The Journal of Dora Damage

by Belinda Starling

  ‘Shameful, ma’am?’

  ‘Is it not degrading for you – to be working on – this?’ Still I did not know if he knew the true nature of the work here, but my anger pushed me. But still he did not react. It provoked me further. I was what was shameful here. ‘And for a woman as well?’

  He lifted his head from his work, and met my gaze. ‘Shame?’ he answered. ‘There is no shame here. You run a highly respectable business, ma’am.’

  ‘Do not mock me!’

  ‘I do not.’ He tilted his head, and closed one eye, as if to scrutinise me with the open one. He looked amused. ‘Respectable,’ he repeated. ‘Respicere. To look back at. To regard. To behold.’ He was grinning now, and I was confounded. ‘Respectability is only how folk see you. I only know how I see you, not how they do. To me, ma’am, you are indeed respectable, for here I am beholdin’ you.’

  His words winded me, and I paused, unable to go back to what I had said, or forward to what I wanted to say. This was not where I had intended to be. Finally, I replied, ‘Then you cannot worry that I may not think you respectable. Am I not beholding you too?’

  A moment passed between us, like the air that waits between the bell and the clapper as the clock strikes the hour, before I turned away. If words were nothing more than dressings on our true selves, then the not-saying, the silence, was an undressing, and I was shivering. But I dared not allow the man’s beholding warm me up, although I knew it would. It would stoke fires that would rage beyond my control, and consume me in their heat, all for the sake of a bit of warmth. No. How dare he behold me. How dare he ridicule me, mock me, play with me, undress me. I was his employer; he was my slave.

  If the man would not tell me where he went, all I had to do was follow him. I would know, then, and I would have power over him. I believe now that that was what I wanted most: power over the man. For in the face of those strange feelings within me that he engendered, I was powerless.

  I also had the leisure to undertake this plan, given the troubling lack of crates descending on us from Holywell-street. But it would require some preparation, so I ambled up Ivy-street, plotting my pursuit of Din, and knocked at Mrs Eeles’s door. She opened it quickly, only to discover to her disappointment that it was the whore of Ivy-street. She left the door open, as a sign that I was to continue my supplication, but hid herself entirely behind it.

  ‘Mrs Eeles,’ I said to the empty space. ‘I beg your forgiveness for broaching you on such a sensitive issue, only I have today received news of the passing of a business acquaintance of my husband . . .’

  I had not appreciated how little she would be able to resist. Her head poked round the door, so she could show me how well her brow was knitted out of concern. ‘Oh, you poor, dear girl. Did you know him well?’

  ‘Passing well, yes. But I do not ask for pity. It is his widow for whom I feel sorrow, and his eighteen children.’

  ‘Eighteen!’ Now a hand appeared, raised heavenwards. ‘The Lord giveth, and yet He taketh away. May He bless the poor, bereft, little ones!’

  ‘The funeral is on Friday and . . .’

  ‘. . . you wish for weeds?’

  ‘Sadly, yes. I am in need of a mantle, and the weeping veil I gave you in lieu of rent back in December last. Just for one night. I shall be leaving around five o’clock on Friday, and walking to my destination. I will return it to you clean and fresh on my return.’ I could see she was noting the timing in her head, and I hoped she felt it would not be worth sending Billy to follow me. I knew not where I could give him the slip on the way to the tanneries.

  She went back inside for a moment, and left me on the threshold. I did not turn around, but could feel I was being watched by Ivy-street. Eventually her hand wound its way around the door, holding a large black bundle of crêpe and wool. I took it, and bobbed a curtsey, even though the hand couldn’t see.

  ‘I am ever so grateful, Mrs Eeles. Thank you.’

  ‘And here are some gloves for you,’ came the unexpected words, and the other hand thrust out two limp black gloves at me. I half-expected a third hand to appear with a jet cameo, and a fourth with some ribbons, but I was grateful for what I had, and fled with them back to the workshop.

  My time in the bindery with Din on Friday was fraught with tension. I trembled constantly at the thought of what I was to undertake that night, and how best to explain myself should he catch me. But in truth, my trembling was for other reasons. For I was starting to worry that my desire to touch him was not out of any intellectual fancy – which is what I had told myself – but from a compulsion born within the pit of my being, which threatened to stretch my fingers out without any intercession on behalf of my brain. Each time I passed him a folder or buffer, it was as much as I could do, as I withdrew my hand, to will my fingers to clench into a fist, as if I were deliberately trying to hammer the air instead of impress his flesh onto their tips.

  Idle fantasy arising out of our irreconcilable, innate differences, I kept trying to convince myself as I struggled to work. That much I knew from the literature Diprose had supplied me with, which declared that black men want white women because they are everything they have been told they can’t have. The argument reversed would imply that I only wanted him because he was black; Lady Knightley and her Ladies were proof enough of that. No, books were no help to me here. The only book that showed the lust of white women for a black man was The Lustful Turk, but then, he was a Turk, not an African, and the Dey at that, and so prodigiously endowed that, allegedly, no woman brutally awoken to her sexuality by such a weapon could ever resist, once pain had transmuted to pleasure. So I could hardly look to it for guidance. Nowhere could I find a book that would help me: this was not the sort of thing one would find on the shelves of Mudie’s Select Libraries. A delusion of love, Dora, I told myself over again. An unrighteous lust, Dora.

  I announced, very publicly, to Jack that I would be leaving the bindery early, that he must lock up, and that I expected he would leave on time. At a quarter to five I went into the house and put on the long black mantle, the veil and Mrs Eeles’s gloves. I put on my boots, but beneath the finery their sorry state was more evident than ever: my toes were completely exposed, and there was hardly enough left of the eroded sole to keep in the pages of The Illustrated London News. In haste I pulled my new brown boots from under the bed, and persuaded myself that tottering in heels would be preferable to freezing in ruins. I laced them tightly, then bid farewell to Pansy and Lucinda, all the while listening for the door of the bindery, and then it came, and I sensed Din’s shadow passing the house as he left.

  I could not see Billy the Nose anywhere, and by the time we got to Waterloo Bridge I knew I was not being tailed, which left me free to concentrate on following Din at a distance, and to worry about where we were going, for it was clear we were not heading to Bermondsey. Besides, I was worrying about the weather. Crêpe did not like getting wet. The gummy, tightly wound silk threads would shrivel in the rain, and the veil would be ruined, along with my plans, and Mrs Eeles’s pleasure.

  But then I had another thing to worry about. I could hardly count the times I had crossed this bridge watching my toes go in and out under the hem of my skirts, and each of those times I had longed for smart new boots to keep the rain out and my toes warm. Now I had them, and their efficient clip clip clip gratified my spirit but grated my feet, which were soon blistering all over.

  As we reached the Strand, Din stuck out his arm, and a green omnibus marked ‘BOW and STRATFORD’ ground to a halt, so I quickened my sore pace to reach the vehicle before it pulled out again. I fretted about whether I had the exact fare in my purse, so as not to draw attention to myself when paying, and where I was to sit: not on top, in this fine mantle, but if I sat inside, I risked being cheek-by-jowl with the man I was stalking.

  I could not hear what Din said to the driver as he paid his fare, but afterwards he placed his hand on the wheel rim and leapt on top of the bus, as if he were hurdling a gate, which
meant I could comfortably and appropriately ride inside.

  ‘Same as him,’ I whispered to the driver, and proffered a shilling.

  ‘You what?’ the man shouted.

  ‘Same as him,’ I repeated. ‘I’m getting off where that man’s getting off.’

  ‘The nigger?’ he said loudly.

  ‘Yes,’ I hissed. ‘Please, be quick.’ He took my coin, and I climbed across the knees of the bowler-hatted clerks on their way home, and sat where I could see the movements of Din’s legs on the knifeboard, so I would know where to dismount.

  The other passengers stared at me as if I were a pickpocket. But I remembered from before that this was indeed how people looked at you if you were wearing a veil; their inability to see your eyes offers a false reassurance that you can’t see theirs. I forgave them their insolence; there was precious little else to look at on this grey Friday evening, other than the strangers with whom one was sharing a space that was even smaller than our box-room. I could not see much in the fog outside, except the shapes caught in the yellow pools of gaslight, so I spent the journey keeping half an eye out for Din, and half an eye out for maltoolers. Clerks descended; clerks got on again.

  Finally Din’s legs straightened: he had stood up, and was about to descend.

  ‘Excuse me, excuse me,’ I whispered, and ‘I beg your pardon,’ until I was at the top of the precarious steps and, even though the bus was still moving gently, I had to jump or lose my prey. I staggered on the curb from the unfamiliar heel height, and clutched onto a lamppost for support. But where was Din? I spotted him turning the corner into another street, and I hastened after him. I had not thought this far ahead, of the folly of tottering on cobbles, wearing a long mantle and fine boots through streets where there were no sweepers for what lay in my path. It disguised me insomuch as it was not my usual costume, but it drew attention to me too.

  I lost him here and there in the misty gaps between streetlights, but I could hear him whistling, and when I could not, a couple of women standing by a shop, arms folded, shouted out, ‘Scrub your gob, Uncle Tom,’ and I caught up once more with his springing stride, which had not faltered. Then an urchin skipped alongside him for a bit, singing ‘nigger, nigger, nignog’ at him, before chancing upon a puppy to stop and torment. Occasionally someone nodded at him; a few greeted him openly. ‘Dinjerous!’ an older black man with a grizzled beard said to him, slapping him on the back. I noted the wider range of complexions than I was used to; there were more black people, more Indians, more Orientals, and indeed more women on the streets of wherever we were now.

  Then Din strode over a large stretch of cobbles to a public-house that stood in the centre where two roads forked. I could only stand and watch as he disappeared into a space next to the main door, and down a stairwell. I could not go in alone. I was rooted to the spot, and suddenly conspicuous.

  I tried to pretend I was waiting for someone. I pulled the mantle more closely around me, and noticed the cold. I could not go home yet, but I had not found anything out. ‘A-ha, Din! So you went to a public-house!’ It wouldn’t really suffice.

  But as I was troubling myself, Din’s face appeared, smiling, in the gloom above the stairwell.

  ‘You not goin’ to follow me in, lady?’ He came through the doorway and started to walk towards me, holding out his hands. ‘You come all this way, and you want to miss the party? I can’t leave a lady standin’ out.’

  ‘How on God’s earth did you know it was me?’

  ‘I’d know you anywhere from your gait, for all those foolish boots.’ He took me firmly by the arm, and I shrank at his touch, then relaxed into the warmth and firmness of his grasp, which was as welcome right now as a warm brandy and milk.

  ‘Where are we?’

  ‘Whitechapel,’ he replied. ‘Come on in.’

  ‘Can I?’

  ‘It’s not good, no. I was close to roundin’ on you all the way. But I’m not angry no more. You’re stupid, though. If I leave you up here, you’ll be dead when I get back.’

  We descended the steep wooden staircase – Din gripping my arm above the elbow – and I used both hands to lift my skirts. We reached a room in the cellar. ‘You would do well to leave your veil on,’ he whispered.

  Inside were congregated about ten people; most, but not all, of the same hue as my escort. Two were of the fair sex, although whether that was a suitable title for a woman whose skin was blacker than Din’s, I was not altogether sure; Sir Jocelyn, no doubt, would have had some words on the matter. Din found me a seat in the shadows at the back of the room where he left me, and went to roam around. He waved at some of the occupants, placed his hands on the shoulders of others and patted them warmly, and chatted to still more. Occasionally, while talking to someone, he would gesture back to me, and his companion would look at me, and nod.

  I was more nervous than when I was following him on the streets. My hands were clammy inside their gloves, and my armpits too, despite the cold. Nobody seemed to look at me for long, but one of the women had a baby on her lap, and the baby was staring hard at me. I was grateful for the veil, and wondered if Din would offer me his protection, should his colleagues demand the removal of my disguise. I wondered when the fighting would start.

  ‘Back to our business here,’ a tall man with a red hat said, with a gesture to the minor disruption of our entrance.

  Quickly the discussion grew, and the atmosphere in the room was as serious as death. Most of what they said passed me by completely; names of people and places were tossed around, some I’d heard of before, others which were completely new to me. Someone mentioned Freddie: Freddie Douglass. Harpers Ferry. John Brown. The conversation heated up. Shouts were thrown, fists pounded tables. But this was not sport with a rabble of tanners. What was it then? An abominable brotherhood? A satanic sect?

  ‘South Carolina is gonna secede. We have to strike there.’

  ‘Our scouts are in Mississippi,’ a small, scruffy white man said. ‘All our people are there. South Carolina will be impractical, impossible.’

  ‘South Carolina is where it’s at. Barnwell Rhett is our man, not Davis. We be fools to miss it.’

  ‘We be fools to try. Mississippi will go too, believe it. We still go for Davis.’

  ‘He’s saying he ain’t gonna. He opposes it in principle.’

  The speaker was swooped on by half his listeners: ‘But in practice, fool?’ ‘You believe him?’ ‘Watch Mississippi pull away.’ ‘Watch and wait.’

  The argument did not abate when the landlord brought in a tray of beer, which he distributed amongst the guests. A few took their glasses from him with a nod and a smile, which he reciprocated; the tall man with the red hat ignored him, and the drinks too. The landlord lingered for a while, listening to the debate, then left, seemingly unperturbed by, or accustomed to, the rising tension. There would be a fight, I was sure of it.

  ‘He’s right,’ said the white man. ‘It’s stepping up, and we must step up too. Strike while the iron’s hot; strike while the President’s fresh.’

  ‘You’re wrong. It’s too dangerous now. We shoulda nailed him earlier. He’ll get too big soon . . .’

  ‘. . . an’ bigger if Mississippi go too.’

  ‘The bigger the better.’

  ‘So nail him now!’

  ‘We don’ dare . . .’

  ‘Sol is right, but for the wrong reasons.’ This was Din speaking. He stood up, and the room hushed. Din. My heart beat loud and I grew hot with fear. What was his role here? Was he some cat’s-paw, or a ring-leader, or a stooge? ‘We go for Davies. But we don’ kill him. Davies is the mos’ importan’ man in the South, an’ we can’ have blood on our hands at this time. We revert to the July plan.’ His accent was more pronounced than ever; I had never heard him talk like this. He made to sit down, but nobody was going to let him.

  ‘You change yo’ tune, Din, little man! What’s gettin’ you?’

  ‘Nothin’,’ he said, rounding on his accuser. ‘I jus�
�� think . . . we’re wrong to use violence.’ I was stunned by his authority. No one yet had elicited such a reaction. It was deafening. There were hisses from some, boos from others, gasps of surprise, and even a few cheers by yet others.

  ‘Wrong to use violence! Do you hear the words of Dinjerous Din? Wrong to use violence!’

  Din started to talk again, his voice low but solid. ‘Kidnap him and hol’ him hostage. Bring the country to its knees. Hol’ it to ransom.’

  ‘I’m hearin’ you, Din!’ shouted another man from the corner.

  ‘Give him a taste o’ captivity; and kill him if our demands aren’ met,’ Din continued.

  ‘Kill him first! Kill him first!’ someone else shouted amidst the rising hubbub.

  ‘Silence y’all!’ Din was standing in the centre of the chaos. ‘We take; we don’ kill. We bite; we don’ kill. We strike; we don’ kill. Why?’ The fuss started to die down around him. The man was a great speaker. ‘Cos we wan’ time. Time to take our demands to the Senate, and time for them to consider them. There is too much blood already on our hands.’ Then he added quietly, ‘I know that more’n all.’

  ‘Din, you have been baying for blood since you joined us!’ the man called Sol said. He had a warm face; he looked tired, and old, but I liked him already. ‘What’s changed, brother?’

  ‘What’s changed? What’s changed is that I know I’m a fighter. We’re all fighters here; an’ we can’ fight if we are dead. I ain’ gonna risk a hanging without trial. I ain’ gonna risk that. The day I risk a hangin’ will be the day I know I am seen as a citizen of the United States, and that I be granted a trial for my wrong-doin’.’

  ‘You’re a coward, Din. A cheap chicken-heart.’

  ‘You wrong me, Adam, you wrong me. Remember New Orleans? That was nothin’ short of a suicide mission, but I took it. I will die for my people and my country. If I believe it is the right action. But now, it’s changed. You can smell it too. And Jefferson Davis is mo’ use to us alive than dead. Don’ misun’erstand: I could pull the knife on the man if I wanted to. I could kill any man who says he’ll uphold slavery at any cost, includin’ the cost of the union. But if I am to lead the team o’ hostage-takers – and I have been chosen by you, all o’ you – I will feed that man the finest foods and wines three times a day an’ mo’; I will treat him in his captivity like an African king – nay, an African god – if it will secure freedom for ev’ry nigger under the sun, and under grey skies too, for that matter.’