The Journal of Dora Damage Read Free Page B

admonished, and, as if to punish me for my harsh words, her body flicked itself violently out of my hands, and almost
     into the fire. Her tiny tongue lolled from her mouth and only the whites of her eyes were visible, and she writhed and thrust
     herself close to the ashes, as if the devil himself were inside her and wanted to return to the inferno whence he came. I
     seized her and held her close, then laid her down on the chair and pressed my body against hers as her little fists and feet
     pummelled and thrashed my tender belly, until she lay still again.
    I was frightened; I even called for the doctor, who told me she was having a teething fit, and gave her castor-oil, and told
     me to submerge her up to her neck in hot water the next time she fitted. But when the convulsions persisted beyond her full
     mouth of teeth I did not call the doctor again, for there was a fear greater than that from which I knew my daughter was suffering.
     I had grown to understand that my daughter was afflicted by the same disorder that ruined my grandfather’s chances of a reasonable
     existence, and which saw him incarcerated in an asylum at the age of twenty-four.
    I went to visit him once – old Georgie Tanner – with my mother when I was only five, just like Lucinda. I remember an old
     man more vividly than my grandfather, an old man crouching by his bed, tugging at his sheets, hissing, ‘Your majesty!’ at
     him. ‘Your majesty. Can’t be? Is’t thou?’ When we approached, he stood up with the sheets wrapped round his loins, the bones
     of his chest protruding out of his nightshirt, and pointed at my grandfather. ‘Ladies of the court! His Majesty King George
     the Third!’ He pulled a chair up for my mother, then turned to me, and clasped my hand to his chest. ‘But mark you,’ he whispered,
     nodding conspiratorially, ‘it is my army that shall lead the rebellion, and then I shall rule the world!’
    And when I looked around me to establish the whereabouts of the rest of his army, I caught the eye of another man, lying in
     his bed, who turned his face towards me and said, with a mouth as dry as skin, ‘No food since 1712.’
    It is possible that a five-year-old is better equipped than an adult when it comes to coping with such displays of mental
     peculiarity. That is not to say that insanity always turns an old fellow back into a child, but that children are of necessity
     constantly dancing in and out of the shadows of reason, and better at accepting displays of lunacy. Certainly my mother was
     more discomfited by the experience than I was, and had I not taken her as my example of how best to react in the circumstances,
     my sole memory of my grandfather would, doubtless, be a more pleasant one. Instead, I remember old Georgie Tanner more as
     she saw him: a cause for grief, smelling sour, lying inert, his rheumy eyes directed at the ceiling, and his mouth sore and
     dripping from the latest chemical solution intended to control his seizures.
    He wasn’t mad, even a five-year-old could tell that. He was just unlucky, for men don’t often get locked up, not for madness,
     even though there are more mad men than women. Madness is a female word. ‘It’s a madness’ they say, like it’s a governess,
     or a seamstress, or a murderess. There’s no male equivalent, no such word as ‘madner’. I should start saying it, but then
     they might lock me up. Peter took me to see Hamlet at the Royal in our courting days, and when I saw Ophelia, I knew she wasn’t mad. I wanted to cry out that madness isn’t this
     pretty, with flowers entwined in her hair and ivy between her toes. It was Hamlet who was mad, carrying on to himself like
     that, and Claudius too, but who’s brave enough to lock up a king and a prince? I wanted to tell the whole theatre, but they
     would have told me I was stirred by the heat, and that the gas-lights were hurting my head, which they probably were.
    Lucinda wasn’t mad either, but with