The Journal of Dora Damage(15)

And then it was that I needed the in and out, in and out of my frozen toes more than ever to carry me forward. Once through the toll-gate, the hansom cabs picked up speed as if to make up for lost time, and I felt that if I lost the momentum of my pace I would be whipped over the side by one of them, or by the vicious wind itself, and over I would go to my icy, smelly doom. But I knew even as I thought it, that I would catch the sides on my way over and cling on. That would have been me, there, hanging on to the rim, all my remaining strength going into keeping myself hanging there. I could have stopped myself falling further, but I could not have found the strength to pull myself back over into safety. And besides, even if I could have, it would only have brought me back into the path of a cab, or another gust of wind.

The fog was dreadful on the bridge; it did not hang like a brown pall, but flurried and swirled in a fast-moving current, as if the bubbling brown Thames beneath us were a fantasy compared to the raging course of the fog-river through which we had to wade. Not for nothing was this called the Bridge of Sighs. I could hear through the wind the howls of lives spent along with their ha’pennies; the world looked so bleak from here that I would have bet my eleven pence-ha’penny on there being very few prospective suicides who had paid their toll and then asked for a refund, having changed their minds in the centre of the bridge. From up here, it was not possible to tell how much worse down there would be.

Then in and out, in and out to the city itself, where I hoped to find assistance; I would not call it charity.

First I visited the Institute for the Restitution of Fallen Women, where I waited in line for two hours with nothing in my stomach to hold me up, but my fall being not a moral one, they had no time for me.

Next I went to the Guild of Distressed Gentlewomen, but, as I was not a widow, and lacked a whole cartload of children to support, my distress counted for nothing.

More hopeful was the Society for the Promotion of the Employment of Women, who told me I had the skills to become a fine governess, and so I could have been, had they not shuddered at my suggestion that my daughter attend me while I worked. But there was no other way: she would undoubtedly fall into convulsions at the prospect of long absences from me with only her invalid father for care. The harshest claws of poverty scratched like a mere kitten compared to that.

The rain started on my way back to Lambeth. In and out, in and out, I picked up my skirts so they would not wick up the water from the puddles, and wrapped my shawl tighter around me. In and out, in and out, I passed the heavy gates of the St Saviour Poorhouse, and my toes went in and out quicker than ever to carry me far from its reaches. More than an absent mother off playing the governess, the workhouse would have meant certain death for Lucinda.

I finally reached Remy & Randolph, the most advanced bookbinders in London, where the guard told me with a yawn that I would earn eight shillings – eight shillings! – for a fifty-four hour week as a paper-folder if I could bring a reference. ‘They prefer girls to women, in ’ere, as girls are cheaper,’ he warned my departing back.

I remember leaving the gates of Remy & Randolph as the lamplighters started their rounds, and I was fretting about all sorts: that Lucinda might have had a turn in my absence; that Peter might never return; that I had no choice but to find that old suitcase of my parents’ in the box-room, and sell it, or at least pawn it, which might bring us enough money to last another two days. The evening chill was setting in, and I scrunched my toes in my boots to squeeze out the cold from them. I walked like this down New Cut, past the two hundred costermongers, the vagabonds loitering in gin-shop doorways, the five-year-old urchins collecting horse-droppings for the Bermondsey tanneries, in and out, in and out.

The rain had picked up even more, and my damp clothes quickly became saturated. The wool of my shawl was sodden, and my skirts were drenched by water hurled up from the cobbles by passing carriages. Soon, wool, flannel and horsehair were all soaking, and I stank of wet animal. I remember trying to wrap my cloak tighter around me, and my hand failing to grasp one side of the flabby fabric, and as I clutched for it in the bitter wind I found my knees giving way, and I sank down on to the pavement, skirts billowing around me like a deflating hot-air balloon. My legs had nothing left in them to carry out my orders, not even the thought of Lucinda at Agatha Marrow’s. My nose was streaming, but I had not the strength to move my arms to release my handkerchief from my cuff. I bowed my head so that my bonnet would disguise me from the scurrying swell of folk about me.

‘Here’s a pretty pickle,’ an old voice croaked behind me. I dipped my head further into the chafing wet of my collar, and sank closer to the ground. ‘Come, lovely. Down on your luck? There’s a sorry story to hear, I’ll warrant.’