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

underneath to keep me warm, and it
     would have soaked up the splashes from the puddles, and no one would ever have known.
    And finally all that remained for us was to head to the sign of the three golden balls and into the dingy interior of the
     pawn-shop, next to the gin-shop (as they always were), where we huddled in a cubicle and waited our turn to be served.
    ‘You gave me eight bob for the gown last Friday! What d’ya mean only seven today? You know I’ll be back Monday, I’m good as
     gold I am. What’s it to ya?’
    And we saw the broker shaking his head, and mouthing ‘seven’ to the woman with no hair and a black eye.
    ‘But what about our Sunday dinner? Think of that! Or are you not a godly man?’
    And then in lurched a man with a mouth full of broken teeth, who put two pairs of tiny little shoes on the counter, pocketed
     two shillings, and lumbered out again and into the gin-shop next door. Then in came another one, who took off his coat, his
     belt, and the very boots he was standing in, and watched as they were wrapped into a bundle and ticketed, and I could not
     help but stare as he hobbled away, his toes poking through the ends of his threadbare socks, holding up his trousers with
     one hand, and clutching his pennies in the other, and into the gin-shop he went too.
    ‘He forgot to give me his handkerchief,’ the broker said as he came to serve us. ‘He’ll be back later.’ I shuddered to think
     what else he might be offered: the man no doubt would prefer to go home naked but with a bellyful of beer, if only the pawnbroker
     would accept his smalls and all.
    ‘What we got ’ere then?’ He whistled through the gap in his teeth as I laid out two solid-silver spoons boxed in red velvet,
     a silver-plated vase, a pair of pearl earrings, and a small, inlaid walnut music-box. He bit the pearls with his teeth, fingered
     the spoons and held them to the light, brought out a magnifying glass to the hallmarks, and checked the mechanism of the music-box.
    ‘Ten shillings,’ he said.
    I gasped. ‘For these? They’re worth far more! I need at least a pound!’
    He was unaffected by my outburst; he continued to look at the counter, for whatever I was saying, he’d heard it all before.
     ‘The less you get, the less it costs you to get them back,’ he said philosophically.
    And so I pocketed ten shillings, which was better than nothing, and indeed my purse so chinked with coins that I pulled Lucinda
     into the better sort of baker’s-shop and told her to choose whatever she fancied. She picked an apricot slice and a doughnut.
     I bought nothing for myself, but licked the sugar off my fingers once I’d handed her the sweets. I tried to fathom the extent
     of our debts, so I might know how much I dared spend on tonight’s meal, but I feared the plumb line of my mind might fall
     short of the true depths of our penury. In and out more slowly now our toes went over the cobbles, dodging the dung and the
     rotten fruit as we rounded the corner past the Royal Victorian Theatre and into New Cut. I eyed the knife-grinders and tinkers,
     and the gypsy chair-menders sitting on their wicker-bundles in the rain like roosting fowl, and I wondered at their ability
     to forge a living out of nothing, and whether it would come to that for me. We picked our way amongst the stalls of shoddy
     clothes, shoes and hardware, solicited the kindest-looking costermongers, and picked up some stewed eels, a pound of potatoes,
     half a dozen eggs, some butter and the like.
    We returned home with our victuals, which Lucinda unpacked while I set about scraping the empty coal cellar for something
     to rekindle the fire. But straightways there was a knock at the door, and whoever was there did not wait for me to come and
     open it, for the door snapped into the room and nearly caught me in the face, and a tall man with grey sunken eyes and a bristly
     chin set himself to pacing round the parlour sniffing at my furniture like a