The Journal of Dora Damage(43)

I kissed her hot cheek, and descended. Peter was agitating his crimson fingers and muttering ungodly curses beneath his breath; it had not escaped me that the seams of his moral suit of clothes were becoming somewhat unstitched as his health deteriorated, abandoned as he must have felt by the good Lord.

Back in the workshop, as I wondered what to do with the dangerous contents of the crate, I discovered something I had overlooked beneath them all. It was a large apothecary’s bottle, with a hand-written label, which read, ‘Patient: Mr Peter Damage, 2, Ivy-street, Waterloo. Under Specification of Dr Theodore Chisholm, Harley Street. Triple Strength Formula. Not for General Sale.’ I uncorked it and examined the contents: it was a brown, syrupy liquid, which I took to be a laudanum nostrum, not unlike Battley’s, Dalby’s or Godfrey’s. I took it back in to Peter and read him the label.

‘I’ll get a spoon,’ I said, and left it on the table next to him, but by the time I returned, he had already swigged from the bottle. I re-corked it and put it on the dresser, but only a few minutes later I noticed a strange smile creep across his lips, and his eyelids were heavy. Unlike me, he slept soundly that night.





* * *





The illustrations to the Decameron were indeed unusual. At first I could not work out what they were about, but when I did, I said ‘oh!’ and quickly closed the book. I paced around the workshop for several minutes. I arranged the papers in a more perfect pile. The tools, always left in neat rows, were made neater by my agitated hands. I chipped the wax drippings off the candles and laid them in the melting tray. Only when there was nothing left for me to straighten and order did I return to the unusual volume with great trepidation and care. But as I still was unable to view the pictures for long, I turned to the relative safety of the text, and did what I normally did when I felt flustered: I read.

I read of creatures – I could not yet consider them people – who performed acts without shame such as that they would be sent straight to hell, and with good reason. I trembled at the wantonness within and searched for shelter for my soul against the certain apocalypse that would befall them for doing it and me for bearing witness. My shame would protect me, I believed. At least, it always had done; we women wear it like a veil.

I read into the night, a hundred marvellous tales of fortune and the plague and truth and lying – and the other kind of lying. And oh! The women dressed as men! And my! The heart consumed! And then when I could feel my place in the text encroaching upon the stiff paper of an engraving, I was at least prepared, and could accept that the illustrations made sense in the context of the whole, and were another way into, or a different angle on, the startling feelings elicited by Boccaccio’s masterful tales.

And I could feel the familiar sensation of a design for the binding forming in my head. As the public face of this very private volume, it had to be something ambivalent, sensual and evocative, which only hinted at the surprises inside. My yearnings that night were not for the strange joys Boccaccio wrote of, but for the skill to execute a binding that would do them justice.

In the morning, Peter, dull of temper, instructed me somehow to raise eighteen shillings, as Skinner was due to call later that day. So Lucinda and I took his Sunday suit to the pawn-shop, and got a solid pound in return, which felt satisfactory. As we rounded the corner of New Cut, two half-sovereigns in my purse, we passed the theatre, where a group of the better-to-do ladies and gentlemen of Lambeth idly watched a performance by some minstrels blackened with burnt cork.

‘Look, Mama! Let’s go see.’ I was going to lift Lucinda up to get a better view over the crowd, but her wily smallness wheedled its way through the skirts and trouser legs almost to the front, and I found myself in the midst of the crowd some way behind her. A lady stood in front of me whose golden curls shook about her ears as she laughed at the musical jokes. A gentleman had his arm around her tiny waist, and when the songs became maudlin she leant her head on his shoulder, crushing her perfect curls on that side.

Something fell to the ground between us. I waited for a moment, then cast my eyes down, and slowly stooped to pick it up, hoping she wouldn’t notice the movement to her right side. It was a fine gold earring, inlaid with four garnets. I hesitated for a moment, and looked at my lady’s ears. They were graced with simple diamond studs. I scanned the rest of the group to find the lady with the naked ear to whom I should return it. I saw her; she was directly by my left arm, but she had not cared to look at what I had collected from the pavement. In an irreparable instant, I curled my fist over the earring. I waited a few moments until the end of the song, and then in the midst of the applause I reached forward between two gentlemen and tugged gently on Lucinda’s braids.