‘Go!’ I screamed once more. ‘A war? I have enough blood on my hands already!’
But still he stood there. He was questioning me, and I was not to be questioned. I wanted to be obliterated, but his presence
was making me more real. I needed him to walk away from me, so I could vanish with him.
‘Please. Leave me alone!’
De humani corporis fabrica
. Made of human skin.
And have you fucked us both into the bargain?
And then I closed the door on his approaching foot, arm, face, feeling the resistance of his flesh until the latch finally
found its hole, and I bolted the door and felt him disappear. But he did not take with him my self-loathing, which took me
straight towards the bottle of Black Drop on the dresser, and soon I did not know if Sylvia was still watching me, or had
gone away with her own miseries.
Dancy-diddlety-poppety-pin,
Have a new dress when summer comes in;
When summer goes out,
‘
Tis all worn out,
Dancy-diddlety-poppety-pin.
'O
h my, how clear it suddenly becomes! Dora, do you know what
sati
means?’
Sati
? The immolation of a Hindoo widow on her husband’s funeral pyre. It’s been illegal for some time.’
‘It still continues, in the more rural, out-of-the-way places in India. Jocelyn told me so.’
‘Why would he torment you thus?’
‘Torment me? Why, he was assuaging me! I hated his long absences, and he would lecture me on the barbaric practices that went
on in the darkest corners of the world which he, and only he, could put a stop to. He told me he had to go, in the name of
civilisation. To stop the Africans taking a knife to their little girls in the name of chastity; to stop the Hindoos from
burning their widows in the name of fidelity; to stop the . . . oh!’
‘Do go on!’
‘It is hard for me. And that is why I must explain to you, Dora, for I heard Jocelyn boasting to someone – Valentine, Charles,
Hugh, whoever – that he would rescue a brave and beautiful widow from
sati
– from her husband’s funeral pyre – and immortalise her for ever in the greatest scientific and literary work of the century!
Surely . . . but I had presumed that this meant the woman would become the basis of a phreno-logical study! That she was a
biological curiosity to him. That there must have been something in her cranial shape and general physiognomy that predisposed
her people to barbarism, that it was Jocelyn’s duty to discover. This I had so nobly assumed! I would never have thought to
take him at his word!’
Is this the intrinsic worth, I wondered, of the human body, to be so reduced after we are gone? And what leads a man to reduce
it so, in the name of exaltation? Is he so severed from our source that he must sever more in his quest for wholeness? We
tear down trees and rip up animals for our books; we kill elephants and destroy forests to make pianos on which we make music
to soothe our souls; small wonder the music is so plaintive, with ivory yearning for its life back. But what when the materials
are from amongst our own? For the exaltation of his own fleshful library, Sir Jocelyn had stripped this woman of more than
her clothes.
I thought of the books of our lives, and I prayed to St Bartholomew for the opportunity to erase the last few pages of my
life and rewrite them. St Bartholomew. And then it dawned on me. He had been flayed alive by Astyages for converting his brother,
the King of Armenia, to Christianity. He was not merely patron saint of bookbinders, but of tanners, cobblers and leather-workers
besides. Was this a macabre prank? Or was this a tradition whose origins ran deeper and bloodier than I could imagine? I could
only think of the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, the slaughter of thousands of innocents for their differences, and the power
that continues to be wielded by the most unworthy.
‘Dora. Dora. Calm yourself, girl. What are you doing?’
‘What does it look like I’m doing?’
‘Well, why, then? Why are you doing it? That’s a perfectly reasonable dress. It might be last season’s, I’ll grant you, but
it will last you many more. It’s presentable enough.’
My scissors ripped through the seams, and soon I had sixteen pieces of brown silk of various shapes and sizes, and two large
pieces of cream silk. I sorted through them until I found what had been two sleeves, and two bodice-sides, then I smoothed
down the rest on to the table, one on top of each other. Then I grabbed the cloud of brown and cream silk in both arms, and
took them into the workshop. ‘Dora! It won’t bring her back!’ Sylvia shouted after me.
But what else could I have done? This is what I had learnt to do in times of adversity: work. But it was not so much ‘working’
as ‘working out’: the bindings were not as relevant as the plan I needed to formulate. One thing was for sure: it was better
to have Sylvia on my side now than against me. I would cease my suspicions about her and Din. I laid the pieces of brown silk
down on the bench and assessed the number and sizes of journals and albums I would be able to magic from them.
I dissected the parasol, discarded its stem and spokes, and turned the pale blue silk into an embroidered pocket-book, trimmed
with its own point-lace. I striped ribbons of cream silk from the scarf over the brown silk of the dress, for several albums.
The tortoiseshell top of the hair comb became a buckle on the edge of another brown silk volume, and I fashioned a fastener
out of silver wire so it would snap shut. The purple feathers bedecked the ivory silk of the petticoats; the black feathers
sprayed around the black rose from the centre of the dress’s bodice in an unusual and beautiful centrepiece on the cover of
a scrapbook. Everything – except Lucinda’s coat – was sacrificed to the alchemical process that provided me with a frenzied
focus, as if in work I would find the answer. The work consumed me, and for a while consumed my guilt, and the immoral life
I had been leading.
But as I sliced up the silk and wrapped it around the boards, I could only think of the poor unfortunate whose skin had been
used for the binding. It was a woman, it had to be. Was it the Hindoo widow, dragged from the fire? If so, how did she ultimately
meet her death at the hands of her so-called saviours? I was angry; angry for her ignominious demise, and angry for my unwitting
role in furthering her dishonour. I had read of it in a thousand vile books, but I had not realised until this moment how
closely allied were anger and desire. And as in every one of those books, my desire was indeed to violate the one towards
whom I felt anger. I wanted one thing only. Revenge.
Go to the police, an inner voice called! Pah! To what effect? Look at Charlie Diprose, prancing out of his cell a week into
what should rightfully have been a four-year sentence! If that odious man could slip so fluidly out of the hands of the law,
why should I imagine that Sir Jocelyn Knightley was any less untouchable?
If only I had known before Diprose brought me the leather. If only. I would have burnt it in the fire before it left my hands
to deny the twisted pleasure of so diseased an imagination. If only. And what if. What if I could find out where the book
was now? What if I could retrieve it? I could destroy it myself. I could go to Holywell-street – in disguise? I could send
. . . who? I could break in . . . I could break in to Berkeley-square? I could send Sylvia back one last time? I could . .
. I could . . . I could not think of a single reasonable plan, and the brown silk kept turning to skin beneath my accursed
fingers, and I retched, and swooned, and burned with rage and impotence.
My anger was my consolation, though. I thought of Lizzie, whom life had taught that there was no point in getting angry, for
nothing would change by it. Anger is a luxury for those who still have hope, who still have dignity; those who have neither,
those like Lizzie, know not to waste their energy on anger.
I tried to annihilate the book from my thoughts by focusing on the women who might own these silken journals. I didn’t want
to give them to a bookseller who might prove to be another Diprose. I wanted to hand them out on New Cut and Lambeth Walk,
throw them from Waterloo Bridge to the mud-larks, walk up the street and give them to Mrs Eeles, Nora Negley, Patience Bishop,
Agatha Marrow. Write them, I would scream at them. What are we to write, their faces would ask, looking as blank as the pages
within. Your dreams, I would cry. Your thoughts. Your fantasies. Yours, and yours alone. In your own voice. Not constructed
for you by Mr Eeles, Mr Marrow, Mr Bishop or Mr Negley, dead or alive. Author your own body. Walk your own text. Is it not
constantly being read anyway, each time you walk up the street? You read mine often enough.
Ha! I rued. Would it could have been so. For more likely than not, I knew that every one of these brown-silk beauties would
be bought by some rich roué, and some would go to appease the wives, and some would tickle the fancy of the courtesans, and
the brothel-keeper would keep her illicit accounts in one, and the dilettante would sketch his naked mistress in another,
so ha! Ha to my noble thoughts! And so the world goes, and so our bodies rot and turn to dust, to gold, to nothing. Welcome
to Damage’s Bindery. The Whore of Bibliolon.
For, once again, more than for peace of mind, I was working, still, for money. The chinking of coins saw me through every
fold, every stitch, every cut and every paste, for money was what would see me through, and time was running out.
For one thought sounded clear in the morass of confusion. I could no longer continue to work for Charles Diprose and the Noble
Savages. Which would mean that I would break our unwritten contract. Which would mean that London – possibly even England
– would become unsafe for us. I needed money to do what I knew was inevitable.
I would flee with Lucinda.
I would find Din before he left, and together the three of us would go to the only place we could possibly go together.
America.
‘You must be insane! Insane!’
There is no hope; no, for I have loved strangers, and after
them will I go.
‘Sylvia!’ I had figured that the remarkable and rather beautiful change that had come about in her since Jocelyn’s final dismissal
of her would have opened her to a more sympathetic understanding of my plight. There was nothing else for it, than to broach
the issue. ‘Sylvia,’ I repeated, more softly. ‘Is there something behind your anger?’
‘I do not follow you.’
‘Is there something you wish to tell me about your relationship with . . . with . . . Din?’
‘Your intimation, please?’
‘Nathaniel,’ I whispered, but immediately wished I hadn’t, suspicious fool that I was. Of course she would deny it, but I
had not appreciated with how much vehemence.
Her mouth fell open, and her eyes widened, and she looked as if she would hit me, but instead she slumped on to the chair
and said, ‘Not you too! Do you mean to say you have not believed me all this time? Do you accuse me too?’
‘Sylvia,’ I said gently. ‘I know about your evenings with him. I know about the spear.’
‘Pshaw!’ she said. ‘It was not only me. We all have our curiosities. But as if I would take it any further! Dora, you revolt
me. You are worse than Jocelyn. But then, you really
have
slept with a black man, so of course, you suspect everyone else of having the same letches.’
There is no hope; no, for I have loved strangers, and after
them will I go.
Where had I read that recently?
‘And you! You, leaving for America, with him! I have never heard anything so mad! I should call for a doctor immediately!’
I remembered the quotation. It was from the book of Jeremiah.
‘What you are saying is an abomination! You disgust me! Never in my wildest dreams!’
‘Be that as it may, I persist in thinking it would be safest for me to leave. But I am concerned for you, and leaving you
behind.’
‘Dora, Dora darling. Let me talk some sense into your feeble little head. I do understand, really I do, or at least I think
I do, that your Black Prince may now be to you some darling thing with kinky hair and velvet skin, but let me tell you in
no uncertain terms, painful though it may be, that in time he will revert to type. I have learnt more than I care to share
with you through my work with the Society. They may be our brethren, but they are not our equals. To such a man, his wife
is by custom his slave. She is nothing more than a tiller of the ground, a vessel for more children than nature can cope with,
and an outlet for his rage!’
‘Sylvia . . . !’
‘He will kill you, one day, in a savage attack! Or he will take another wife! Or, heaven forbid, wives plural! And Lord, knows,
he may not be a bachelor now!’
‘Sylvia . . . !’
‘Dora! You are very naughty!’ She opened her eyes wide and dared me to interrupt her again. When she continued, her voice
was calmer, and she had changed tack. ‘Dora. There is one reason above all others why I would never have relations with a
black man. And that is, that in so doing, one foolish white woman endangers all other white women! Think of your American
sisters! Your impropriety will have completely changed that man’s expectations of them; their safety has been jeopardised,
by you! You! Your actions have served to weaken the very Empire! I have absolutely no idea why you would want a nigger for
a lover anyway.’
‘And you never did?’ I retorted, despite myself. Even if Din wasn’t Nathaniel’s father, who was to say that she didn’t have
her way with one of the other slaves bought by the Society? I settled on that as the most likely explanation; it soothed me
better, at least.
‘Oh!’ she exclaimed again, and then her tears started, and I did not move to stop them. I did not even fetch her a handkerchief.
‘Oh Dora, forgive me! Forgive me! I am an evil, evil woman! My words are wrong, and I am ashamed! I speak only out of fear
for myself, and a deep, and I fear, fatal, disillusionment about love.’
‘Well may you say that now.’
‘I guessed about your feelings for Din,’ she continued, ‘a long time ago. But I wish you well. I know you must leave me, and
I am sad about that; you showed me unusual kindness in my time of greatest distress, and I fear you are not just the only
friend I have, but the best friend I could hope to have. Do you believe me when I tell you I love you?’
I had no answer. I didn’t know what I believed of what she told me any more.
‘And that I love Lucinda? Look how I love Nathaniel, now that I have embraced my role as his mother! How could I not love
Lucinda, who loves him so? Do you not know that?’
‘I do,’ I whispered.
‘And know then, that I wish you well. For I do love you, Dora, and I love Lucinda. So, can’t you see, that I cannot bear for
two people I care about so deeply to be going to a country racked by civil war! Don’t you see that you and Lucinda and Din
will be torn apart by more enemies than you can possibly imagine? Have you no eyes, no ears, no worldly wisdom, no common
sense? Or has love so deluded you?’