Pandora(11)

In the shop Dora perches on a stool (this one no less uncomfortable than the one upstairs), swinging her legs in boredom. While she knows there is plenty to entertain her – if Lottie will not do it, she might as well do the dusting herself – Dora cannot quite bring herself to, for her mind is as peaceful as a stormy sea. Under the counter are her sketchbook and reticule, close at hand so that when Hezekiah does return she can make her escape as quickly as possible.

Today is the day that everything will change.

The cannetille design is finished. All it will take is a ‘yes’, an acknowledgement that her work is worthy of fashioning into beautiful pieces fit for members of high society to wear. It only need start with one item – just one – sold to a woman of quality. A lady, maybe a baroness. A duchess, perhaps. Of course, she thinks, the chances of someone so far up the peerage taking a fancy to her designs is unlikely but with any sale Dora would gain a cut of the value, be commissioned for more. It would go from there. She would gain her independence. She would be free.

What of the shop? a little voice whispers inside her head. What will happen to it without you?

Dora’s legs still. This shop is all she has ever known. It is her home. To leave it would break her heart clean in two. And if Hezekiah were to sell, her parents’ legacy – what is left of it – would be as dead as they are. Though these walls are woodwormed and their joists have begun to weaken like dried-out leaves, they contain within them the very map of her, the memory of what once was.

She thinks back to one Christmas spent at the shop, the merchants and patrons who joined them to toast the season, to celebrate a year of successful trade. Blake’s Emporium had been warm and welcoming back then, the oak floor polished to a rich shine, the beams free of cobwebs, and Dora remembers being fascinated by the shimmering candlelight that reflected off the clean unbroken windowpanes. Her father carried her high on his hip, and though she had no true understanding of them he was keen to include Dora in conversations about expansion, East India shipments, new lots to sell at Christie’s. Hezekiah was meant to honour those memories. If he can discard his loyalty that easily, Dora thinks, what then will become of her when the time comes to sell? She thinks back to what he said to her at dinner … You’re far too old to still be sharing my roof.

Dora swallows hard. From the very beginning Hezekiah has treated her like an inconvenience. Beyond arranging for a Sunday school education, her uncle had no interest in continuing the classical education Dora’s parents began – when she asked him to teach her about the antiquity trade he laughed, said there was no need to clutter her mind with such things, though he never hesitated to put her to use behind the shop counter. And so everything Dora knows has been built on memory, on keen observation. Where would she go, if not for him?

Though neglectful, Hezekiah has never strictly been unkind to her – Dora’s sketchbooks are purchased by him, after all – but there is no love lost between them. She thought, perhaps, when he brought Lottie home with him one evening that things might change between them. Dora thinks on when she first saw the woman standing in the narrow stairwell of their apartments (not six months after her parents’ deaths), how Hezekiah announced that Lottie had come to live with them. She assumed this woman – decked head to toe in ill-fitting rouge – was to act as a mother to her, that Hezekiah might then treat Dora with a little more warmth, but she had been sorely disappointed. Dora was promptly moved from her comfortable bedroom on the second floor to the cold and dreary attic. And so, if anything, she had felt even more alone.

Where would she go, indeed. The thought sends a cold tug against Dora’s ribs. She has no other family aside from Hezekiah. Her paternal grandparents are long dead, and her mother was raised in an orphanage in Greece. Until Dora can provide for herself she cannot leave, she cannot be free of him. Her only options – the poorhouse, the streets, or the brothels – well, they are no options at all.

The brothels.

Uneasily Dora thinks of the way Hezekiah looked at her. I should think you would be glad of a change of scene. More liberating surroundings. Surely he did not mean …?

Her macabre thoughts are interrupted by the tinkling of the bell. Dora’s gaze shoots to the front of the shop but no, it is no customer, only Lottie who has come from the door behind.

‘Missum.’

Dora sniffs, needlessly adjusts the position of the empty ledger in front of her. Lottie folds her arms across her chest and looks at Dora, calculating.

‘You’re very pale. Why don’t you take yourself off for a walk? I can see to things here.’ The housekeeper hesitates. ‘An hour or two will do.’

Dora looks into Lottie’s round face, dubious. ‘You?’

Lottie’s eyebrows lift. ‘Why not?’

Her request is curious. Lottie has never offered to look after the shop floor before, nor has she ever cared about Dora’s health. But these brief spells of freedom are precious and so Dora reaches for her sketchbook beneath the counter.

She does not need telling twice.



At St Paul’s churchyard, located in the north-western corner, stands Clements & Co., a jeweller and goldsmith of the most eminent reputation. It is accessed by four steep and narrow steps and with her free hand – the other clasps the large leather-bound sketchbook – Dora clutches the iron railings, careful not to step a hole through her skirts as she descends them.