‘Indeed. Would that they were of your ilk around Berkeley-square, Dora. Now, may I ask, Dora, if it is not too inopportune a moment, if you have given thought to cremation?’
‘Oh, merciful Father!’ swooned Mrs Eeles, and I feared she might collapse. ‘No, no, no!’
‘I espouse it as quite the modern thing: it is hygienic, and it hastens the natural process of decomposition. Ashes to ashes, Dora, is considerably quicker than dust to dust.’
‘Is it not rather barbaric?’ I asked nervously, one eye on Mrs Eeles, who was clearly revising her opinion of the gentleman.
‘We can learn from our Eastern brethren in this matter, who consider cremation as the only option in a hot country, and for religious purposes. Not that I am condoning their related practices: I would not wish to see Mr Damage’s good widow immolate herself on her husband’s funeral pyre!’
‘I – I – do not believe it would have been Peter’s wish.’
Sir Jocelyn held up his hand. ‘I need hear no more. It shall not be.’
Mrs Eeles righted herself, and smiled approbation at me. I realised, having been so long out of her favour, that I did not much prefer being in it either.
Sir Jocelyn packed his bag, collected his silver cane, doffed his hat to us, and left. I hurried after him into the street, as much to escape Mrs Eeles as to air my troubles to Sir Jocelyn. I checked we were out of earshot of Mrs Eeles, then spoke quietly.
‘Sir Jocelyn?’ I knew I would never forgive myself if I did not ask.
‘Dora.’
‘Does it – does it look at all suspicious to you?’
‘Suspicious?’
‘Like – like – like murder?’ I barely mouthed the word, but it seemed to echo up the whole street.
Sir Jocelyn paused and seemed to be examining the side of our building before saying, ‘Not evidently. There was no blow to the head, no stab in the gut.’ Then he dropped his voice and said pointedly, ‘But suspicions may be alerted to one who had the inclination and ability to poison him with opium for many months. I doubt you would wish that to come out, Dora?’
‘Oh!’ I gasped and put my hand to my mouth. ‘But I didn’t! I didn’t!’
‘I know, I know,’ he soothed hastily. ‘But best not to draw attention to the possibility, eh?’ Then he kissed me on the forehead, and departed. I rubbed the spot vigorously; he was a swine, and a dangerous one, and I owed him so much – and so little, too.
I went back into the parlour and straightways looked at the certificate he had left on the table. Under ‘Cause of death’ was written: ‘Congestion of the brain and heart: severe rheumatism leading to brain fever and morbis cordis.’ Would I ever be free of my obligations to this man?
Later that day, Din returned.
‘I found Jack’s mamma, at home, as you said, but she wouldn’t talk to me. She said she’d speak to you about it all, if you would be good enough to come see her. I told her of your misfortune with Peter. She sends condolences, ma’am.’
‘Din?’
‘Yes, ma’am?’
‘You got the impression from her that Jack was still alive, didn’t you?’
‘Indeed I did, ma’am. Just she would not say where.’
‘Should I be troubled, Din?’
He shrugged. I thanked him, and dismissed him until further notice. I could not think of business at a time like this, although I knew I would have to soon. I wondered if I should send the police round to Lizzie’s; I banished the thought the moment it entered my brain. Jack was a good boy, that was one thing I could be sure of.
The men in black came to measure Peter that afternoon, and returned with the coffin the following day. Having placed him in it, they covered the box with a fine black pall, which they fixed with bright brass tacks, and moved it into the centre of the parlour, so that there was scarcely any room left to live in. They brought too, much to my embarrassment, a fine black woollen dress, which was soft and warm and fitted me perfectly, along with a new long weeping veil, and a pair of black gloves, all with the compliments of Sir Jocelyn and Lady Knightley. Mrs Eeles was beside herself with wonder and envy, especially as I still had my old veil in my keeping, and owing to her.
The chief undertaker informed me of the details of the funeral, which was fixed for the coming Thursday at Woking, given our convenient proximity to the Necropolitan Railway. I sent telegrams to those of Peter’s siblings for whom I had details: his brothers Tommy and Arthur, and his sisters Rosie and Ethel.
‘Shall you be attending?’ Mrs Eeles asked me anxiously. She had hardly stayed away from the house these last few days, not believing her luck at having a fancy funeral so close to home. ‘Hard to say what’s best to do, nowadays.’ She could not help but stroke the sleeve of my mourning dress, even as I was wearing it.
‘What is your opinion, Mrs Eeles?’
‘You may think me modern, but I think us women should be there. It might not appear seemly, for us so to sit by the gaping maw of the grave, but we work our hardest getting the poor soul ready for it; why should we be deprived the internment itself? And I will go with you, if you choose, if you wish not to be the only woman there and therefore something of a conspicuousness, if you get my meaning.’
‘In truth, Mrs Eeles, if I do not go, who else will?’ I sighed. ‘I am hoping his brothers will attend, but my father is dead, and so is his. Who of the book trade will attend?’ I did not mention Jack, or Din. ‘Precious few, I imagine. Peter does not deserve to be put in the clay without witnesses.’
I was glad not to have mentioned these concerns to Sir Jocelyn, or he would have offered to hire extra mourners, no doubt. As it was, thanks to his lordship, Peter got the finest funeral this part of Lambeth had ever seen. The bells started tolling early on Thursday morning for him, and the procession arrived at nine. He got eight horses, each with a black plume, and a shiny hearse adorned with gold scrollwork.
Mrs Eeles, Lucinda and I followed the coffin out of the house, where, to my shock, two mutes were standing on either side of our door, stiffer and more inert than the trees flanking the Knightley’s front door in Berkeley-square.
‘Hello,’ I said to one of them, just to be polite. ‘Thank you for coming today.’ But their faces stared ahead, as marmoreal as figure-heads on a gravestone, even though the massive crêpe ribbon on their staffs flapped in the wind, and kept hitting their faces.
The pall-bearers lifted the coffin into the hearse, and the three of us followed it to the steps of the station just round the corner. Nora Negley, Patience Bishop, Agatha Marrow and the rest of Ivy-street stood in their door-ways, watching us go past in a silence that I hoped was out of respect. It must have made a good spectacle. Did these good folk of Ivy-street think I had paid for this all out of the proceeds of prostitution, I wondered. Were they mocking me in my grief for my apparently cuckolded husband? I was strangely glad of Mrs Eeles by my side in the face of their stares, torn though I knew she was.
As we ambled, our three blacked heads were sorely outnumbered by the wealth of black plumes nodding to us from all corners of the hearse and on the heads of each horse. But we were joined at the Church of England platform by Din, and by our former journeyman Sven Ulrich, who squeezed my hand tenderly and offered me sweet words of sympathy, and by Peter’s older brother Tommy. Arthur, he said, could not get leave from the Church. It struck me that I had possibly caused offence by not asking him to take the service; I did not think to be offended that he had not offered.
There were three classes – First, Second and Third – for both the living and the dead – and we were in Second. Peter would have approved of the middle way; Sir Jocelyn was a clever man. He did not attend, despite having borne the cost, although I was relieved in part. However, just as Peter’s coffin was being loaded onto the hearse car, Mr Diprose turned up and breezed into the passenger carriage with us, fresh from prison, and with a notable spring in his step. He uttered the usual words of condolence, only in French.
The person who
was most conspicuous by his absence was Jack, dear Jack, who had worked for Peter for six years. Jack, who hadn’t seen his father since he was eleven, and who treated Peter as a respectful son would a father. How could Jack miss this day? Jack was not playing truant; something bad must have happened to him. My gut ached as I thought of him, and I still could not help but wonder what his disappearance might have to do with my husband lying cold in his box. I felt for him like a mother for a son; I clutched Lucinda’s hand tightly, and wondered at this pomp and ceremony for our dear departed, when there are people left behind in this life who are suffering and abandoned. I looked at the fields and trees flashing past the windows of the train, and wondered who this was all for, really, who we were trying to console with such funereal ostentation. Even Peter, I would wager, would have disapproved if it had been bestowed on anyone else. I felt removed from the outward display, from the vanity of it all; my grief bore inward. I did not wish to show my pain to the good folk of Ivy-street and get their approval for it. I wished to suffer it alone, and know the knife-edges of grief, and guilt, and not have them appeased by my neighbours’ self-satisfied nods, or the clutches of Mrs Eeles’s hands.
We arrived at Brookwood an hour later, where we received a simple, short service in the chapel. When we drifted out again, it felt only natural that Mrs Eeles, Lucinda and I lead the pitiful handful of mourners through the avenue of birch trees to the graveside, and not an eyebrow was raised at our sex. I was glad to be seeing where Peter would be laid to rest, and that it was proper. Brookwood was indeed a splendid place: everyone got a plot to themselves, even if one was in Third Class, and there were plenty of watchmen and high gates and fences. I knew he would be safe here. Burke and Hare might have been relegated to the role of bogeymen with the passage of time, but resurrection men still stalked the pages of our newspapers, and our nightmares. I did not want my husband dissected, even by the likes of Sir Jocelyn Knightley. Strange to think that so fine a physician could only become so by chopping up dead, possibly snatched, bodies, but such was the way of the world. Strange, too, the thoughts that wander through one’s head on the way through the quiet eeriness of the cemetery; I tried to shake the vision of Sir Jocelyn’s knife penetrating Peter’s cold flesh as we approached his graveside.
To distract me I looked up at the clouds, and the slender, leafless birch trees flexing in the wind; even grief and the severity of the occasion did not prevent my work-addled mind from perceiving the trees as giant whips, flexing in the wind as if the clouds themselves were fluffy bottoms waiting excitedly for flagellant attention. I lodged the image in the recesses of my filthy brain, with intentions to inset a watercolour on vellum of this very row of birch trees topped by fluffy, derrièrelike clouds, into the morocco binding of my next whipping-themed commission. For this was how my mind worked now: I could not see nettles growing in the hedgerows without thinking of whipped fundaments, could not hear of a nunnery without thinking of a group of cats licking each other as if they were bowls of milk, of the Irish without thinking of their antics in the sheep-fields, and, worst of all, of the Italians without thinking of corpse profanation, which of course brought me back to the cemetery at Woking, and the interment of my poor Peter, whose body was just now descending into its pit. Earth was shovelled back over the coffin, until I could no longer see it. I rubbed my hands together to keep them warm, and felt my fingers through my black gloves and the place where my wedding ring should have been.
‘Wery sowwy, Mrs Damage.’ It was Skinner, at my elbow, leering at me, with a thick-set, squat man by his side, like a mastiff, whom I presumed was Mr Blades.
‘That a man could pass on without settling ’is debts in this lifetime is indeed a twagedy,’ said Skinner.
‘Oh, a twagedy,’ echoed Blades.
‘’Is debts are now yours, madam. Wha’ a legacy.’
‘Wha’ a legacy,’ came the echo again.
‘They always were, Mr Skinner. Good day to you, Mr Blades.’
‘My lady.’ The mastiff touched his cap and grinned; he lacked his front teeth, but his canines on either side were sharp and brown.
‘Yeees,’ Skinner said with gratification. ‘I ’ear business is booming. Just as well your ’usband agreed to step up the repayment schedule afore ’e died.’ He thrust a paper up into my face as I grabbed Lucinda’s hand and stalked round to the other side of the grave. I did not see them merge back into the the trees and gravestones, but heard Skinner’s voice like a ghost chasing me, ‘Lookee ’ere, it’s in ’is own ’and. In ’is own ’and . . .’
Chapter Seventeen
I saw a ship a-sailing,
A-sailing on the sea,
And oh, but it was laden,
With pretty things for thee!
There were comfits in the cabin,
And apples in the hold;
The sails were made of silk,
And the masts were all of gold . . .
Christmas crept up on us unawares after Peter died. It was just another trouble to add to the empty tea-caddy: the worry about Jack, Skinner’s threats, the chores, the battles of getting fires going on freezing mornings, the coaxing dry of frozen washing, and the cold fingers of grief and loss that gripped my heart and stole it of all sensation. I wondered if I should start work again in the bindery, even just to pay the butcher’s bill for Christmas, but there was, in truth, little to do, which troubled me too. I kept meaning to return my old veil to Mrs Eeles, but put it off for fear that she would ask me not only for the current rent but also for the two months’ rent the veil initially bought me. No doubt she would have strong opinions about my returning to work, given that I was meant to be in mourning for a year and a month. A man who had lost his wife would be expected to mourn for a month, for it would be assumed that he would need to get back to work. But what of a widow who needed to do the same?
But I could not avoid her for ever, and on Christmas Eve she came knocking on my door with false concern and a breezy smile, just to ask how I was getting on.
‘Well enough, thank you.’ I did not want to invite her in, but it was cold out on the door-step. ‘Oh, Mrs Eeles, I must give you back the veil I borrowed,’ I said, quickly, meaning to hand it over and send her on her way before she could settle herself down.
‘Oh, no matter, dearie,’ she said casually, pushing her way into the house. ‘It’s always handy to have a spare one.’ But as I was closing the door behind her, we heard the noise of a carriage rattling into Ivy-street; Sir Jocelyn’s brougham lumbered towards us, patterned with frost, and stopped outside the bindery. The gentleman was not within, but his driver started to unload first one tea-chest, then another, and then a third and a fourth, while I unlocked the door to the workshop.
‘Excuse me, Mrs Eeles. I wasn’t expecting a delivery.’ She folded her arms as I rummaged for the key in my skirts. ‘Books?’ I asked the boy, but he shrugged his shoulders.
‘Not this one, anyway,’ he added, as he pulled a large, narrow, rectangular box out of the interior.
‘Is that,’ Mrs Eeles started to say, stumbling towards us, visibly disturbed, ‘that isn’t, is that, could it be, a corset box?’ Her voice reached a shriek.
‘A corset! No, it can’t be,’ I remonstrated, but I could not deny that it was distinctly of the right shape. That, and the fact that it said, ‘Elegant Line Corsets’ on the top, with a picture of the back of a woman, hair piled up on top of her head, admiring her elegant line in the glass, in which her frontal glories were fully reflected. ‘Hygienic and comfortable’, the box declared.
‘A corset!’ Mrs Eeles repeated, in horror. ‘Well, I never knew the like!’
‘But I don’t want it, Mrs Eeles,’ I protested. ‘I don’t want it,’ I said to the boy. ‘Really, I don’t.’ I thought quickly, to counter her shock and disapproval. ‘If it is one, Mrs Eeles, would you like it? You can have it, in lieu of rent.’
Mrs Eeles’s nose wrinkled slightly as she leant forward to inspect the box closer. ‘Is it
a mourning corset?’ she asked, tentatively.
‘Are there such things?’
‘I read of one once. All trimmed in black and edged in black satin. Why, even the stitching was black silk. It must have been quite a sight to see.’
‘Well, I’m sure it must be, given that everyone knows that I am in mourning.’
I opened the box carefully. Unfortunately for us both, it was a simple ivory corset, with a cuirasse-bodice, trimmed with lavender lace. I hastily put the lid back on.
‘Just give me the money, then,’ Mrs Eeles snapped. ‘I need the last two months by Christmas,’ she called over her shoulder as she stamped her cold feet back up Ivy-street.
At least I would get a pretty penny for it at the pawnshop, I rued, as the boy ascended the carriage and trundled away. I settled down to the boxes in the bindery, in the hope that their contents would prove to be more practical. With the claw of a hammer, I levered out the nails of the first, and prised off the lid. I did not want to see vile catalogues. I put a hand inside and pulled off the straw padding, hardly daring to look. My hand reached first a bottle, and then another, and then some more: in total, six bottles of fine wine and two bottles of port. In the middle was a vast, warm lump wrapped in hemp wadding. I pulled back the hemp, and tore through the wax paper. It was a goose, and it had been roasted. The thoughtfulness of my benefactor extended even to the details; he had realised my range would never fit a goose inside. I found its cavity: it had been stuffed, too.
The other crate contained a ham, a Stilton in an earthenware pot, a mature Cheddar in a tawny rind, some fat Muscatel raisins, a jar of figs in syrup, a box of honeyed dates stuffed with almonds, a tin of candied lemons, oranges, pineapples, plums, and some fresh winter pears, Ribston pippins, grapes, and pomegranates.
‘For Lucinda’, read the tag of a parcel, which I placed down carefully on the floor. For her also were several brown packets of bromide.
The Journal of Dora Damage Page 29
