The Journal of Dora Damage Read Free Page A

drizzle. She lived round the
     corner from us, in the house two along from the workshop. Her empire only extended to the top ends of these two streets, where
     she could keep at bay the seedier folk that so troubled her sense of decorum, namely Fenians, Italians and Jews. On our side
     of the road was a terrace of fifteen houses, like a long line of dirty red siblings with the same narrow faces and familial
     features. Each had three floors with two rooms on each floor, one front and one back, plus a basement, except for ours, the
     first – or fifteenth – house, number two, Ivy-street, which had no basement but two small cellars, too small to use for anything
     other than storing coal and mixing paste. But the house did have an extra room off the ground floor where two roads met (and
     where a public-house should have been, were it not for a hiccup of town planning), and it was this room that became the binding
     workshop. So far, the neighbours had not complained about our industry, even though we could hear them plain as pewter through
     the damp walls.
    I smiled at Nora Negley opposite at number one, with her saggy-dugged goat that always strolled into the parlour just when
     you were sat there having a cup of tea, and the widow Patience Bishop at number three who never liked visitors, or tea. Agatha
     Marrow was leading her donkey-cart up the road to number sixteen; I could see she had a new maid from the poorhouse to help
     her, for the last one was carried off by an ague even as she was stoking the range not long back.
    ‘Marnin’, Dara dearie.’
    ‘Morning, Agatha.’
    ‘Wet in’t it?’
    ‘Wet it is.’
    ‘It is wet, oh, in’t it wet?’
    When times were better I used to give her our laundry, for although her children were the dirtiest in the street, it was a
     miracle the way the sheets came back from her without a speck of soot on them. But when I did it, no matter where I hung them,
     inside or out, the smuts and blacks from my hearth, or of the hearths of the city, would get to them some way.
    I closed the door just as Peter re-entered from the house, somewhat sheepishly.
    ‘I – er – I was looking for the unguent,’ he murmured. ‘It’s gone from the pot on the dresser.’ He started hunting for his
     spectacles, fists curled by his sides.
    ‘It is gone, yes,’ I said, equally quietly, with only the slightest raise of my eyebrow, not so as he could chide me for any
     impertinence, for he had dismissed it as quackery when I made it the previous winter, but that hadn’t been such a wet one
     as this.
    Eventually he found his spectacles lying on the binding primer. He picked them up carefully, but his hideous fingers were
     a sorry sight; it was like he was raising his glasses to his face with two cow’s udders. I thought of suggesting a butter
     rub, but I held my tongue, for I already knew that the pennies in the tea caddy would not last the week, and Peter would scold
     me if there was no butter for his toast. We settled again into a grim, clammy silence; the only sounds were the puttering
     and hissing of the rain in the gutters and the gas in the pipes, whispering to us of the mysteries of the city, as if our
     very fates were bound into it, and which we could not hope to comprehend.
    At two o’clock as usual I carried Lucinda back into the house, her legs wrapped around my waist, and she folded her head into
     my neck. Her smooth blonde hair fell about my shoulders like a pelerine of gold lace on a gentlewoman; indeed, I was all the
     finer for Lucinda. I was glad to leave the workshop and get on with the household chores while she rested, for I could smell
     the trouble, and I did not want her to have an attack.
    The first time Lucinda had a fit she was but three days old. I still had no milk at the time, for it took a few days to rise
     into the breast, and in her fury and hunger she cried out sharply before convulsing, all twitches and purple. ‘Hush, you angry
     thing,’ I