The Journal of Dora Damage(42)
Most sincerely yours, &c.
Charles Diprose
Encs.
Assorted leathers: 4 x alum-tawed pigskin, 1 x black sealskin, 2 x maroon crocodile skin, 2 x grey and white snakeskin, 4 x Japanese embossed leather (2 x floral, 2 x seaweeds and sea creatures)
Assorted silks, silk brocades and silk satins
Gold eyelets: sizes, various
2 oz gold
The paper may have been perfumed with vetivert, but the writing was spiky and stiff like the man himself, and unlike the soft wonders awaiting me inside the treasure chest. I unpacked the contents, and laid them out on the bench.
‘Ooh, Mama, show me, show me!’
‘Where have you been?’
‘Playing in the street with Billy.’
‘Billy?’
‘Mrs Eeles’s boy.’
‘So your hands won’t be clean.’
She held them out to me, and flapped them over and around. ‘Spotless.’
‘Black as a pickaninny. Come and let me wipe them.’ I took her through the curtain back into the kitchen, dipped a sponge into the pail, and cleaned right into the lines of her palms and under her finger-nails. Then she dried them on a towel, and followed me back into the workshop.
‘Oh, Mama! It’s like the elves and their shoemaker! Can we be the shoemaker, can we? Can we cut little patterns out and leave them for the elves to make by morning? Look, this would make a fine jerkin for a goblin king. And he could have breeches of this, and boots of that. And he would marry a royal elfin queen, and she would be draped in this!’
‘That’s enough now, Lucinda. I am as excited as you, but we must be careful with Mama’s work materials.’
‘But can I help you?’
‘Yes. You can help me choose the right ones, and tell me how I can cut them, and combine them, and inlay them, to make the most beautiful clothes, but for our books, not for any elves or goblins.’
‘But Mama, what if they’re goblins disguised as books? And when we go to bed they leap up off the workbench and go to the goblin ball?’
‘Wouldn’t that be exciting? Only I hope they would promise to be home by midnight and not soil their breeches in the mud before I get a chance to give them back to Mr Bookseller.’
‘But what if they don’t?’
‘Then we must rap their bottoms with an emery strop and tie them to the bench with trindles.’
‘I’m tired, Mama.’
‘Perhaps you should lie down and have a little rest. Are you feeling peculiar?’
‘A little. But not too much.’
‘Would you like to sleep in your bed?’
‘I’d like you to put me in front of the fire in the parlour.’
So I carried her through, and made a space for her on the rug in front of the fire, at the feet of her father sleeping in the armchair. She rested her head on the cushion which I took off the Windsor chair, and I brought a blanket down from her bed and wrapped it around her. Her eyes started to sink into her, and it looked as if she was starting to doze off. I was impatient to get back to the leathers and silks, and to get Jack started on the backing boards. I kissed her on the forehead; in retrospect I should have waited longer, but she seemed drowsy enough.
In the workshop I re-read the letter, and pulled the manuscripts out from the bottom of the box. And then Peter shouted from the sitting room, and his shouting was pained and anxious, and I knew what had happened even before I heard her small body writhing on the floor and hitting the table legs.
‘Where are you, woman? For the love of – !’
I rushed in and moved the two dining chairs away in one gesture, and kicked the table towards the wall with my foot, before rolling Lucinda on to her side and placing my hand on the small of her back in the slow wait for her to find calm. Past experience should have taught me that she always would, but each time it felt as if she had cast off into the unknown, and might never drift back to my shore. Her skin was grey, and her breathing fast. But eventually she fell into a deep slumber, and her breathing grew more regular, and I picked her up in my arms and buried my head into her neck, and wished I never had to let her go from this hold again.
Peter uttered a couple of ‘humphs’ before picking up an old newspaper. He considered it improper to fuss over anybody else’s health, except, perhaps his own. All that he wanted, always, was for Lucinda to keep herself quiet and out of his way, and he had neither the energy nor the inclination to engage with her childish whims; if the needs of others were not subordinated to his own, he sulked. But this was ever the wife’s challenge: to look after her children, while making it seem as if she put her husband first.
I took Lucinda to bed, and sat darning clothes by her bedside for an hour, until I could be sure she was safe. Her fitting, coming so soon after the excitement of the parcel in the workshop, felt like a bad omen. I wondered if I should simply repackage the box and instruct Jack to take it back to Holywell-street, with the announcement that Damage’s would have nothing more to do with Diprose’s, but we were in no position to look this particular gift horse in the mouth.