The Journal of Dora Damage(133)

‘Then I admire you your application to your lessons. You are an outlaw, but a highly educated one.’

I laughed. ‘You are talking about yourself.’

‘Face it, an’ embrace it, Dora. You’re a fighter. Only you just don’t know it. You even earn a livin’ from outside the law.’

‘No. I have only swapped one set of rules for another. And curiously enough, they’re set by the same people. I hope you never meet Sir Jocelyn Knightley. I fear he considers himself an outlaw.’

‘I should relish the challenge. Becoming an outlaw is the best response to tyranny I know of. I shall consider him my brother. I have heard you call him a libertine. What is that, other than someone who has been freed from slavery?’

‘You do him too well, Din,’ I snorted. ‘I am afraid he shall consider you a scientific curiosity.’

‘And what does he consider you?’

‘Please don’t ask, I beseech you,’ I said, knowing that the answer was quite simply, and quite probably more accurately than I had realised, little more than a whore. ‘Spank me,’ I said instead, surprising myself as I heard the words come from my mouth.

‘What?’

‘Spank me,’ I repeated. ‘Here.’ I stood up, without wondering for a moment whether I was presenting to him my best angle, and seized the strop from the wall. ‘The leather side, not the emery cloth,’ I added, as I lay myself across his lap, although this was no time to fear for my tender behind.

‘I don’t want to hurt you, Dora.’

‘Just give it to me. I want to know what it feels like.’

He patted the strop against my bottom, and I giggled.

‘Go on, harder,’ I said. He raised the strop higher in the air, then landed it against my skin.

‘Ouch,’ I shrieked, and thrust my pelvis into his lap.

‘Did I hurt you?’

‘Yes!’

‘I’m sorry.’

He rubbed the palm of his hand over my bottom, and kissed it gently.

‘Don’t be. I asked for it.’

‘You have a perfect bottom,’ he said tenderly. ‘Do you want me to hit it again?’

‘No,’ I said, wriggling myself around to kiss his face. I think my face must have been redder than my rear. It felt naughty, but appropriate; it was in many ways what I needed, combining both sensation and punishment in the one act, answering my desire and my guilt at once. I was a woman in mourning; I was betraying my husband, and deserved to suffer. I took the strop from him, laid it on the floor next to us, and locked my limbs in his. ‘It’s just – it was in the books. I was curious.’

‘You have to pity the men,’ Din said gravely. ‘Why is it they think they’re bein’ dangerous lookin’ at a black man with a white woman? Why is that more horrorsome than a fifty-year-old man with a ten-year-old child, or a woman with a goat? Cos it’s seen to be the wrong way round; the wrong balance of power. White over black, man over woman, that’s the right way, ain’t it? Black man, white woman, though, stirs it all up, causes bother.’

‘Are you saying they seek out sensation? They want the thrill of possibility?’

‘Right.’

‘Just like me with the strop.’

‘Just like. Cos they never lost their dignity, they know they’d want revenge if they’d been treated like us. They know what they’ve done to us, and they’re scared that if we get a little power we’re gonna get some guns and come runnin’ after them.’

‘Which is precisely what you’ve said you want to do!’

‘Have to, not want to. I want to live in peace. Ain’t no such thing as a free revolution, Dora.’

‘Ain’t that the truth,’ I agreed. I was starting to realise our loving would have a heavy price, although it felt worth every penny. What did Adam and Eve think of their punishment, having tasted the tree of knowledge? I could only remember the wrath and indignation of the Almighty; we were not told whether His first minions felt it was worth it. Was I a white Eve with my black Adam; or was he the black serpent hiding in the tree? I looked around at the bindery and became aware of a crawling feeling across my skin, which sat uneasily with the warmth of his embrace. We had perpetrated a terrible sin; we had violated every moral, social and religious taboo, yet my shame mixed curiously with a wondrous, golden sensation of glory, and I wondered to myself how something so wrong could feel so good. Or was that, how could something that felt so good be so wrong?

‘You don’t want revenge?’ I was starting to shiver with cold.

Din fell silent for the first time.