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

until it got buried, and then it could go to heaven?’
    ‘But Mama, maybe it doesn’t like trains. Maybe it thinks trains go too fast.’
    ‘But why would it be worried about that?’ It would already be dead, I wanted to add, so it wouldn’t fear dying, but I thought
     that might be an explanation too far.
    ‘Mama, do ghosts have to get tickets, or just their bodies?’
    ‘I think just their bodies, but the living people have to buy their tickets for them.’
    ‘So, what if the ghost couldn’t get its ticket? It wouldn’t be allowed on the train!’
    ‘No. But I don’t think . . .’
    ‘And Mama, what if the spirit couldn’t get on the train, and it didn’t know where the train was going, so it couldn’t follow
     it, and what if it came into my room through my window?’
    ‘Now why would it want to do that?’
    ‘Because it’s nice in here and it might want cheering up, if it’s just died and lost its family and that.’
    ‘But I don’t think that’s going to happen.’
    ‘But it might . And what if it does? Mama, will you come in here at once and show it the way out?’
    ‘At once. I will ask it which wall it came in through, and I will send it back that way, with a map to the cemetery at the
     end of the line. And now, my love, you must sleep.’ I kissed her again, and heard her whisper, ‘Good night, Mama,’ and I tiptoed
     out of her room.
    The following morning, when there was still no sign of Peter, Lucinda and I went out again. The toes of our boots went in
     and out of our skirts like pistons, as we scuttled across the wet cobblestones, hunched and downcast against the rain. First
     we took stuff to Huggitty the hawker to sell. He was the type of dealer who supplied whatever he could get his hands on, and
     I had bought the piano from him a few pennies at a time. In our courting days, Peter would surprise me with the latest sheet-music,
     which he had bound up especially for me, and he would say that only lower-class parlours did not have a piano. Out of concern
     for his dignity, and for Lucinda’s pleasure, I endeavoured to keep it. Instead we took to Huggitty the spoils from the bedroom,
     a découpaged umbrella stand, the embroidered antimacassars, the black marble mantel clock, and one of my two nice dresses. I even presented
     him with a description of the contents of the bookbinding workshop, but although Huggitty was cruel and unscrupulous, and
     told me I was ‘a proper jewel’, even if I were to have found a hawker with more scruples, I knew that the antiquated frames,
     tools and presses were worth nothing, not since booksellers expected one to have guillotines and sewing machines and whatnot
     nowadays.
    We left Huggity’s and steeled ourselves against the smells coming from the bakery next door, with the consolation that we
     knew he cut his flour worse than any of the bakers in Lambeth. And then through the drizzle to our next port of call – toes
     going in and out under our hems – which was the butcher’s, Sam Battye. He let me put a sign in his window, advertising my
     services as a piano teacher, as I could not afford the rates of the Lambeth Local Gazette .
    In and out, in and out, and I would watch our toes as if they were the only things I could depend on in life, although occasionally
     I would lift my head, and flick my eyes around for signs of Peter amongst the crowds, down the alley-ways, or slumped in door-ways.
     In and out in and out, a regular beat to counteract the gnawing of our stomachs and the fretting of the endless rain. I tried
     to distract myself by wondering what it must feel like to have one of those crinolines holding my skirts out, so nothing would
     be brushing past my legs. I shouldn’t like that, I remember thinking, for my legs would have been colder than they already
     were. I’ll keep my horsehair petticoat, I thought. Then I realised that I could indeed keep my horsehair petticoat, even if I had one of those crinolines, and wear it