The captivating new novel from Pip Williams, the internationally bestselling author of The Dictionary of Lost Words, is the perfect book for anyone obsessed with words. Dip in with this extract from the book.
Before
“Scraps. That’s all I got. Fragments that made no sense without the words before or the words after.
We were folding The Complete Works of William Shakespeare and I’d scanned the first page of the editor’s preface a hundred times. The last line on the page rang in my mind, incomplete and teasing. I have only ventured to deviate where it seemed to me that …
Ventured to deviate. My eye caught the phrase each time I folded a section.
Where it seemed to me that …
That what? I thought. Then I’d start on another sheet.
First fold: The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. Second fold: Edited by WJ Craig. Third fold: ventured to bloody deviate.
My hand hovered as I read that last line and tried to guess at the rest.
WJ Craig changed Shakespeare, I thought. Where it seemed to him that …
I grew desperate to know.
I glanced around the bindery, along the folding bench piled with quires of sheets and folded sections. I looked at Maude.
She couldn’t care less about the words on the page. I could hear her humming a little tune, each fold marking time like the second hand of a clock. Folding was her favourite job, and she could fold better than anyone, but that didn’t stop mistakes. Folding tangents, Ma used to call them. Folds of her own design and purpose. From the corner of my eye, I’d sense a change in rhythm. It was easy enough to reach over, stay her hand. She understood. She wasn’t simple, despite what people thought. And if I missed the signs? Well, a section ruined. It could happen to any of us with the slip of a bonefolder. But we’d notice. We’d put the damaged section aside. My sister never did. And so I had to.
Keep an eye.
Watch over.
Deep breath.
Dear Maude. I love you, I really do. But sometimes … This is how my mind ran.
Already I could see a folded section in Maude’s pile that didn’t sit square. I’d remove it later. She wouldn’t know, and neither would Mrs Hogg. There’d be no need for tutting.
The only thing that could upset the applecart at that moment was me.
If I didn’t find out why WJ Craig had changed Shakespeare, I thought I might scream. I raised my hand.
‘Yes, Miss Jones?’
‘Lavatory, Mrs Hogg.’
She nodded.
I finished the fold I’d started and waited for Mrs Hogg to drift away. Mrs Hogg, the freckly frog. Maude had said it out loud once and I’d never been forgiven. She had no trouble telling us apart, but as far as Mrs Hogg was concerned, Maude and I were one and the same.
‘Back in a mo, Maudie.’
‘Back in a mo,’ she said.
Lou was folding the second section. As I passed behind her chair, I leant over her shoulder. ‘Can you stop for a second?’ I said.
‘I thought you were desperate for the lav.’
‘Of course not. I just need to know what it says.’
She paused long enough for me to read the end of the sentence. I added it to what I knew and whispered it to myself: ‘I have only ventured to deviate where it seemed to me that the carelessness of either copyist or printer deprived a word or sentence wholly of meaning.’
‘Can I keep folding now, Peggy?’ Lou asked.
‘Yes, you can, Louise,’ said Mrs Hogg.
Lou blushed and gave me a look.
‘Miss Jones …’
Mrs Hogg had been at school with Ma and she’d known me since Maude and I were newborns. Still, Miss Jones. The emphasis on Ma’s maiden name, just in case anyone in the bindery had forgotten her disgrace.
‘Your job is to bind the books, not read them …’
She kept talking but I stopped listening. I’d heard it a hundred times. The sheets were there to be folded not read, the sections gathered not read, the text blocks sewn not read – and for the hundredth time I thought that reading the pages was the only thing that made the rest tolerable. I have only ventured to deviate where it seemed to me that the carelessness of either copyist or printer deprived a word or sentence wholly of meaning.
Mrs Hogg raised her finger, and I wondered what response I had failed to give. She was going red in the face, the way she invariably did. Then our forewoman interrupted.
‘Peggy, as you are up, I wonder if you could run an errand for me?’ Mrs Stoddard turned a smile on the floor supervisor. ‘I’m sure you can spare her for ten minutes, Mrs Hogg?’
Freckly frog nodded and continued down the line of girls without another glance at me. I looked towards my sister.
‘Maude will be fine,’ said Mrs Stoddard.
We walked the length of the bindery, and Mrs Stoddard stopped occasionally to encourage one of the younger girls or to advise on posture if she saw someone slouching. When we got to her office, she picked up a book, newly bound, lettered in gold so shiny it looked wet.
The Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250–1900. We printed it almost every year.
‘Has no one written a poem since 1900?’ I asked.
Mrs Stoddard suppressed a smile. ‘The Controller will want to see how the latest print run has turned out.’ She handed me the book. ‘The walk to his office should relieve your boredom.’
I held the book to my nose: clean leather and the fading scent of ink and glue. I never tired of it. It was the freshly minted smell of a new idea, an old story, a disturbing rhyme. I knew it would be gone from that book within a month, so I inhaled, as if I might absorb whatever was printed on the pages within.
I walked back slowly between two long rows of benches piled with flat printed sheets and folded sections. Women and girls were bent to the task of transforming one to the other, and I had been given a moment’s reprieve. I started to open the book when a freckly hand covered mine and pushed the book shut.
‘It won’t do to have the spine creased,’ said Mrs Hogg. ‘Not by the likes of you, Miss Jones.’
“I opened The Oxford Book of English Verse and heard the spine crack. I turned the pages – John Barbour, Geoffrey Chaucer, Robert Henryson, William Dunbar, Anonymous, Anonymous. If they had names, might they be Anna or Mary or Lucy or Peg?”
I took my time walking through the corridors of the Clarendon Press.
Mr Hart had a visitor: her words were escaping the privacy of their conversation. She was young, well spoken, with a faint hint of the Midlands. I lightened my tread so as not to scare the words into silence.
‘And what does your father think?’ asked Mr Hart.
I paused just outside the office door. It was half-open and I could see her fashionable shoes and slim ankles below a straight lilac skirt. A long matching jacket.
‘He was reluctant but eventually persuaded.’
‘He’s a businessman. Practical. He didn’t need a degree to make a success of milling paper. He probably can’t see the point for a young woman.’
‘No, he can’t,’ she said, and I felt her frustration. ‘So I must show him the point by making it worthwhile.’
‘And when will you come up to Oxford?’
‘September. Just before Michaelmas term. I’m coming up to Somerville, so we’ll be neighbours.’
Somerville. Every morning, I imagined leaving Maude at the entrance to the Press and walking across the road and into the porter’s lodge of Somerville College. I imagined the quad and the library and a desk in one of the rooms that overlooked Walton Street. I imagined spending my days reading books instead of binding them. I imagined, for a moment, that there was no need for me to earn an income and that Maude could fend for herself.
‘And what will you read?’
There was an answer on the tip of my tongue, but the young woman stole it.
‘English. I want to be a writer.’
‘Well, perhaps one day we will have the privilege of printing your work.’
‘Perhaps you will, Mr Hart. I look forward to seeing my name among your first editions.’
There was a hush, not uncomfortable, and I knew they were looking at the Controller’s bookshelf, at all the first editions with their pristine leather spines and gold-leaf lettering. The book in my hand asserted itself. I’d almost forgotten why I was there.
‘Give my regards to your father, Miss Brittain.’
‘I will, Mr Hart.’
The door swung open and I had no time to step back, so for a moment we stood eye to eye. Miss Brittain might have been nineteen or twenty, twenty-one perhaps, the same age as me. She was my height and just as slender, and she was pretty, despite her mousy hair. Lilac suited her well, I thought, and I wondered what she might think of me. Pretty, no doubt; everyone said so. Hair as dark as the canal at night and eyes to match, like Ma’s. Though my nose was different: a little too big. I might not have been so conscious of it except I saw it in profile when I looked at Maude.
It was just a moment, but sometimes that’s all it takes – I could see there was something steely in Miss Brittain’s expression: a determination. We could be friends, I thought.
She seemed to know better. She was not rude, but there were protocols. She saw the apron of a bindery girl over a plain brown cotton-drill skirt and a wash-worn blouse, sleeves rolled up to the elbows. She smiled and nodded, then walked away along the corridor.
I knocked on the open door and Mr Hart looked up from his desk. I’d been nine years at the Press and never seen him smile, but one now lingered around the corners of his mouth. When he realised I was not Miss Brittain returned, it retreated. He motioned for me to come in but returned his attention to the ledger on his desk.
My ten minutes had run down, but it was not my place to interrupt. I looked beyond Mr Hart and out the window. There she was, Miss Brittain, crossing Walton Street. She stopped on the pavement and looked up at the windows of Somerville College. She stayed there for some time, and people were forced to walk around her. In that moment, I felt her excitement. She was wondering if one of those windows would be hers. She was imagining the desk overlooking the street and all the books she would read.
And then there was a tightness in my chest. A familiar resentment. Perhaps Mrs Hogg knew the truth of things and I had no right to read the books I bound, or imagine myself anywhere but Jericho, or contemplate for one moment that I could ever have a life beyond Maude. The book started to feel heavy in my hands, and I was surprised I’d been entrusted with it at all.
And then I was angry.
I opened The Oxford Book of English Verse and heard the spine crack. I turned the pages – John Barbour, Geoffrey Chaucer, Robert Henryson, William Dunbar, Anonymous, Anonymous. If they had names, might they be Anna or Mary or Lucy or Peg? I looked up and saw the Controller staring at me.
For a moment I thought he might ask what I thought. But he simply held out his hand for the book. I hesitated and he raised his eyebrows. It was enough. I put the book in his hand. He nodded and looked down at his ledger.
Without a word, I was dismissed.”
Extracted from The Bookbinder of Jericho by Pip Williams, out in July.
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