The Journal of Dora Damage(25)

Chapter Four

Hush thee, my babby,

Lie still with thy daddy,

Thy mammy has gone to the mill,

To grind thee some wheat

To make thee some meat,

Oh, my dear babby, lie still.





We had enough paper to make two albums – one quarto and one octavo – and two duodecimo, two sextodecimo, two vigesimo-quarto and two trigesimo-segundo notebooks, and several smaller frippery books for young ladies to write their secrets in. And still we would have sheets left over. But rich in paper as we were, we were paupers in leather: we had little more than half a sheet of morocco, which would never cover ten albums of varying sizes. The Bible, of course, would have to be full-leather, but we knew without conferring that we would have to wait until we had been paid for the volumes before we even considered its binding.

‘Could we bind them in half leather?’ I suggested. It would have been a jigsaw-puzzle of a task, to cut ten spines and forty corners from the half-sheet we had, but by eye it did not look impossible.

‘Certainly not. We cannot use cloth over paper of such quality. Don’t be ridiculous. Besides, I need Jack here to help; it is monstrous to presume you and I can proceed without him. This is all quite, quite ridiculous.’

Jack had not been in his house; Peter had barked at Lizzie, his long-suffering mother, who had simply shrugged her shoulders and offered him tea, which he refused because it would have been made with pestilential river water, and gin, which he refused on principle.

‘What is the world coming to?’ he raged when he returned. ‘Where is the respect for age, and experience, and professionalism? She should have begged and pleaded with me not to report Jack to the magistrates for rupture of indenture. I was surprised, Dora, nay, I was angered, at her insolence. He is our charge and our apprentice, and he is in serious breach of contract.’

I chewed my lip as I looked down at the half-sheet of morocco, trying to solve both the problems that were presenting themselves. I wondered if it might be best for me to take the trip to Jack’s house and speak to Lizzie myself. The nuances in her speech and manner might have betrayed something to me to which Peter had been oblivious.

But just then I heard Lucinda calling from the house, so I left Peter in the workshop alone and scooped her up in my arms. She sang me a little song, and started to plait my hair, and I drifted round the house holding her and pondering how to overcome the first hitch in my master plan – that we did not have enough leather. I ran my hands over the books in the case by the fire as if the touch of those bindings would inspire me, but their old leather gave little away. We had a good collection of books, and there was not one I had not read cover to cover several times. They were all ragged now, for when she was smaller Lucinda used to occupy herself with pulling them out of their shelves and heaping them on the floor. The casualties of childhood delight were sorely in need of a re-bind, but none of the editions were special enough to merit the effort. We had a Bible and Pilgrim’s Progress, and several volumes of poetry, and it was here that my hands lingered, as if I were looking for a few lines, a cheering couplet, that would provide succour or inspiration. William Blake, of course. Keats. Wordsworth. But my hands did not pull one out at random; neither did the pages fall open at some words into which I might have read some meaning. We left the books behind, and we climbed the stairs to fold and press the laundry together.

But Wordsworth came with us in spirit, for as I smoothed the shabby sheets and checked for damp patches, I remembered reading somewhere how his sister Dorothy would cut up her old gowns, and use them to bind the early volumes of his poetry. I had never seen one, but I could imagine the pretty faded floral fabric enfolding his pretty floral poems with the colours of Grasmere, and protecting them with a woman’s love. But without the genius of William’s writings within, Dorothy’s dresses would not have been worthy enough of gracing a gentlewoman’s writing-desk as required by Mr Diprose. We needed something finer. But still the notion persisted, and I remembered too a tale of royal libraries, of the magnificent bindings manufactured from Charles I’s own waistcoat collection. But I had no regal waistcoats to hand or to spare in my linen press. I only had my one fine dress – my Sunday dress, my wedding dress – which I had worn the day before and which was still muddy and drying in the kitchen.

And then I remembered my parents’ suitcase in the box-room. Dared I see what was inside? From what was I hiding? I pulled it out, laid it on the bed, and opened it.

On top were a few keepsakes: a gold ring the size of a shilling tooled on to a scrap of red morocco; a piece of folded card decorated with pressed violets and clover leaves, which contained within two locks of pale yellow hair, which was not mine, but of the sickly twin brothers I had never met; a pair of worn-out boots with lop-sided tongues and split edges, which were too small for me to bother mending. I pulled open the tops and traced my fingers around the insides where my mother’s ankles had once been. I wondered how much I could get in the pawn-shop for them, and if she would have minded.