The Journal of Dora Damage(33)

‘Hello, Mrs Eeles,’ I said as I reached the top of Ivy-street.

‘Hello, dearie.’ She wasn’t wearing a veil today, but an enormous black bonnet, which looked as if someone had tipped a coal scuttle over her head and left it there. A sallow, bucktoothed boy of about ten years hovered by her side. ‘His mam’s just died, I’m taking him in for a bit,’ she said mawkishly. ‘ “Stand we in jeopardy every hour; in the midst of life we are in death.” Say hello, Billy.’

‘Hello,’ Billy said, not looking at me.

‘Hello, Billy,’ I said. ‘You must play with my Lucinda while you’re here. You’ll meet her in the street soon enough.’ Billy nodded, preoccupied with the expanse of black bombazine around his temporary guardian. I looked longingly at Mrs Eeles’s black gloves; they weren’t fine and white, like a lady’s, but I could have done with them today. My fingers were stained with leather dye, and cracked all over, as if they too were becoming leather in the process. Oh, the irony of it, that ladies got to wear smooth white gloves over their smooth white fingers, yet the ones that needed them most, the hard workers of the country, couldn’t afford them, and even if we could have, we wouldn’t have been allowed to wear them, or we would have been called fast, or gay, even. Mrs Eeles got away with it only because hers were black, and she was eccentric besides.

Mr Diprose himself greeted me at the entrance to his shop, took the Bible from me, and unwrapped it. He would, I feared, be displeased with the design or execution of the binding, or worse still, would find me out, from the stains on my fingers, or the shoddiness of the handiwork. He was silent in consideration for several minutes. His lips were a tight, thin line, and his face flushed the colour of port, like Peter’s did when he was angry.

‘Vous me troublez, Madame,’ was all he eventually said, and expressed his perplexity by rising and ascending the bare wooden staircase to the floor above.

I must have sat there for well nigh on fifteen minutes. Not a soul entered or left, but there was muted activity upstairs, footsteps, hammering, machinery. I peered through the curtain into the road, and through the windows I could see clerks, businessmen, errand-boys and -girls, street sweepers, racing pell-mell down the cluttered streets in their droves. From the remarkable silence of the shop interior it was as if I had turned deaf, for the plate-glass was thick and its sealings magnificent in their design. It kept out the smells as well as the sounds, and as I relaxed into the aroma of well-bound books, leather dressings and neatsfoot oil, I inhaled my own odour and realised, as Mr Diprose descended once more, that I was foul.

‘You have struck me, Mrs Damage.’

I did not know how to answer such a strange remark. ‘Beg pardon, sir?’

‘You have quite struck me, madam, today.’ My thoughts danced with smiting Mr Diprose’s corpulence with a boot, or a book, or even just my poor hands. I wanted to giggle, but I dared not. I think I smirked at him. ‘I asked for a simple representation of God’s bounty.’

‘In tropical climes,’ I added, to be polite.

‘And your husband has not taken me at my word.’

‘Oh, hasn’t he, sir?

‘No, indeed he hasn’t. He has surpassed the brief. A more complex, and, dare I say it, feminine expression of God’s bounty I have not seen. I was told your husband was a man of lines and angles, of form and function, whose bindings spoke of the probity and order to be found within. He is a Parliament binder, is he not?’ I nodded. ‘I do not wish to embarrass you, but I had heard your husband had fallen on hard times. I consider myself to be something of a philanthropist in the book industry. I took pity on the unfortunate man, knowing that he must have a dear wife and a host of children to feed. It was compassion, Mrs Damage, which led me to give you that Bible for your husband to bind. It was not an important commission. But he has made it so. Vous m’avez frappé, I will say it again, Mrs Damage, by presenting me with something so beautiful.’

I think I flushed, and for an instance was unaware enough of myself to clap my unseemly hands together.

‘That is not to say I am altogether pleased,’ he cautioned. ‘The inset piece makes it vulnerable; it will not wear well. But then, one has to wonder how many Bibles this Bishop already has. Let us presume he will not be taking this one in his luggage on his next trip to Oojabooja-ville. And, Mrs Damage?’

‘Yes?’

‘The work may be lavish, but I can furnish your husband with no more than the standard fee.’

I had expected no more, but I skipped home with the few coins jingling merrily in my purse, although through my excitement I tried to hold in my head the sums that needed paying – to Skinner and Blades; to the grocer’s and the coalman; to Felix Stephens and the other suppliers, and for food – and the fractions of each I could get away with paying this week to keep everybody happy for a while, and how much would be left over to buy some scraps of leather and silk to work up some more notebooks from the remaining Dutch paper. I knew I would always be able to sell them to Diprose, but I was also planning to make up a particularly fine book and tout it around some of the other booksellers who hadn’t been overly prejudiced or directly affected by Damage’s recent troubles. There were a few of Peter’s old clients, too, to whom I hoped to return with the news that Damage’s was open for business, with the same management, but new staff.