‘You are too harsh on the plant, Sir Jocelyn,’ I said. ‘Pray tell me, what does not injure that to which it clings?’
‘A very good question, Mrs Damage. I see you are no stranger to the philosophies of love.’ He pretended to ponder, as we shared the joke. ‘Woodbine,’ he finally answered, with mock triumph, and returned to the ivy wreath. ‘Your tooling is excellent,’ he said. ‘Strange to think we find such beauty in the posthumous scarification and gilding of an animal’s hide. Like a tattoo, on dead skin.’ Then he ceased his musing, seized one of my hands, and turned it over to stroke the palm, like a fortune-teller at a fair. ‘Do these delicate hands really do all this hard work?’
I nodded, and he started to chuckle.
‘Why are you laughing?’ I asked, slightly indignant.
‘Why, Mistress Binder? I will tell you why. Because you make me happy. And why do you make me happy? Because of your ingenuity, and your creativity, and your bravery.’ He waited before delivering each attribute to me, like a gift on platter. ‘Ah, Mrs Damage. You delight me. You are the fresh air we need in this stale old business. These are sumptuous, supple bindings, for men like me, who do not wish simply to read and shelve our books.’ Then he added casually, ‘Did you enjoy the Decameron?’
‘Yes, thank you, sir.’
‘Translated by John Florio, 1620. It’s about time someone did a more modern version. With all one hundred stories. I pity poor Alibech, whose tale of putting the devil back into hell gets left out every time. Possibly I should . . . why, there’s a capital idea! You see, Mrs Damage, what purpose science without its application to human existence? On my travels through the Orient I have gained wisdom of the sensual side of human nature, which has informed and transformed my scientific study, such that my purpose is now the liberation of our oh-so-corseted society from the restraints of decency and prudery as an urgent matter of health and well-being. Is this not a far greater, and more necessary, import to this country than tea or sugar or pineapples? The sacred texts of the East, along with, of course, the buried classics of Greece and Rome – buried by priggish translations and expurgated editions, I mean – and more recent works such as the Decameron: these are works which captivate, and which liberate, and no, that is not a semantic impossibility, and it is what England needs. Our literature is chaste and ailing, because we as a society are chaste, and ailing.’ Here he leaned conspiratorially towards me, and said in a stage whisper, ‘And were not your husband’s bindings terribly chaste, Mrs Damage, and is not he ailing?’
‘Chaste, Sir Jocelyn?’
‘I knew his work, of old. It was not his fault; he, and everybody else it seems, was only operating within a tradition that exalts the terribly dull, the ineffably boring, the tediously prudish. But you: your bindings are as beautiful, as sensual, as arousing, as full of vigour as . . . well . . . as you are, Mrs Damage.’
I mewed involuntarily, and quickly made a show of looking at Lucinda’s doll.
‘What are you going to call her, Lucinda?’ I said, hoping my voice did not quiver.
‘Mossie,’ she said.
‘Mossie. How lovely.’
Oh, but he was dangerous, and I was not immune to his charms, for all that I could see through them. There would be too many ladies who loved him already, too many dandies scouting the style of his coat, the angle of his hat, and his fashionable turned-down collar. And even as I considered the demise of the stock and high-pointed collar that would surely become general because of Sir Jocelyn’s example, I was sensible enough to know that even my new status as Mistress Binder did not justify the way in which he spoke to me, and so immured was I by the boundaries of class, age, and education, that I was determined that my head would remain resolutely level in my transactions with this rogue.
Which was just as well, for, having so skilfully unlocked me, he cut to the purpose of his visit.
‘Lucinda.’ The bolts slammed shut again inside me. ‘At the risk of indiscretion, Mrs Damage, am I right in thinking that Lucinda suffers from Epilepsie?’
My eyes widened in alarm, and I reached for Lucinda and she for me in the same moment. Jack put down his tools.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Does she have convulsions? The Morbids? Falling Sickness? Oh, but I did not wish to alarm you in the slightest. I applaud your wish to exclude the authorities. I am not an advocate of institutions. Some may call me a radical, and they may well be correct, but I can safely say that not all doctors wish to lock people up. May I ask Lucinda a few questions?’
There was terror in Lucinda’s eyes, but the nobleman knelt down to be at her level. He was as disarming of the daughter as of her mother; he was gentle and teasing, and soon had her giggling. He smiled at her, and she smiled back; and despite myself, my cold loathing of doctors melted somewhat.
‘Now, Lucinda. A little frog came to my window the other night, to tell me that his dear old friend Lucinda sometimes comes over a bit peculiar. Is he correct?’
She chortled and exclaimed, ‘A frog!’ Then she nodded.
‘The frog was unable to tell me what happens to her when she feels like this. Can you explain it to me?’
‘Yes. I feel strange.’
‘Strange. Anything else?
‘And I feel like lying down.’
‘Lying down. And do you?’
‘Sometimes.’
‘Anything else? Does your head hurt?’
‘Yes, and my eyes too, cos sometimes it’s like candles are flickering in them, but they’re not really there, cos we never have so many candles lit at once, and then sometimes I been sick, and then I wake up and there’s a fog inside me although I’m better.’
He listened intently, all the while crouching down at her level. He held his finger up. ‘Do you see my finger? I’d like you to blow on it as if it were a candle, but, you are not trying to blow the candle out. You must blow slowly, as if you want the candle flame to lie down. Now, inspire deeply, and take care that your shoulders don’t rise. Now breathe out, and make that flame lie down.’ She obeyed. ‘Well done, Lucinda. What a good girl you are.’ He ruffled her hair with his hand. ‘Whenever you feel funny, I want you to ask your mother to hold her finger up, and blow on her candle.
‘Now, observe. This peculiar contraption is called a pair of callipers. They are like the pincers of a crab.’ He showed her how they opened and closed. ‘But look, they are a most discerning crab. They will not snap at pretty little girls. They may tickle, but they are friendly callipers.’ She let him measure her head, and then he felt her head all over with his bare hands, and she watched as he made some notes in a tatty little book in need of a re-bind. He looked in her mouth, her ears and her eyes, and wrapped a tape-measure around her skull, and her neck, and her chest. He listened to her heartbeat, he tested her reflexes.
‘Would you help me, Lucinda?’ He opened his large black bag. ‘Do you see all these phials? They contain pills and powders. There are so many of them! But we are looking for the most special phial of all. It has a brown cap, with a piece of string tied around it. Can you see it?’
‘Here! Here it is! Shall I take it out?’ she said gleefully.
‘If you would be so kind. Good girl. Now this –’ he took off the lid and shook most of the contents out onto a large piece of paper ‘– is something that is almost magical. Do you like magic?’
She nodded, as he tipped the rest into his palm.
‘And can you count to twenty?’
‘Yes I can. One – two –’
‘Excellent. You must count out twenty grains – like this – and you may mix them in some water first, or eat them off your palm.’
‘What will they do to me?’
‘Nothing. Not a thing. For that is their magic, Lucinda: they will simply act as a preventative. You will not feel quite as strange as you used to; you will be safer and less tired. But you will not know that, unless you remember how you used to be.’ He folded up the paper and gave it to Lucinda. ‘Give this
to your mother to keep safe for you.’
‘Thank you, Lou,’ I said as she handed it to me. ‘What is it?’ I asked Sir Jocelyn. But something most strange was happening to him. For all his athleticism, he was struggling to pull himself up to standing from where he had been kneeling on the floor. He held on to the side of the bench, and he grimaced, just as Peter did whenever he made the slightest movement. He reached for his side, and pressed it in as he hauled himself up.
‘I was attacked in the Kalahari,’ he puffed, by way of explanation. ‘Got a spear in the ribs, and some residual damage to the intercostals.’ He was tugging at something on his person: at first I thought that he was trying to get his watch out of his pocket, but then his waistcoat rose up with the movement of his arms, and he was pulling at his crisp white shirt underneath, which came clean out of the waistband of his trousers, and I realised to my utter horror that I could see his woollen undershirt, and that he was unfastening the buttons about his middle.
‘Sir Jocelyn,’ I started. ‘No . . . !’ I clutched Lucinda to me with the hand holding the paper of grains, and buried her head in my skirts so she should not be victim to the horrid sight. Jack moved closer to us, but clearly did not know what to do either.
But the man continued, as if this were the most normal practice in medical, scientific, epileptic, what-have-you circles, and soon he had peeled apart his undershirt, and I caught a degrading glimpse of his navel, all curly hairs and bronzed skin. I covered my face with the hand that was not holding Lucinda, and whimpered.
‘Mrs Damage, do I alarm you? Come now, permit yourself a moment’s viewing.’
‘But my modesty, Sir Jocelyn!’
‘Your modesty, my good woman? Your modesty will not be compromised by a look! Come, Mrs Damage. Come, Dora, if I may. Dora, you may look, and still be virtuous. You, why, you have a scrutinising gaze that belies your inner wisdom. Look, I entreat you, so you may better understand me.’
I did not remove my hand from my face, but separated my fingers somewhat, and turned my head back towards him. I lowered my gaze, all the while partially obscured by the Vs of my fingers, but kept Lucinda’s face pressed into my legs. And where his fingers were pulling apart the fabric of his undergarment, I saw a fuzzy blue shape, like the spokes of a wheel radiating around his navel.
‘What – what is it?’ I asked, despite myself.
‘The sun. A tattoo of the sun.’ He was already buttoning himself up again, tucking his shirt back into his trousers, pulling his waistcoat neatly down over his waist again. ‘A minor deity, I must have seemed to them, I’ll warrant, or how else was I to have survived their vicious assaults? The Sun-God, I fancied. I had myself marked accordingly by a sailor on the return boat.’
I released Lucinda, but could not remove the image of the blue sun staining the skin around the dark hole of his umbilicus. I heard Jack exhale heavily, busying himself in his work once more.
‘I have left instructions in my will to bind my complete works with the skin from my torso, with the scar left by the spear resplendent across the back panel, and the tattoo round my navel on the front. What do you think of that, Dora?’ But he pursued beyond my dumbstruck silence. ‘I shall call my memoirs, Afric’s Apollo: Helios in the Bushveld, or Travels of a Latter Day Sun-God. Is it not a fine way to achieve immortality?’
There was no answer to that. The paper of grains he had given Lucinda offered me a diversion.
‘But the grains, Sir Jocelyn? Tell me about the grains, please.’
‘Potassium bromide,’ he said, as he arranged the tails of his coat. ‘It will significantly reduce the incidence of her convulsions, but it may increase her appetite and urination, and affect her co-ordination somewhat.’
‘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, lea
nt 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.’
I choked, and spluttered white and yellow confection into my hands, as Sir Jocelyn leant back to enjoy my reaction.
‘Can you taste the jasmine, Dora?’
I nodded, finally able to free my tongue. Soon, I thought, I might dare to swallow the dangerous sweetmeat; it was not safe in my mouth or my throat.
‘I trust it delights,’ he probed. ‘That is its sole purpose. It was especially commissioned by Sultan Abdul Hamid the First, for the delectation of the women in his harem. He had far too many to keep satisfied, so the sweet was designed for the appeasement of wanton ladies craving solace in the arms of their only man. Which reminds me: a favourite book of mine about a rather infamous Turk is in need of repair. I shall send it to Diprose and he will get it to you. You might enjoy it.’
I believe now, although I dared not admit it at the time, that he actually winked at me. He bent down to collect his bag, then adjusted his hat on his head.
‘Good day, Jack,’ he said.
‘Good day, Sir Jocelyn.’
I opened the front door to him, and his driver dismounted, to open the door of his brougham.
‘Good-bye, Mrs Damage. It was a most satisfactory visit.’
‘Good-bye, Sir Jocelyn,’ I managed to say, after swallowing particularly violently.
He stood for a moment in the damp chill outside the workshop, as if he wished to savour the full flatus of Lambeth one last time before departing from it. Then, when he seemed to have breathed his fill, he looked me directly in the eye, and, with the kindest of smiles, said, as if in passing, ‘You look after my books, and I’ll look after little Lucy.’
The Journal of Dora Damage Page 15
