‘And, darn, because I left mine behind in Virginia,’ Din added.
‘How thoughtless of you, Din.’
He continued with his work, but I was not ready to go back to mine. I wanted this moment to last longer. So I found a question I could ask him. ‘Tell me, Din, why are you really called Din? Is it a real name? Or were you telling the truth when you said it was that acronym, what was it?’
‘Dudish Intelligent Nigger. Of course. Or Dun-coloured Idiot Nigger. Or Dangerous Irate Nigger.’
‘No, seriously, Din.’
‘Yes, seriously. They would put it in on my papers. DIN. Dangerous Intelligent Nigger.’
‘Really?’
He laughed. ‘Or I can tell you that it’s a word from the Mandingo, my people in West Africa.’
‘What does it mean?’
‘It don’ mean nothin’. But each time I slipped away, I heard a man holler, “Where dat man-Din-go?” ’
I had to laugh too. ‘You are good at slipping away.’
‘And besides, Dora tell me, what is a din?’
‘A noise.’
‘A noise. See, I been given too many names. The one of my birth. Master Lucas changed it twice. The ones given to you by the other whiteys. Other niggers have had their names changed forty, fifty times. And along the way, they get names like Shame, or Odious. I heard a Master call out across the fields, “Shit, get Dung for me.” And they’ll keep that name for five years. Din stands for the noise in your head of all your names arguin’ at once. I’m going to call any child of mine somethin’ wrong, somethin’ unexpected, like after flowers, or something. If it’s a boy, he’ll be tall, so I’m gonna call him Delphinium. An’ if it’s a cute little girl, I’ll call her Daisy.’
‘And what if she’s a tall girl?
‘I’ll call her Dora.’
We burst out laughing at the same time, and I felt the unexpected sensation of my eyes watering, but with mirth, not misery, and I bit my lip and scolded myself for this unseemliness. I love you Din, the words teased around my heart. No I don’t, my head chastised. I merely appreciated this new and unexpected friendship, which threw the relationship I had with the empty woman in the house into stark relief.
‘We all thought Jocelyn had gone mad,’ Sylvia exclaimed at supper-time, ‘when he came back from the Continent, and wanted his meals served at all sorts of strange times, in the foreign fashion, but Dora, the hours you keep are something else entirely! You have your dinner at noon, and only a frugal repast at nightfall.’ I got up at this point, and went into the bindery. Her words chased me there, her voice raised now. ‘And as if that were not quaint enough, you still serve your food à la russe; don’t you know the rest of the world is now dining à la française?’
But my head was full of Din, and I stopped hearing her.
Later, however, she knocked on the door, and called through the wood, ‘Dora, dear. May I disturb you?’ When I did not answer, she added, ‘I was wondering if you might like a cup of tea with me, or something stronger.’
‘Stronger?’ I quizzed. Such an overture was not wholly unpleasant to me. I unlocked the door.
She was standing in the door-way, and shrugged, a small smile on her face. ‘I don’t know. What have you got?’ She was almost skittish.
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.’