The Journal of Dora Damage(28)

Jack gasped, and looked with horror from Peter to me, and back again. He had only been gone eight days. I should say something, I thought. I must defend the poor lad. But I had already taken all the power I dared from Peter. I was not boss of the workshop yet. I stayed silent, coward that I was.

‘A month’s wages from the lad whose inefficiency has sorely cost my business. You’d better scrub your face and pull up your socks, my boy, because of the trouble you’ve caused. Never let it be said that Damage’s isn’t good to you, giving you a second chance and helping you mend your ways.’ Peter headed towards the curtain into the house. ‘I’m going to mix up some more paste, and when I’m back I want you to make it clear you’re grateful, boy. It’s not often a master will take back a scrap who’s lost him so much respect in the trade.’

Jack hung his head, but one eye peered up at me beneath his curls, before scanning his bench for the work I’d been doing. We shared a small smile. I loved Jack, almost in the way I loved Lucinda. He wasn’t much younger than me, really, but he seemed like a child still. He never seemed interested in girls, never had a sweetheart. He would have had a handsome face, really, if it had only had a bit more meat on it. Poor little scrap, I couldn’t help thinking. He was too fine for the slums; he was like a skeletal silver birch, which glows even in mid-winter, when all the rest of the trees look like dead twigs.

I handed him his apron, which he took from me without a word, then he ran his finger over the hinge I had been making on the book in the press.

‘What’s this, Mrs D? You tryin’ to do my job?’ he said.

‘Needs must, Master Jack. What do you think?’

He wrinkled his nose. ‘It’s not the best I’ve seen.’

‘No, me neither,’ I rued. ‘I’m glad you’re back. I need to concentrate on the finishing, if we’re to make a go of things.’

‘Well, I’ll see if I can’t sort out the mess you’ve made, so you can at least use the spine to practise yer toolin’ on.’

‘Thank you Jack,’ I whispered, as Peter returned with the paste. ‘It’s good to have a friend in here.’

By nightfall a row of blank books of various sizes waited on the benches, drying out, and we were still on the bottom rung of the ladder down to the poorhouse, but at least no lower. We knew we were racing against time, and the knock at the door of the bailiffs, the debt-collectors, or the police, for whatever was in the house at the time of their arrival would legitimately be theirs. Even Mrs Eeles was within her rights to claim her back rent by distraining everything we owned; she would then have a mere five days to take it to the broker.

But I was determined that nobody would get their hands on my beautiful albums, nobody except Charles Diprose and his clientele. Peter could go to prison first, I found myself thinking, before they would interfere with our work. That night, and every night after, before I went to sleep, I took the books up carefully, one by one, and laid them out on a board under our bed, until they were ready to take to my Mr Diprose.





The morning I was due to deliver them, the mud had finally dried on the skirts of my floral dress; I brushed the crusts off into the garden, and then sponged the remaining patches where the dirt was ingrained. On my return today they would be just as filthy, but I could not arrive at Mr Diprose’s with them already in such a state.

I wished I could have done the same with my hands, which were wrinkled, stained, red-raw, and clearly betrayed the fact that I had been working. A pair of gloves would have hid them from Diprose, but I had not even a cotton pair. The family for whom my mother was governess used to say that if one cannot afford kid gloves one should not wear gloves at all. They were right, in a way, gloves being a menace to clean and costly to replace, so one should not wear them if one is the type of woman who has to do even the smallest bit of dirty work, but today I would have settled for cotton. I would never look like a lady, besides, kid gloves or no: I had no waist or hips to speak of, my arms were more built up than Jack’s, and I’d never seen a society lady with my snub nose, my grey eyes, my brittle hair. And so my cold, chapped hands, red with work and yellow with pressure, were clear for all to see as I carried the box of books back to Mr Diprose.

‘Well, well, Mrs Damage. What a delight it is to see you.’ Pizzy greeted me at the door, and relieved me of the box. Diprose came through from the back room.

‘I presume by this return visit that Peter’s foot is still ailing him?’ he said, and he and Pizzy shared a smile that excluded me. I cannot say how long we chit-chatted, for all I remember was the moment I was asked to open the box and reveal its contents, and Charles Diprose’s first, ‘very nice’, followed by an, ‘I’m impressed’. And I could see at last that the books were indeed very nice, and impressive. Possibly I had known it all along; but his verdict allowed me to believe it. Similarly, I cannot remember how much he paid me for the books, but it felt like both a king’s ransom and an insult to a pauper. Simply to have earned the smallest amount of money in those days was a great achievement, and yet reminded me of how much more we needed in order to harbour in a safe place. I was pleased, and proud, and scared, all at once.