The Journal of Dora Damage(23)

I pushed the door open with my foot, and placed the box down just inside the door. A sense of peace pervaded me; I was home.

‘Where have you been?’ Peter’s voice thundered with more force than I had expected, given his state only yesterday. ‘Where?’

‘I – I –’ I stood up straight and flexed my fingers, to iron out the stiff red and white creases.

‘Where?’

‘I will explain . . . I was going to explain . . .’

‘Explain? Explain what? Explain how a mother can leave her house, her husband, her child? With no prior explanation? How dare you? Do you know what you have done – to me, to her?’ With that, he pointed to the heap on the rug by the empty fire; it was Lucinda, with a blanket cast over her. The blood fled my frozen cheeks.

‘What’s happened to her? Tell me.’ But his words had to follow me as I flew to her side. She was sleeping. But I knew – as only a mother can, before even taking in the set of her face, the colour of her lips, the grip of her fists – that she had had a fit in my absence.

‘How do you expect me to cope with – with – that?’ Peter spat. ‘How was I supposed to know what to do? How could you expect me to step into the breach left by her – her mother? How could you do this to me?’

‘How did it happen? How did she fare?’ I wanted to know everything; if it had come on slowly, or if she had woken and fussed to find I was gone, and if he had attempted to soothe her, or if he had taken leave of his senses first, giving her no bedrock of stability; an infection, as it were, of ill-temper.

Peter did not seem to hear me, or perhaps the questions – being, as they were, about someone other than himself – were too hard for him. ‘You – you – you irresponsible harlot,’ he raved. His eyes were crazed and delirious, yet he did not frighten me; I felt distanced from him, as if I were watching a lunatic through a window. I turned back to Lucinda. My heart was pounding, but I knew she was safe now, and the danger had passed. It only served to confirm to me the importance of my presence; however I was to earn a living and support this family through this difficult time, it had to be with Lucinda by my side. It gave me the courage of my convictions for the task of persuasion I had ahead of me.

‘There, now,’ I said to Peter. ‘I’m back where I belong. I won’t be going anywhere again, I promise.’ It was as if I were crooning into Lucinda’s ear, not a grown man’s. But beneath his livid exterior was relief that I had returned.

I went into the kitchen to draw up the range, and to make up a little bed in front of it for Lucinda. We were, I could tell, going to have to start living out of one room for warmth, like the poor unfortunates who had no choice but so to do. When I came back into the parlour, I found Peter fingering a piece of Dutch paper as if it were a leaf of gold.

‘What is this?’ He was too awed to be enraged.

‘Handmade Dutch, heavyweight, ivory, with an interesting watermark, that I haven’t examined properly yet but it appears to be the letters L, G and . . .’

‘I will ignore your insolence. I repeat, what is this? What is it for? How did you come by it?’

The time had come. ‘I have a suggestion, Peter. Just a small one, which has arisen out of the inspiring example you give to me daily as you toil on our behalf. I was wondering, and was hoping you would agree, that –’

He stood up, and held the paper up to the light to examine the watermark.

‘– under your jurisdiction –’ I continued.

‘Linen fibre, too,’ he muttered to himself.

‘– you would let me assist you in the workshop.’

He turned to me. ‘I beg your pardon. Did you say something?’

‘Yes, Peter.’ I was not going to gabble like I did with Diprose. ‘Do you not think that together – by which I mean, you leading me – we are capable of continuing to work the shop?’

Peter snorted. ‘We shall do no such thing.’ I took the paper from him; he was about to launch into his opinion, and we could not afford to lose even one piece of paper. I laid it back in the box. Peter’s mouth seemed to be grabbing at air, as his mind formed his words. ‘I shall not have you adding to the many vulgar examples of your sex who steal from honest workers and their poor families, and who threaten the very structure of family life upon which England became great.’

‘But Peter, I will only be, as it were, your hands, instructed by your brain, and the commands from your mouth.’

‘You! You – will be my hands? When you have quite returned from the leave you have evidently taken of your senses, you will understand the absurdity of assuming that these little hands of yours are capable of lifting a hammer, let alone landing it accurately and with due force. The absurdity of assuming that you have the capability to learn what it takes seven years to teach an apprentice, and a lifetime to perfect! Or the discernment to know which approach should be best taken for the range of bookbinding problems that are brought to me daily, or to determine a noble from a shoddy binding, or to ensure that margins are straight, spines curved, lettering precise, backs strong. Do you understand? Hm? Do you?’