The Journal of Dora Damage (8 page)
He did not release his grip on the arms of the chair. ‘Most peculiar,’ he said. ‘It is not our practice to advance. It does
not tally with our book-keeping.’ He kept looking at me, but said to his assistant, ‘Pizzy, I believe the tree up which we
were barking is most definitely the wrong one.’ He reached out for the envelope. ‘Madam, we have made a mistake with your
husband. I bid you farewell, before I waste another minute of your time.’
Had I handed the envelope back to him straightways, the future of my family might have been very different. But, as I continued
to clutch it to my bosom, needing a moment’s pause to gather my thoughts, he seemed to revise his attitudes, for he waved
his hand towards a box of paper I had not noticed, in the corner behind my chair.
‘Finest Dutch, surplus to my requirements. Take it, and tell Mr Damage to use it as he will. I will always buy blank volumes.
There is a fine market for ladies’ commonplace books, pocketbooks, journals, albums,
que voulez-vous
. I’m sure there are countless other ways to describe a sheaf of papers bound daintily and prettily according to the fancy
of
les femmes
.’ He nodded at me knowingly. ‘Mr Damage should be able to knock a few of those up in less than a week. I shall pay him on
receipt.’
Pizzy the assistant blew the dust off the top of the box, and picked it up, then he turned to me, and paused.
‘Ah.’ He seemed unsure of whether he could hand me the box. Perhaps it would have been deemed improper, too heavy, too inappropriate.
I would have none of it; those were my papers, my ticket out of the insolvency courts. I took the box from him, and bade the
gentlemen good day.
‘
Au plaisir de vous revoir, Madame
,’ Mr Diprose said, bowing.
The box was indeed heavy, as I found before I even reached Waterloo Bridge. The drizzle was flecking my face, causing the
blacks settling on my bonnet to dribble on to my ears and streak down my neck. It was not yet ten o’clock, but the world was
out in force. It felt as if I were going the wrong way over Waterloo Bridge as I weaved my way through the relentless wall
of tradesmen. There were butcher boys in blue-and-white striped aprons, with brown hunks of meat oozing beneath the black-spotted
wax paper on trays carried on their shoulders. There were baker boys too, their wares more appealing, wafting sweet smells
across the odours of horse-dung and sewer construction. Even the milkmaids, in their white smocks, with covered pails swinging
from the yokes like extra pairs of strange arms, were heading north, as if they were all fleeing Lambeth, their course determinedly
set by the north star, towards Westminster and the City, where people and pickings were richer, and they only returned when
they were empty-handed. With my box of Dutch filling my hands, I couldn’t help but feel I was going the wrong way.
I pushed the door open with my foot, and placed the box down just inside the door. A sense of peace pervaded me; I was home.
‘Where have you been?’ Peter’s voice thundered with more force than I had expected, given his state only yesterday. ‘Where?’
‘I – I –’ I stood up straight and flexed my fingers, to iron out the stiff red and white creases.
‘Where?’
‘I will explain . . . I was going to explain . . .’
‘Explain? Explain what? Explain how a mother can leave her house, her husband, her child? With no
prior
explanation? How dare you? Do you know what you have done – to me, to her?’ With that, he pointed to the heap on the rug by
the empty fire; it was Lucinda, with a blanket cast over her. The blood fled my frozen cheeks.
‘What’s happened to her? Tell me.’ But his words had to follow me as I flew to her side. She was sleeping. But I knew – as
only a mother can, before even taking in the set of her face, the colour of her lips, the grip of her fists – that she had
had a fit in my absence.
‘How do you expect me to cope with – with –
that
?’ Peter spat. ‘How was
I
supposed to know what to do? How could you expect me to step into the breach left by her – her
mother
? How could you do this to me?’
‘How did it happen? How did she fare?’ I wanted to know everything; if it had come on slowly, or if she had woken and fussed
to find I was gone, and if he had attempted to soothe her, or if he had taken leave of his senses first, giving her no bedrock
of stability; an infection, as it were, of ill-temper.
Peter did not seem to hear me, or perhaps the questions – being, as they were, about someone other than himself – were too
hard for him. ‘You – you – you irresponsible harlot,’ he raved. His eyes were crazed and delirious, yet he did not frighten
me; I felt distanced from him, as if I were watching a lunatic through a window. I turned back to Lucinda. My heart was pounding,
but I knew she was safe now, and the danger had passed. It only served to confirm to me the importance of my presence; however
I was to earn a living and support this family through this difficult time, it had to be with Lucinda by my side. It gave
me the courage of my convictions for the task of persuasion I had ahead of me.
‘There, now,’ I said to Peter. ‘I’m back where I belong. I won’t be going anywhere again, I promise.’ It was as if I were
crooning into Lucinda’s ear, not a grown man’s. But beneath his livid exterior was relief that I had returned.
I went into the kitchen to draw up the range, and to make up a little bed in front of it for Lucinda. We were, I could tell,
going to have to start living out of one room for warmth, like the poor unfortunates who had no choice but so to do. When
I came back into the parlour, I found Peter fingering a piece of Dutch paper as if it were a leaf of gold.
‘What is this?’ He was too awed to be enraged.
‘Handmade Dutch, heavyweight, ivory, with an interesting watermark, that I haven’t examined properly yet but it appears to
be the letters L, G and . . .’
‘I will ignore your insolence. I repeat, what is this? What is it for? How did you come by it?’
The time had come. ‘I have a suggestion, Peter. Just a small one, which has arisen out of the inspiring example you give to
me daily as you toil on our behalf. I was wondering, and was hoping you would agree, that –’
He stood up, and held the paper up to the light to examine the watermark.
‘– under your jurisdiction –’ I continued.
‘Linen fibre, too,’ he muttered to himself.
‘– you would let me assist you in the workshop.’
He turned to me. ‘I beg your pardon. Did you say something?’
‘Yes, Peter.’ I was not going to gabble like I did with Diprose. ‘Do you not think that together – by which I mean, you leading
me – we are capable of continuing to work the shop?’
Peter snorted. ‘We shall do no such thing.’ I took the paper from him; he was about to launch into his opinion, and we could
not afford to lose even one piece of paper. I laid it back in the box. Peter’s mouth seemed to be grabbing at air, as his
mind formed his words. ‘I shall not have you adding to the many vulgar examples of your sex who steal from honest workers
and their poor families, and who threaten the very structure of family life upon which England became great.’
‘But Peter, I will only be, as it were, your hands, instructed by your brain, and the commands from your mouth.’
‘You! You – will be
my
hands? When you have
quite
returned from the leave you have evidently taken of your senses, you will understand the absurdity of assuming that these
little hands of yours are capable of lifting a hammer, let alone landing it accurately and with due force. The absurdity of
assuming that you have the capability to learn what it takes seven years to teach an apprentice, and a lifetime to perfect!
Or the discernment to know which approach should be best taken for the range of bookbinding problems that are brought to me
daily, or to determine a noble from a shoddy binding, or to ensure that margins are straight, spines curved, lettering precise,
backs strong. Do you understand? Hm? Do you?’
‘Yes,’ I answered. ‘No.’
‘What brain fever afflicts you, child? What troubles you so, that you dare to degrade my house so? Today you have visited
a man, with no other escort than your own conscience. My reputation, I presume, you cast to the pigs.’
‘Must you ask? Peter, you are sick. Peter, we have no money. Peter, we are cold and hungry, and the bailiffs will be knocking
in six days. Six days. We have a box of fine paper and an African Bible. Shall we burn them for heat, or shall we make something
out of them?’
He chose not to hear me. He seemed to be addressing the print of
The Annunciation
on the wall beyond me. ‘You delicate creature,’ he said, with a feeble smile. ‘You – you are too good for manual labour, too
precious for the arts. Let us pity those poor women who are forced to make their own way in the world and earn their own keep,
when they should be husbanding the wages of their menfolk.’ His eyes were starting to glaze. ‘Let us praise your dependent
existence, and work to your strengths, that of embellishing the house and cheering the heart of your husband. Think of our
loss of character.’ Here the light came back into his eyes, and he turned to sear them onto me. ‘Think of how they’ll talk
of us! “There’s the man who wasn’t enough of a man to keep his woman.” “There’s the woman who wears the trousers beneath those
skirts.” Think of it, Dora. It would be worse than hanging, or, or transportation, even! Think of it, Dora! Have you anything
to say to that?’
And so he gave me the perfect opportunity to hang him with his own argument.
‘Indeed, Peter. What if I, truly, went out to make my own way in the world at large? Here you are right, for they would point,
and say, there goes the shame of Peter Damage, as I walk to the factory or the market or my mistress’s mansion. Him who’s
in prison for debt. Him who lost his house and let his wife and child go to the poor. But this way, Peter, won’t it be best?
You are sick. I am offering you a solution that saves your face. We can bring Jack back into the fold. He’s indentured to
us; he’s breaking the law now by not being here. And you will tell us – you will tell us always – what we are and are not
to do. I will not be your brain, but I will be your hands, your arms, your muscles too, for the Lord knows I have them. I
have sat in bookbinder’s workshops all my life listening to every instruction first my father and now you breathe upon your
mechanics, and I have heard them all. And if you don’t help me, why, Jack and I shall muddle through this ourselves! How hard
can it be?’
I could not tell how he was receiving me. He seemed to be holding his breath. His face was red, but through anger or shame
I did not know, and I feared what might issue forth from his pursed lips and his clenched fists. But I had to continue.
‘So, are you happy for books to leave this establishment with your name on them, but in which you have had no part, and let
them flutter amongst the Strand and Westminster showing everyone your prowess? With you or without you, I am binding books.
From tomorrow morning, Damage’s Book- binders is open for business. So, Peter, let us keep this within these four walls. Let
us keep the name of Damage strong. Let us allay our public shame. And use me to do that. Try me. Try me, for we have no other
choice. Try me, and if we fail, we fail.’ My, I realised, here I was becoming a veritable Lady Macbeth. ‘But screw your courage
–’ Did I dare continue? Peter would never recognise the quotation, and I had no other words of my own to use ‘– to the sticking-place
and we’ll not fail.’
But like Lady Macbeth, was I leading my lord into an evil trap? Was I unsexing myself, or worse, him? I looked over at him
and was surprised to feel only scorn. He had already unsexed himself. He was impotent. And we had nothing to lose.
‘Well, I never did see such a manner,’ he said, on a vicious exhalation, ‘from the likes of a wife.’ He pulled on his coat
and scarf, and placed his hat on his head. He tried to squeeze his hands into his gloves, but the pain was too great and he
gave up, casting them onto the floor with a disdainful look, and stuffed his hands instead into his pockets. I watched him
go over to the front door.
I had failed. I wondered to which devil he was going, to which money-lender, den of crooks, whorehouse, or even drinking-house,
in his rage. At least he had not struck me. The thought crossed my mind that the door would slam behind him and that I would
never see him again.
‘Where are you going?’ I asked croakily, and raised my hand as if in farewell.
He turned to me surlily, one eye-brow cocked. ‘To the river, my silly wife,’ he said, ‘to find out which gutter Jack’s lying
in.’
Hush thee, my babby,
Lie still with thy daddy,
Thy mammy has gone to the mill,
To grind thee some wheat
To make thee some meat,
Oh, my dear babby, lie still.
W
e had enough paper to make two albums – one quarto and one octavo – and two duodecimo, two sextodecimo, two vigesimo-quarto
and two trigesimo-segundo notebooks, and several smaller frippery books for young ladies to write their secrets in. And still
we would have sheets left over. But rich in paper as we were, we were paupers in leather: we had little more than half a sheet
of morocco, which would never cover ten albums of varying sizes. The Bible, of course, would have to be full-leather, but
we knew without conferring that we would have to wait until we had been paid for the volumes before we even considered its
binding.
‘Could we bind them in half leather?’ I suggested. It would have been a jigsaw-puzzle of a task, to cut ten spines and forty
corners from the half-sheet we had, but by eye it did not look impossible.
‘Certainly not. We cannot use cloth over paper of such quality. Don’t be ridiculous. Besides, I need Jack here to help; it
is monstrous to presume you and I can proceed without him. This is all quite, quite ridiculous.’
Jack had not been in his house; Peter had barked at Lizzie, his long-suffering mother, who had simply shrugged her shoulders
and offered him tea, which he refused because it would have been made with pestilential river water, and gin, which he refused
on principle.
‘What is the world coming to?’ he raged when he returned. ‘Where is the respect for age, and experience, and professionalism?
She should have begged and pleaded with me not to report Jack to the magistrates for rupture of indenture. I was surprised,
Dora, nay, I was angered, at her insolence. He is our charge and our apprentice, and he is in serious breach of contract.’
I chewed my lip as I looked down at the half-sheet of morocco, trying to solve both the problems that were presenting themselves.
I wondered if it might be best for me to take the trip to Jack’s house and speak to Lizzie myself. The nuances in her speech
and manner might have betrayed something to me to which Peter had been oblivious.
But just then I heard Lucinda calling from the house, so I left Peter in the workshop alone and scooped her up in my arms.
She sang me a little song, and started to plait my hair, and I drifted round the house holding her and pondering how to overcome
the first hitch in my master plan – that we did not have enough leather. I ran my hands over the books in the case by the
fire as if the touch of those bindings would inspire me, but their old leather gave little away. We had a good collection
of books, and there was not one I had not read cover to cover several times. They were all ragged now, for when she was smaller
Lucinda used to occupy herself with pulling them out of their shelves and heaping them on the floor. The casualties of childhood
delight were sorely in need of a re-bind, but none of the editions were special enough to merit the effort. We had a Bible
and
Pilgrim’s Progress
, and several volumes of poetry, and it was here that my hands lingered, as if I were looking for a few lines, a cheering
couplet, that would provide succour or inspiration. William Blake, of course. Keats. Wordsworth. But my hands did not pull
one out at random; neither did the pages fall open at some words into which I might have read some meaning. We left the books
behind, and we climbed the stairs to fold and press the laundry together.
But Wordsworth came with us in spirit, for as I smoothed the shabby sheets and checked for damp patches, I remembered reading
somewhere how his sister Dorothy would cut up her old gowns, and use them to bind the early volumes of his poetry. I had never
seen one, but I could imagine the pretty faded floral fabric enfolding his pretty floral poems with the colours of Grasmere,
and protecting them with a woman’s love. But without the genius of William’s writings within, Dorothy’s dresses would not
have been worthy enough of gracing a gentlewoman’s writing-desk as required by Mr Diprose. We needed something finer. But
still the notion persisted, and I remembered too a tale of royal libraries, of the magnificent bindings manufactured from
Charles I’s own waistcoat collection. But I had no regal waistcoats to hand or to spare in my linen press. I only had my one
fine dress – my Sunday dress, my wedding dress – which I had worn the day before and which was still muddy and drying in the
kitchen.
And then I remembered my parents’ suitcase in the box-room. Dared I see what was inside? From what was I hiding? I pulled
it out, laid it on the bed, and opened it.
On top were a few keepsakes: a gold ring the size of a shilling tooled on to a scrap of red morocco; a piece of folded card
decorated with pressed violets and clover leaves, which contained within two locks of pale yellow hair, which was not mine,
but of the sickly twin brothers I had never met; a pair of worn-out boots with lop-sided tongues and split edges, which were
too small for me to bother mending. I pulled open the tops and traced my fingers around the insides where my mother’s ankles
had once been. I wondered how much I could get in the pawn-shop for them, and if she would have minded.
Underneath them all was a dress, laid up in lavender. It was nothing special, but it was silk, and a most excellent, strong
silk at that, which had scarcely worn at the elbows and where the sash rubbed, despite the fact that it was over forty years
old. It had been given to my mother by the lady of the house where she was governess, who had never worn it. It was markedly
of the fashions of the twenties, and my mother had tried in vain to update it to suit first her, and then me. I had worn it
twice, on the summer evenings when Peter took me to Cremorne and the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens, and always felt clumsy and
outdated in it, but I loved the way it felt against my skin, and the colours – a plain, cornflower blue, with a yellow silk
underskirt – were charming.
I knew immediately that it would do. I wondered why I had not thought of selling it to the Jew, or Huggity, or even taking
it north to the clothes traders off the Strand, but I was grateful to the guiding heavens that I had not. Its purpose was
now more than as a dress to a gentlewoman or a poor unfashionable bookseller’s betrothed. This was not a dress whose time
was over. It was several books whose life had only just begun.
Lucinda helped me unpick every seam with care, and we reserved the thin strips of cream lace around the cuffs and neckline.
Even the tiny triangles of silk from the darts around the bust and waist I saved, thinking I could use them for appliqué.
I only had to discard a square panel from the back of the skirts, where there was an indelible grass stain.
Then Lucinda and I teased out whatever coloured threads we could find from my workbasket, chatting, and laughing even. Over
the years I had kept the remnants of every headband I had ever sewn, and like any good housewife I had a variety of colours
and textures, silks, cottons and linens. The pinks, golds and creams I laid on top of the blue silk; by that evening they
had become embroidered flowers. The silver purl I laid on top of the yellow silk; this found its way to being plaited and
stitched on in elegant curls. Also in the suitcase was a patterned twill that was interesting enough of itself, and could
be transformed into a handsome desk book, striped with the delicate burgundy leather off-cuts – the ones pared off from spines
and edges that would be considered too thin to use – which I would learn to chase and
répoussé
with a simple scroll design, running from the raised bands of the back to within a half-inch of the fore-edge. I even cut
up a cushion, which, once I had discarded the shabby trimmings, would become a purple velvet album, embroidered with gold
thread and coloured silks in a rose and thistle design, with ornate gilt corner pieces, and pale pink ribbon ties.
Lucinda and I brought them back to Peter in the workshop, and watched his face carefully as he fingered through them, and
laid them out with care.
‘It is just as well you have found these. I have come to the conclusion that the journals must all be half-leather, and you
have done well to find the material for the front and back faces,’ Peter said solemnly. ‘Furthermore, we must continue without
Jack. I fear we have no choice.’
Lucinda clapped her hands. ‘We have worked hard, Papa! It was fun!’ I smoothed her hair and kissed her; I too was relishing
the prospect of the next phase of work.
First Lucinda and I folded and rubbed the papers with polished bone while Peter soaked his hands in Epsom Salts, and then
I worked out the various stitches that would be required for each type of book. Peter had always been happy for me to do this:
he asked my opinion on everything from tacketing to tape-slotting, kettle-stitches to meeting-guards, whether thongs should
be raised or recessed, the difference between oversewing and overcasting, and which thread would work with which paper.
‘May I go and play in the street, Mama?’
‘Of course you may. Thank you for your help, you useful girl. I shall be in here if you need me.’ I rigged up the old sewing-frame,
and started to sew the various sections together and on to the main cords for the books.
So recently thrown into the pits of peril, I was at last starting to feel sunshine on my face as I laboured in our own cause.
My carpet-needle wove in and out between the pages of the sections and the vertical cords of the frame, and through its regularity
I tried to convince myself that we were back in the old days when money was less of a worry, and that when I had finished
sewing, there would be only a minor amendment to our usual practice, which was that I would be doing Jack’s work instead of
Jack, and Peter’s work instead of Peter.
Despite a short break at midday to prepare lunch for Peter and Lucinda, I had sewn all the books and albums by one o’clock.
I stood by the chair where Peter was dozing under his newspaper.
‘I’m ready for the forwarding, if you wish,’ I said. Then I went back into the workshop, punched the holes and prepared the
vellum thongs for the tacketing. Soon he was by my side, scanning the assorted piles of naked pages.
‘But we cannot use any of these. It would be a waste of finest Dutch! Have we not some inferior paper upon which I can instruct
you? This is going to be difficult, if you have not even the brain to determine something so fundamental.’
‘We could disband an old volume of ours. The
Pilgrim’s
Progress
, or the Scott?’
‘Possibly. You are thinking, at least.’
‘Or . . .’ I started rummaging in the scraps drawer. ‘. . . here, would this do?’ I held up an old set of papers, yellowed
at the corners and torn here and there, but soundly sewn, approximately two hundred pages thick, uncut and unploughed.
‘I asked you to make that years ago, didn’t I? I believe I instructed Jack on it,’ he said wistfully. ‘It will do, but it
needs re-hammering first.’
And so we began. I took Jack’s leather apron and wrapped it over my pale blue work smock. I heated up some glue as Peter laid
out the leather and marked out on it ten shapes of varying sizes.
‘We are in luck, for once, in this sorry situation. There is just about enough left over to use on your mockery of a journal.
So we shall have one trial run, before starting the serious matter.’
Once the glue was liquid, I painted a thick coat into the back and stippled it between the sections, cut the strings a couple
of inches above and below, and started to round, groove, and back the book. But it was harder than I had anticipated, and
Peter was not forthcoming with assistance. He simply asked, as I hammered unevenly, ‘Did you ask Diprose how he likes his
spines?’
I shook my head.
‘Idiot,’ he said. ‘What if he’s one of those dreadfully fashionable flat-spine men? Let me see what you’ve done. Move it over
here. Now turn it over.’ He stayed silent for a while, the air hissing between his teeth, which he clenched whenever he was
concentrating.
‘Not quite a third-of-a-circle, but not flat at least. The first rule. Never over-round your spines. And why? Why?’
‘Because . . .’ I looked up into the corner of the window frame as if I could read the answer there. ‘The spine won’t be sufficiently
flexible. The margins will be reduced by the extreme curvature. If forced beyond its capability the spine may spring up in
the centre of the pages like a ledger. This could strain the sewing.’ I may not have been the student, but I had attended
the lessons, which was little solace when it came to struggling with the clamps of the press, cutting the millboards with
an unwieldy saw, and making holes with a bradawl. When I pared the leather, my hand shook, and although I will not exalt the
paring knife by claiming it had a mind of its own, it certainly did not wish to follow the instructions of my mind, and the
resultant scrap was pitted and uneven, too thin here and not thin enough there.
‘Peter, please, I am failing.’
‘Indeed,’ came his reply.
And so I took the grass-stained section of the skirt, and cut it to size, and smoothed it over the front and back boards,
and then rounded the leather onto the spine and the joins, and smoothed and rounded and smoothed and rounded, but still it
was lumpy, and a shocking revelation to me of my inadequacy for our plan. I was angry at Peter’s refusal to help: could it
really have been more important to him to confirm that I, as a woman, was unfit for such work, than to extricate us from the
trap of debt?
My troublings were interrupted by the rattling of the external door to the workshop, followed by a pounding, then a voice.
‘Mr Damage. It’s me. Mr Damage. It’s Jack. Please –’
Peter strode to the door, but he could not grasp the key between his bloated fingers. I unlocked the door for him, but hid
behind it as I opened it so that Mr Damage’s full worth could fill the vacating space and greet the street.
