The Journal of Dora Damage (35 page)

I was not going to turn down this unsolicited offer of companionship from a softened Sylvia. ‘We could make a hot flannel?’
I suggested.

‘A hot flannel! That sounds marvellous!’ She clapped her hands together. ‘What is a hot flannel, Dora?’

‘My mother used to make it for my father. It’s beer, gin, eggs, sugar, and nutmeg. Only, being bookbinders, we make it with
egg yolks only, so it’s even richer.’

‘It sounds disgusting!’ Sylvia squealed. ‘But it sounds perfect.’

I started to unfasten Jack’s apron. ‘My father always used to tell my mother, “Just a daffy for me, just a daffy,” but he
would always drink the lot.’

‘And what might a daffy be?’ Sylvia asked.

‘You shall see,’ I replied, as we went into the kitchen. But we had no surplus egg yolks today, as I had not needed to make
glair for a while. I picked out the eggs from the basket, and asked Sylvia to separate them, while I went back into the bindery
to get a jug of beer. When I came back she was still standing where I had left her.

‘What are you doing?’ I asked.

‘I have separated the eggs.’

Indeed she had: she had laid out the eggs in a perfect circle, so none of the shells touched.

‘My apologies, Sylvia. I meant, that one must separate the white from the yolk.’

‘And how on earth is one expected to do that?’ she asked. I selected two bowls, and started to demonstrate. And as we whisked
the whites and yolks, and added the sugar, and the beer and liquor and spices, I felt we were enjoying each other’s company.
She spluttered and grimaced through her first sips of the beverage, but downed it remarkably quickly, only the alcohol dampened
her somewhat and soon she was sighing and fretting and torturing herself once more. Still, I was able to find some vestige
of sympathy for her inside me, much as the vision of her begging Din for humiliation started to mock my brain again and antagonise
my affection for him.

‘Oh, but Jossie must love me still, Dora!’ she lamented, as she played with her empty, frothy glass. ‘And I love him!’

Yes, you may love him, I wanted to say, but you love him as you loved that spear, with Din holding it, as a victim loves a
villain. And he, he loves you like that too, only in reverse. He loves you as the British Empire loves its conquests, and
look what happens when they react, revolt, retreat, I wanted to say. Look at the Fenians; look at the Sepoys. That’s how much
he loves you.

And then I had to wonder: is that how I felt about Din?

‘What will he think? Look at me! I have been reduced to living in the – the – slums!’

‘I think you’ll find,’ I said, hoping that words would obliterate the image of the spear and her white, exposed breastbone,
and my own peculiar yearnings for the man, ‘that this is the more respectable part of Lambeth.’ Peter would be turning in
his grave at her words. The grave, I suddenly realised, that this woman had paid for.

‘And in such close proximity to whores!’ she shuddered.

‘There are no prostitutes in Ivy-street, Lady Knightley,’ I said pawkily.

‘Oh, hark at you, Dora,’ she snorted. ‘Jocelyn will be horrified when he hears I had to resort to coming here. Look at you
in your dull gown! Have you nothing cheerier to wear? What about that black dress we gave you? You depress me.’

I thought of the brown silk dress that lay upstairs in the box-room, and my absurd charade when I first put it on, how it
had made me feel such a lady. My cheeks burned with my own contempt at myself.

‘Sylvia,’ I said quietly. ‘We have had a pleasant evening. I beg you not to spoil it.’ And so she sunk into her own thoughts
once more, and I into mine, but there were too many with Din’s name on inside me, so I returned to the bindery to work.

Din stayed later these days, as if he knew I needed the company, what with Jack’s absence and Sylvia’s presence. Accustomed
to his banishment from the house to avoid contact with Peter, Din still never came beyond the heavy wooden door into the house,
so he and Sylvia never crossed paths again, but he was my solace and escape when I slipped into the bindery to leave her behind.
Our days were marked by periods of intense chatter, and stretches of silence which seemed easy enough for him, but which for
me were raging arguments between my heart and my head.

He still left early on Fridays, but nowadays he would ask my leave as a matter of courtesy, and I would of course grant it.
And he still turned up some mornings with fresh tar-like wounds to his face, or an eye so bruised it could not see my blushing
concern, or injuries to his shins that only betrayed their presence slowly by the steady seepage of vital fluids across the
already stained canvas of his trousers.

Din. Din. I love you, Din. Oh, no, I would never say it. But the words crept up from my heart and lurked in the corners of
my mouth, as if daring me to swallow them whole, or spit them out, anything but say them. Din.

‘I know what you did last night, Din,’ I said instead one such morning, only very quietly. I was cleaning a brush, in order
to paste the reverse of some leather, and did not look at him as I spoke. But when I received no reaction, I added, ‘I thought
that was what I would find when I followed you to Whitechapel.’

‘You are even more foolish than I thought,’ Din said eventually, when the struggle to rig up the sewing-frame became too much
for him. ‘You willin’ly took yourself to where you would see a bunch of men splittin’ each other’s skulls and rippin’ their
skins off.’

‘Why do you do it?’ I dipped the brush into the paste, and looked at him.

He made a valiant attempt at a shrug. ‘Why not?’

‘Is it not inhuman, Din?’

He closed his eyes and sighed. ‘Perhaps.’

‘Does it not reduce you to the level of dogs, or bears, or cocks?’

‘Why so interested, ma’am? Do you not know enough about the inhumanity of men?’ And here he sat upright, with more determination
than his injuries would allow, and directed his one good eye pointedly at me. I swallowed and positioned the leather on the
bench. We had never discussed the particular speciality of Damage’s Bookbinders; I had not wanted to know that he knew.

He tried to continue with the sewing-frame, but I could see it was hard for him.

‘Come, Din. Help me here. It might be easier for you. Hold the leather for me, won’t you? Would that Jack were here.’

‘You miss him, ma’am,’ he said as he stood up and came over to the bench.

‘I do, Din. He was very dear to me.’

Din held two opposite corners of the olive-green leather for me, as he had done once before. I was close to his neck; I could
see the depth of last night’s injury. I should have offered to dress it, but I feared the intimacy. I searched for something
else I could say to express my sadness about Jack, but the words did not come out now we were in range of each other’s breathing.

As I pasted, Din finally proferred something like an answer to my questions. ‘Sometimes, ma’am, I need to feel less than human.
But also, it can make me feel
more
human. It reminds me of what I’ve got to lose.’

‘Do you need reminding, Din?’ I said quietly, not looking up.

‘Maybe we all do.’

‘Indeed.’ And his statements got me thinking of the pictures in the crates, and I escaped into a new train of thought as if
to prove to him that I was not distracted by his presence. ‘Do they – they – by which I mean, the Noble Savages,’ for there
was no escaping it now, ‘possibly they need reminding – possibly they – they – need
these
,’ I waved the brush at the crates, ‘these pictures, these words, this
violence
– in order to feel more human.’

‘Or less.’

‘Or less, indeed. I think I am starting to understand you now, Din.’

‘We have young aristocrats at the fights too,’ he added.

‘They come to watch? To wager?’

‘To fight. A young Smith-Pemberton, fresh from Eton. A young Gallinforth, trainin’ to be an officer,’ he said knowingly. ‘These
names mean somethin’ to you, ma’am?’

‘I don’t believe you!’ I said. And yet I did. I could not look up from the leather.

‘We’ve all got our demons. Money don’t mean nothin’ when you’re beatin’ the brains out of someone in the East End. They can’t
do it up West, can they? You’d be surprised who you find there. I don’t know many men who don’t feel the need to beat somebody
else up once in a while.’

‘But the tanners: surely they face enough blood in their daily toil?’

He shrugged, then grimaced.

‘And they don’t do it for money?’

‘No.’

‘Do you do it because – because the others are white?’

‘They’re not, not all o’ them. Colour doesn’t come in to it when you’re head to foot in blood. Although bein’ black, it don’t
show too bad much when I’m bleedin’.’

‘I would call that a disadvantage.’

‘Blood shows them how strong they are. If they can’t see it, they feel weak. As long as you can stand the pain, you never
let them see how much you’re bleedin’.’

I was feeling weak by now; I thought at first that I was feeling queasy at all this talk of blood, but he was leaning slightly
further in to me now, and in my head our cheeks brush, and I pull away, and lean in to him once more, only this time slowly,
so the hairs on our bodies have to reach for sensation before our skin presses more tightly, and then we move our heads a
little, to enhance the tingling feeling, and then my lips find his nose and I kiss it, and my eyelashes flutter like a butterfly’s
wings across his brow, and I catch close his round brown eyes, and the old scars like fossils in the solid rock of his face,
but warm, so warm, and alive, and the fresh wound open and gaping like his mouth into which I am now falling, falling, but
I hold on to his teeth, his jagged teeth which are eating my lips, and I hang on, but still I am sinking and drowning and
dying for breath, and my chest heaves in the quest for air, heaves and thrusts into him, swelling and shrinking, reaching
and fading, and his hands hold me up and he is the pillar which supports me, my column of strength, but then he falls too,
down, down, and I look down and see him climbing up my legs, my skirts bunching upwards towards me, he rises and his hands
encircle my calves, my knees, my thighs, and still he is rising, and I can’t see his face for he is tasting his way blind,
up and up, and then I want to come crashing down over on around him, but I don’t because it is so sweet here, with his tongue
pulsing a nether heartbeat inside me, then his fingers renew the thrust while his mouth sucks, and I well and swell and clutch
at the bench to keep me here, on the brink, as long as I can, and my hand seizes something, and I don’t know what it is.

And then I saw the brush of paste, and my fingers sticky with cold paste, and the leather that was now fully pasted, and had
been all this time, and Din, looking at me strangely, and I knew I could keep him at my table no longer.

A voice that did not sound like mine croaked, ‘Thank you, Din,’ and he returned, unknowing, to the sewing-frame.

Mr Diprose arrived at the bindery that afternoon. I ushered him quickly into the workshop and closed the door.

‘Din, would you kindly go buy me some thread. Here is some money.’

I frantically thought about what I was going to say: I had indeed found out some horrendous secret that bound Din and I together,
but I was damned if I was going to share it with Charles Diprose. I waved him off the premises, and prepared to defend myself,
and Din, once more.

But he did not pursue this tack; he seemed excited, and clearly anxious to get to his brief immediately, although he had brought
with him only two things: a piece of leather, and a muslin bag filled with a freshly folded and sewn manuscript.

‘
Regardez
,’ he said dramatically, as he revealed them to me like a mountebank. ‘This is possibly the most important commission of your
life. It may seem modest, but you will be paid handsomely.’

I fingered the leather: it was quite rough, and translucent in places, like coarse vellum. Despite myself, I was intrigued.
The leather was not particularly beautiful, but tigers and dowries and Sir Jocelyn and the Earl with their rifles danced in
my head.

‘It must bear the insignia of
Les Sauvages Nobles
, and
Nocturnus
, but no title,’ Diprose explained. So it was indeed a commission for Sir Jocelyn.

‘Blind- or gold-tooling?’ I asked. The skin seemed fitting for a Noble Savage; I wondered if it were the hide of an elephant,
or other wild animal, shot on safari.

‘Gold.’

‘What is this leather?’

‘I cannot tell you the exact beast, or from which country it originates,’ he answered. ‘They are all the same to me. But if
you wish to give it a name, by way of reference, shall we call it “Imperial Leather”?’ He gave an oily chuckle.

‘Do you want it dyed, or natural?’

‘
Au naturel
, most definitely. And there is one other thing, Dora. You will not be working on the book itself.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘I have the book here, in this bag, but I am not permitted to leave it with you. You must take the measurements from it now,
in my presence, then fashion the binding in its absence.’

‘But how will we complete the forwarding process?’

‘That is up to you to fathom. A week today, I will return with this manuscript, which you will fasten to the binding, again
in my presence.’

I did not answer, for I was thinking hard and fast. This was a new approach to binding, and I knew of no precedent. Strictly
speaking, it would be a casing, not a binding, and we would need to leave the cords loose, and forward after the finishing
process, all of which was tricky, but not impossible. It would require skill and ingenuity; I wished Jack could have been
here to help. I wondered if Diprose knew of his arrest.

As if he could read my mind, Diprose then said, ‘And Dora, I need your assurance that only you will work on this. This is
not a job for an apprentice. This is a highly secret assignment, and for you alone. You must not even
work
on it in the presence of anyone else.
En cachette
.’