would be.

‘Pansy,’ I said, as she walked past with a pile of sheets in her arms.

‘Yes, mum?’

‘Would you hold the baby for just a short while?’

She placed the sheets in the corner of the kitchen, and came back to take Nathaniel from me. We exchanged a lingering glance,
as if to ask, what is going on here and what can we possibly do about it? ‘I won’t be long, love.’

I placed a few griddle-cakes in a clean tea-towel, and gave another couple to Lucinda, then I wrapped my shawl around me,
and left the sounds of Schubert behind to face the freezing night air. I crossed the road, and knocked on the opposite door.
Nora Negley shouted from within, ‘I’ll be there,’ and the goat maa-ed from the kitchen, then the bolt was pulled back, and
the door was opened a crack.

‘Oh,’ she said in surprise. Then her mouth wrinkled with distaste, as she asked, ‘What you want?’

‘Sorry for the bother, Nora. Only I have an unexpected guest, with a newborn baby, in need of some milk, and I was wondering
. . .’ and, as I proffered the griddle-cakes up to her, steaming in the cold air, the door was slammed in my face and I dropped
the cakes in the street. I returned to the house, and to Pansy in the kitchen, who was cooing at the waking baby.

‘Nora won’t give us any milk.’

‘Pity.’

‘What else can we do, Pansy?’ We shared another look. ‘Do you know a wet-nurse nearby?’

She looked doubtful. ‘There’s one I can think of, not far, but she got a lotta little ’uns and I can’t see she’d want one
more. I’ll ask her though. Now?’

‘Please.’ I took Nathaniel from her, and rocked him back to sleep as best I could. ‘Take my shawl, Pansy. It’s very cold out.’
She took it off from round my shoulders, and gave me a little squeeze of reassurance, before wrapping it round her and disappearing
into the Lambeth night.

Lady Knightley came back into the kitchen, oblivious to her child in my arms. ‘Goodness, but it’s cold in here. How can you
live in such draughts?’ She lowered herself carefully back into the Windsor chair, and we waited for something else to say
to each other.

Then suddenly, the composure on which she had such a precarious hold left her altogether; her head and shoulders fell forwards
onto her lap as she set about weeping, as if she was going to tip onto the floor and lie there. Thank heavens, I thought,
for Pansy, and a clean floor. Only a few weeks ago she would have tipped herself into dust, grease and beetles. I sat and
watched as she cried herself out like her own baby; I knew his stirring would increase to full-blown rage and hunger soon
enough, and I hoped his mother’s tears would not hasten the process. She cried and cried, and the tears dripped onto the silk
of her skirts, and spread there.

‘There’s a sorry thing, Lady Knightley,’ I said, quietly. ‘Don’t take on so.’

She cried a bit further, then sniffed loudly, then set to crying again, and then the sobs died down, and she sighed, and stood
up and wandered around a bit, then sighed some more, and sat down again, and looked at me with eyes that had spent a lifetime
being untroubled, and I found myself pitying the weak woman, for not knowing how to live with pain.

‘The injustice of it, oh, the injustice!’ she wailed. ‘He – Jocelyn – he said . . . oh, I cannot bring myself to say it!’

‘You don’t have to.’

She shuddered further, then sniffed, ‘He sent me word this morning that I was to leave, and not to come back! Ever! The child
is a week old. My lying-in should have lasted a month, with no leaving the house, no exercise, and a feeding-cup for meals!
And now I am on the street, with nowhere to go!’

‘You’re here,’ I said gently, only I doubted whether this was the best place for her.

‘Yes,’ she said gloomily. ‘Oh Dora, it is all too much for me.’

And, frankly, it was all too much for me, too, to fathom this world where blood was thinner than the old school tie, and where
those who opened their hearts to slaves from overseas had little time for the needs of one closer to them, even to a mother
and newborn baby. Surely she was exaggerating? Maybe she was playing a game with Jocelyn, and had not gone to her Ladies at
all, but at the first whiff of his malice had taken herself to the lowest place she could imagine – here, in Lambeth – to
see how quickly he would come running for her. She was using me, I was sure of it. I could not help but be sceptical.