The Journal of Dora Damage

by Belinda Starling

  The visit from Diprose or Pizzy never came. I wondered if they had been informed but did not care, or whether for a moment we had slipped the scrutiny of the Eeles spies. It did not much matter, either way.

  Sylvia (for that is what I was now to call her) spent her first week at Ivy-street living entirely in the past or the future. The present situation and the immediate needs of her child, beyond suckling him, were lost on her. Her milk had started to flow well, and she seemed to gain some small satisfaction from the nursing, but her heavy sighs would startle the baby from his milk-filled dozes. She floated and cried, prayed and yearned, around the house; even the simplest chores seemed to perturb her. She made not a single mention of my Peter, or gave a moment’s recognition that I might wish for peace and solace in my time of mourning. She was not interested in what I did all day in the workshop, or even in meeting Din again – in fact, she did not even seem to remember he was now working for me – such was her self-obsession.

  She fretted over Nathaniel’s linen binder, and insisted on dressing him so: his clothes took up the contents of one of her travelling cases alone. He had a flannel cap to prevent eye inflammations, a selection of cambric gowns and lawn smocks, embroidered or trimmed with muslin and satin ribbons, and woollen shoes. Then there were his Russian napkins and flannel pilches, which had to be laundered separately for reasons of hygiene, and Sylvia’s bloody bandages too, while her wounds of childbirth healed, which meant Pansy was at the laundry all day, it seemed. And Sylvia insisted that Pansy starch Nathaniel’s clothes as well, and not just with cold potato starch; she made her heat it up in a pan with borax and candle-wax until it jellified, and dip the clothes in, and then iron them only once dry, which taxed the poor girl a whole extra load as well. I told Pansy she could take all the washing out to Agatha Marrow again, which she did, but when it came back she didn’t do what I did, and put it all straightways in the press and drawers. Instead, she unloaded it in the kitchen and aired the sheets and clothes in front of the fire, and checked them all over for lice and their eggs. Eventually, I decided, given that money was so good, that we could hire a laundress who would come straight to the house itself, even thought she cost nigh on two shillings. a day, on top of the cost of boiling water, and all the extra soap.

  But one could not help but pity Sylvia. It cannot have been easy to go from the upper ten thousand to the lower middle class with such rapidity. She had been bred to be nothing more than a beautiful appendage to an aristocratic arm, helpless but ornamental, and it was not her fault she had not received instruction in resourcefulness in circumstances such as these.

  She required my presence each evening to hear her latest lamentations, which quickly moved from sobbing to anger. She would reminisce about her childhood and her courtship with Jocelyn; she would bemoan her recent pain, and strategise how to win him back; everything, in fact, but explain the reason for her eviction, much as I was curious to discover it, and despite my best efforts to draw it out of her by stealth, the direct approach having been firmly rebuffed the first night she had arrived.

  ‘Is he not beautiful?’ she started one evening. ‘Is Nathaniel not exquisite?’ And this single sad thought so quickly precipitated outright indignation. ‘How dare he! The monster! Spends his months with naked African women, all saggy dugs and bloody thighs, and yet he would not even attend me in childbirth while I was wearing a chemise, a full petticoat and a bed jacket! Would the man have preferred me to have worn stays as well? He administered the chloroform, then went off to his club for a game of backgammon and a venison roast.’ And thence she would meander into her thoughts, which took her any which way. ‘Charles Darwin gave chloroform to his wife, and stayed. And Charles Dickens! Queen Victoria took it when she had Leopold and Beatrice. Where was Albert?’

  ‘At least you got chloroform,’ I muttered.

  ‘There are, I suppose, some advantages to being married to a man of medicine. I could have had my pick of my brothers’ friends, but they bored me. Decaying men with their crumbling manors, or stiff rods in the Army, or worse, in business. I chose none of them. Jocelyn told me I had too much sunshine in me for the grey lives they offered. He might not have had the breeding my father required, but I loved him.’

  ‘Breeding?’

  ‘I’m the daughter of an Earl, Dora. Papa told me I had to think of my future, but I had never wanted for anything. I would bring money to our marriage, so why should it trouble me that Jocelyn never quite reached the five thousand a year Papa demanded? Jocelyn had invented some half-credible scheme, some crazy prospective venture, which half-quelled Papa’s doubts. But of course it came to nothing. I thought my father secretly liked his wayward son-in-law. His interest in science might have marked him as more upper-middle than upper ten, but Papa loved his sense of adventure, and when he received his title for his exploits in India, Papa couldn’t have been more proud. Besides he couldn’t fault Jossie’s love of the foreign climes. They even went tiger-shooting together in Burma. Jocelyn killed two; Papa didn’t kill any, but Jossie gave him one of his, and on the boat back, Papa finally accepted Joss’s request for my hand in marriage. They used to joke that I was traded for a tiger-skin; Jossie always said I was cheap at the price.’

  I listened, and oh, but it was tedious! The only thing that kept me in check was Lucinda’s delight at little Nathaniel, and at Sylvia too, with her wan beauty, her suffering and sighs. Lucinda helped out in every way she could – she brought Sylvia drinks while she was nursing, she held the baby while Sylvia bathed, she helped Sylvia bathe the baby – and was responsible for the first smile to cross Sylvia’s face since being thrown out of her own home. I would sit and listen to the woman, but my attention was always on the enchanting games being played on the blanket at our feet, of a happy little girl with a living doll for a playmate.

  ‘So, you have a lodger,’ Din murmured one morning as he fastened some cord to the sewing-key.

  ‘You have seen Lady Sylvia?’ I queried.

  ‘Hmm-mmm,’ he affirmed. I watched, quizzically, as he laid out the shears, and checked the sharpness of the bodkin. Then, almost as if he weren’t talking, and I weren’t listening, he added quietly, ‘But she ain’t that much of a lady.’

  ‘Din!’ I scolded, as both warning and encouragement. ‘You wish to tell me something?’

  ‘Hmm. Maybe,’ he breezed.

  I sat down on the chair next to him, and started to rub the bodkin against the strop. We would catch each other’s eyes, then look away, and giggle, until finally he spoke.

  ‘I told you they made me pose with spears, yes?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘An’ do the Zoo-loo warrior thing, yes?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, that lady likes spears.’

  ‘She likes spears?’ Oh my, but I had visions of the Lustful Turk’s fleshful weaponry, and I was not sure I wanted Din to continue. ‘Your meaning?’

  ‘She had this idea, see, of bein’ the white lady captured by savages. She would swoon, and lie down, and pull at her dress, like this, see –’ and he tugged at the neck of his own shirt, so that I could see more of his chest, and I found myself looking away, and then back again, ‘– an’ say to me, “No, no, no, you must not kill me!” ’

  ‘Why, what were you doing to her?’

  ‘Nothin’! That was what was wrong. She would get so cross with me, an’ order me, “You stand there, above me, an’ hold that spear so, and point it at me, an’ make like you’re killin’ me!” An’ I didn’t want to do it. Felt like such a fool. But I did it. “Oh, no, no, no, the Negro is killin’ me! Help! Help!” ’

  ‘Oh, Din! You’re playing with me!’ He shook his head. ‘Really? What a marvellous story! Sylvia – really – she?’

  ‘Really, she, yes!’ Din was nodding.

  ‘The indignity!’ I gasped. ‘It’s outrageous! It’s – it’s thrilling, and scandalous!’

  ‘Ain’ it just!’

  The extraordinary memory lingered aroun
d us, as Din took the bodkin from me, and tested the point. And there it was again, catching me by surprise: the urge to touch him, and be touched by him. Was this what Sylvia had felt? Did I lack dignity because of it? It certainly was all the more shameful, given that I was meant to be in mourning. But all the more intense, because I was growing to like this man a lot.

  ‘I could always revisit it with her today, only with a real weapon,’ he said slyly, brandishing the bodkin and gesturing at the door.

  ‘I fear her appetite is less for frivolity these days,’ I chastened.

  Din nodded more solemnly. ‘There’s a baby in there, right?’

  ‘Yes. I don’t quite know what to make of it, whether she’s a silly woman, or a victim of circumstance.’

  ‘Or both.’

  ‘Possibly you are correct, Din. Isn’t it peculiar, that those so recently envied can so quickly elicit pity?’ But I was unlike Sylvia, in that his companionship meant as much to me as my desire for him, and each intensified the other.

  ‘And ridicule,’ Din added, with poignant resignation.

  ‘And ridicule, Din,’ I agreed.

  We were interrupted by a knocking from the interior door.

  ‘Dora!’ Sylvia was calling.

  ‘Oh my!’ I whispered to Din. ‘Are you ready to meet her again?’

  ‘As I’ll ever be,’ he said, casually.

  I called through the door, ‘What is it, Sylvia?’ as I began to unlock it.

  ‘Could you tell me the date, please?’

  I swung the door open, and said, ‘It’s the ninth of February. Why?’

  ‘The Prysemans will be back from Scotland soon.’ I waited for her to notice Din, and wondered what her reaction would be. But she continued, dreamily, ‘What bad timing my confinement was! Just when people are returning from the hunting season! I must be back in full health by the time the season starts.’ She was looking directly at Din now, but her blank face registered no recognition. Then she turned on her heel and disappeared back into the house.

  ‘She has no need to fret,’ I said saltily to Din as I locked the door. ‘Surely all she does at the season is make small talk with people she doesn’t actually really like. I can take her to the market tomorrow for her to practise.’

  ‘You are a wicked lady,’ Din said.

  ‘And you a wicked man, for those stories you tell about her. But she did not recognise you, Din.’ He simply shrugged. ‘Possibly we need to jog her memory. But, to my great regret, I have no animal skins and spears to hand.’

  ‘And, darn, because I left mine behind in Virginia,’ Din added.

  ‘How thoughtless of you, Din.’

  He continued with his work, but I was not ready to go back to mine. I wanted this moment to last longer. So I found a question I could ask him. ‘Tell me, Din, why are you really called Din? Is it a real name? Or were you telling the truth when you said it was that acronym, what was it?’

  ‘Dudish Intelligent Nigger. Of course. Or Dun-coloured Idiot Nigger. Or Dangerous Irate Nigger.’

  ‘No, seriously, Din.’

  ‘Yes, seriously. They would put it in on my papers. DIN. Dangerous Intelligent Nigger.’

  ‘Really?’

  He laughed. ‘Or I can tell you that it’s a word from the Mandingo, my people in West Africa.’

  ‘What does it mean?’

  ‘It don’ mean nothin’. But each time I slipped away, I heard a man holler, “Where dat man-Din-go?” ’

  I had to laugh too. ‘You are good at slipping away.’

  ‘And besides, Dora tell me, what is a din?’

  ‘A noise.’

  ‘A noise. See, I been given too many names. The one of my birth. Master Lucas changed it twice. The ones given to you by the other whiteys. Other niggers have had their names changed forty, fifty times. And along the way, they get names like Shame, or Odious. I heard a Master call out across the fields, “Shit, get Dung for me.” And they’ll keep that name for five years. Din stands for the noise in your head of all your names arguin’ at once. I’m going to call any child of mine somethin’ wrong, somethin’ unexpected, like after flowers, or something. If it’s a boy, he’ll be tall, so I’m gonna call him Delphinium. An’ if it’s a cute little girl, I’ll call her Daisy.’

  ‘And what if she’s a tall girl?

  ‘I’ll call her Dora.’

  We burst out laughing at the same time, and I felt the unexpected sensation of my eyes watering, but with mirth, not misery, and I bit my lip and scolded myself for this unseemliness. I love you Din, the words teased around my heart. No I don’t, my head chastised. I merely appreciated this new and unexpected friendship, which threw the relationship I had with the empty woman in the house into stark relief.

  ‘We all thought Jocelyn had gone mad,’ Sylvia exclaimed at supper-time, ‘when he came back from the Continent, and wanted his meals served at all sorts of strange times, in the foreign fashion, but Dora, the hours you keep are something else entirely! You have your dinner at noon, and only a frugal repast at nightfall.’ I got up at this point, and went into the bindery. Her words chased me there, her voice raised now. ‘And as if that were not quaint enough, you still serve your food à la russe; don’t you know the rest of the world is now dining à la française?’

  But my head was full of Din, and I stopped hearing her.

  Later, however, she knocked on the door, and called through the wood, ‘Dora, dear. May I disturb you?’ When I did not answer, she added, ‘I was wondering if you might like a cup of tea with me, or something stronger.’

  ‘Stronger?’ I quizzed. Such an overture was not wholly unpleasant to me. I unlocked the door.

  She was standing in the door-way, and shrugged, a small smile on her face. ‘I don’t know. What have you got?’ She was almost skittish.

  I was not going to turn down this unsolicited offer of companionship from a softened Sylvia. ‘We could make a hot flannel?’ I suggested.

  ‘A hot flannel! That sounds marvellous!’ She clapped her hands together. ‘What is a hot flannel, Dora?’

  ‘My mother used to make it for my father. It’s beer, gin, eggs, sugar, and nutmeg. Only, being bookbinders, we make it with egg yolks only, so it’s even richer.’

  ‘It sounds disgusting!’ Sylvia squealed. ‘But it sounds perfect.’

  I started to unfasten Jack’s apron. ‘My father always used to tell my mother, “Just a daffy for me, just a daffy,” but he would always drink the lot.’

  ‘And what might a daffy be?’ Sylvia asked.

  ‘You shall see,’ I replied, as we went into the kitchen. But we had no surplus egg yolks today, as I had not needed to make glair for a while. I picked out the eggs from the basket, and asked Sylvia to separate them, while I went back into the bindery to get a jug of beer. When I came back she was still standing where I had left her.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I asked.

  ‘I have separated the eggs.’

  Indeed she had: she had laid out the eggs in a perfect circle, so none of the shells touched.

  ‘My apologies, Sylvia. I meant, that one must separate the white from the yolk.’

  ‘And how on earth is one expected to do that?’ she asked. I selected two bowls, and started to demonstrate. And as we whisked the whites and yolks, and added the sugar, and the beer and liquor and spices, I felt we were enjoying each other’s company. She spluttered and grimaced through her first sips of the beverage, but downed it remarkably quickly, only the alcohol dampened her somewhat and soon she was sighing and fretting and torturing herself once more. Still, I was able to find some vestige of sympathy for her inside me, much as the vision of her begging Din for humiliation started to mock my brain again and antagonise my affection for him.

  ‘Oh, but Jossie must love me still, Dora!’ she lamented, as she played with her empty, frothy glass. ‘And I love him!’

  Yes, you may love him, I wanted to say, but you love him as you loved that spear, with Din holding it, as a victim lov
es a villain. And he, he loves you like that too, only in reverse. He loves you as the British Empire loves its conquests, and look what happens when they react, revolt, retreat, I wanted to say. Look at the Fenians; look at the Sepoys. That’s how much he loves you.

  And then I had to wonder: is that how I felt about Din?

  ‘What will he think? Look at me! I have been reduced to living in the – the – slums!’

  ‘I think you’ll find,’ I said, hoping that words would obliterate the image of the spear and her white, exposed breastbone, and my own peculiar yearnings for the man, ‘that this is the more respectable part of Lambeth.’ Peter would be turning in his grave at her words. The grave, I suddenly realised, that this woman had paid for.

  ‘And in such close proximity to whores!’ she shuddered.

  ‘There are no prostitutes in Ivy-street, Lady Knightley,’ I said pawkily.

  ‘Oh, hark at you, Dora,’ she snorted. ‘Jocelyn will be horrified when he hears I had to resort to coming here. Look at you in your dull gown! Have you nothing cheerier to wear? What about that black dress we gave you? You depress me.’

  I thought of the brown silk dress that lay upstairs in the box-room, and my absurd charade when I first put it on, how it had made me feel such a lady. My cheeks burned with my own contempt at myself.

  ‘Sylvia,’ I said quietly. ‘We have had a pleasant evening. I beg you not to spoil it.’ And so she sunk into her own thoughts once more, and I into mine, but there were too many with Din’s name on inside me, so I returned to the bindery to work.

  Din stayed later these days, as if he knew I needed the company, what with Jack’s absence and Sylvia’s presence. Accustomed to his banishment from the house to avoid contact with Peter, Din still never came beyond the heavy wooden door into the house, so he and Sylvia never crossed paths again, but he was my solace and escape when I slipped into the bindery to leave her behind. Our days were marked by periods of intense chatter, and stretches of silence which seemed easy enough for him, but which for me were raging arguments between my heart and my head.