The Journal of Dora Damage(61)
‘I think we must. Do you suppose “Beneficium Flumen” would be that?’
‘Precisely. Next.’
‘Hugh Pryseman. I’ve heard of him. He’s heir to the Viscountcy of Avonbridge, and he must be . . . “Praemium Vir”. Prize man.’
‘Next.’
‘Well, the rest don’t seem to be as important. They haven’t written anything I’ve bound, and they don’t feature as much in the texts or correspondence. There’s Brigadier Michael Rodericks, of the Royal Artillery, the Reverend Harold Oswald . . .’
‘A clergyman.’
‘Indeed. Then there’s Captain Charles Clemence, of the Bombay army of the East India Company.’
‘Clementia. ’
‘Of course! And finally, Benedict Clarke, who seems to be in industry.’
‘I know not of him. But the others are clearly all eminent individuals. Members of Parliament, churchmen, dignitaries, noblemen.’
I showed him the coat-of-arms.
‘Why, they must all be members of the same club,’ he said, not reading the inscription of Les Sauvages Nobles. He nodded heartily. ‘Oh, Dora, this is magnificent news. I’d been touting for the off-trade from White’s ever since I got the Parliament contract. My dear wife, I must confess to underestimating you. You will save the Damage name yet. Keep up the good work. Now, be a good girl and bring me my draught, for I must sleep.’
But I could not rest easily that evening, as I thought of Jocelyn, Valentine, Theodore, Aubrey, Jeremy, Christopher, Ruthven, Hugh, Michael, Harold, Charles and Benedict. I could assume the intimacy of their first names in the dream-creations of my workshop, as I, mistress of their dreams, knew their fantasies probably better than their wives. I thought of Sir Jocelyn, with his beautiful, clean new wife, Sylvia, and wondered how he could leave her to breathe not just the fetid air of my Lambeth but the miasma of sin emerging from these pages. I thought of the others: as I tooled the spines, I tried to imagine what rooms they would look down on, from what shelves. And if the pages had faces, whose faces would they see looking back at them? What acts would they bear witness to? These were not the sort of novels to be read around the hearth by father or mother to the rest of the family. These were solitary pleasures, not read at bedtime or in one’s chair, but under the bed covers, or with the chair in front of the door, yet such precautions would never suffice. It was as if safety could only be had if the head that read them could be sliced open, and the books secreted inside the cavity of the skull itself before suturing the incision shut, for these books were temporary balm and permanent antagonist to the needs, twists and wounds of an already tortured mind.
But until medical science had progressed to this point, the books would have to be held in furtive hands, which no doubt would have preferred to have been free to whip the nether regions into a similar torment as the mind. Was it really, I had to ask, possible to have fun in this manner?
Chapter Eleven
Who’s that ringing at my door bell?
A little pussy cat that isn’t very well.
Rub its little nose with a little mutton fat,
That’s the best cure for a little pussy cat.
Measurements and weights of paper, margins and gutters, rectos and versos marched across my brain even while I was sweeping the floor, shaking the mattresses and banging the rugs. Crimson orifices and their myriad descriptions, endless and ever more extraordinary plays on the word ‘cock’, and the more absurd euphemisms for sexual congress danced round my head as I served supper, aired our nightgowns, and shooed the beetles out of their dusty hideyholes in the kitchen. My husband slumped in his bed, my daughter frolicked in the street, and my hands, feet and shoulders permanently ached; I never sat, except to sew. But I did not complain, even when Jack found me asleep among the paper-shavings as he lit the candles at seven the next morning. For this pestle-and-mortar existence, hard though it sounds as I write it, was not in fact grinding me down. It was refining me.
The summer was over before we even realised, and the first cold, foggy, September day meant the leather started to feel more supple in the workshop. But otherwise it was a day like any other. I rose at five, riddled the cinders, drew up the fire, unpegged the linen, put the kettle on, cleaned the range, whipped around a sweeping-cloth, steeped the washing, made the breakfast, and set to soaking and boiling enough ingredients to cover the day’s meals.
Then I ran into the workshop, and cleaned it thoroughly, making sure to collect every last grain of gold-dust to sell back to Edwin Nightingale, and to continue my war against mites and silverfish. I ran a wet cloth over the windows, but the autumnal fog hung like a pall around the house, so I might as well have left them alone for all the light we gained. I let Jack in at seven, but my chores still weighed over me, so I returned to the house. I counted out twenty grains of bromide for Lucinda, which she took before her bread and milk.