The Journal of Dora Damage

by Belinda Starling

  Pansy and Lucinda were standing watching her.

  ‘May I go now, mum? I was gonna stay, to help out with Lady Knigh’ley, but seein’ as you’re ’ere . . .’

  ‘Yes, Pansy, you may go. Thank you, love.’

  Lucinda went into the kitchen and brought Sylvia a glass of water. Sylvia raised her head and looked, bewildered, at it, before taking it and drinking it down in one gulp. ‘Thank you, sweet,’ she said quietly, and patted Lucinda’s shoulder. Lucinda leant on the armchair, half-kneeling, watching Sylvia nurse Nathaniel, and waiting to be of assistance.

  I went upstairs and pulled a couple of clean handkerchiefs out of the linen press. I brought them back downstairs, and handed one to Sylvia. She took it, but crumpled it into a ball in her fist. I pulled up a chair next to her and waited for her to talk.

  ‘I’m not going to cry,’ she said solemnly. ‘I am going to be like you Dora. Besides, I am too tired to cry.’

  ‘Was Jocelyn at home?’

  ‘No. But Buncie let me in. Despite strict instructions to the contrary from “my master”. Her master! I told her she had no master, that I was her mistress, and that I would be coming home, and she bobbed and said her by-your-leaves, but that her employer was Sir Jocelyn and – well – you understand. She let me in, which was, I presume, beyond the call of duty. I will not get her sacked for it, at least. I went first to my morning-room, and it was bare. Stripped bare, save a few meagre furnishings that I never liked. As was the nursery. No berceaunette, no lace, no rocking chair, no toys. And my bedroom. He had packed my possessions into boxes. “Will you send someone for them, ma’am?” Buncie asked me. “How can I?” I replied. “I have no one to send. You must work on Sir Jocelyn to find it somewhere in his heart to despatch them to me.” I gave her your address. Dora, he has removed all trace of me and the baby from the building. To add insult to injury, he is using the nursery as a packing room, to organise his expedition equipment, for he is leaving for the Zambezi. This has not been planned; he gave me no indication of this throughout my confinement. It takes months to plan these trips, months.’

  ‘Will he divorce you?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, Dora, you’re so modern! Don’t be ridiculous!’

  ‘Well, he could. He only needs to claim adultery.’

  ‘So what if he does? He will keep my entire fortune. He brought not a penny into our marriage. Who can say what will be the caprices of his goodwill? He could give me something, or nothing at all. I don’t even have enough to arrange for the return of my possessions. They all belong to him now. Buncie treated me like a madwoman. He’s told them all that I’m insane. She thought I had gone to an institution. Apparently he had told all my friends, and all his colleagues, that the baby was unnaturally formed, that I went mad because of it, that I’m in an institution. That’s why they all turned me away before I had to come to you.’

  ‘So he clearly doesn’t want to divorce you,’ I said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘A divorce cannot be granted if the wife is insane.’

  ‘Are you trying to cheer me up? Because it’s not helping.’ She sniffed, and blew her nose on the handkerchief. ‘Dora, it was as if I had never lived in that house. There was no sign of me at all. It belongs now to a bachelor, and is dedicated exclusively to the higher realms of science and anthropological study. And his books.’

  Which hardly belong to those realms at all, I wanted to add.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Hickety, pickety, my black hen,

  She lays eggs for gentlemen;

  Gentlemen come every day

  To see what my

  black hen doth lay.

  We came together whenever we could over the next five days. Some mornings we would make a valiant attempt at work before succumbing to the inevitable; others we would be kissing and disrobing as I was turning the key in the lock behind him.

  I learnt more over those five days about the inner workings of our hearts and bodies than I had done in over a year of binding erotic texts; I learnt things on which the books could not inform or instruct, written as they were solely to arose and shock. I learnt that my lover would start soft and vulnerable in my fingers, yet within seconds he would grow and strain against my grip as if outraged at the constraints of my fingers. I learnt of the parts between the parts, the soft rims of the body at the meeting points of the more obvious sensory places: by which I mean the skin above the inner thigh at the top of the leg, before flesh spills and splits, soft and dewy like that between the back of the ear and the hairline, or the front of the earlobe and the whiskers, the crease under the breasts, the crack at the base of the spine. I learnt that it is possible to relax and tense one’s muscles simultaneously. I learnt, as my lover surged with delight at a tongue deep in his ear and elsewhere, that it is not only women who like to be penetrated. I learnt that a man’s bag of jewels is not fixed, but empties and fills, is carried high and drops low, according to my caresses and the body’s secrets. I learnt that there is always one more part of the body for the tongue to probe, for the fingers to engage. I learnt that mouths that start off dry with nerves and anticipation soon overflow with juice, just like the nether orifices: an abundance of drinks. I learnt that my lover’s eyes deceived, for when he was close to his limit it was as if he had moved away from the windows of his face into his inmost self, yet it was at such times that he was closer to me in spirit than ever. I learnt that pleasure is not only a final flourish of spending, but also a slow ooze throughout the course of our union, that sticks where it touches and weaves long, shining threads between my thigh, my navel, my breasts, like a spider’s web of love.

  And I learnt to keep my eyes open – why were they always closed in the books? – whether I was up close to his skin or beholding him half a body’s length away. For I learnt that it is not just the men who like to look, as I sat myself up on my elbows or twisted myself round, the better to observe my lover’s attentions. But I learnt too that men have the better view, as Din pulled himself up and back, hands on my hips to control the movements, and watch and smile, then look back into my eyes as if he could transfer the image to me that way. And he would place a candle between my thighs, and gaze and gaze and smile, and I learnt at last what my best angle was.

  But the books never told me either that the more we did this, the greater would grow the urge to tell him that I loved him, and I wondered if that urge grew in him too, but somehow I doubted it. It was always the men, in the books, who said it first, and always beforehand, to convince their unwilling victims into the act, and never afterwards. I may have defied the books in many ways, but I knew I would not, could not, say it first.

  Sylvia needed me every evening of those five days, which was just as well, for it was after hours, in the aftermath, that I found it hard to reconcile the shame prickling over my skin with the impetus to dance and run riot with fulfilled desire. I would sit in the tin-bath and pour icy water over my guilty, spent flesh, but I was torn: I wanted to rid myself of all traces of him, as much as I wanted to smell of him for longer.

  The sixth day was Sunday, so the bindery was closed. But on the seventh, he did not come back to work.

  I sat in the empty room, ennerved first by anticipation, and then by confusion, anger, and at times, relief, over the next few hours. I held myself tight in the waiting, as if any sudden movement would shatter the tentative and fragile bowl containing these new sensations, and disperse their memory for ever. I tried tidying as I waited for him, as if I could impose order on what had so recently been a temple of pleasure, or a boudoir of vice, I was still not sure which.

  Presently I wandered into the kitchen, where Pansy was sorting the washing, and we heard noises in the parlour. Sylvia had opened up the dining-table with the spare leaf, and was trying to move it over to the window.

  ‘I’m going to change the piano with the bookshelf, too. And do you like the scarves I’ve draped everywhere? I think it gives the room a certain freshness, don’t you think,
Dora?’

  I shrugged, as I watched her struggle with the table.

  ‘Aren’t you going to help? Are you just going to stand there? If you will not help me, I will help myself.’

  So I came over to the table, but as I placed my hands on the edge she gave it one almighty shove, with the full weight of her anger behind it, and it screeched towards the corner.

  ‘You see, I don’t need your help at all.’

  And so I retreated once more into the bindery, and tried to busy myself with work. I knew I had not made much headway on the crates that arrived after Peter’s death, what with Jack being gone. I pulled out a stack of manuscripts, but I did not want to disband them and rig up the sewing-frame. I could not shake Din out of my head that way. I would have to ask Pansy to take over the sewing, in Din’s absence. I fiddled around on a piece of paper with a few designs, and willed the day to go quicker, and passed it as in a fog.

  My yearning for Din was as intense as Peter’s had been for laudanum. The pain of not-having transcended the immediate satiation demanded by those lustful Turks. It brought with it its own thrill, which gratified me in the face of the strutting women of Lambeth, the respectable old women of Ivy-street. How free were they all, really? And what of Knightley, and Glidewell, and Diprose, and their lot? Libertines, were they? It felt as if Din and I were the only true Libertines in London society. The conversations we were yet to have; the parts of his body I was yet to kiss; the pouring ourselves over each other and languishing in the smells, the tastes, the heat. Dora, he said. Dora, he called across my fantasies. I cherished the way he said my name. It defies transcription. It leans on the ‘do’, and dwells on the ‘r’, richly mouthed, with a full pucker, like an Englishman would never do. Dooarra. He felt my name fully in his mouth as he spoke it. My name felt at home there, as if it were basking on the bed of his tongue, in an exciting new room. It felt safe there. Dooarra. Yes, my beloved Din.

  Oh, but I needed to distract myself with work, before I succumbed to brain-fever. There were some sewn manuscripts ready for forwarding. But we were low on leather, and I could not send Jack to the tanneries to buy some more. I would have to go myself, but some other day, for what if Din arrived just then to find me gone? I ferreted around in the drawer for scraps of velvet to appliqué on to another binding, and came across the single strip of Diprose’s special leather which I had saved. It was too late to return it, and he would never have known I had it. I had nothing better to do – everything else seemed like a superfluous nonsense at a time like this – so I thought that I might as well play. I measured the scrap with an angle, and cut it into a perfect rectangle, and then I tooled it into an elegant bookmark for my daughter.

  What next? Not the books. No sewing, still. So I tried the anagram of Diprose’s inscription. I scrutinised the grid of squares and spaces, then wrote out all the letters, first in alphabetical order, and then in random order.

  a, a, a, b, c, c, d, e, f, h, i, i, i, m, n, o, o, p, r, r, r, s, u n, c, o, a, r, b, c, s, d, u, h, i, m, a, i, o, p, e, r, i, a, r, f

  ‘Birch’ and ‘houri’, I found straight away, as well as ‘farce’, ‘hide’, ‘chief’, ‘epic’ and ‘opium’, all of which seemed very appropriate, but I did not need any four-or five-letter words: the grid demanded a word of two letters, followed by one of six, one of eight, and finally one of seven.

  Two-letter words were easy: ‘is’, ‘am’, ‘of’, ‘us’, ‘no’, ‘in’, ‘he’, ‘as’. I had thought that the tool I had used farthest to the left had been a ‘d’, but could not be sure. I had used no upper-case tools, so could not tell which letter had started the sentence that way.

  Six-letter words were: ‘mirror’, ‘riches’, ‘porous’, ‘prince’, ‘honour’, ‘heroic’, ‘french’, ‘purism’, ‘parish’ and ‘humour’.

  Seven-letter words were: ‘currish’, ‘ciphers’, ‘informs’ and ‘horrors’.

  Eight-letter words were: ‘abidance’, ‘academic’, ‘conspire’ and ‘horrific’.

  When I found ‘soir’ and ‘horreur’ I wondered if the inscription was in French; when I found ‘a priori’ and ‘primus’, I wondered if it could be in Latin.

  In short, I was none the wiser. I started to doubt my memory. Had the space been here, and not there? Had I really used ‘a’ three times, or just twice? Surely I had used ‘e’ more than once?

  I gave up.

  I pulled out my account book, which seemed a more sensible distraction, and settled down to my accounts.

  I knew we had made a substantial profit, but I had not appreciated that the total would near seventy pounds. It was enough for a guillotine, even. But I had better things to spend the money on; I would continue to oil and steel the old one. I set aside a portion to put into savings for Lucinda, extracted Din’s and Pansy’s wages, then I took out of it a month’s wages for Jack, and then I doubled it, and added another three pounds, and put it in an envelope to take to Lizzie.

  Jack, dear Jack, Jack the Skull. I stared at the place where he used to stand behind the bench each day, and felt it tingle with love, real and pure and requited and unrequited, and lust, real and dirty, and I felt a flicker of understanding, that he was no different from me and Din, that we shared our own sense of joy and shame, bliss and guilt, and the feeling that we were different from the world out there, who would never love us the way we needed to be loved. And I thought of all the other men who traipsed through here with their higher and lower desires, their nobler and baser thoughts, and I wondered if we were all one and the same.

  That evening, Sylvia sat at the newly positioned table writing a list, muttering to herself.

  ‘Valentine, first. Then I need to find Aubrey. Yes, Aubrey will know. And Theodore, of course, if he will speak to me. I could send a letter to Charles, but that may take a while. Dora, congratulate me on my plans. I will grill them all, and find all Jossie’s sins. There must be – must be – some mistress in Paris, some concubine in Africa. Where was he on his birthday last year? With some doxy in a bawdyhouse, no doubt.’

  ‘And you think they’ll tell you? The other Noble Savages?’

  ‘Of course they’ll tell me. They’ll tell me everything. They’ll tell me . . .’

  ‘What?’ I prompted.

  ‘What?’ she quizzed me vaguely.

  ‘The Savages. What will they tell you?’

  ‘What it is I need to know.’

  ‘Which is what?’

  ‘Dora! I can divorce him, if I can prove adultery in the first instance, together with bigamy, incest, or cruelty, or desertion, or rape, or sodomy. So, adultery first. Shouldn’t be hard. Incest is out, thank the Lord, and rape, and sodomy.’ I might have raised a querying eyebrow, but she did not see. ‘Bigamy is always a possibility, in those evil lands he frequents. And cruelty, hmmm.’

  ‘Desertion?’

  ‘Strictly speaking, I left him. But that’s a detail. We would still have to wait two years, though, until it counts as desertion.’

  ‘But Sylvia, what rights would these give you over your property?’

  ‘I will be able at least to inherit and bequeath; so whatever my father deigns to leave me would come to me. And anything I might earn in the future. Not that I’d actually consider working. So, cruelty. Oh curses! It doesn’t exactly look promising, does it?’

  ‘You could always claim he was right, and that you were adulterous, and then he could divorce you.’

  ‘Oh, Dora. Imagine the shame.’

  ‘Any less shameful than what you have been reduced to?’ She pondered for a while. ‘On second thoughts,’ I continued, ‘I have probably advised you ill. For if he divorces you, on grounds of adultery, he gains custody of Nathaniel.’

  ‘He would not claim it. He hates the child.’

  ‘Wouldn’t he? Not even to spite you?’

  ‘He loathes him, Dora.’

  ‘Not as much as he loathes you.’

  ‘You evil bitch! Hush your vile mouth!’

  And th
en a thought crackled painfully across my brain, and I wondered why I had not realised before. I had no reason to believe the woman, or Din, for that matter. He had intimated as much about her soirées, only I wanted to believe him when he said that he was never touched in that way. But her ladyship’s excessive protestations against Jocelyn’s accusations only aroused my suspicions, and my cheeks flushed with anger, and no, surely not, with jealousy. Might it be true that Nathaniel was not Sir Jocelyn’s child after all? Was it possible, could it be, that Nathaniel was Din’s child?

  I turned aside and caught my breath, as Sylvia scribbled beside me. Had she known him in that way? Had she possessed him? How blind I had been! How I had chosen to ignore the awful possibility! I looked at her with resentment and mistrust. I was vexed, and did not know what to do. I felt the urge to strike her.

  Had she carried his child for nine months? Had she had what was mine? Had she been there first?

  Did you molest unsuspecting black men? I wanted to shout at her. Did you ride a black cock and impregnate yourself with coloured seed? I was burning inside.

  I watched her as she wrote, this woman, who allegedly worked hard to secure the freedom of the most exploited race on earth, and yet delighted in making them her own slaves – sexual slaves – of sorts. What a perfect match she was with her contradictory Sir Jocelyn.

  And then we heard Nathaniel awaken upstairs, and start to holler.

  ‘Oh, Dora. Do go and look in on him, for I am quite weary.’

  What did you do to Din?! I wanted to scream at her. But, to save myself from any rash action, I willingly fled upstairs and picked up Nathaniel, and placed him on my shoulder. I tried to angle him in the moonlight, to see what colour his skin really was, but we are all shades of grey at night.