The Journal of Dora Damage (12 page)

‘See how she looks so,’ Knightley whispered, and I tried to flash my eyes away from the hideous cast. I met Diprose’s eye,
which felt uncomfortable too, so I dropped my gaze to the fire, which was lit, despite the heat in the room, and from there
to the couch, and then back to the poor semi-form in front of me.

‘Indeed, Sir Jocelyn,’ Diprose hissed back. ‘Which is why, with all due respect, I advise we proceed with caution.’

I did not hear Knightley’s reply, but knew he was continuing to watch my struggle with placing my gaze. Eventually I determined
to face them both and wait for them to address me, which I did for a while, but they continued to observe me, as if I were
some scientific curiosity, so I dropped my gaze and found my eyes wandering back to that thing, where they could penetrate
beyond the skin to the marvellous inner world of the body.

At length Sir Jocelyn went over to the statue, and put his hand on its shoulder. His other hand he held out to me. ‘Come.
Would you like a closer look?’

I think I nodded, and my legs started to walk towards him. But I was about to step on a dead tiger. I hesitated, heard Diprose
snigger, then planted my foot firmly on the skin. It yielded softly, and I felt as if I might slip.

‘I will warn you, Mrs Damage, that this is not usually considered a suitable object for women to peruse. Hitherto, I have
not shown it to many. Indeed, have I shown it to any? Good lord, this could be a historic day. But I have been told by my
advisers –’ here he smiled benevolently, ‘– that you show special qualities which prove that you are not like the rest of
them; hence.’

And here, with his own finger, he pointed out to me what I was looking at. ‘I picked it up in Paris. It’s
papier-mâché
, made by Auzoux.’ He dug his hands right into her cold flesh, and pulled out pink cushions and tubes and curiously shaped
lumps, and told me that this one was the liver, and these were the kidneys, and this the oesophagus, and I couldn’t follow
it all and felt my insides turn right over several times in sympathy. He asked me if I wanted to touch it, but I shook my
head.

At that moment, the door opened and Goodchild brought in a tray of tea and cakes. I felt the old familiar gnaw of hunger to
which I had grown so accustomed. ‘Have you met my wife yet, Mrs Damage?’ Sir Jocelyn asked as we walked back towards the fireplace.
‘She was hoping to see you at some point.’ Again, I shook my head. ‘She was thrilled to find a bookbinder she can inveigle
into her pet cause. Her charming Nigger philanthropy. Don’t take it too seriously. I don’t. Still, I should consider myself
blessed that she did not choose temperance as her pet time-waster. Or the vote.’ Good-child left, and Sir Jocelyn himself
bent down to serve.

‘Tell me, Dipsy,’ he continued, ‘does it strike you as strange that, having so benefited from slavery for centuries, our conscience
should only stir when more profitable methods of sugar production are discovered? How happily we erase past shame with present
virtue, as long as it continues to serve us. It is nothing but humbug. Humbug, hypocrisy, and self-interest.’

Diprose chuckled. He had nothing to add to the argument; possibly he had run out of foreign words to drop into his conversation.
He simply nodded his concurrence with Sir Jocelyn’s assertion that it was market forces, rather than morality, that led to
the abolition of the British slave trade.

‘Bless my dear wife. She still drinks tea unsweetened, despite loathing the drink so in its natural state. What about you,
Mrs Damage?’ he asked, pouring the tea into a china cup. And then, as he tipped one, and then a second, spoonful of sugar
into the cup, he asked me, ‘Sugar?’

‘Thank you,’ I said as I took the cup, and watched as he put a slice of lemon in the one he handed to Diprose, but did not
have one himself. Instead, he lit a cigar, which was monogrammed with the letters ‘JRK’.

Diprose took his tea, and muttered something I didn’t understand, but I heard the word ‘
kaffir
’, which I had heard before around Lambeth market when there had been a fight. So he had found a foreign word to use after
all. I think he was trying to be funny, but Sir Jocelyn didn’t laugh.

‘ “
Kaffir
”, Dipsy, comes from an Arab word, “
kafir
”, which means “infidel”. It may indeed sound like the Cauzuh word “
kafula
”, which means, “to spit upon”, but the word you are using is a continent away from those to whom you are referring. If you
are to use a term of abuse to describe a man of colour, please choose a geographically correct one.’

He stretched out his legs to reveal silk stockings and a pair of monogrammed slippers. I could imagine those legs wading through
crocodile-infested swamps and sticky jungles. I could see him clubbing a man-eating tiger to death while singing the baritone
aria from
Don Giovanni
and ripping her apart with his bare hands in order to assuage a week-long hunger. I could picture his strong body laid low
with dysentery and malaria at times, but not for long.

Suddenly he stood up. ‘Mrs Damage, you are perfect for our requirements.’ My cheeks reddened to match the rose-coloured bloom
of the light on his desk. ‘I can tell by your pert little nose.’ No one had ever called it that before, only ‘snub’. ‘You
have a nose for discretion, and an aptitude for business. And your delightful chin tells me you are quick to learn, and are
creative and spontaneous, without abandoning caution. Your brow tells me you have a sense of fun, and are quite flirtatious.
But interesting features are all very well, as far as they go. It is how one chooses to inhabit them, to manifest their qualities
in life, that makes the difference.’ He picked up a black leather-bound file, pulled out from it some drawings, and handed
them to me. They were sketches, made in charcoal, of all the bindings I had constructed for Diprose. ‘Are we correct in assuming
you designed these yourself?’

I nodded, for my mouth was too dry to speak, despite the tea.

‘
And
executed them?’ It would have been impossible for me to lie, but I did not know then whether a lie would have saved me. I
nodded again, and then managed the words, ‘Jack did the forwarding.’

‘Ah yes. Jack. We shall come to him. But you were the finisher?’

‘Yes sir.’

‘Excellent news. I believe that problems often arise in book-bindings when there is a division of labour. It is as if intelligent
thought is lost in the gap between designer and maker. Is it fair to say, Mrs Damage, that you give a plain binding the same
attention to detail and commitment as a more elaborate one?’

‘Oh yes, sir. My prices vary only according to the size of the book and the amount of gold required.’

‘Indeed. And your father Mr Archibald Brice, late of Brice’s Bookbinders, Carnaby-street, died of pulmonary disease, 28 September
1854? And your mother Georgina, likewise, of the cholera, 14 September 1854? No surviving siblings? Your husband, Peter, was
apprentice first in Hammersmith at the workshop of Falcon Riviere, and next at your father’s, after Riviere died a year into
his indenture?’ I nodded. ‘You married in June 1854? Peter took over the binding business, and moved it to Lambeth in November
1854? He suffers from rheumatism? Now an invalid?’ I nodded again and again.

‘I presume he has been taking salicylate, and probably quinine too, and that neither have been efficacious? And various other
splendid embrocations too, no doubt, all with trifling success? Any signs of gout? Sciatica? Pleurisy? Periosteal nodes?’
I had long since ceased nodding, for I simply did not know, and he waved his arm dismissively.

‘Let us get back to the point. Jack Tapster, apprenticed to you since December 1854, of Howley-place, Waterloo. Any trouble
with him?’

I shook my head. He sat down at his desk and picked up, not a pen from the well, but a gold pencil with a large coloured jewel
embedded in the end, and added something to the notes.

‘Thank you, Mrs Damage. You may go now. We shall contact you soon with regard to our full intentions for you. Good day.’

I put down my tea, stood up, and the gentlemen both stood up too, and I went over to the door on my own. No Goodchild appeared
to open it for me. Behind me I heard Diprose gather himself together with a start, and he commanded me to wait. ‘I suppose
I should take you back now,’ he said, and he took the door from me and ushered me through.

We found our own way to the stairs, and started to descend.

‘Well, that went sufficiently well, under the circumstances.’

‘Should I not have said all that about Peter and his rheumatism and the like?’ I said anxiously. ‘He knew it all, it seemed.
I couldn’t have lied, could I? Not like I did to you at the beginning. Should I have? I knew I should’ve.’

‘Come, come, my dear. You have fooled no one. Sir Jocelyn has bestowed you with the blessing of his approval, and,
malgré moi
, you and I have no choice but to consent.’

I wish I had known then why the man had such an aversion to me. I did not know if I shamed him, or tempted him, or repulsed
him, or all three at once, but for something about these feelings he chose to dislike me.

We hailed another cab and returned to the shop. He bolted the front and back doors, and gathered some manuscripts about him.

‘First, Boccaccio’s
Decameron
.’ He held it close to me, without proffering it, and I could smell the sourness of his breath. ‘It has some fine illustrations;
c’est à dire
, they are of the more exuberant variety.’ He was agitated, and his eyes refused to meet mine. ‘You must render their spirit
on the binding, if not their detail.’ He sighed, and added, ‘You will be very busy. I will have the first books to you as
soon as I manage to procure them from Amsterdam.’ It did not occur to my troubled mind to question the whereabouts of the
books, whether they were enjoying the sights and sports Amsterdam had to offer or whether their purpose there was strictly
business, innocent such that I was. What sudden reversals were to befall me.

‘And here. You will need this.’ He handed me a weighty implement, like a large bookbinder’s tool or stamp. I examined it carefully:
it seemed to be a peculiar coat of arms. In the centre was a shield, divided into four by two straight overlaying chains:
in the top left quadrant was a dagger; in the top right, a clarion; bottom left, a large buckle as from a belt; bottom right,
a crowing rooster. The shield was supported by a rampant elephant on the left, at the foot of which was a cannon, with a pile
of three balls waiting to be loaded, and on the right, a satyr, also rampant, leaning against a column around which curled
a serpent. Above the shield a beacon burned from a castellated grate, with bunches of grapes descending from its lower basket.
And across the middle snaked a ribbon with words on, in undulate, which I could not make out in reverse.

‘The Knightley coat of arms?’ I asked.

‘
Les Sauvages Nobles
,’ Diprose replied, but I did not understand. ‘The majority of books will need this on the rear cover, or occasionally on
the front when the design so warrants. You shall receive instructions.’

‘And what about payment?’

‘Mrs Damage.
Virtus post nummos
, indeed!’

But the blackguard’s insult only emboldened me. ‘Mr Diprose. You know I have not yet the means to purchase materials appropriate
to the task.’

‘I will send you a few things to help you out,’ he said with irritation. Then he creaked his torso forward at me and placed
his hands upon his thighs, so that he could stare directly into my eyes. ‘Tell me, child, the definition of “discretion”.’

I swallowed. ‘Prudence,’ I blurted out. Then I thought harder.
Discernere
, to perceive. ‘The ability to discern.’ My mother, the governess, delighted in setting me word games like this. ‘Circumspection.’
Circumspecere
, to look around on all sides. She would have pushed me harder still. I could hear her voice now, but I was grasping for my
own words. ‘The adoption –’ I was getting into my stride, ‘– of behaviour appropriate to the situation.’ I paused. ‘Which
errs on the side of caution,’ I added.

‘It will be required,’ he replied. ‘Payment will be handsome once discretion has been proven. You certainly have need to assure
that
je ferme ma bouche
. How tidy, that we are now keeping each other’s secrets. We have
un arrangement
?’

I nodded. Satisfied, he reached for my hand, helped me to my feet, and placed the Boccaccio in my hands. I made to move towards
the front of the shop.

‘No, Mrs Damage,’ said Mr Diprose. ‘You must leave now by the back entrance.’

I looked at him blankly.

‘Are you scared of ghosts, Mrs Damage?’

‘Ghosts?’ Was he testing my mettle, as a member of the fair sex?

‘Ghosts,’ he repeated. ‘For there is reputed to be a ghost of Holywell-street. Will you permit me to shiver your senses with
the story?’

‘Please do.’ I stood by the back door and waited.

‘Once upon a time, a young man – let us call him Joseph – came up from the country – let us say, the wilds of Lincolnshire
– to earn his living in the big city – let us say, he was a printer. Joseph was abandoned one night – perhaps he had been
drinking with some other printers – in the darkness of Holywell-street, but knew it was a journey of only a few short yards
back to the main thoroughfare of the Strand. He went one way, then another, then took a turn, then another turn, and found
himself staggering down more and more winding alleys, and soon became lost.’

‘What became of him?’

‘Many have guessed, but none will confirm. You and I can only imagine what cruelty lies in these irregular alley-ways. His
body was never found, but his spirit was unable to find the same freedom. It is said that his ghost still haunts Holy-well-street,
still wanders round and about the narrow lanes, never quite reaching the Strand, and constantly going back to the beginning
of his journey, where he has to start his quest over again. But you, Mrs Damage, seem skilled at finding your way out.’