The Journal of Dora Damage (25 page)

‘Yes, Dora?’

‘Will they really destroy all the stock?’

‘Yes.’

‘Was any of my work in it?’

‘No. I can say that with certainty. Your line of work runs directly between Diprose and the Noble Savages, and is not kept
in the shop.’

‘So will I be paid for it?’

‘Of course. The coffers are not connected either.’

‘I have not been paid for a while.’

‘And I shall see it gets attended to. But you should not visit here any more. It is not safe. I, or another of Charles’s men,
will deliver and collect from Lambeth. I shall relish the journey. Oh, but Jocelyn was right. He called you a rum doxy. Now
I am sure you are of better breeding, but still, a fine-made wench.’

‘Will you excuse me, please, Mr Pizzy.’ I stood up, and whispered to Bernie, ‘I need to relieve myself.’

‘Hallelujah,’ she replied. ‘And we thought you were too pure to piss.’

‘You must not use the privy,’ Mr Pizzy commanded. ‘As I said, nobody leaves.’

‘So where can I go?’

‘There’s a chamber-pot in the ante-room.’ He pointed to a cubby-hole off the top of the staircase.

I stood up, and sidled carefully past Pizzy’s knees. I felt his fingertips brush up my legs, then a thumb curled and pressed
itself into the top of my thigh. I brought my boot down on the toes of his left foot and did what damage I could with a worn-out
heel. At last, a fine purpose for the heels of those unwearable brown boots; would that I had them on now. I did not look
back at his face.

But from the top of the stairs, as I stooped to enter the cubby-hole, I could see that his attention was now occupied with
Bernie, and no one else could see me from the printing room. I did not even think, but darted down the stairs into the rear
room by the alley. The chair on which I had sat this morning was lying on its side; Diprose’s chair had been used to gain
access to a high cupboard; most of the photographs from the catalogue had been removed, but some remained, ground into the
floor, disfigured by footprints and muck.

Alec Trotter was asleep across the door into the alley. I pitied the poor boy for the aches he would feel in the morning.
I slid into the shop, and tried the door into Holywell-street, but it was locked.

I went back into the rear room, and tried to reach the bolt without standing on any part of Alec’s body, but I could not.
And then I noticed that the door was also locked, and the key glinted from the hand on which Alec’s body lay. I could touch
it, but I would have to unlace his fingers from around it. And then he woke. He was about to cry out when I seized him and
hushed him.

‘Who’s there?’ he said, terrified. ‘We’re armed!’

‘It’s me,’ I said. ‘Dora Damage.’

‘You can’t go,’ he said. ‘I’m not to let ya.’

‘You must. It’s urgent. I have to leave.’

‘You can’t. You’ll get us all in trouble. Me ma said. I ain’t gonna.’

‘There’s two shillings in it for you. They’ll never know it was you. Look. I’ll break this window, and you can say it was
robbers. Or rozzers.’ I flashed the coins at the boy, and he weighed them in his head. Then he looked down at the key in his
hand.

‘I can’t do it.’ I placed first one coin, and then the next, in his palm alongside the key, but at that moment we heard the
cursings and hushings of perturbed folk from upstairs, followed by the bobbing halos of candles and oil-lamps coming down.
I seized the key, and clenched it in my fist.

‘Oi,’ Alec shouted. ‘Give that back!’

Pizzy arrived first. His smile was gone; however he was going to greet me, I knew it would be with anger.

But he redirected it. Before I could receive whatever harsh words were due to me, Alec Trotter was cuffed round the ear, then
caught sharply in the eye by Pizzy’s two forefingers.

‘Hey,’ I started to cry out, and I reached towards the lad, only to find another hand come sharply round from below to slap
me across the cheek. Stung, I turned to vent my wrath on Mr Pizzy, but then saw Mrs Trotter, red-faced and stalwart, hand
poised to deliver another blow.

‘Sit down, Dora, and be quiet,’ Pizzy said, righting the chair that lay on its side. I obeyed, glaring at Mrs Trotter and
rubbing my cheek.

‘Here, take this,’ said Bernie with a modicum of tenderness, and handed me a steaming mug of tea. She wrapped a blanket around
my shoulders, then set the tea-pot on the table. She pulled Diprose’s chair up next to me, and we refilled our cups at intervals,
drinking but not talking. I did not want to look around me at anyone. I would not cry.

At length I felt an icy shaft of air, and heard Mr Pizzy, holding the door open into the alley, saying, ‘Go on, Dora. Your
carriage awaits.’

‘Be off with you,’ Mrs Trotter said. ‘And good riddance.’ I fell into the alley-way in an effort to draw my shawl closer,
and she called after me, ‘And don’t be causing any more trouble to poor lads who can’t help it.’

I was free at last. What a blessing it was to be out of that horrid building. But I soon faced new dangers, as I put my head
down and started to navigate the alleys out towards the Strand. I turned one way, and then the other, but the darkness had
put up new walls around me, and I quickly lost my bearings. I remembered the ghost of Holywell-street, so I fingered my mother’s
hair-bracelet like a talisman, and muttered into myself like a madwoman. Alone except for my imagination, I started to rush
and panic. I stumbled over a blanket that heaved with sour breath; a hand thrust forth from it and grabbed my ankle as I hastened
past. I tripped, kicked, and pulled my leg out from its bony clutch with the fury of a mother separated from her child, and
I ran. Out at last, I fell into the yellow glare of the Strand, and the new fears of the gas-lights as a woman alone in the
London streets at night.

Illuminated, I was making a spectacle of myself; in the darkness between the sulphurous pools, I was putting myself at the
mercy of unseen terrors. Some sailors stood talking to some men in top-hats, and they looked at me. I knew not where was safest,
in the light, or in the shadows.

A solitary cab waited on the road, just at the entrance to the alley-way. It had seen me, for sure, in the lamp-light. I quickened
my pace westwards, skirting the pools of gas-lights. But the cab came up beside me, and continued at my own pace, before pulling
up ahead of me. The driver hopped down from his perch and landed directly in my path.

When he seized my elbow, I screamed. ‘This way, Mrs Damage,’ he said gruffly. ‘Or didn’t Pizzy tell you?’ I couldn’t snatch
my arm away from his strong grip; no one came to my assistance. He shoved me into the back of the cab; I tried to crouch at
the door, in order to hurl myself out as soon as I could, but the night did not offer the slow traffic of noon, and the speed
to which the driver jimmied his horse threw me back into the seat. I prayed for a sheep to wander into the road from Hyde
Park as we raced down Knightsbridge, but the way was clear. And, by the time we turned into Wilton-place and slowed to a halt
in Belgrave-square, it was too late.

The driver pulled me down from the carriage, and encircled his rough hand around my waist. I wanted to slap him for his insolence,
but the mansion to which he had brought me awed me, and I dared not.

Within, a butler bundled me up an elegant staircase lined with stern portraits, and into a bottle-green office. It was large,
but moderately furnished; it did not smell of smoke, or betray the opulence of its owner. It was studious, and reserved; what
furniture there was, was orderly and precise, like an officer’s room in the nearby barracks. There was a simple writing-desk
on one side, a bookcase with a selection of books, and a brown leather couch beneath the window. The only blots in the room
were the ink-stains around the well on the desk, and a half-written paper at an angle to the others. I had no idea what time
of night or morning it was.

Then a door opened somewhere in the house, and I heard a low rumbling of male voices, and some baritone laughter, and then
the door to the office opened, and the butler announced, ‘Lord Glidewell’.

Labor Bene
– for it was indeed he, Valentine, Lord Glidewell – smiled warmly at me, and clutched my hand by way of welcome. He was a
small man, unremarkable in features, wearing a deep-red quilted smoking-jacket, with black braid about his waist, and holding
a glass of port.

‘Mrs Damage. Sir Jocelyn will be joining us shortly. We are dining tonight. Tell me, Mrs Damage, do you like birds?’ His affability
was unexpected, given the unconventional manner in which he had summoned me. ‘Behind me are some of the finest ornithological
volumes you will ever see. I am fascinated too with reptiles and insects; the rarest of the species interest me most. My interests,
you will see, are similar to those of Sir Jocelyn’s, but mine is a mere hobby, and its subjects have the great advantage of
not being human; and therefore, not being able to answer back.’

I forced a small smile, which I believed was expected of me.

‘Will you sit, while we wait?’

I perched on the edge of the couch, and asked, ‘Lord Glidewell, please tell me why I am here?’

‘Why, my dear lady? We have an account to settle, do we not? I have been sent word of your untoward behaviour this past day
on this matter.’ His courtesy and civility were unmatchable, but the very calmness of his displeasure unbound every nerve
in my body. ‘To place our entire shared venture in jeopardy with such imprudence only serves to demonstrate to us how remiss
we have been in not keeping up our payments to you.’

His voice was so liquid I feared I would slip up on it. I had to be careful what I said.

‘Lord Glidewell. My misgivings were not pecuniary.’

‘They were prurient, then. Madam, we all have the itch. Only some of us know how to scratch it.’

‘No. The prurience is not mine, either. Only that –’ But Lord Glidewell had come to stand directly in front of me, and was
knitting his brow, such that I fell silent. He began as if by addressing the shadowy towers of the Knightsbridge Barracks
through his window, but his words fell into my ears only.

‘As a judge, I am no stranger,’ he ruminated, ‘to the horrors and pleasures of the noose, and other implements of torture.
They are,’ he gently assured me, ‘not suitable for ladies of your skill, and I would not wish you closer contact with them,
and neither should you. Do you understand me?’

I swallowed and nodded. His kind voice lulled me. So kind, I could not quite absorb his meaning.

‘Ah, and here is Sir Jocelyn.’

‘Dora!’

I stood up as the man marched towards me with a broad smile, stopping only to place his glass of port on the writing-desk,
before reaching out his arms and kissing me firmly on both cheeks. ‘You are safe, dear child! Such a dreadful experience for
you to have to undergo. Poor, poor Charles. But you, precious girl, escaped their clutches.’ He slid his palms down my arms,
took hold of both my hands, and started to stroke my cracked, calloused palms. ‘Look at these beautiful hands, Valentine.
Our little binding angel; she weaves the softest magic for us, from the most unusual wellsprings of inspiration. Hmmm. You,
Mrs Damage, are my
magnum
opus
. What a woman we have made of you! I have a gift for you, my angel.’ He let go of my hands to pull from his vest pocket a
long golden rope, at the end of which was a faceted honey-coloured drop. ‘Amber, from Africa.’ He smiled, as if at a distant
memory. ‘I love amber. For me it is like a woman. Did you know, Dora, that amber has a special scent, a
secret
scent, yielded only once warm, and rubbed?’ He held the drop tightly in the palm of his hand, and massaged his fingers and
thumb vigorously around it, looking at me all the while. Then he knelt down, wrapped the necklace around my neck, and reached
behind me to fasten the clasp. ‘Can you smell that, Dora?’ But I couldn’t. I could only smell the spicy smokiness of Sir Jocelyn
himself; his velvet jacket yielded a musty perfume, and his mouth the fermenting sweetness of tobacco and fine wine.

‘And you must set these into a binding for me,’ he proceeded, pouring into my hands ten polished amber nuggets.

‘Jocelyn,’ Lord Glidewell interrupted, ‘I was imparting to Mrs Damage the severity of the day’s events.’

‘Indeed, Valentine.’

‘And I believe you have some information for Mrs Damage? I do not wish to hurry you, but we must return to dinner forthwith.’

Sir Jocelyn stared at Glidewell for a moment, before turning back to me. ‘Dora. Darling Dora,’ he repeated. I think he was
slightly drunk. He sat down on the couch, pulled me next to him, and rubbed my hand some more. ‘Dora,’ he said again.

‘Yes, Sir Jocelyn?’

‘Dora.’

But I never knew what he wanted to say to me, for all of a sudden, as if taken by something of a more pressing nature, he
stood up sharply, picked up his glass, and left. I heard him mutter to Glidewell over his shoulder as he passed, ‘Your dirty
work, Valentine, not mine.’ And with that he was gone, and the door clicked neatly shut behind him, like the cocking of a
flintlock gun.

Lord Glidewell seemed unperturbed. He paused to sip his drink, then smacked his lips together, and paced the room. When he
began to speak again, it was with military precision and care.

‘I may not be a medical man, Mrs Damage, but as a judge I know how to weigh evidence, and as such I am convinced that Sir
Jocelyn will be considered to be the most eminent, radical and life-changing, nay,
epoch
-changing, physician of his generation. I urge you to tender your greatest consideration to what I am about to say.’ I sat,
attentive, and waiting. ‘Did you know,’ Lord Glidewell continued, ‘that Sir Jocelyn has found a strong and convincing connection
between an individual being subject to an excess of sexual energy, and that same individual suffering from epileptic seizures?
Ah, I see I have your full attention now. You did not know that, I can tell. I appreciate that this is a very delicate area,
but may I ask if Lucinda partakes in, shall we say, onanism?’