Pandora(28)
‘Oh, very well.’
He slips from the stool, disappears behind a curtain into the back room. She can hear muttering, the whisper-hiss of conference. Dora taps her fingers impatiently on the counter. There is a space of silence, then the approach of footsteps; the dark curtain is pulled full across on its pole, metal rings clattering. A man emerges.
‘Miss … Blake?’
Mr Bramah is a tall, neatly dressed man (aside from the oil-smeared apron at his waist) with steel-grey hair though it was once, Dora remembers, as dark as the black on Hermes’ wings. He blinks owlishly at her in the orange candlelight, seemingly waiting for Dora to speak. The dour assistant resumes his perch, purses his lips at the ink splodge and glares.
‘Mr Bramah, sir,’ Dora begins, a flush filling her cold cheeks. ‘Many years ago my father Elijah Blake commissioned a safe from you. I was only a child then but I remember it clearly. As you specialise in locks I had hoped …’
She trails off. She does not know how to put her request articulately into words. Hearing herself fumble over them makes her ashamed, embarrassed.
Mr Bramah’s mouth twitches. He seems to take pity on her for he says, ‘A small fireproof safe, barely large enough for a grown man to stand in. For papers, ledgers. Standard cylinder lock, with pin and steel sliders in gold plate, self-locking. Yes, I remember the commission well.’ He pauses, takes a breath. ‘A complex job. Gold-and-black keys. Took a year to complete. The passing of your parents, Miss Blake, was an enormous shock. A great shame. But how may I help you now?’
Dora produces the wax-filled tinderbox. She is dismayed to see her hands are shaking.
‘I was hoping you might produce a key for me.’ As Mr Bramah frowns down at her offering she rushes on. ‘I understand this is very unorthodox but it really is rather urgent. I have only this imprint to work from, but it should serve?’
He takes it, tilts the box this way and that. Next to him his assistant shakes his head as though lamenting the whimsy of women.
‘Well,’ Mr Bramah says, ‘the mould is deep enough. It is a simple key from the looks of it. I cannot guarantee it would be perfect but the lines do seem clean enough …’ He places the tinderbox on the counter. ‘I can have it for you by tomorrow eve—’
‘Forgive me, sir, but I need it today, this moment.’
She knows she is being unreasonable. To come to a shop and demand immediate service is arrogant, discourteous, but the thought is in her head now and she wants – no, needs – to know what sits in the basement and so Dora places a fat purse on the counter, tries not to squirm as she thinks of how she took it from her uncle’s coat pocket that morning. Dishonesty has never sat well with her. But then she stamps it down where it curdles in her belly. Where did he get it, after all?
Mr Bramah stares at Dora a moment before sliding the purse across the glass. He opens the drawstring, peers in. Hesitates.
‘Unorthodox is the word, isn’t it, Miss Blake? And you’ve left it very late in the day …’ Dora can only stare pleadingly back at him. Mr Bramah picks up the box. ‘It will take an hour,’ he tells her.
She sighs in relief, clasps her hands. ‘I will wait.’
Dora sits fully clothed on the bed. Hermes is perched on the windowsill. The light from the moon casts a silhouette of him on the floorboards, and if it were not for the small breeze coming from the rotten frames that ruffle his silken feathers, Dora could almost believe the bird to be a shadow portrait set behind a screen.
She is not sure how long she has waited for Hezekiah and Lottie to retreat to their beds. At dinner she pled a headache and retired to her room, marooned herself on the bed so that the floorboards would not groan beneath her from endless pacing. At her side the sketchbook lies flat and blank, her pencil resting on its sheets. Between her fingers Dora twists the new key over and over – ring to tooth, ring to tooth – a methodical spin of brass that hits her knuckles with dull and painless knocks.
Outside it has started to rain, needle-points at the glass. The sound is a comfort and Dora’s impatience – sharp as salt – is dulled somewhat by the patter. Still, she cannot stop thinking about what might be waiting beneath the shop, what her new key might unlock. Items of Grecian origin, she hopes, to inspire her designs. But to know what is inside the crate, what else her uncle might be hiding … It is this that haunts her now.
Finally there is the creak of stair, the giggled laughter of Lottie, the low murmur of Hezekiah in the stairwell, the thud of door into casement. Dora half-lifts herself onto her elbows and feels the jitter of excitement in her chest, but when the bedsprings begin their abominable squeak she groans, presses the key hard into her palm. A squeal, a moan, a grunt. In vain she tries to shut her ears to the sounds and closing her eyes Dora turns onto her side, tucks her knees up to her chest, waiting for it to stop.
It goes on longer than she expects it to. There is a pause in their coupling – one of them either begged to rest or perhaps they merely started again – but when they finally cease their fleshy intimacies Dora feels exhausted, nauseous, as if someone has hollowed out her stomach and filled it with reeling worms.
She counts down one minute. Then another, another. After Dora has counted down ten she slips from the bed, pads on tiptoe to the door. On the cramped landing she listens, ears straining in the dark to the floor below. And then she hears it: Lottie’s unmistakable snore coming from Hezekiah’s bedchamber. When her uncle follows suit not a moment later Dora retreats quickly to her bed, takes up the sketchbook, the stub candle in its chamberstick. Hermes flees from his perch at the window and settles on Dora’s shoulder, nips lightly at her ear. His feathers are cold against her cheek.