He waved his fork at me; a strand of egg twirled around it, splattering yolk in a circle.
‘Why women? That’s what I ask. They’re not strong enough; nay, they are not
straight
enough. Bookbinding requires a linear mind, a firm hand, a sense of direction and rectitude. They cannot apply themselves
to one task. They are used to the circular process of housework; an occupation to which there is no
end
.’ For all his curves, Peter thought in straight lines. ‘To
finish
a job is too great a burden for them. Granted, give them the lower-quality work, granted, give them magazines, if we must,
and let them headband, let them mend paper, let them sew, let them fold, and let them even hammer sometimes, but let that
be the end of it.’
And then he took another mouthful, and recommenced his talking straight after, all potato and spittle.
‘Where’s the security? Women are
meantimers
! “I’ll get married soon but I’ll work in the meantime.” If that’s not selfish, I don’t know what is. And then to work beyond
that, with a husband bringing in another wage! And then, even when they have a family! And what do they have? Children neglected
by their mother, while the upright man with a dutiful wife and mother to several children struggles to feed them all on his
solitary income!’
He swallowed hastily, and followed it down with a glass of water. Then he took another mouthful, but water seeped out at the
corners of his lips, so he turned his head to one side, lifted his right shoulder and wiped his mouth across his shirt so
he wouldn’t have to let go of his knife and fork, and continued talking.
‘Their standards are lower. They will sell shoddier work, for less. And their expectations are lower. They charge tuppence
an hour! I need a shilling! And I would not
give
away the work which they sell for tuppence! It is inferior; it is not worth any amount!’
He stabbed at another potato with his fork, but it crumbled into floury chunks around the prongs. He tried again.
‘Too many machines,’ he grumbled. ‘Machination equals
fem-in-i-cation
, but that’s not to say it adds up. I’ve promised I’ll go to the Society tomorrow to lend a hand.’
And one more failed stab led him to drop his fork, and as he struggled to pick it up again I saw him wince, and then he gave
up entirely, rubbed his joints, and stumbled into an awkward silence, and the real reason behind his rage.
For his fingers were now fatter than the cigars he used to smoke at the end of a day’s work before he took up the pipe. With
his sleeves rolled up I could see the engorgement of his wrists and arms too; I could scarcely make out the joints between
them. The urge crept over me to pierce him with a needle from my work-basket, not out of malice, but with just one prick,
it seemed, the gallons of water trapped in his tissues would come pouring out and relieve him of his suffering.
It had rained constantly from January to November. Any other bookbinder would have rejoiced, as damp keeps leather moist and
pliable. Peter certainly bemoaned the summer before, along with the rest of his trade, when I had to bring in damp towels
every hour to drape over the books. It was unusually hot then, but despite the Great Stink it was a joy for us, as Peter’s
joints were for once at ease. But this year, we had had the wettest summer – and were about to face the coldest winter – we
could remember. Peter’s rheumatism had always been troublesome and fitted him ill for his chosen trade, but in this relentlessly
damp city he had become a human sponge, and the pain was such, I knew, that he wished at times to be washed away in the daily
torrents of grey sludge, down the sewers and into the sea, for a kinder end to his life.
I brought him his pipe, and lit it for him, as he drew sharply on it, and then settled myself down with my work-basket on
the chair by the fire, and started to darn some stockings. Peter continued to sit at the table, puffing his pipe, and for
a while we listened to the soot-saturated rain hammering the roof tiles, and the carriage wheels sluicing over the cobblestones.
I pictured the men sloshing outside, heading towards the taverns to find a place around the fire where they could sit and
steam, alongside other silent, steaming men, before limping back to lodgings where there was no wife – or an insufficient
one – to look after them, no one to ensure they did not tumble in wet clothes into a damp bed. I often thanked my lucky stars
not to have married a drinker or a philanderer, but Peter would tell me it was not luck, it was his modern values, and my
reasonable house-keeping.
Then he groaned, put his pipe down and rubbed his hands. ‘Dora.’ He sighed, and I looked up. ‘It perturbs me to mention the
affairs of men’s business within these four walls, and with my wife, but I fear I can keep it from you no longer.’ When he
spoke, he talked through his nose, as if it were swollen inside too. I put down my needle, and he nodded appreciatively. ‘You
are a good wife, and you have been of no small help to us in the workshop.’ He picked his pipe up again, and winced. ‘But
we are in trouble.’ His eyes searched my face to see how I was receiving him, then dropped to his swollen hands.
I had not expected him to look so downcast. The unkempt grey strands around his crown wisped out in all directions. I decided
to let him speak further, then I would go to him and smooth his hair, and kiss his brow if he would let me. For all his aspirations,
Peter never looked polished.
‘I – I – I . . .’ The sounds of wet London grew around us, as if trying to drown out the hideous impropriety of a man about
to cry. ‘I cannot work any more.’ He pulled his chest upwards, and sucked the tears back on a sharp inhalation. His lips were
red, wet and full like a baby’s, puckering and pouting incongruously amidst his grey whiskers as if he were searching for
something that lay just before his face. ‘My hands hurt.’ He sounded like Lucinda when she had fallen over, only graver.
‘Shall I call for Dr Grimshaw?’ I proffered. ‘Perhaps it is time for you to be bled again, or for your bowels to be opened
with a black draught.’
But I did not want to summon Dr Grimshaw with his black bag, his knives and his leeches. I could stare straight into his evil
eyes and act as unruffled as a duchess, but inside I would be having palpitations in case Lucinda were to have one of her
turns in his presence. Besides, we did not have the money for a night call. Even by daylight it would be two-and-six.
‘This is not about my blood or my bowels,’ Peter spat angrily. ‘I can no longer work. These – these hands – will not let me.
I cannot work. I cannot bind books.’
Still I did not understand. ‘Jack . . . Sven . . . can’t we . . . ?’
Peter batted off their names like flies. ‘Don’t be absurd. You may think, in your ignorance, that all one needs to bind books
is a forwarder, a finisher and someone to sew and fold, but, quite frankly, it would be nothing short of preposterous to leave
Damage’s in the hands of an apprentice, a journeyman, and a – a – a – a
woman
!’
One thing that could always be said in Peter’s favour was that he wore an apron alongside his mechanics.
He lifted himself out of his chair with a grimace, and started slowly to pace the floor. ‘They cannot, Dora,’ he finally admitted,
his voice low. ‘We tried today – we have been trying for weeks, in the afternoons, when you are gone – but they have not the
skill. Jack has the strength for forwarding, but he is young and green. Sven is almost as fine a finisher as myself, but .
. . well, Sven . . . he . . .’
The room felt chilly, and I noticed that the fire was low again. I wondered if Peter would find it rude if I tended to it
while he was talking.
‘Besides . . .’ After a pause, he started speaking again, and his voice was even quieter, ‘. . . he is leaving us. Sven has
seen the writing on the wall. He is too good for me now. He is off to Zaehnsdorf’s, for twenty-five shillings a week. I offered
him eighteen, and he spat on the floor. Damn that German. He spat on my floor!’
He sucked on his pipe and realised with distaste that it had gone out, so he manoeuvred himself painfully towards the hearth
to rescue the spent lucifer from the stone. The fat, round ends of his fingers could scarcely grasp the slender piece of wood;
his finger-nails, which might have given him some purchase, were buried deep in his flesh. I crouched down next to him and
picked up the lucifer, placed it in the embers, then waited for it to ignite. We transferred it arduously from my fingers
to his; I at least had to give him the dignity of lighting his own pipe.
Once it was lit, he could not stand up again. He could not lean on his hands to push himself up, or grasp anything to help
him. I stood behind him for several moments, looking at his dishevelled head bobbing up and down, and listening to the puffs
and groans. Suddenly my hands decided for me what to do, and did something my head would never have allowed. They slid into
his armpits, and dragged him, with one sharp heave, to his feet.
I could not tell who was more surprised; the touch was a shock to us both, but Peter looked more startled by my strength.
Perhaps he had never noticed how much I had to carry our long-limbed daughter around, or even that she was no longer a baby.
It was as if he did not know that muscles could be made strong through the labours of housework or factory work, muscles that
could rise up and crush the languid, unmuscled rulers of their sex. Did they not have to work an eighteen-hour day and more,
and tumble into bed at the end of it, too tired even to dream?
‘What is to be done?’ I ventured, softly, as if I could compensate for the hardness of my body and regain some semblance of
femininity.
‘What is there to do?’ he railed back at me, still reeling from my touch.
Hire another journeyman, I wanted to say, angry at his anger. Is not this the obvious answer? But of course I stayed silent,
and returned to the dying fire to draw up some heat into the room, embarrassed at what my hands had just done.
When he next spoke, his voice was solemn. ‘We have not many books left to go into leather. We are not getting many more in.
The booksellers are losing faith in Damage’s Bookbinders. Herzina’s won’t buy from us. Chancellors have given up on us. Barker
& Bobbs likewise won’t touch us. Diprose is our only new lead, Charles Diprose. He has a fine line in medical textbooks, anatomies
and so forth. There’s no point my going to see him now, but I’ve heard he supports the unions.’
After a pause I said quietly, ‘We could move.’
To any sensible person it would not have seemed too outrageous an idea. North towards the river or south towards the factories,
it would have been less salubrious, but the drop in our rent would have been substantial. But so too, of course, would have
been the drop in our status. Were we to move below the ten-pounds-a-year property threshold, he would lose his right to vote.
We were currently paying twenty-five; a reduction of just five or eight pounds would help significantly.
‘Preposterous,’ was what he hissed back at me. ‘Quite preposterous. Must I really trouble myself with instructing you, again,
of the evils – the injury to our character and standing – which would be occasioned by such a descent? I beseech you to think
beyond the capabilities of your sex and experience, and recognise what would be involved with the loss of our home and our
station. It would be failure; it would be unseemly, un – un – un-
man
ly. No, we have a good name, and we must preserve it at all costs!’
But Damage was not a good name, and there was no use pretending it was. ‘What’s the damage?’ some bookseller wag would say
when they came to collect their bindings, and would think they were being original. And as for me, the moment I married Mr
Damage, I became Damaged Goods. Damage?
Dommage
, my mother the governess said, and I knew now what she meant. Besides, it was never as if Peter seemed particularly anxious
to pass his name on. On our wedding night he had led me to the bedroom, where he had prepared a tin bath, and waited outside
the door barking instructions at me to scrub myself all over with carbolic soap and baking soda. When he was fully satisfied
of my cleanliness, we managed the act during which Lucinda was conceived, but as it drew to a close he fretted that I was
having a fit and that I, too, like my grandfather, was a convulsive. We did it twice more after her birth, both times again
preluded with carbolic and soda, which may well explain my subsequent aversion to housework. I remember suggesting a third
time, some months later, to which he replied in wonder, ‘What do you want to be going and doing that for?’ as if I had suggested
we steal a hot-air balloon and see if we could fly to the moon. It was a wrongful disposition for a respectable wife and mother;
I learnt to acquire an appropriate aversion. And if I dared to speak of wanting more children, Peter would silence me, and
demand of me why I wanted to bring more children into this terrible world, before answering the question himself. He did not,
he would say, desire me to die bringing forth our tenth child, as his poor mother did, leaving him and seven surviving others
to be brought up by his long-suffering sister, until she went into service, when it fell not to Peter, Tommy or Arthur, the
next in line, but to Rosie, who was only ten, to look after them all. But at least, by then, Peter had been apprenticed to
my father’s bookbinding establishment, and Arthur had started his ecclesiastical training under the Bishop of Hadley, who
lavished favours on his family, which meant that life started to feel kinder to the little Damages.
Peter had been silent for a while. I did not imagine he was still contemplating my blundering suggestion. The truth was that
Lambeth had not been what we had hoped for ourselves. We had chosen it with the best of intentions: Peter was apprenticed
to my father at his workshop in Carnaby-street, where we lived on the floor above, and we continued to live there until we
had to find our own dwellings because of the impending birth of our baby. And then both my parents died: my mother from cholera,
which she caught from the notorious water-pump in Broad-street, and my father shortly after from pulmonary disease, although
I suspect a broken heart also had something to do with it. I was four months pregnant. We could have stayed in Carnaby-street
– we no longer had to leave in search of more space – but Peter was determined to whisk his precious wife and future child
to somewhere cleaner. So we chose Lambeth, because its water was supplied by the Southwark and Vauxhall Company, and the pipes
went down all the streets, into houses rich and poor, big and small. But the city miasma still wrapped around us here like
a bonnet veil, and we might as well still have been in So-ho, for all the paupers and orphans and tollings of the workhouse
bell. And we were little better than them; this was all we could afford, and all we were good for. As we traipsed around the
Borough looking for somewhere reasonable, in the tiny stretch of salubrity between the river tenements to the north and the
slums of Lambeth proper to the south, I clutched the words of William Blake’s words to my bosom: