‘Is it safe?’
‘Completely. It has had tremendous efficacy in a large number of cases of what we call hysterical – or menstrual – epilepsy.’
‘But she’s five years old, Sir Jocelyn!’ Still I could not look him in the eye, or anywhere else.
‘She has suffered from convulsions since birth. Do you wish to wait until puberty to be rid of them? It will be a blessing for you both.’
Then he turned back to Lucinda with an ‘A-ha’, as if he had forgotten something, as if he had no awareness of the gross breach of propriety he had just committed in front of her. I wondered at this world he inhabited, where convention was to be broken up and trampled over in fearless pursuit of a better world, cheeks flushed and moustaches rippling in the warm breezes of progress. ‘In here, look.’ He pulled a small blue bag from his pocket and instructed Lucinda to hold out her hand. He counted out one, two, three small, brown, rolled sticks into her little palms. Then four, five. She dropped one and laughed, and held out her skirts to catch some more. Soon she had ten sticks.
I knew what they were: crude opium. I felt a flash of anger; the man was surely insulting me. I could have bought these from any pharmacy by the pennyworth or tuppenny-worth.
‘Give them to your mother again, please, but these are for your father. And tell her from me, Lucinda, that I bestow them upon her for the simple reason that a lady of her responsibilities and industry has precious little time to run to the pharmacy.’ Oh, but the man was so persuasive he could talk a paddle-steamer out of slapping the water as it moved.
‘Now, run along, and play with Mossie,’ he said to Lucinda, ‘and tell her about your magic grains.’
‘I will!’ And she lifted up her doll to him, too struck to thank him, and I was too gone to make her, and we watched as she waved good-bye and ran out into Ivy-street to show Billy.
Sir Jocelyn folded my fingers over the sticks of opium in my palm with his broad hand, and grinned. ‘Besides,’ he continued his explanation, ‘I believe your local pharmacy only stops Bridport’s best, which is nothing compared to pure Turk. And before I forget –’ he pulled a small brown apothecary’s bottle from another pocket, ‘– here it is already made up, so you do not have to wait until your own preparations are ready.’
‘Thank you, Sir Jocelyn. That is most thoughtful of you.’ I moved away from him and placed the sticks in a box on top of the cabinet.
‘And for you,’ he added, ‘a different sort of pure Turk.’ He took a square wooden box out from his case, and opened it to reveal what looked like a slab of pale yellow jelly divided into diamond shapes, beneath a thick white powder. ‘Rahat Lokum.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘It is Arabic for “contentment of the throat”. A sentiment I salute. Do try one, Mrs Damage.’
‘With my fingers?’
‘Is there anything better?’
With difficulty I gouged one of the diamond shapes out from amongst the others, and placed it in my mouth. Instantly the powder tickled my nose from within, and although I did not sneeze, my eyes watered and my throat closed up. The texture of the confection was cloying; it adhered to my teeth and the roof of my mouth as I chewed, and to my tongue as I tried to extricate it from where it was stuck, and I dared not swallow for what it might do to my throat. Contentment of the throat?
And the taste! It was like eating a rich lady’s too-strong perfume in solid form! But it was sweet, oh so sweet, like honey from the spoon.
‘Do you like it?’
I shook my head and then nodded; I could not speak; my eyes and nose were streaming. And in truth, I did not know the answer.
‘I am helping to finance an old school chum who is opening the first Turkish Baths, right here in London,’ he continued as I struggled. ‘The city needs to have something to recommend it, doesn’t it? The Iznik tiles arrived yesterday . . .’ and so he went on, as if I were the type of person who would be interested, or would have the leisure to attend the Baths, and went on about his own travels through the Ottoman Empire with the same school chum, the aromas and colours of Izmir and Latakia, the pashas, the beys, the sultans, the women. Then he paused, as if to take in the furious action of my jaws, and smiled languidly. He stroked his chin with his long fingers, leant forward to me and murmured, ‘Can you guess why the lokum is so fashioned, my dear?’
I shook my head again, chewing.
‘The diamond shape,’ he whispered, so that Jack would not hear, ‘may be pressed between the outer lips of a woman’s nether orifices by her lover, then licked out of her. It drives them both mad with untold delight and desire, or so I am told.’