The Journal of Dora Damage(5)

But my mother’s favourite instruction to me, which she also taught the little girls in her charge (although never the little boys), was ‘whatever it is that you desire, halve it’. Whether it be hopes for cake at tea-time, or a wish for a speedy recovery from an illness, my mother advised that if one halves one’s expectations, one will never be quite so disappointed. And so I learnt that a polite little girl only takes half of what she really wants, and learns to settle with that half, and so I did, especially as far as Peter and our way of life in Lambeth were concerned.

My smock, apron, cap, face and arms were all wet and filthy, but it was four o’clock, and Lucinda was waking, so I shook all my dusty, sooty cloths, skirts and aprons into the dust-hole, then carried her downstairs and set her in her chair while I made Peter’s meat-tea: eggs and forcemeat balls with potatoes. The wind raged outside, and I dared not leave the lid off the pan for too long for fear of soot being blown down the chimney.

‘Are you making soot soup for Papa?’ Lucinda said from behind me.

‘No, love, I’m making smut stew,’ I said, kissing her, and smoothing her hair, which was all ruffled from the bed.

‘Yum, yum. And I’d like some black broth.’

‘And so you shall have it. Just let’s wait until Old Man Wind has blown some more blacks down the chimney, and we’ll catch them in our pan and fry them up good and proper.’

But just then, Peter crashed in from the workshop in such a gammon I feared Lucinda would fall fitting. He barked at me, kicked the table leg as if he wished it were my own, and ignored Lucinda huddling in my arms.

‘Where is it? We must have one somewhere. What have you done with them, woman?’

‘What is it you’re looking for?’

‘A candle-stub, a candle-stub. Jack has failed to wax the cords of a casing. Again. And I must do it. Again.’ Neither he nor I knew at this point that it would be the last one he would ever make; still I ignored the signs.

‘Here you are,’ I said, ‘and here, drink this, before you head back.’

‘Wretched stuff. Doesn’t work.’ But still, he downed it, and went back to his mechanics in the workshop. And he was right. Salicin never seemed to offer his fat old joints the relief that it was reputed to provide.

Where Peter was round, I was sharp: he used to complain that it was like sharing a bed with a carriage-axle. But I was not so much thin as muscular, all sinewy arms and bony shoulders, with no breasts or hips to speak of, and I knew that I lacked femininity because of my muscles. My snub nose and lank hair gave no beauty to my face, only my chin was round and stuck out like a bun put on the wrong side of a cottage-loaf. We were Jack Sprat and his wife, but in reverse. Maybe it was wrong of me to describe Peter’s fingers as fat. They weren’t fat, just as the pot-belly of a bag-of-bones Fenian isn’t fat either, but the opposite: it’s the worst sign of hunger, and Peter’s fingers were the worst sign of something else, I didn’t know what. He was born in the caul, his sister Rosie had told me, and drank his mother dry by the time he was four months old. Her tit gave up on him, and he on her, for she was rather partial to gin, and Peter had been an advocate of the temperate way of life since he could talk. But he could certainly drink water and tea by the gallon. He had already had nine cups of tea today, and would drink another six more before the day was out. Three to every one of Jack’s; four to every one of mine. Still, tea wasn’t costly, and left me with a fine bunch of leaves to sweep the dust up with each afternoon. Besides, it was his only excess, and I believed all men had to have one. He did not squander our money in the ale-house; I could forgive him his weekly pound of tea.

At half past six I aired Lucinda’s nightdress over the fire, then put her to bed, read her a story, and heard her prayers.

‘Mama,’ she said to me, in that tone of voice which always preceded a difficult question.

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘What if God doesn’t look on me tonight, and something bad happens?’

‘God always looks down on you, little one.’

‘But bad things do happen too.’

‘Yes, they do, but maybe they are God’s will.’ I didn’t believe it, but it was said to me, and I said it to her, and she will say it to her children too, and so the conspiracy goes on. Besides, I did not have a better answer.

‘But why would He want bad things to happen, if He loves us?’

‘Some things He just can’t help. But bad things won’t happen to you tonight.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Because I know.’

‘Because you won’t let them?’