The Journal of Dora Damage

by Belinda Starling

  ‘Could we bind them in half leather?’ I suggested. It would have been a jigsaw-puzzle of a task, to cut ten spines and forty corners from the half-sheet we had, but by eye it did not look impossible.

  ‘Certainly not. We cannot use cloth over paper of such quality. Don’t be ridiculous. Besides, I need Jack here to help; it is monstrous to presume you and I can proceed without him. This is all quite, quite ridiculous.’

  Jack had not been in his house; Peter had barked at Lizzie, his long-suffering mother, who had simply shrugged her shoulders and offered him tea, which he refused because it would have been made with pestilential river water, and gin, which he refused on principle.

  ‘What is the world coming to?’ he raged when he returned. ‘Where is the respect for age, and experience, and professionalism? She should have begged and pleaded with me not to report Jack to the magistrates for rupture of indenture. I was surprised, Dora, nay, I was angered, at her insolence. He is our charge and our apprentice, and he is in serious breach of contract.’

  I chewed my lip as I looked down at the half-sheet of morocco, trying to solve both the problems that were presenting themselves. I wondered if it might be best for me to take the trip to Jack’s house and speak to Lizzie myself. The nuances in her speech and manner might have betrayed something to me to which Peter had been oblivious.

  But just then I heard Lucinda calling from the house, so I left Peter in the workshop alone and scooped her up in my arms. She sang me a little song, and started to plait my hair, and I drifted round the house holding her and pondering how to overcome the first hitch in my master plan – that we did not have enough leather. I ran my hands over the books in the case by the fire as if the touch of those bindings would inspire me, but their old leather gave little away. We had a good collection of books, and there was not one I had not read cover to cover several times. They were all ragged now, for when she was smaller Lucinda used to occupy herself with pulling them out of their shelves and heaping them on the floor. The casualties of childhood delight were sorely in need of a re-bind, but none of the editions were special enough to merit the effort. We had a Bible and Pilgrim’s Progress, and several volumes of poetry, and it was here that my hands lingered, as if I were looking for a few lines, a cheering couplet, that would provide succour or inspiration. William Blake, of course. Keats. Wordsworth. But my hands did not pull one out at random; neither did the pages fall open at some words into which I might have read some meaning. We left the books behind, and we climbed the stairs to fold and press the laundry together.

  But Wordsworth came with us in spirit, for as I smoothed the shabby sheets and checked for damp patches, I remembered reading somewhere how his sister Dorothy would cut up her old gowns, and use them to bind the early volumes of his poetry. I had never seen one, but I could imagine the pretty faded floral fabric enfolding his pretty floral poems with the colours of Grasmere, and protecting them with a woman’s love. But without the genius of William’s writings within, Dorothy’s dresses would not have been worthy enough of gracing a gentlewoman’s writing-desk as required by Mr Diprose. We needed something finer. But still the notion persisted, and I remembered too a tale of royal libraries, of the magnificent bindings manufactured from Charles I’s own waistcoat collection. But I had no regal waistcoats to hand or to spare in my linen press. I only had my one fine dress – my Sunday dress, my wedding dress – which I had worn the day before and which was still muddy and drying in the kitchen.

  And then I remembered my parents’ suitcase in the box-room. Dared I see what was inside? From what was I hiding? I pulled it out, laid it on the bed, and opened it.

  On top were a few keepsakes: a gold ring the size of a shilling tooled on to a scrap of red morocco; a piece of folded card decorated with pressed violets and clover leaves, which contained within two locks of pale yellow hair, which was not mine, but of the sickly twin brothers I had never met; a pair of worn-out boots with lop-sided tongues and split edges, which were too small for me to bother mending. I pulled open the tops and traced my fingers around the insides where my mother’s ankles had once been. I wondered how much I could get in the pawn-shop for them, and if she would have minded.

  Underneath them all was a dress, laid up in lavender. It was nothing special, but it was silk, and a most excellent, strong silk at that, which had scarcely worn at the elbows and where the sash rubbed, despite the fact that it was over forty years old. It had been given to my mother by the lady of the house where she was governess, who had never worn it. It was markedly of the fashions of the twenties, and my mother had tried in vain to update it to suit first her, and then me. I had worn it twice, on the summer evenings when Peter took me to Cremorne and the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens, and always felt clumsy and outdated in it, but I loved the way it felt against my skin, and the colours – a plain, cornflower blue, with a yellow silk underskirt – were charming.

  I knew immediately that it would do. I wondered why I had not thought of selling it to the Jew, or Huggity, or even taking it north to the clothes traders off the Strand, but I was grateful to the guiding heavens that I had not. Its purpose was now more than as a dress to a gentlewoman or a poor unfashionable bookseller’s betrothed. This was not a dress whose time was over. It was several books whose life had only just begun.

  Lucinda helped me unpick every seam with care, and we reserved the thin strips of cream lace around the cuffs and neckline. Even the tiny triangles of silk from the darts around the bust and waist I saved, thinking I could use them for appliqué. I only had to discard a square panel from the back of the skirts, where there was an indelible grass stain.

  Then Lucinda and I teased out whatever coloured threads we could find from my workbasket, chatting, and laughing even. Over the years I had kept the remnants of every headband I had ever sewn, and like any good housewife I had a variety of colours and textures, silks, cottons and linens. The pinks, golds and creams I laid on top of the blue silk; by that evening they had become embroidered flowers. The silver purl I laid on top of the yellow silk; this found its way to being plaited and stitched on in elegant curls. Also in the suitcase was a patterned twill that was interesting enough of itself, and could be transformed into a handsome desk book, striped with the delicate burgundy leather off-cuts – the ones pared off from spines and edges that would be considered too thin to use – which I would learn to chase and répoussé with a simple scroll design, running from the raised bands of the back to within a half-inch of the fore-edge. I even cut up a cushion, which, once I had discarded the shabby trimmings, would become a purple velvet album, embroidered with gold thread and coloured silks in a rose and thistle design, with ornate gilt corner pieces, and pale pink ribbon ties.

  Lucinda and I brought them back to Peter in the workshop, and watched his face carefully as he fingered through them, and laid them out with care.

  ‘It is just as well you have found these. I have come to the conclusion that the journals must all be half-leather, and you have done well to find the material for the front and back faces,’ Peter said solemnly. ‘Furthermore, we must continue without Jack. I fear we have no choice.’

  Lucinda clapped her hands. ‘We have worked hard, Papa! It was fun!’ I smoothed her hair and kissed her; I too was relishing the prospect of the next phase of work.

  First Lucinda and I folded and rubbed the papers with polished bone while Peter soaked his hands in Epsom Salts, and then I worked out the various stitches that would be required for each type of book. Peter had always been happy for me to do this: he asked my opinion on everything from tacketing to tape-slotting, kettle-stitches to meeting-guards, whether thongs should be raised or recessed, the difference between oversewing and overcasting, and which thread would work with which paper.

  ‘May I go and play in the street, Mama?’

  ‘Of course you may. Thank you for your help, you useful girl. I shall be in here if you need me.’ I rigged up the old sewing-frame, and started to sew the various sections t
ogether and on to the main cords for the books.

  So recently thrown into the pits of peril, I was at last starting to feel sunshine on my face as I laboured in our own cause. My carpet-needle wove in and out between the pages of the sections and the vertical cords of the frame, and through its regularity I tried to convince myself that we were back in the old days when money was less of a worry, and that when I had finished sewing, there would be only a minor amendment to our usual practice, which was that I would be doing Jack’s work instead of Jack, and Peter’s work instead of Peter.

  Despite a short break at midday to prepare lunch for Peter and Lucinda, I had sewn all the books and albums by one o’clock. I stood by the chair where Peter was dozing under his newspaper.

  ‘I’m ready for the forwarding, if you wish,’ I said. Then I went back into the workshop, punched the holes and prepared the vellum thongs for the tacketing. Soon he was by my side, scanning the assorted piles of naked pages.

  ‘But we cannot use any of these. It would be a waste of finest Dutch! Have we not some inferior paper upon which I can instruct you? This is going to be difficult, if you have not even the brain to determine something so fundamental.’

  ‘We could disband an old volume of ours. The Pilgrim’s Progress, or the Scott?’

  ‘Possibly. You are thinking, at least.’

  ‘Or . . .’ I started rummaging in the scraps drawer. ‘. . . here, would this do?’ I held up an old set of papers, yellowed at the corners and torn here and there, but soundly sewn, approximately two hundred pages thick, uncut and unploughed.

  ‘I asked you to make that years ago, didn’t I? I believe I instructed Jack on it,’ he said wistfully. ‘It will do, but it needs re-hammering first.’

  And so we began. I took Jack’s leather apron and wrapped it over my pale blue work smock. I heated up some glue as Peter laid out the leather and marked out on it ten shapes of varying sizes.

  ‘We are in luck, for once, in this sorry situation. There is just about enough left over to use on your mockery of a journal. So we shall have one trial run, before starting the serious matter.’

  Once the glue was liquid, I painted a thick coat into the back and stippled it between the sections, cut the strings a couple of inches above and below, and started to round, groove, and back the book. But it was harder than I had anticipated, and Peter was not forthcoming with assistance. He simply asked, as I hammered unevenly, ‘Did you ask Diprose how he likes his spines?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Idiot,’ he said. ‘What if he’s one of those dreadfully fashionable flat-spine men? Let me see what you’ve done. Move it over here. Now turn it over.’ He stayed silent for a while, the air hissing between his teeth, which he clenched whenever he was concentrating.

  ‘Not quite a third-of-a-circle, but not flat at least. The first rule. Never over-round your spines. And why? Why?’

  ‘Because . . .’ I looked up into the corner of the window frame as if I could read the answer there. ‘The spine won’t be sufficiently flexible. The margins will be reduced by the extreme curvature. If forced beyond its capability the spine may spring up in the centre of the pages like a ledger. This could strain the sewing.’ I may not have been the student, but I had attended the lessons, which was little solace when it came to struggling with the clamps of the press, cutting the millboards with an unwieldy saw, and making holes with a bradawl. When I pared the leather, my hand shook, and although I will not exalt the paring knife by claiming it had a mind of its own, it certainly did not wish to follow the instructions of my mind, and the resultant scrap was pitted and uneven, too thin here and not thin enough there.

  ‘Peter, please, I am failing.’

  ‘Indeed,’ came his reply.

  And so I took the grass-stained section of the skirt, and cut it to size, and smoothed it over the front and back boards, and then rounded the leather onto the spine and the joins, and smoothed and rounded and smoothed and rounded, but still it was lumpy, and a shocking revelation to me of my inadequacy for our plan. I was angry at Peter’s refusal to help: could it really have been more important to him to confirm that I, as a woman, was unfit for such work, than to extricate us from the trap of debt?

  My troublings were interrupted by the rattling of the external door to the workshop, followed by a pounding, then a voice.

  ‘Mr Damage. It’s me. Mr Damage. It’s Jack. Please –’

  Peter strode to the door, but he could not grasp the key between his bloated fingers. I unlocked the door for him, but hid behind it as I opened it so that Mr Damage’s full worth could fill the vacating space and greet the street.

  ‘I’m sorry for my leave, Mr Damage. Please –’

  ‘Hush your excuses, boy,’ Peter bellowed. ‘Get in here. Stop making your fuss so public. Have you no courtesy?’

  I closed the door behind Jack, and turned the key in the lock again.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mr Damage,’ Jack started up once more. He certainly looked as if he had had a rough time. His eyes were dark and sunken, and his hair was so lank and greasy it hardly looked red any more.

  ‘Sorry?’ Peter’s voice had calmed, which was possibly worse. Jack glanced over to the old birch cane in the umbrella stand, on the receiving end of which he had been too many times. I winced at the thought, and knew I would have to excuse myself before the walloping began. But Peter simply said, ‘No need to be sorry. A month’s wages is apology enough.’

  Jack gasped, and looked with horror from Peter to me, and back again. He had only been gone eight days. I should say something, I thought. I must defend the poor lad. But I had already taken all the power I dared from Peter. I was not boss of the workshop yet. I stayed silent, coward that I was.

  ‘A month’s wages from the lad whose inefficiency has sorely cost my business. You’d better scrub your face and pull up your socks, my boy, because of the trouble you’ve caused. Never let it be said that Damage’s isn’t good to you, giving you a second chance and helping you mend your ways.’ Peter headed towards the curtain into the house. ‘I’m going to mix up some more paste, and when I’m back I want you to make it clear you’re grateful, boy. It’s not often a master will take back a scrap who’s lost him so much respect in the trade.’

  Jack hung his head, but one eye peered up at me beneath his curls, before scanning his bench for the work I’d been doing. We shared a small smile. I loved Jack, almost in the way I loved Lucinda. He wasn’t much younger than me, really, but he seemed like a child still. He never seemed interested in girls, never had a sweetheart. He would have had a handsome face, really, if it had only had a bit more meat on it. Poor little scrap, I couldn’t help thinking. He was too fine for the slums; he was like a skeletal silver birch, which glows even in mid-winter, when all the rest of the trees look like dead twigs.

  I handed him his apron, which he took from me without a word, then he ran his finger over the hinge I had been making on the book in the press.

  ‘What’s this, Mrs D? You tryin’ to do my job?’ he said.

  ‘Needs must, Master Jack. What do you think?’

  He wrinkled his nose. ‘It’s not the best I’ve seen.’

  ‘No, me neither,’ I rued. ‘I’m glad you’re back. I need to concentrate on the finishing, if we’re to make a go of things.’

  ‘Well, I’ll see if I can’t sort out the mess you’ve made, so you can at least use the spine to practise yer toolin’ on.’

  ‘Thank you Jack,’ I whispered, as Peter returned with the paste. ‘It’s good to have a friend in here.’

  By nightfall a row of blank books of various sizes waited on the benches, drying out, and we were still on the bottom rung of the ladder down to the poorhouse, but at least no lower. We knew we were racing against time, and the knock at the door of the bailiffs, the debt-collectors, or the police, for whatever was in the house at the time of their arrival would legitimately be theirs. Even Mrs Eeles was within her rights to claim her back rent by distraining everything we
owned; she would then have a mere five days to take it to the broker.

  But I was determined that nobody would get their hands on my beautiful albums, nobody except Charles Diprose and his clientele. Peter could go to prison first, I found myself thinking, before they would interfere with our work. That night, and every night after, before I went to sleep, I took the books up carefully, one by one, and laid them out on a board under our bed, until they were ready to take to my Mr Diprose.

  The morning I was due to deliver them, the mud had finally dried on the skirts of my floral dress; I brushed the crusts off into the garden, and then sponged the remaining patches where the dirt was ingrained. On my return today they would be just as filthy, but I could not arrive at Mr Diprose’s with them already in such a state.

  I wished I could have done the same with my hands, which were wrinkled, stained, red-raw, and clearly betrayed the fact that I had been working. A pair of gloves would have hid them from Diprose, but I had not even a cotton pair. The family for whom my mother was governess used to say that if one cannot afford kid gloves one should not wear gloves at all. They were right, in a way, gloves being a menace to clean and costly to replace, so one should not wear them if one is the type of woman who has to do even the smallest bit of dirty work, but today I would have settled for cotton. I would never look like a lady, besides, kid gloves or no: I had no waist or hips to speak of, my arms were more built up than Jack’s, and I’d never seen a society lady with my snub nose, my grey eyes, my brittle hair. And so my cold, chapped hands, red with work and yellow with pressure, were clear for all to see as I carried the box of books back to Mr Diprose.