The Journal of Dora Damage (38 page)
‘You don’t want revenge?’ I was starting to shiver with cold.
Din fell silent for the first time.
‘A little bit of revenge, maybe?’ I goaded. His lips moved up and down together, his chin twitched. And then I froze. ‘No.
Is that what – this – is all about?’
‘What?’
‘You and me?’
‘Oh, Dora, Dora no.’
I sat up and disentangled myself from him. ‘Yes! Yes! You horrible man! Go! Get away from me!’ I seized my chemise and held
it over my nakedness.
‘Dora, listen! Way back, back in the homestead, the men used to talk ’bout white women in a way that made my ears burn. And
I’m ashamed to say, I joined in, more than most at times.’ He took my hands in his, the chemise still bundled between us.
‘I don’t want to hear it! You, you violator! How could you? I want to spit on you!’ Actually, I wanted to vomit, and gouge
his eyes out at the same time. ‘Was it good, your triumph, your revenge, hmm? Oh!’ I shook out my chemise and climbed into
it, then searched for my dress.
‘Dora, Dora, hush. Do me some justice. Let me finish. What we have just done is nothing to do with triumph, or revenge. I
am not those men, I am not the man I was back in the homestead, and I am not the men in your books, either. I have seen –
I have seen countless livin’ bodies, bodies of my friends, semi-strangled, their backs laid open, every limb mutilated, with
veins drainin’ and arteries pumpin’ out into the soil, and thrashed to within an inch of their life, beyond the point at which
every onlooker is beggin’ for their spirit to give up the fight and take their freedom. Yet their soul chooses to stay, and
their body comes back with it. Life is tenacious, and it is a wonder. The soul loves the body; and if you love one, you cannot
help but love the other. I will kill a man who has killed those I love, black or white; but I will
not harm
any one of any colour
just because they are of his colour! Do you hear me, Dora?’
I stepped into his arms, my dress still unbuttoned behind.
‘Do you
hear
me Dora?’
‘Yes.’ I believed him, and he was right. There was nothing of transgression or power in our afternoon of bliss. On the contrary,
it was a time of healing and forgiveness. In the gloom, we glowed; our union had only made us more beautiful.
‘
Odi et amo
.’ He turned me round and started to do up my buttons.
‘I hate and I love?’ I asked.
‘ I hate and I love: why I do so you may well ask. I do not know, but I feel it happen and am in agony. ’
‘Ovid?’
‘Catullus. Why make love, Dora, if it is not in the spirit of love?’ He sat me down again next to him on the floor. He was
still naked. ‘Our congress is the most precious thing we have; I will never, ever, confuse it with hatred. You’re tremblin’,
Dora. I am sorry.’
‘No,
I’m
sorry. I don’t know what we’ve done here today, but it scares me. I feel I know you so well, and yet I don’t understand you
at all. Two human beings met here today, not just a white woman and a black man. You happen to be black and I happen to be
white.’
‘An’ you happen to be in mourning for your husband,’ Din said, and kissed me on the tip of my nose. ‘An’ I
am
a black man, Dora, and it defines me more than your skin will ever define you. I am black, an’ I must fight for its recognition
an’ acceptance, an’ for the freedom of my country.’
‘But this is what I do not understand. It is not
your
country. You were taken there, or at least your forefathers were.’
‘It’s the land o’ my birth.’ He rolled onto his back, and stretched his arms above his head. I wanted to kiss his armpits,
to stretch myself like a cat along the length of him. I loved his nakedness. I was no longer afraid of his body, only of the
rules that surrounded me.
‘So?’ I answered. ‘It does not have to be the land of your life! You are free here. Would you stay with a mother who tortured
you? You would leave, and find someone else to love you. Why stay with your motherland, when all she can do is abuse you?’
‘I am bound by my past, an’ the past of my race.’
‘You have a responsibility to your future, and the future of your race.’
‘Who are still in captivity in the land of my birth. Tell me, Dora, the opposite of slavery?’
‘Freedom.’
‘Is it? Could be. Or is it mastery? Self-mastery, I mean. Or are they one and the same?’
Self-mastery. I thought about the books of our lives, the choice presented to our souls at birth by St Bartholomew. Freedom
has its responsibilities; we are bound to write our books well.
And then we heard the noises in the sitting room, and it was more of a commotion than Pansy and the children would ever have
made simply by returning from a puppet-show. I laid a finger on Din’s lips, and he clasped it and kissed it, before seizing
his clothes and dressing quickly. I watched as he went over to the bindery door, raised his hand, and fled into the night
with the silence of snow, on which we had to leave not a trace.
I turned the key quietly behind him, then I unlocked the door into the house, and slipped back inside my life. I rubbed my
eyes, rearranged my hair and dress, and apologised for falling asleep in the workshop.
Sylvia was slumped over to one side in the armchair; Nathaniel lay loosely in her arms, busily sucking at her breast. Her
dress was undone at the back, and was crushed and creased below her arms, and the top of her corset jutted up and under her
breasts, pinching the skin, her flesh rubbed raw around it.
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.
Hickety, pickety, my black hen,
She lays eggs for gentlemen;
Gentlemen come every day
To see what my
black hen doth lay.
W
e 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 then 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.