The Journal of Dora Damage(37)

A piano was playing somewhere as we climbed the soft, carpeted stairs, and I presumed it was being played by the hands of Lady Knightley. They would be smooth, milky hands, not like mine. We padded quietly behind Goodchild up to the top of the stairs; there was a large panelled door directly in front of us, on which he knocked.

‘Come in,’ came the voice. Goodchild held the door open for us.

It was how I had pictured a gentlemen’s club: stale, dusty and smoky. A man stood up from a large burgundy-covered desk in the far corner of the room, and strode towards us with handsome grace. He was tall and languid, like those elegant men who danced quadrilles at Cremorne on the covers of my sheet-music. He had fine long fingers, and long feet in polished brown shoes. He took my overworked hand in his, much to my shame, and despite myself I found myself looking up at him. A shock of honey-streaked brown hair flopped over his forehead, and I imagined Lady Knightley’s delicate fingers sweeping it back over his head. His eyes were a lustrous brown, like a bear’s, and exuded a sense of fiery righteousness. In flagrant defiance of fashion, his bronzed countenance boasted close aquaintance with the sun, and his face, I was relieved to see, was a kind one. But there I was, looking too long; I dropped my gaze.

‘Mrs Damage,’ he said, kissing my hand. His voice was languid too; it oozed downwards and filled the room, even though it wasn’t loud. It was deep and liquid, and I found it soothing, like liquorice, if a bit sickly. I pulled my hand back from him, for I was losing myself.

I searched for Mr Diprose for help, but he had settled himself in a worn leather armchair with a glass of whisky in his hand. There was another chair facing him, on the other side of the fire, and in between was an exotic, low leather couch draped in a fine red Persian rug and embroidered cushions. I wondered if I was meant to sit there. But no one asked me to sit down. Still I kept searching, for what I did not know. Sir Jocelyn moved to my side, bent his knees so that his head was at the same level as mine, and followed my gaze, as if he wanted to see what I was seeing.

The room was brown, very brown. The furniture was all rich mahogany, dark oak and chocolate leather, with wine-coloured brocades; the walls were the colour of tea. But despite this gloom, there were glimmers of wonders, and I could not help my eyes from flitting from this to that with alarming promiscuity.

I was afraid of what I saw, and it was fear, more than anything, that rooted me to the spot. For the animals that seemed so elegantly unusual in Lucinda’s picture books, or at a distance in the circus, were terrifying to me in proximity. Their skins, heads and tusks leered out or up at me from the walls and floors, and even though I knew they were dead, it was as if they might suddenly take to breathing again once they sensed my presence and smelt my fear, and would devour me on the spot.

In between the heads hung the paraphernalia of the hunter and adventurer: plenty of instruments – sextants, I imagined, and telescopes, compasses, microscopes and all sorts of meters – and between their dials and the heads on the walls hung a variety of firearms, some tribal spears, beaded headdresses, and shields.

I was on safer ground when my gaze fell on the stretch of bookcases filled with endless volumes, beautifully bound in finely lettered, gold-tooled leather of all colours; the wall behind his large leather-topped desk held several glass-fronted cabinets, some filled with books, others with medical implements or exploration equipment. I peered over my shoulder at the bookcase closer to hand, where several volumes by Richard Burton were grouped together: First Footsteps in East Africa, Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to El-Medinah and Meccah, Complete System of Bayonet Exercise. Next to them was Livingstone’s Missionary Travels. So Knightley did not catalogue alphabetically. Maybe this was his ‘Africa’ section.

And indeed, next were the anatomy books, which fairly made my pulse race, so fine a collection had he. Peter would have swooned to see such masterpieces sharing the same shelf. There were two books of Galen: one was a crisp, modern Oeuvres Anatomiques, the other an ancient, crumbling De anatomicis. There was Bourgery’s great, four-part Atlas of Anatomy, Cheselden’s The Anatomy of the Human Body, Quain’s and Gray’s. But the most precious, esteemed book in the whole collection I knew to be the large black and gold folio, entitled De humani corporis fabrica libri septum, by Andreas Vesalius, the founder of the science of anatomy. On the Fabric of the Human Body.

‘You have an eye for the Vesalius, madam?’ Sir Jocelyn said.

‘Yes, sir,’ I answered. ‘I have not seen one before. Actually, I have not seen any anatomies,’ I hastened to add, ‘but I have heard of the most famous.’