The Journal of Dora Damage(155)

Chapter Twenty-four

Who are you? A dirty old man

I’ve always been since the day I began,

Mother and Father were dirty before me,

Hot or cold water has never come o’er me.





It is July, 1865. I have just had an extraordinary encounter which I need to relate here, for the story seems to have some sort of an ending at last. But first, let me catch up on the intervening years.

I started to write this journal shortly after Lucinda was returned to me, as I laid low, and waited for the knock at the door. The writing kept me busy, and was a vain attempt at making sense of the previous year or so. I chanced upon this small half-bound notebook stashed in a drawer in the bindery: it was a mockery of leather, silk and gold, entitled MOIV BIBLL, but it had beguilingly blank pages, like the blank book that St Bartholomew had intended to give to someone who was to delight under that name in her impending life, only she never showed up, or, possibly, had changed her mind at the last minute, and opted for the book that had been written in instead. Either way, it was if I had got her cast-off, being next in line for a blank book. It was the one book I had bound for nobody else but me, for nobody’s perusal, for no purchase, and I realised at last what its purpose would be.

I never saw Din again. Pansy got wind, through her brother, that he had eventually left for Bristol, and thence to America, and although I know that it was his true destination, I could not help but think that it was his sacrifice for me. It may even have been his plan, if they ever had come looking for me: it would have given me the chance to blame the murder on him, this renegade black man. Sir Jocelyn would even have backed me up on it, no doubt, as the only, and most expert, witness. I was aware of what he was risking for me by coming to Berkeley-square that night, and I knew that he would have killed for me. In that way I consoled myself that he must have loved me. For what is love, anyway? Did he not say to me, ‘Is love not only sacrifice? Do we not give up those we love, in order to prove to them that they are loved?’ But there were times I could not help but feel my victory had been a Pyrrhic one.

But they never did come for him, nor for me neither. As I said, I laid low for a while, scribbling in my journal, and making commonplace books and albums for a stationer’s up in Lamb’s-Conduit-street, but the knock at the door never came. I scoured the papers daily for news of the Diprose murder. I learnt of the Winner of the Ascot Cup, the Progress of the Building for the Great International Exhibition of 1862, and Paris Fashions for the Summer, but not of what had happened to Mr Charles Diprose. My eyes lingered longer over the reports of the Civil War in America, but they were as missives from a dream state or some distant solar system, and left no trace around my heart.

But one article caught my attention for a brief moment: ‘Eminent Judge Dies in Tragic Accident’. It read:





Valentine, Lord Glidewell, the most eminent judge of his time, and the most excellent person from whose hammer justice was meted upon the worst felons of this land, has passed away in tragic circumstances. As the authorities debate the merits of moving the gallows into the penitentiary, and ending the ancient tradition of execution as public spectacle, which can have no place in a modern and civilised society such as ours, the esteemed judge was found hanging from the ceiling of his study in Belgrave-square this Thursday last. It is believed that Lord Glidewell, out of the spirit of compassion and consideration for which he was widely renowned, had determined to understand more intimately what was at stake each time he sent a criminal to the gallows, but this noble experiment had a most tragic ending . . .





But of Mr Diprose there was nothing. Presumably the same contact in the Home Office – indeed, possibly, the same Noble Savage – who repeatedly got him off his obscenity charges, enabled this cover-up of justice too. His allegiance would have been to Knightley, not to Diprose, after all, and there had to be some advantages to having a secret society, didn’t there? Possibly Sir Jocelyn donated his body to medical science; they were both, in their own way, fine anatomists, so it was only fitting that Diprose should join them, and save the body-snatchers the trouble.

I found out where Jack was imprisoned, and visited him when I could. He had grown twice the size, and aged as much too, since I had last clapped eyes on him. His hair was darker, and his muscles as big as his father’s now. He was quieter, though. A kindly warden brought him some books now and then; that much I gathered, but little else.

After a while, I ventured out and started to earn my living once more. I gave lessons in bookbinding to gentlewomen at a studio in South Kensington: how times were changing! Veritable ladies were choosing to use their idle time in the gentle pursuits of fine handicrafts, and my, they paid handsomely for it. Twenty-five guineas for three months’ tuition, forty for six, seventy for twelve, plus materials at cost. But the money was only important in terms of what it enabled me to set aside for Lucinda. There were fears too: I fretted constantly about what would happen if one of my lady pupils were to discover my past. Or worse, if I were to discover the identities of their eminent husbands and find them to be . . .