The Journal of Dora Damage Page 4

  I trusted that tomorrow he would return with good news, and that I would not need to trouble him with women’s worries, such as the price of groceries, or the state of my pans, or that Mrs Eeles had paid yet another visit just after the rag-and-bone man had left. Besides, I had long struggled to cultivate the air of resourcefulness and industry, cheerfulness and forbearance – I had even taken to serving Peter’s bread cold and not quite fresh, to make the butter go further – and I did not want him ever to wonder if his poverty was due to my poor husbandry.

  But when he did not return the next day, or night either, I started to think. I traced my hands over everything in the two bedrooms to see what we could lose – we kept the inferior stuff up here, as Peter wanted our social rooms to present our best face to the world. I collected a jug from the washstand in Lucinda’s room, a soap-dish from our room, and one of the two toilet cans. We could not spare the chamber-pots, or the tin hip-bath, but I scanned the medical provisions with which we had tried and failed to keep Peter’s rheumatism at bay – bandages, flannels, bloodletting ribbon, scissors, lint, spoons – and tucked the empty apothecary’s bottles into the jug to give to the rag-and-bone man. But the rooms were bare enough already; there were no pictures to remove from the walls, no rugs of any worth. I knew, as I went downstairs with my haul, that I was choosing to ignore my parents’ suitcase that hid in the box-room. I could scarcely remember what it contained, but, apart from the bracelet made of my mother’s hair that I kept round my wrist, it was all I had left of them.

  But sentiment did not entirely override practicality; I came upstairs again and went to the ottoman at the foot of our bed, and took out the yards of black crêpe. It was the veil that I had worn every day for the six months after my parents died, and it had since lain there for nearly five years. It had gone stiff, coarse and crackly, as if it had rusted all over, as crêpe is wont to do. I took it downstairs, and Lucinda helped me spread it out and inch it slowly over the steam coming off the kettle, and then we sprinkled it all over with alcohol, rolled it up in The Illustrated London News, and laid it by the hearth to dry. The next morning, when still there was no Peter, we unrolled it, aired it by the fire, and carried it out into the street.

  We knocked on Mrs Eeles’s door. She opened it cautiously, as if to check we weren’t foxes coming to raid her hen house. ‘You’ve just caught me. Come in, dearies.’

  Without her mourning cloak she was formidable: she was wearing a shabby old black lace ball-dress, with sizeable frayed ribbons that picked her hems up in dramatic loops, under which splayed out sections of black gauze petticoats. On her nose were pince-nez eye-glasses, and on her fingers a selection of jet rings.

  ‘Oh my, oh my, what is that you are carrying? Is that really? Could it be? May I have a look?’

  We laid the veil out on the faded flowers of her couch. The room was surprisingly colourful for one preoccupied with mortality: the antimacassars were white, with a lavender lace edging; the rug had a deep blue pile, and every surface was covered in knick-knacks and figurines: two prancing china ponies; a trio of crystal owls; a miniature violin; a collection of thimbles; a selection of old silver tea-spoons with bone handles; a stack of prayer-books. There was also a chessboard, laid out ready for battle, which, along with a large number of framed photographs, was the only source of black in the room.

  ‘What have you brought me, dearie?’ Mrs Eeles asked.

  ‘Finest crêpe, and I bought it new, too. Only wore it for six months. I was hoping – I was wondering – if this would be of interest to you.’

  ‘Only one mourning?’

  ‘Two actually. Overlapping.’ I paused. I had presumed that the less wear the better; it had not occurred to me that successive grievings might have a cumulative effect, that sensations might linger and, indeed, one day, provide some sort of thrill. ‘My parents, you know,’ I added.

  ‘Oh, you poor little darling. Bless your sweet orphan soul.’

  ‘Would you – would you – consider taking this in lieu of rent?’ I asked.

  She fingered the crêpe thoughtfully, then bent her head down to it, and sniffed it noisily. ‘Two months, I’ll give you for it.’

  I was so stunned it did not even occur to me to negotiate. ‘Oh, thank you! Two months, yes, why, thank you, Mrs Eeles!’

  I was still reeling when I heard Lucinda say sweetly, ‘Oh, look, Mama, she’s sleeping!’ The photographs on a round side-table on the other side of the room had caught Lucinda’s attention, but I was distracted, as I was wondering if it were too late to insist on three months. I twiddled my mother’s hair-bracelet by way of an apology to her: I could never trade this, but would that Mrs Eeles were a pawn-shop, for I might even have got half a crown for it, and the prospect of redeeming it later.

  ‘And this one, look, he’s sleeping too!’

  ‘Aye, sleeping cherubs, all of ‘em. Look lovely, don’t they? Especially seeing as they’re gorn! Ye’d never know, would ye?’

  ‘Gone?’ Lucinda asked.

  ‘Dead!’ Mrs Eeles replied. ‘Well, have they done your portrait yet?’

  Lucinda shook her head.

  ‘Of course not. Your mammy won’t go to that expense until you’re twelve or so, stands to reason. But if you passed over before then, she would want a record of you, you’d hope, wouldn’t she?’

  ‘Mrs Eeles!’

  ‘Are they your children?’ Lucinda continued.

  ‘Lucinda!’ I exclaimed. ‘That’s quite enough!’ But, truth be told, it was Mrs Eeles I wanted to scold.

  ‘No, dearie. Never had the luck. They’re from my poor dear sister, and some cousins, and some more distant relatives, and a few tenants. All of them my acquaintance, mind. I knew of all of them, by letter or by conversation, otherwise it wouldn’t be quite proper, would it now? Look at this one. Blew up on a steamship while her mother was waving him off with a spotted hankie. You should never use a spotted one, brings bad luck.’

  ‘We really will be off now, Mrs Eeles. Thank you, indeed, thank you. Come along now, Lucinda.’ I pulled open her front door, and from the top of her doorstep, I noticed she had a fine view directly on to the platform of the Necropolitan Railway, and into the waiting room for the Anglicans, though not the inferior one reserved for Non-Conformists.

  ‘Right-ho, dearies. Thanks for popping by. You’re welcome any time, you know. Lovely veil; what a treasure you are. I always knew you were sound, you Damages.’

  And so we returned home, and still Peter did not return, and I troubled and feared for his safety. That evening I was starting to know the torture of a mother who cannot feed her own child, as I presented a plate of stale bread and cheese-rinds to Lucinda, who ate them as quickly as if they were apple fritters and custard, and I could only watch her in my emptiness, having peeled the crust off the loaf for myself sixteen hours before. I pretended to her that I was not hungry, that I had an ache in my gut, and that I had a few halfpennies to buy us something better in the morning.

  As I put her to bed that night, a distant train left Waterloo station.

  ‘Mama,’ she said, in that same ponderous tone of voice that heralded the inscrutable question.

  ‘What is it, darling?’

  ‘A train has just gone past!’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Mama?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Is it a dead train?’

  ‘Darling, go to sleep.’

  ‘Is it a dead train, mama?’

  I sighed. ‘No, darling. The dead trains don’t go at night.’

  ‘But Mama, what if it was a special one, just for tonight?’

  ‘I don’t think that would happen.’

  ‘It might do if lots of people died at the same time.’

  ‘Well, yes, it might, but that hasn’t happened today.’

  ‘But what if it was a train without a ghost in it?’

  ‘None of the trains have ghosts in them.’

  ‘Just dead people.’

  ‘Yes,
and some living ones too. Now you be quiet and . . .’

  ‘But Mama, what if the dead train left the station with the dead body in it, and all the living ones, and the death men, but the spirit got left on the platform?’

  ‘Lucinda love, don’t you be worrying yourself about scary things like that.’

  ‘But Mama, what if that happened?’

  I placed my hand on her chest. ‘Hmm, well, now, that would be a tricky one. Let’s think. Why would a spirit want to be left behind? Wouldn’t it prefer to stay with its body until it got buried, and then it could go to heaven?’

  ‘But Mama, maybe it doesn’t like trains. Maybe it thinks trains go too fast.’

  ‘But why would it be worried about that?’ It would already be dead, I wanted to add, so it wouldn’t fear dying, but I thought that might be an explanation too far.

  ‘Mama, do ghosts have to get tickets, or just their bodies?’

  ‘I think just their bodies, but the living people have to buy their tickets for them.’

  ‘So, what if the ghost couldn’t get its ticket? It wouldn’t be allowed on the train!’

  ‘No. But I don’t think . . .’

  ‘And Mama, what if the spirit couldn’t get on the train, and it didn’t know where the train was going, so it couldn’t follow it, and what if it came into my room through my window?’

  ‘Now why would it want to do that?’

  ‘Because it’s nice in here and it might want cheering up, if it’s just died and lost its family and that.’

  ‘But I don’t think that’s going to happen.’

  ‘But it might. And what if it does? Mama, will you come in here at once and show it the way out?’

  ‘At once. I will ask it which wall it came in through, and I will send it back that way, with a map to the cemetery at the end of the line. And now, my love, you must sleep.’ I kissed her again, and heard her whisper, ‘Good night, Mama,’ and I tiptoed out of her room.

  The following morning, when there was still no sign of Peter, Lucinda and I went out again. The toes of our boots went in and out of our skirts like pistons, as we scuttled across the wet cobblestones, hunched and downcast against the rain. First we took stuff to Huggitty the hawker to sell. He was the type of dealer who supplied whatever he could get his hands on, and I had bought the piano from him a few pennies at a time. In our courting days, Peter would surprise me with the latest sheet-music, which he had bound up especially for me, and he would say that only lower-class parlours did not have a piano. Out of concern for his dignity, and for Lucinda’s pleasure, I endeavoured to keep it. Instead we took to Huggitty the spoils from the bedroom, a découpaged umbrella stand, the embroidered antimacassars, the black marble mantel clock, and one of my two nice dresses. I even presented him with a description of the contents of the bookbinding workshop, but although Huggitty was cruel and unscrupulous, and told me I was ‘a proper jewel’, even if I were to have found a hawker with more scruples, I knew that the antiquated frames, tools and presses were worth nothing, not since booksellers expected one to have guillotines and sewing machines and whatnot nowadays.

  We left Huggity’s and steeled ourselves against the smells coming from the bakery next door, with the consolation that we knew he cut his flour worse than any of the bakers in Lambeth. And then through the drizzle to our next port of call – toes going in and out under our hems – which was the butcher’s, Sam Battye. He let me put a sign in his window, advertising my services as a piano teacher, as I could not afford the rates of the Lambeth Local Gazette.

  In and out, in and out, and I would watch our toes as if they were the only things I could depend on in life, although occasionally I would lift my head, and flick my eyes around for signs of Peter amongst the crowds, down the alley-ways, or slumped in door-ways. In and out in and out, a regular beat to counteract the gnawing of our stomachs and the fretting of the endless rain. I tried to distract myself by wondering what it must feel like to have one of those crinolines holding my skirts out, so nothing would be brushing past my legs. I shouldn’t like that, I remember thinking, for my legs would have been colder than they already were. I’ll keep my horsehair petticoat, I thought. Then I realised that I could indeed keep my horsehair petticoat, even if I had one of those crinolines, and wear it underneath to keep me warm, and it would have soaked up the splashes from the puddles, and no one would ever have known.

  And finally all that remained for us was to head to the sign of the three golden balls and into the dingy interior of the pawn-shop, next to the gin-shop (as they always were), where we huddled in a cubicle and waited our turn to be served.

  ‘You gave me eight bob for the gown last Friday! What d’ya mean only seven today? You know I’ll be back Monday, I’m good as gold I am. What’s it to ya?’

  And we saw the broker shaking his head, and mouthing ‘seven’ to the woman with no hair and a black eye.

  ‘But what about our Sunday dinner? Think of that! Or are you not a godly man?’

  And then in lurched a man with a mouth full of broken teeth, who put two pairs of tiny little shoes on the counter, pocketed two shillings, and lumbered out again and into the gin-shop next door. Then in came another one, who took off his coat, his belt, and the very boots he was standing in, and watched as they were wrapped into a bundle and ticketed, and I could not help but stare as he hobbled away, his toes poking through the ends of his threadbare socks, holding up his trousers with one hand, and clutching his pennies in the other, and into the gin-shop he went too.

  ‘He forgot to give me his handkerchief,’ the broker said as he came to serve us. ‘He’ll be back later.’ I shuddered to think what else he might be offered: the man no doubt would prefer to go home naked but with a bellyful of beer, if only the pawnbroker would accept his smalls and all.

  ‘What we got ’ere then?’ He whistled through the gap in his teeth as I laid out two solid-silver spoons boxed in red velvet, a silver-plated vase, a pair of pearl earrings, and a small, inlaid walnut music-box. He bit the pearls with his teeth, fingered the spoons and held them to the light, brought out a magnifying glass to the hallmarks, and checked the mechanism of the music-box.

  ‘Ten shillings,’ he said.

  I gasped. ‘For these? They’re worth far more! I need at least a pound!’

  He was unaffected by my outburst; he continued to look at the counter, for whatever I was saying, he’d heard it all before. ‘The less you get, the less it costs you to get them back,’ he said philosophically.

  And so I pocketed ten shillings, which was better than nothing, and indeed my purse so chinked with coins that I pulled Lucinda into the better sort of baker’s-shop and told her to choose whatever she fancied. She picked an apricot slice and a doughnut. I bought nothing for myself, but licked the sugar off my fingers once I’d handed her the sweets. I tried to fathom the extent of our debts, so I might know how much I dared spend on tonight’s meal, but I feared the plumb line of my mind might fall short of the true depths of our penury. In and out more slowly now our toes went over the cobbles, dodging the dung and the rotten fruit as we rounded the corner past the Royal Victorian Theatre and into New Cut. I eyed the knife-grinders and tinkers, and the gypsy chair-menders sitting on their wicker-bundles in the rain like roosting fowl, and I wondered at their ability to forge a living out of nothing, and whether it would come to that for me. We picked our way amongst the stalls of shoddy clothes, shoes and hardware, solicited the kindest-looking costermongers, and picked up some stewed eels, a pound of potatoes, half a dozen eggs, some butter and the like.

  We returned home with our victuals, which Lucinda unpacked while I set about scraping the empty coal cellar for something to rekindle the fire. But straightways there was a knock at the door, and whoever was there did not wait for me to come and open it, for the door snapped into the room and nearly caught me in the face, and a tall man with grey sunken eyes and a bristly chin set himself to pacing round the parlour sniffing at my furniture like a rangy do
g looking for somewhere to spray.

  ‘Mrs Damage? Weally, a pleasure. It’s you who’ll be owin’ us, then. Wo’ you got?’

  ‘I beg your pardon? Who are you?’

  ‘Now I be beggin’ yewer pardon. Skinner’s the name.’

  ‘Mr Skinner.’ I had heard that name before, but I could not remember where. ‘And you are?’

  ‘Acquain’ance of yer ’usband’s. We’ve been, ah, workin’ togevver, of sorts. ’E owes me. So you owe me nah.’

  ‘Why? What’s happened to him?’

  ‘I’ll let ’im tell ya that. But if ya want ’im back you gotta pay up. So I say agin, wo’ ya got?’ And then I remembered. Skinner was the most feared money-lender south of the river.

  ‘Have you kidnapped him?’

  ‘Naaa-ow. Dahn’t be so silly.’

  ‘I’m not paying you a penny until I speak to Peter.’

  ‘So ya got some, then?’

  ‘I’m not saying that.’

  ‘Well, you better ‘ad. Cos I can waise a bill o’ sale on this place tomowwa,’ he sneered, ‘but fwom what I can see, there ain’t enough tat in ’ere to make it worth the auctioneer’s fees.’

  ‘What does he owe?’

  ‘Fifty pahnd plus sixty per cent in’rest.’

  ‘Fifty! And sixty! He would never have signed to those terms! Why, he could have got a bank loan at seven per cent!’

  ‘It’s all here, in ’is own ’and. Wanna wead it?’

  ‘No, I do not. I shall take you to the magistrate.’ I started towards my shawl, gliding cautiously so that the coins in the purse at my waist would make not a chink and betray their presence.

  ‘Aa-aww, is that how you treat a chawitable man?’

  ‘Charitable! Why, you, you bully! You’re nothing but a crook, and a brute!’ I wrapped my shawl around my shoulders.