The Journal of Dora Damage (5 page)

And finally all that remained for us was to head to the sign of the three golden balls and into the dingy interior of the
pawn-shop, next to the gin-shop (as they always were), where we huddled in a cubicle and waited our turn to be served.

‘You gave me eight bob for the gown last Friday! What d’ya mean only seven today? You know I’ll be back Monday, I’m good as
gold I am. What’s it to ya?’

And we saw the broker shaking his head, and mouthing ‘seven’ to the woman with no hair and a black eye.

‘But what about our Sunday dinner? Think of that! Or are you not a godly man?’

And then in lurched a man with a mouth full of broken teeth, who put two pairs of tiny little shoes on the counter, pocketed
two shillings, and lumbered out again and into the gin-shop next door. Then in came another one, who took off his coat, his
belt, and the very boots he was standing in, and watched as they were wrapped into a bundle and ticketed, and I could not
help but stare as he hobbled away, his toes poking through the ends of his threadbare socks, holding up his trousers with
one hand, and clutching his pennies in the other, and into the gin-shop he went too.

‘He forgot to give me his handkerchief,’ the broker said as he came to serve us. ‘He’ll be back later.’ I shuddered to think
what else he might be offered: the man no doubt would prefer to go home naked but with a bellyful of beer, if only the pawnbroker
would accept his smalls and all.

‘What we got ’ere then?’ He whistled through the gap in his teeth as I laid out two solid-silver spoons boxed in red velvet,
a silver-plated vase, a pair of pearl earrings, and a small, inlaid walnut music-box. He bit the pearls with his teeth, fingered
the spoons and held them to the light, brought out a magnifying glass to the hallmarks, and checked the mechanism of the music-box.

‘Ten shillings,’ he said.

I gasped. ‘For these? They’re worth far more! I need at least a pound!’

He was unaffected by my outburst; he continued to look at the counter, for whatever I was saying, he’d heard it all before.
‘The less you get, the less it costs you to get them back,’ he said philosophically.

And so I pocketed ten shillings, which was better than nothing, and indeed my purse so chinked with coins that I pulled Lucinda
into the better sort of baker’s-shop and told her to choose whatever she fancied. She picked an apricot slice and a doughnut.
I bought nothing for myself, but licked the sugar off my fingers once I’d handed her the sweets. I tried to fathom the extent
of our debts, so I might know how much I dared spend on tonight’s meal, but I feared the plumb line of my mind might fall
short of the true depths of our penury. In and out more slowly now our toes went over the cobbles, dodging the dung and the
rotten fruit as we rounded the corner past the Royal Victorian Theatre and into New Cut. I eyed the knife-grinders and tinkers,
and the gypsy chair-menders sitting on their wicker-bundles in the rain like roosting fowl, and I wondered at their ability
to forge a living out of nothing, and whether it would come to that for me. We picked our way amongst the stalls of shoddy
clothes, shoes and hardware, solicited the kindest-looking costermongers, and picked up some stewed eels, a pound of potatoes,
half a dozen eggs, some butter and the like.

We returned home with our victuals, which Lucinda unpacked while I set about scraping the empty coal cellar for something
to rekindle the fire. But straightways there was a knock at the door, and whoever was there did not wait for me to come and
open it, for the door snapped into the room and nearly caught me in the face, and a tall man with grey sunken eyes and a bristly
chin set himself to pacing round the parlour sniffing at my furniture like a rangy dog looking for somewhere to spray.

‘Mrs Damage? Weally, a pleasure. It’s you who’ll be owin’ us, then. Wo’ you got?’

‘I beg your pardon? Who are you?’

‘Now I be beggin’
yewer
pardon. Skinner’s the name.’

‘Mr Skinner.’ I had heard that name before, but I could not remember where. ‘And you are?’

‘Acquain’ance of yer ’usband’s. We’ve been, ah, workin’ togevver, of sorts. ’E owes me. So you owe me nah.’

‘Why? What’s happened to him?’

‘I’ll let ’im tell ya that. But if ya want ’im back you gotta pay up. So I say agin, wo’ ya got?’ And then I remembered. Skinner
was the most feared money-lender south of the river.

‘Have you kidnapped him?’

‘Naaa-ow. Dahn’t be so silly.’

‘I’m not paying you a penny until I speak to Peter.’

‘So ya got some, then?’

‘I’m not saying that.’

‘Well, you better ‘ad. Cos I can waise a bill o’ sale on this place tomowwa,’ he sneered, ‘but fwom what I can see, there
ain’t enough tat in ’ere to make it worth the auctioneer’s fees.’

‘What does he owe?’

‘Fifty pahnd plus sixty per cent in’rest.’

‘Fifty! And sixty! He would never have signed to those terms! Why, he could have got a bank loan at seven per cent!’

‘It’s all here, in ’is own ’and. Wanna wead it?’

‘No, I do not. I shall take you to the magistrate.’ I started towards my shawl, gliding cautiously so that the coins in the
purse at my waist would make not a chink and betray their presence.

‘Aa-aww, is that how you treat a chawitable man?’

‘Charitable! Why, you, you bully! You’re nothing but a crook, and a brute!’ I wrapped my shawl around my shoulders.

‘No, not me, Miss. I’m a vewitable philanthwopist. Ask anyone up this stweet. Anyone who’s been in any way
embawwassed
. Like yer old man was. Go on, look, here’s ’is own note of ’and.’

And I scanned the grubby paper he was holding, and read that a bill for fifty pounds was to be discounted, to be taken up
quarterly in increments, with increasing interest, and saw the lawyer’s seal, and the terms laid out, and Peter’s signature
at the bottom.

‘This is my vocation, miss. I became a money-lender aht o’ the goodness o’ me ’eart. Sammy Skinner, Good Samawi’an, at yewer
service. Come nah, I’m a lot prettier than the tallyman who’ll be comin’ in to give ya a good dunnin’ if ya don’t pay me.’

‘Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you, Mr Skinner, but I don’t have any money to give you. You will have to deal with my husband
when he returns. You
will
let him return, I trust? He won’t be able to pay you if he can’t work, so it’s in your best interests to let him go.’

‘Do me a favour, Miss, and pay me nah.’

‘I said, I have no money.’

‘Forgive me laughin’, miss,’ he said, almost peacefully, ‘but we both knows yewer tellin’ little porky pies. I can ’ear it,’
he whispered, ‘chinkin’ away, under yer skirts. Are you tellin’ me I don’t know the sahnd of money when I hear it? Wouldn’t
be a good money-lender if I didn’t, nah, would I?’

I stood still, and looked at him in horror, and felt Lucinda looking up at us both.

‘Come on, then,’ he cooed, like a hungry man trying to get a chicken from a dog’s mouth. ‘Give it up. There’s a good girl.’
I put my hand to where my purse hung at my hip beneath my skirt, but did not put it inside. ‘Come on, girl. Or do I have to
go in there an’ get it for ya?’

And so my hand slipped inside my skirts, and I untied the ribbon securing it, and made to tip the contents into my hand, when
I saw Skinner shake his head.

‘Just give it to me. None a’ this cahntin’-aht nonsense. I need it all.’ And with that, he snatched it out of my hand, tipped
its meagre innards out, flung the empty purse on the floor, and then he was gone, and with him my eight shillings.

I think it was fair to say that now, after the visitation from Samuel Skinner, having been too proud to ask for support, I
had reached the point where desperation overcame pride. So the next morning, one of those awful ones when the water had frozen
overnight in the pans, I left Lucinda with Agatha Marrow for as long as I dared, where I knew at least her stomach would be
filled, and then in and out, in and out, my toes first took me back to the pawnbroker.

I waited in the booth while the man attended to a poor fellow whose face betrayed more misery than I dared to imagine. He
handed over a blanket with a look of such sorrow it were like he were giving away a child, and took away a shilling for it.
I wanted to run after him and check he had at least one more blanket left at home, but it would have served no other purpose
than to make myself feel better in the face of his tragedy, and I feared the answer would have been no besides.

‘My flat-iron, how much?’ I asked as the door closed behind me.

‘Four pence.’

‘Four? But with the ha’penny gone to get me over the bridge that leaves me with next to nothing! I need at least sixpence!’

Still the man shook his head. ‘Then you’ll have to give me something else.’

‘But I only want sixpence! Surely you can do a flat-iron for that?’

‘I have twenty flat-irons back there,’ he said, waving his hand at the storerooms behind him. ‘All of ’em got four pence,
nothing more. Here you go, here’s a thrupp’ny bit and a brown.’

‘But I need a tanner!’

‘So, what else you got?’

‘Nothing on me.’

‘What about that ring?’ He gestured towards my finger.

‘No! I can’t! That’s my wedding ring!’

The man shrugged and turned away. I thought about going home, to get my own blanket, or one of Peter’s waistcoats, which might
raise nine pence, but I needed to get north of the river this morning, and I feared further delay would condemn me forever
to the pile reserved for prevaricators and no-hopers.

‘Please don’t go! Help me! Raise me sixpence for the iron, and I’ll bring it all back, I promise.’

‘Not a hope, miss. I’ve heard it all before. Give me the ring, an’ I’ll give you what I think. If you redeem it soon enough,
the old man might never know.’

And so I took off my wedding ring and handed it over. I looked down at the clammy white dented band it left behind on my skin,
and waited for him to deliver his verdict.

‘Three shillings.’

‘You evil man! It’s worth at least a crown! Do you spit on my husband’s name?’

‘Which is?’ he asked, raising a pen.

‘Damage,’ I said meekly. ‘Peter Damage, two Ivy-street, Lambeth,’ as he filled out the ticket and handed me over the three
silver coins.

Then in and out, in and out, my toes took me north across the marshes where the mud-larks – the tide-waiters, the beach-pickers,
whatever name you want to give them – were wading over the shallows of the Thames in the rain for fragments of iron and wood,
their children swimming alongside them waist-deep in mud, toes searching for lumps of coal and what-have-you dropped by the
barges, to sell for one shilling per hundredweight. I scanned them for signs of Jack’s family, and indeed, for Jack, for the
Lord knew how else he might be spending his days and earning his living while he was not at Damage’s. And then I approached
Waterloo Bridge, and gave a ‘Good day’ and a shilling to the toll-keeper. I waited for my eleven pence-ha’penny change and
the clicking of the turnstile, then went through onto the bridge.

And then it was that I needed the in and out, in and out of my frozen toes more than ever to carry me forward. Once through
the toll-gate, the hansom cabs picked up speed as if to make up for lost time, and I felt that if I lost the momentum of my
pace I would be whipped over the side by one of them, or by the vicious wind itself, and over I would go to my icy, smelly
doom. But I knew even as I thought it, that I would catch the sides on my way over and cling on. That would have been me,
there, hanging on to the rim, all my remaining strength going into keeping myself hanging there. I could have stopped myself
falling further, but I could not have found the strength to pull myself back over into safety. And besides, even if I could
have, it would only have brought me back into the path of a cab, or another gust of wind.

The fog was dreadful on the bridge; it did not hang like a brown pall, but flurried and swirled in a fast-moving current,
as if the bubbling brown Thames beneath us were a fantasy compared to the raging course of the fog-river through which we
had to wade. Not for nothing was this called the Bridge of Sighs. I could hear through the wind the howls of lives spent along
with their ha’pennies; the world looked so bleak from here that I would have bet my eleven pence-ha’penny on there being very
few prospective suicides who had paid their toll and then asked for a refund, having changed their minds in the centre of
the bridge. From up here, it was not possible to tell how much worse down there would be.

Then in and out, in and out to the city itself, where I hoped to find assistance; I would not call it charity.

First I visited the Institute for the Restitution of Fallen Women, where I waited in line for two hours with nothing in my
stomach to hold me up, but my fall being not a moral one, they had no time for me.

Next I went to the Guild of Distressed Gentlewomen, but, as I was not a widow, and lacked a whole cartload of children to
support, my distress counted for nothing.

More hopeful was the Society for the Promotion of the Employment of Women, who told me I had the skills to become a fine governess,
and so I could have been, had they not shuddered at my suggestion that my daughter attend me while I worked. But there was
no other way: she would undoubtedly fall into convulsions at the prospect of long absences from me with only her invalid father
for care. The harshest claws of poverty scratched like a mere kitten compared to that.

The rain started on my way back to Lambeth. In and out, in and out, I picked up my skirts so they would not wick up the water
from the puddles, and wrapped my shawl tighter around me. In and out, in and out, I passed the heavy gates of the St Saviour
Poorhouse, and my toes went in and out quicker than ever to carry me far from its reaches. More than an absent mother off
playing the governess, the workhouse would have meant certain death for Lucinda.

I finally reached Remy & Randolph, the most advanced bookbinders in London, where the guard told me with a yawn that I would
earn eight shillings – eight shillings! – for a fifty-four hour week as a paper-folder if I could bring a reference. ‘They
prefer girls to women, in ’ere, as girls are cheaper,’ he warned my departing back.