The Binding

‘Is that what you think?’

‘What else could it be? You don’t know me. Why else would you choose someone who’s ill?’

‘Why else, indeed?’ There was an edge to her voice, but then she sighed and looked at me. ‘Do you remember when it began? The fever?’

‘I think I was …’ I took a breath, trying to steady my mind. ‘I’d been to Castleford, and I was on my way back – when I woke up I was at home—’ I stopped. I didn’t want to think about the gaps and nightmares, daytime terrors, sudden appalled flashes of lucidity when I knew where I was … The whole summer was ragged, fever-eaten, more hole than memory.

‘You were here, lad. You fell ill here. Your father came to get you. Do you remember that?’

‘What? No. What was I doing here?’

‘It’s on the road to Castleford,’ she said, with a faint smile. ‘But with the fever … you remember it, and you don’t. That’s partly what’s making you ill.’

‘I can’t stay here. This place – those locked doors. It’ll make me worse.’

‘It will pass. Trust me. And it will pass more quickly and more cleanly here than anywhere else you could go.’

There was a strange note in her voice, as though she was almost ashamed.

A new kind of fear tugged at me. I was going to have to stay here and be afraid, until I got better; I didn’t want that, I wanted to run away …

She glanced at the locked door. ‘In a way,’ she said, ‘I suppose I did choose you because you’re ill. But not in the way you think. Not out of pity, Emmett.’

Abruptly she swung round and pushed past me, and I was left staring at the dust that swirled in the empty doorway.

She was lying. I’d heard it in her voice.

She did pity me.

But perhaps, after all, she was right. There was something in the silence of the old house, the low rooms filled with steady autumn sunlight and the still order of the workshop, that loosened the dark knots inside me. Day after day went by, until the place wasn’t new or strange to me any more; then week after week … I learnt things by heart: the crinkling reflections on my ceiling, the gappy seams in the patchwork quilt on my bed, the different creak of each tread under my foot when I came downstairs. Then there was the workshop, the gleam of the tiles around the stove, the saffron-and-earth scent of tea, the opalescent gloop of well-mixed paste in a glass jar … The hours passed slowly, full of small, solid details; at home, in the busyness of farm life, I’d never had the time to sit and stare, or pay attention to the way a tool looked, or how well it was made, before I used it. Here the clock in the hall dredged up seconds like stones and dropped them again into the pool of the day, letting each ripple widen before the next one fell.

The tasks Seredith gave me in the workshop were simple and small. She was a good teacher, clear and patient. I learnt to make endpapers, to pare leather, to finish with blind or gold tooling. She must have been disappointed at the way I fumbled – how I’d paste a page to my own fingers, or gouge a square of pristine calfskin with a sharp centre-tool – but she said nothing, except, occasionally, ‘Throw it away and start again.’ While I practised she’d go for a walk, or write letters or lists of supplies to be ordered by the next post, sitting at the bench behind me; or she’d cook, and the house would fill with the smell of meat and pastry. We shared the rest of the chores, but after a morning bent over painstaking work I was glad to chop wood or fill the copper for laundry. When I felt weak I reminded myself that Seredith had done it all on her own, before I came.

But everything I did – everything I saw her do – was preparing materials or practising finishing; I never saw a block of pages, or a complete book. One evening when we were eating dinner in the kitchen I said, ‘Seredith, where are the books?’

‘In the vault,’ she said. ‘Once they’re finished, they have to be kept out of harm’s way.’

‘But—’ I stopped, thinking of the farm, and how hard we all worked, and how it had never been enough; I’d argued continually with Pa, asking for every new invention to make it as productive as possible. ‘Why don’t we make more? Surely, the more we make, the more you can sell?’

She lifted her head as if she was about to say something sharp; then she shook her head. ‘We don’t make books to sell, boy. Selling books is wrong. Your parents were right about that, at least.’

‘Then – I don’t understand—’

‘It’s the binding that matters. The craft of it, the dignity. Say a woman comes to me for a book. I make a book for her. For her, you understand? Not to be gawped at by strangers.’ She slurped soup from her spoon. ‘There are binders who only think to turn a profit, who care about nothing but their bank balance, who, yes, sell books – but you will never be one of them.’

‘But – no one’s come to you …’ I stared at her, thoroughly confused. ‘When am I going to start using what you’re teaching me? I’m learning all these things, but I haven’t even—’

‘You’ll learn more soon,’ she said, and stood up to get more bread. ‘Let’s take things slowly, Emmett. You’ve been ill. All in good time.’

All in good time. If my mother had said it, I would have snorted; but I stayed silent, because somehow it was a good time. Gradually the nightmares grew fewer, and the lurking daytime shadows receded. Sometimes I could stand for a long time without feeling dizzy; sometimes my eyes were as clear as they used to be. And after a few weeks I didn’t even look twice at the locked doors at the end of the workshop. The benches and tools and presses murmured comfort to me: everything was useful, everything was in its place. It didn’t matter what it was all for, except that a glue brush was for glue, and a paring knife for paring. Sometimes, when I paused to gauge the thickness of a scrap of leather – in places it had to be thinner than a fingernail or it would fold badly – I would look up from the dark scurf of leather shavings and feel that I was in the right place. I knew what I was meant to be doing, and I was doing it – even if I was only practising. I could do it. That hadn’t happened since before I was ill.

I missed home, of course. I wrote letters, and was half glad and half miserable to read their replies. I would have liked to be at the harvest supper, and the dance; or rather, I would have liked it, before … I read that letter over and over again, before I crumpled it up and sat looking out past my lamp-flame into the blue dusk, trying to ignore the ache in my throat. But the part of me that yearned for music and noise was the old, healthy part; I knew that silence, work and rest were what I needed now. Even if, sometimes, it felt so lonely I could hardly bear it.

The quiet days wore on, as if we were waiting for something.

When was it? Perhaps I’d been there a fortnight or a month, the first day I remember clearly. It was a bright, cold morning, and I’d been practising gold tooling on a few odd scraps of leather, concentrating hard. It was difficult, and when I peeled away the foil to see an uneven, indistinct print of my name I cursed and rolled my neck to ease the ache out of it. Something moved outside, and I looked up. The sun dazzled me, and for a moment all I saw was a shape outlined against the light. I narrowed my eyes and the glare softened. A boy – no, a young man, my age or maybe older – with dark hair and eyes and a pale, gaunt face, watching me.

I jumped so much I nearly burnt myself on the tool I was using. How long had he been there, watching me with those black stony eyes? I put the tool carefully back on to the brazier, cursing the sudden tremor that made me as clumsy as an old man. Who did he think he was, lurking there, spying?

He knocked on the glass. I turned my back on him, but when I looked over my shoulder he was still there. He gestured sideways to the little back door that opened on to the marshes. He wanted me to let him in.

I imagined him sinking gently into the mud, up to his knees, then his waist. I couldn’t bear the thought of speaking to him. I hadn’t seen anyone except Seredith for days; but it wasn’t just that, it was his stare, so steady it felt like a finger pressing between my eyes. I kept my face averted from the window as I swept the parings of leather to the ground, tidied the scraps of gold foil into their box, and loosened the screw of the hot type-holder so that I could tap the letters out on to the bench. In a minute they’d be cool enough to put back into their tray. A spacer, like a tiny brass splinter, fell to the floor and I bent to pick it up.

When I straightened to flick it on to the bench, his shadow still hadn’t moved. I sucked the sting out of my burnt finger and conceded defeat.

The back door had swollen – when was the last time it had been used? – and stuck in the frame. When I managed to get it open my heart was drumming with exertion. We stared at each other. At last I said, ‘What do you want?’ It was a stupid question; he clearly wasn’t a tradesman with a delivery, or a friend of Seredith’s here for a visit.

‘I …’ He looked away. Behind him the marsh shone like an old mirror, tarnished and mottled but still bright. When he turned back to me his face was set. ‘I’ve come to see the binder.’

I wanted to shut the door in his face. But he was a customer – the first one since I’d arrived – and I was only an apprentice. I stepped back, opening the door wider.

‘Thanks.’ But he said it with a sort of effort, and stood very still on the step, as if walking past me would soil his clothes. I turned and went back into the workshop: now he was inside he was no longer my problem. He could ring the bell or call for Seredith. I certainly wasn’t going to stop work for his sake. He hadn’t apologised for disturbing me, or watching me.

I heard him hesitate, and follow.

I made my way back to the bench and bent over the piece of tooling I’d been working on. I rubbed at one of the words to see if I could make the letters a bit clearer. The tool had been too hot on the second try – or I’d let it linger too long – and the gold had blurred; the third was a little better but I hadn’t pressed evenly. There was a chilly draught from the open workshop door, and quiet footsteps. He was behind me. I’d only looked at him for a second, but I could still see his face as clearly as if it was reflected in the window: white, smudged with shadows, with red-rimmed eyes. A deathbed face, a face no one would want to look at.

‘Emmett?’

My heart skipped a beat, because he shouldn’t have known my name.

Then I realised: the tooling. EMMETT FARMER. It must have been just large enough for him to read from a few feet away. I picked up the leather and slammed it over, face down. Too late, of course. He gave me a crooked, empty smile, as if he was proud of noticing, as if he was pleased that I’d blenched. He started to say something else.

I said, ‘I don’t know if the binder is taking commissions at the moment.’ But he went on looking at me with that odd, thirsty half-smile. ‘If that’s what you’ve come for. And she doesn’t sell books.’

‘How long have you been here?’

‘Since harvest-time.’ He had no right to ask; I didn’t know why I answered, except that I wanted him to leave me alone.

‘You’re her apprentice?’

‘Yes.’

He looked round at the workshop, and back at me. There was something too slow, too deliberate in his look to be mere curiosity. ‘Is it a – good life?’ A twist of contempt in his voice. ‘Here, alone with her?’

The sweet scorched smell of the tools on the stove was making my head ache. I reached for the smallest, an intricate centre-tool that never came out properly in gold. I wondered how it would feel to bring it down on the back of my other hand. Or his.

‘Emmett—’ He made it sound like a curse.