‘I informed my client, Sir Jocelyn Knightley, about the unfortunate matter of your sex, and much to my horror, it does not seem to perturb him in the slightest. On the contrary. He seems to take delight in the fact. He wishes to continue relations with Damage’s. It goes entirely against my better judgement. Your timing is felicitous. We can see him this morning.’ He clipped his vowels and spat his consonants; it was as if the vowels were dangerous, open spaces, which needed to be reined in and ordered by fixed, predictable consonants, which dictated the confines of the vowel.
He pulled on his coat and hat and led me outside. We walked quickly to the Strand, where he raised his arm and hailed a hansom. He let me ascend, then followed me in, although he was ungainly and creaked, as he would have found bending difficult. I dare say we would have been quicker walking, at the pace the cab lumbered along in the slow-moving Westminster traffic. As we headed westward, the horses and carriages thinned, but the pace of those on the pavements was slower: swells and high-bred ladies strolled in the streets towards the daffodils of Green Park; dubious dandies and demi-reps laughed in the spring sunshine; the perfume of fashion and the gleam of grooming abounded around us.
‘Tell me about Sir Jocelyn,’ I said to Mr Diprose.
‘Is one anxious that one will reveal oneself to be something of a parvenue in the face of one who is the dernier cri, the ne plus ultra, of the elegantly patrician world one is now entering?’ He chuckled at his facetiousness.
‘I have no pretensions even to being a parvenue, Mr Diprose. I was not aware that I had recently arrived somewhere of note.’
‘Oh but you have, my dear, now that you are in the employ of Sir Jocelyn Knightley.’
‘I thought we were working for you.’
‘I am little more than a hawker,’ he said with a wryness that implied that he considered himself nothing of the sort. ‘A procurer, if you will.’ He pouted his lips on the second syllable. ‘And I have procured you for Sir Jocelyn, against my better judgement, I hasten to add. You will continue to work for me and through me, but he is our client, and it is him to whom we both report.’
‘You are unhappy with this arrangement?’
He sighed and shrugged his shoulders.
‘It remains to be seen. There will be plenty of commissions coming your way: rare books, curiosities, literary arcana. You are most fortunate. We shall do well.’ But his tone betrayed that he was not altogether delighted with this happy turn of events. ‘We shall see. Vigilate et orate. We shall watch and pray.’
‘What shall we see?’
‘I wish I shared Sir Jocelyn’s confidence in his plan. You are, after all, a woman. Where there is trouble, cherchez la femme . . .’
The hansom took us to the west side of Berkeley-square, and pulled up outside a grand white building. We had to ascend seven broad steps, wider than my kitchen; two ball-shaped miniature trees in square planters stood sentry on either side of the door. Diprose rang the bell, and immediately, a tall, grey-haired butler answered the door.
‘Good morning, Goodchild,’ Diprose said.
‘Good morning, Mr Diprose,’ Goodchild replied with the slight nod of the head which, I was to learn, he reserved for those who were not of the upper set, but were nevertheless due certain recognition. His voice was low and soft; it was the tone one would use in a reading room conferring on a book, not standing on a door-step in one of the finest squares of the metropolis.
‘May I introduce Mrs Peter Damage.’
‘How do you do, Mrs Damage. But Lady Knightley is not receiving today. Would you care to leave your card?’
‘No, Goodchild. Would you be so kind as to tell Sir Jocelyn that the bookbinder is here, and that we have the leisure to wait?’
Goodchild stepped aside to let us in. Behind where he had stood was a waist-high Negro boy, alarmingly life-like but blessedly inert, holding a white wire birdcage up with one hand; on the other perched three exotic yellow birds. His loincloth drooped precariously down towards his right knee, but his decency was preserved, as well it might have been, for there was no hitching up to be had of bronze and glass. I wondered if Diprose had stared, like me, on their first encounter, or whether he had always thrown his coat on him as he did now.
A piano was playing somewhere as we climbed the soft, carpeted stairs, and I presumed it was being played by the hands of Lady Knightley. They would be smooth, milky hands, not like mine. We padded quietly behind Goodchild up to the top of the stairs; there was a large panelled door directly in front of us, on which he knocked.
‘Come in,’ came the voice. Goodchild held the door open for us.
It was how I had pictured a gentlemen’s club: stale, dusty and smoky. A man stood up from a large burgundy-covered desk in the far corner of the room, and strode towards us with handsome grace. He was tall and languid, like those elegant men who danced quadrilles at Cremorne on the covers of my sheet-music. He had fine long fingers, and long feet in polished brown shoes. He took my overworked hand in his, much to my shame, and despite myself I found myself looking up at him. A shock of honey-streaked brown hair flopped over his forehead, and I imagined Lady Knightley’s delicate fingers sweeping it back over his head. His eyes were a lustrous brown, like a bear’s, and exuded a sense of fiery righteousness. In flagrant defiance of fashion, his bronzed countenance boasted close aquaintance with the sun, and his face, I was relieved to see, was a kind one. But there I was, looking too long; I dropped my gaze.
‘Mrs Damage,’ he said, kissing my hand. His voice was languid too; it oozed downwards and filled the room, even though it wasn’t loud. It was deep and liquid, and I found it soothing, like liquorice, if a bit sickly. I pulled my hand back from him, for I was losing myself.
I searched for Mr Diprose for help, but he had settled himself in a worn leather armchair with a glass of whisky in his hand. There was another chair facing him, on the other side of the fire, and in between was an exotic, low leather couch draped in a fine red Persian rug and embroidered cushions. I wondered if I was meant to sit there. But no one asked me to sit down. Still I kept searching, for what I did not know. Sir Jocelyn moved to my side, bent his knees so that his head was at the same level as mine, and followed my gaze, as if he wanted to see what I was seeing.
The room was brown, very brown. The furniture was all rich mahogany, dark oak and chocolate leather, with wine-coloured brocades; the walls were the colour of tea. But despite this gloom, there were glimmers of wonders, and I could not help my eyes from flitting from this to that with alarming promiscuity.
I was afraid of what I saw, and it was fear, more than anything, that rooted me to the spot. For the animals that seemed so elegantly unusual in Lucinda’s picture books, or at a distance in the circus, were terrifying to me in proximity. Their skins, heads and tusks leered out or up at me from the walls and floors, and even though I knew they were dead, it was as if they might suddenly take to breathing again once they sensed my presence and smelt my fear, and would devour me on the spot.
In between the heads hung the paraphernalia of the hunter and adventurer: plenty of instruments – sextants, I imagined, and telescopes, compasses, microscopes and all sorts of meters – and between their dials and the heads on the walls hung a variety of firearms, some tribal spears, beaded headdresses, and shields.
I was on safer ground when my gaze fell on the stretch of bookcases filled with endless volumes, beautifully bound in finely lettered, gold-tooled leather of all colours; the wall behind his large leather-topped desk held several glass-fronted cabinets, some filled with books, others with medical implements or exploration equipment. I peered over my shoulder at the bookcase closer to hand, where several volumes by Richard Burton were grouped together: First Footsteps in East Africa, Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to El-Medinah and Meccah, Complete System of Bayonet Exercise. Next to them was Livingstone’s Missionary Travels. So Knightley did not catalogue alphabetically. Maybe this was his ‘Africa’ section.
And inde
ed, next were the anatomy books, which fairly made my pulse race, so fine a collection had he. Peter would have swooned to see such masterpieces sharing the same shelf. There were two books of Galen: one was a crisp, modern Oeuvres Anatomiques, the other an ancient, crumbling De anatomicis. There was Bourgery’s great, four-part Atlas of Anatomy, Cheselden’s The Anatomy of the Human Body, Quain’s and Gray’s. But the most precious, esteemed book in the whole collection I knew to be the large black and gold folio, entitled De humani corporis fabrica libri septum, by Andreas Vesalius, the founder of the science of anatomy. On the Fabric of the Human Body.
‘You have an eye for the Vesalius, madam?’ Sir Jocelyn said.
‘Yes, sir,’ I answered. ‘I have not seen one before. Actually, I have not seen any anatomies,’ I hastened to add, ‘but I have heard of the most famous.’
‘And deservedly so. The man was brave enough to risk imprisonment by stealing a corpse from the gallows itself, in order to dispute Galen, and prove that Barbary apes are not anatomical equals to humans.’
I looked aslant at him, for I was not sure how he was expecting me to react; it was not usual practice for intelligent men to talk to women such as me in such a way. And it was then that I spied the most disturbing item in the room, out of that cursed female corner of my eye. It fascinated and repulsed me, and I could not work out what I was looking at, and eventually I found myself looking at it head-on. I felt Sir Jocelyn leave my side, and creep over towards Diprose, but still I could not change the direction of my gaze. It was like a grotesque sculpture of a human torso, like the marble classical sculptures of old, with truncated arms and legs (which, incidentally, I never knew was deliberate or not; whether the sculptors had deliberately chosen to focus on the torso, or if the head, arms and legs had been knocked off over the centuries). But this one was different. The surface had been painted to resemble flesh, but in places the meat was missing. It had one beautiful, perfect breast, with a shockingly real nipple, but where the other one should have been was an orange, pitted cavity. Every separate hair on my own flesh stirred in horror, as I realised that what I was beholding permitted a vision of the interior of the body.
‘See how she looks so,’ Knightley whispered, and I tried to flash my eyes away from the hideous cast. I met Diprose’s eye, which felt uncomfortable too, so I dropped my gaze to the fire, which was lit, despite the heat in the room, and from there to the couch, and then back to the poor semi-form in front of me.
‘Indeed, Sir Jocelyn,’ Diprose hissed back. ‘Which is why, with all due respect, I advise we proceed with caution.’
I did not hear Knightley’s reply, but knew he was continuing to watch my struggle with placing my gaze. Eventually I determined to face them both and wait for them to address me, which I did for a while, but they continued to observe me, as if I were some scientific curiosity, so I dropped my gaze and found my eyes wandering back to that thing, where they could penetrate beyond the skin to the marvellous inner world of the body.
At length Sir Jocelyn went over to the statue, and put his hand on its shoulder. His other hand he held out to me. ‘Come. Would you like a closer look?’
I think I nodded, and my legs started to walk towards him. But I was about to step on a dead tiger. I hesitated, heard Diprose snigger, then planted my foot firmly on the skin. It yielded softly, and I felt as if I might slip.
‘I will warn you, Mrs Damage, that this is not usually considered a suitable object for women to peruse. Hitherto, I have not shown it to many. Indeed, have I shown it to any? Good lord, this could be a historic day. But I have been told by my advisers –’ here he smiled benevolently, ‘– that you show special qualities which prove that you are not like the rest of them; hence.’
And here, with his own finger, he pointed out to me what I was looking at. ‘I picked it up in Paris. It’s papier-mâché, made by Auzoux.’ He dug his hands right into her cold flesh, and pulled out pink cushions and tubes and curiously shaped lumps, and told me that this one was the liver, and these were the kidneys, and this the oesophagus, and I couldn’t follow it all and felt my insides turn right over several times in sympathy. He asked me if I wanted to touch it, but I shook my head.
At that moment, the door opened and Goodchild brought in a tray of tea and cakes. I felt the old familiar gnaw of hunger to which I had grown so accustomed. ‘Have you met my wife yet, Mrs Damage?’ Sir Jocelyn asked as we walked back towards the fireplace. ‘She was hoping to see you at some point.’ Again, I shook my head. ‘She was thrilled to find a bookbinder she can inveigle into her pet cause. Her charming Nigger philanthropy. Don’t take it too seriously. I don’t. Still, I should consider myself blessed that she did not choose temperance as her pet time-waster. Or the vote.’ Good-child left, and Sir Jocelyn himself bent down to serve.
‘Tell me, Dipsy,’ he continued, ‘does it strike you as strange that, having so benefited from slavery for centuries, our conscience should only stir when more profitable methods of sugar production are discovered? How happily we erase past shame with present virtue, as long as it continues to serve us. It is nothing but humbug. Humbug, hypocrisy, and self-interest.’
Diprose chuckled. He had nothing to add to the argument; possibly he had run out of foreign words to drop into his conversation. He simply nodded his concurrence with Sir Jocelyn’s assertion that it was market forces, rather than morality, that led to the abolition of the British slave trade.
‘Bless my dear wife. She still drinks tea unsweetened, despite loathing the drink so in its natural state. What about you, Mrs Damage?’ he asked, pouring the tea into a china cup. And then, as he tipped one, and then a second, spoonful of sugar into the cup, he asked me, ‘Sugar?’
‘Thank you,’ I said as I took the cup, and watched as he put a slice of lemon in the one he handed to Diprose, but did not have one himself. Instead, he lit a cigar, which was monogrammed with the letters ‘JRK’.
Diprose took his tea, and muttered something I didn’t understand, but I heard the word ‘kaffir’, which I had heard before around Lambeth market when there had been a fight. So he had found a foreign word to use after all. I think he was trying to be funny, but Sir Jocelyn didn’t laugh.
‘ “Kaffir”, Dipsy, comes from an Arab word, “kafir”, which means “infidel”. It may indeed sound like the Cauzuh word “kafula”, which means, “to spit upon”, but the word you are using is a continent away from those to whom you are referring. If you are to use a term of abuse to describe a man of colour, please choose a geographically correct one.’
He stretched out his legs to reveal silk stockings and a pair of monogrammed slippers. I could imagine those legs wading through crocodile-infested swamps and sticky jungles. I could see him clubbing a man-eating tiger to death while singing the baritone aria from Don Giovanni and ripping her apart with his bare hands in order to assuage a week-long hunger. I could picture his strong body laid low with dysentery and malaria at times, but not for long.
Suddenly he stood up. ‘Mrs Damage, you are perfect for our requirements.’ My cheeks reddened to match the rose-coloured bloom of the light on his desk. ‘I can tell by your pert little nose.’ No one had ever called it that before, only ‘snub’. ‘You have a nose for discretion, and an aptitude for business. And your delightful chin tells me you are quick to learn, and are creative and spontaneous, without abandoning caution. Your brow tells me you have a sense of fun, and are quite flirtatious. But interesting features are all very well, as far as they go. It is how one chooses to inhabit them, to manifest their qualities in life, that makes the difference.’ He picked up a black leather-bound file, pulled out from it some drawings, and handed them to me. They were sketches, made in charcoal, of all the bindings I had constructed for Diprose. ‘Are we correct in assuming you designed these yourself?’
I nodded, for my mouth was too dry to speak, despite the tea.
‘And executed them?’ It would have been impossible for me to lie, but I did not know then whether a lie wou
ld have saved me. I nodded again, and then managed the words, ‘Jack did the forwarding.’
‘Ah yes. Jack. We shall come to him. But you were the finisher?’
‘Yes sir.’
‘Excellent news. I believe that problems often arise in book-bindings when there is a division of labour. It is as if intelligent thought is lost in the gap between designer and maker. Is it fair to say, Mrs Damage, that you give a plain binding the same attention to detail and commitment as a more elaborate one?’
‘Oh yes, sir. My prices vary only according to the size of the book and the amount of gold required.’
‘Indeed. And your father Mr Archibald Brice, late of Brice’s Bookbinders, Carnaby-street, died of pulmonary disease, 28 September 1854? And your mother Georgina, likewise, of the cholera, 14 September 1854? No surviving siblings? Your husband, Peter, was apprentice first in Hammersmith at the workshop of Falcon Riviere, and next at your father’s, after Riviere died a year into his indenture?’ I nodded. ‘You married in June 1854? Peter took over the binding business, and moved it to Lambeth in November 1854? He suffers from rheumatism? Now an invalid?’ I nodded again and again.
‘I presume he has been taking salicylate, and probably quinine too, and that neither have been efficacious? And various other splendid embrocations too, no doubt, all with trifling success? Any signs of gout? Sciatica? Pleurisy? Periosteal nodes?’ I had long since ceased nodding, for I simply did not know, and he waved his arm dismissively.
‘Let us get back to the point. Jack Tapster, apprenticed to you since December 1854, of Howley-place, Waterloo. Any trouble with him?’
I shook my head. He sat down at his desk and picked up, not a pen from the well, but a gold pencil with a large coloured jewel embedded in the end, and added something to the notes.
‘Thank you, Mrs Damage. You may go now. We shall contact you soon with regard to our full intentions for you. Good day.’
I put down my tea, stood up, and the gentlemen both stood up too, and I went over to the door on my own. No Goodchild appeared to open it for me. Behind me I heard Diprose gather himself together with a start, and he commanded me to wait. ‘I suppose I should take you back now,’ he said, and he took the door from me and ushered me through.
The Journal of Dora Damage Page 11
