The Journal of Dora Damage(60)

‘She’s monstrous! She’s the devil!’

‘No, she isn’t.’

‘Can’t you see her? Look at her red face, see how she drips blood. Clean them, clean these sheets. She’s dripping blood all over them. Get them off! Get her off! Clean me! Look at her teeth, her fangs. Catch the blood. Catch the blood before it falls on me. Catch it! Remove her! Scrub them clean!’

‘Peter, you’re not in bed. There’s no one here. There are no sheets. There’s no woman.’

But it was all in vain. His cries continued, so I raced to the dresser for the Black Drop. He guzzled at the bottle, then wiped his mouth with the back of a swollen hand that appeared as one with his swollen arm. He laid his head back on the antimacassar, and was calm for a while. He gazed out of the window to where our daughter was playing, but I doubt he saw her.

‘I need – I need a cup of tea.’

‘I shall bring you one.’ I made a pot, but Jack needed me to advise on margin widths and flyleaves, so I could not stay with Peter much longer.

It was a few days later, when Peter expressed an interest in the activities of the workshop, that I decided to distract him with my queries about these men.

The first one, ‘Nocturnus’ or ‘Nightly’ I kept to myself, for I already knew it to be Sir Jocelyn Knightley, our host to this strange biblio-ball. But I listed the other guests to Peter.

‘Lord Glidewell.’

‘Ah yes, Valentine, Lord Glidewell. He is a judge. One of our finest.’

‘That’s right. I remember seeing his name on a broadsheet handed out after the hanging of Billy Fawn Baxter.’

‘Must you mention that dreadful affair? He murdered his mother, didn’t he?’

‘Father.’

‘Unnatural,’ he shivered. ‘And so, Lord Glidewell must be . . .’

‘. . . Labor Bene. Labor – to slide, or glide.’

‘Ah, I see. That’s how it works. Who’s next?’

‘Dr Theodore Chisholm. I presume he’s an eminent physician; his name is all over a lot of these medical tracts. And on those bottles they send you.’

‘Why, he’s on the board of the Royal College! To think, my prescriptions are personally authorised by such a man. And his Latin name?’

‘I’m not sure. I can’t work it out. Let’s leave him until later. Now, Aubrey Smith-Pemberton. Who’s he?’

‘He’s a Member of Parliament. I bound for his office on the Yale affair, several years ago. He presides over the committee that regulates the Cremorne Pleasure Gardens. The sooner he shuts it down, the better, as far as I’m concerned. It represents all that’s loose about today’s society.’

‘But we had such fun, there, Peter, when we were courting!’

‘Child, must you?’

‘I’m sorry. So, Smith-Pemberton. This was the hardest one. It’s usually written “P. cinis It”. I only managed to work it out because I found it written at the end of a poem as “Aubretia Malleus P. cinis It”. “Aubretia” being the flower, which is obviously Aubrey, “malleus” is a hammer, so, I thought, related to a smith, then a “P”, followed by “cinis”, which is ash, or ember, and then “It” is not “it”, as I first thought, but one ton. So, Aubrey Smith-Pemberton.’

Peter seemed bored with my puzzle-solving; he was tired, and I feared I was wearing him further. Possibly I was being too pleased with myself.

‘Next?’

‘Dr Christopher Monks.’

‘Headmaster of Eton – no, Harrow, actually.’

‘A-ha. And he, therefore, is . . .’ I pretended to fret over the Latin names in front of us, and waited for an age for Peter to get there first.

‘Monachus! ’

‘Oh yes, you are right, Peter! How clever!’

‘Next?’

‘Sir Ruthven Gallinforth.’

‘Governor of Jamaica.’

‘Ah, I thought as much. I have only recently bound some of his richly colourful accounts of the Caribbean islands; he has some shocking tales to tell of the tensions between the British and the plantation workers.’

‘It must be hard, dealing with such indolence. They are not natural workers.’

‘Is that so? I was not . . . So, I struggle here too . . .’ And again I waited. ‘Hmm, I wonder. “Vesica Quartus”. I don’t know what “vesica” means, but “quartus” is “fourth”, so presumably . . .’

‘Next.’

‘Archdeacon Favourbrook. Jeremy, he is referred to in one of the letters.’

‘Yes, he is an archdeacon, of somewhere. A venerable man. So, let’s see, do you have any words there that mean favour, and brook?’