Read Online The Journal of Dora Damage by Belinda Starling - Free Book Online Page B

to hold them at chest-height as a kind of prayer of communication, but the moment I touched
     them he drew back and hollered in pain. But I had briefly felt the rage in his fingers, and feared for where he had been.
     It had not been drier than his home.
    ‘Where have you been, my love? Tell me.’
    ‘A – sp – a –, a – sp – a –, a – sp – a . . .’
    ‘A spa? A spot?’ I tried.
    ‘A – sp – a – n –, a – span . . .’ he continued. ‘A sponge –’
    ‘A sponge!’ I seized upon the word, and he nodded, then shook his head, which added to my consternation. ‘A sponge?’ Did he
     want one? Was I to mop his brow? His face looked black in the gloom; I moved myself to allow the lamplight from outside to
     shine on him, and saw that it was bruised, swollen, and matted with blood both fresh and dried.
    ‘I’m going to get a flannel from the press,’ I told him slowly, but his protests mounted, and he continued repeating the word
     ‘sponge’ so I stayed by him, and tried to fathom his request. Eventually he sighed heavily and let his head drop to his chest,
     and so it went, and nothing was revealed, so I settled him into the Windsor chair and went into the kitchen. I let the draught
     into the range to draw up the heat, then went back to the parlour to lay the fire in the grate, before running upstairs to
     get a flannel, and returning to the kitchen to boil some water.
    Then I cleaned his face as best I could as he winced and groaned, and I applied some salve.
    ‘Here, love, drink some tea. You can tell me all later.’ I poured him a cup and placed it into his beleaguered hands, then
     left for Agatha Marrow’s house.
    Lucinda was already asleep on a chaise amongst the piles of laundry and I picked her up and started to carry her home. Agatha
     said not a word, nor even smiled at me, but she laid a paper bundle on Lucinda’s sleeping stomach, and held the door open
     for us to leave. Back home, I nestled Lucinda into her bed and felt a warm patch on her dress where the parcel had been. Inside
     the paper were four steaming cheese-and-parsley scones; it was as much as I could do to stop myself crying out and devouring
     them all there and then, but I scuttled down the stairs and presented them to Peter, who was still struggling to lift the
     cup to his lips. I broke a scone into pieces, and placed them into his dry mouth, trying not to let the errant crumbs straying
     from the corners down his shirt trouble me in their profligacy. I restrained my hunger until he had finished, and then I fell
     upon my own scone, and when it was gone I ran a licked finger around the paper to collect every last crumb, and thought about
     starting on those lingering on Peter’s chest. I folded the other two up in a towel and put them in the dresser for Lucinda
     in the morning. It felt strange to be a recipient of such alms, but I was glad all the way down to my frozen feet.
    ‘I was rooled,’ Peter murmured finally, his mouth clagged with scone. ‘Rooled up. In the sponging-house. Blades and Old Skinner
     had me done. Skinner skinned me. Got himself an arrest warrant for a shilling, threw me in the sponging-house. Blades too.’
    Lucinda was turning in her bed upstairs.
    ‘I only pledged twenty-five pounds. But the paper says fifty. It’s got my signature on. And we agreed five per cent. Not –
     not –’
    ‘How much?’ I dared ask.
    ‘Thirty per cent,’ he lied.
    ‘They charge what they please, don’t they, those folk,’ I said, numbly. Sixty, I wanted to scream. I saw it, Peter. Sixty!
    But he proffered nothing further. There was nothing left in his voice, nothing left in him. He had become a veritable Dombey.
    ‘How long have we got?’ I eventually said.
    ‘A week.’
    ‘Will the bailiffs come?’
    ‘If Mrs Eeles doesn’t distrain it all first. We must – should we – can we bolt the moon?’ For the respectable Peter Damage
     even to suggest this was a sorry sign of how far he had