The Binding

by Bridget Collins

  There’s a trick that I use more and more. In my mind I imagine a grey wall rising above me, vast and featureless, so smooth it cheats all sense of perspective. I close my eyes and stand in front of it. I imagine it rising up and over, curling round to meet itself, so that I’m enclosed in a grey bubble the size of infinity. I’m alone. There is nothing here to harm me. Nothing can get through.

  When I open my eyes again the spasms of shivering have stopped. The room is back in focus: quiet, luxurious. Velvet and leather and ebony. Antique grandfather clock, china dogs on the mantelpiece, cabinet of curiosities. A gentleman’s study, as seen in a picture paper. Apart from the body on the hearth.

  I walk to the dark glass-covered painting of anonymous mountains and look into the glass. My reflection looks terrible, but at least I can meet my own eyes. I push my sweaty hair off my face. I straighten my tie, pulling the knot up so that it almost hides the damp stain on my collar. I stink of brandy, but that’s not unusual.

  At last I ring the bell. I sit down in the leather armchair in front of the hearth, crossing my ankle over my knee. I am relaxed. I am in charge. There will be no crack in my voice when Betty comes to ask me what I want. I will order some more brandy, and then I will ask her politely if she could remove the binder from the hearthrug and dispose of him in an appropriate manner. I have no idea what an appropriate manner is; if she asks me I’ll shrug and suggest she ask someone else.

  I’m determined not to stare at Farmer’s body. I raise my eyes and focus on the oval table that my father uses for his desk. The books that Farmer delivered for him are spread out everywhere. It’ll be obvious that I went through them, looking for something. I don’t know if that will make him angry or not. That’s the worst thing about my father, not knowing either way. If he’s angry—

  I breathe. I imagine the grey wall surrounding me. Featureless. Blank.

  The door opens. I am so encased in grey that I manage not to jump. I clear my throat. ‘Clear up this mess, will you?’

  No answer. A footstep. Not Betty’s footstep.

  The grey vanishes, leaving me in a world full of sharp edges and nausea. I swivel round and struggle to my feet. My head spins and I bite my tongue to try to focus. Pathetic.

  My father gives me a faint smile, which to anyone who didn’t know him would look absent-minded. I say, ‘I’m sorry, I thought you were one of the servants.’

  ‘One misplaced word,’ he says, with a little sigh, ‘can be the difference between victory and failure. Pay attention, fool.’

  My face goes hot. I clench my jaw.

  My father steps around the dark splatters of vomit and nudges Emmett Farmer with his foot. ‘What a scene of carnage. I hope you are not to blame.’

  ‘No! I—’ He raises one finger and I fall silent.

  ‘Give me the salient facts as briefly as you can.’

  I swallow. I can’t find words to tell him what just happened. My salient facts – the way Farmer looked as he collapsed, the way he said my name, the horror of seeing a man force-fed part of his own life – are not the ones that my father is asking for. He raises an eyebrow. ‘Take your time.’ He means the opposite.

  ‘He collapsed.’ I glance at the fire. The book is gone now, or nearly, indistinguishable from the glowing bed of logs. Why don’t I want to mention it to my father?

  He twirls one finger in the air to tell me I haven’t finished.

  ‘I don’t know what happened. He was about to leave. Then he threw up on your rug.’

  ‘Elegantly put. Is that all?’

  He knows it isn’t. I look away and shrug, because staring back will make him realise that in my inward, cowardly way I’m defying him. But I’m not sure how long I can bear the silence. If only someone would pick Farmer up off the floor.

  A skitter of light feet. ‘Oh – I’m very sorry, sir, I didn’t expect—’ As I turn, Betty curtsys to my father and frantically pushes a stray lock of hair under her cap. She wouldn’t do that for me. ‘Shall I …?’ Her eyes go to the body on the floor, and she stifles a squeak. Clearly she thinks Farmer’s dead.

  My father doesn’t bother to look at her. ‘Get him taken back to de Havilland’s workshop. They can look after him there.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ She doesn’t understand what’s going on, but she’s too afraid of my father to do anything but bob again and duck out of the door. We hear her run along the passage, raising her voice as she goes out of earshot.

  We stand in silence until the coachman and footman come in, smelling of tobacco and horses. They halt on the threshold when they see my father, but he beckons them in and together they manhandle Farmer until he’s draped over the coachman’s shoulder. Farmer moans and another gurgle of vomit splashes on to the floor. I don’t react. It’s unmanly to show disgust or pity. My father murmurs an instruction to the footman, who grabs the bag of papers from the table. Then, at last, they stagger out.

  Unexpectedly my father chuckles. He sits down in the chair in front of the hearth. He stretches his legs out in front of him. ‘Oh dear, oh dear. And he looked so dapper when he came in. Handsome, even, in a rough-cut way. I saw you looking at him.’

  I don’t answer. He’s right. Farmer was good-looking. Before he turned into that obscenity.

  ‘A feeble lot, these binders. De Havilland is no better. I had higher hopes of this one, but it seems he is cast from the same mould.’

  I don’t say anything. I would like to be invisible.

  ‘They mollycoddle themselves.’ He gestures for me to put another log on the fire. ‘Cultivate delicate constitutions as if weakness was a badge of honour. A spineless lot. De Havilland calls himself an artist, but ultimately a binder is merely the rectum through which waste is squeezed into another shape.’ He leans forward to peer at the books spread out on the table, but they’re too far away to reach and he doesn’t get up.

  I take a tiny step towards the sideboard where the decanters are. He doesn’t even look at me. Sharp as a whip he says, ‘You’ve had enough. Sit down.’

  I swallow the dry edge in my throat that needs alcohol to soften it. Instead I imagine a grey fog that gets thicker and thicker as I drag a chair from the side of the table into the middle of the room. I sit down. Is it obedience? Or am I trying to goad him?

  Silence. ‘At least he finished before he succumbed.’

  ‘Finished?’

  ‘With Nell.’ My father watches me, smiling. ‘My dear Lucian, don’t look so tense. Try to pretend you enjoy your old dad’s company.’

  ‘If you despise them so much—’ I stop.

  ‘Yes? Relax, for goodness’ sake, you look like you’ve just caught your hand in a fan-belt.’ He laughs. That happens, once every few months or so, to men in his factories: they lose their arms. And their jobs, obviously.

  ‘The binders.’ Everything that’s happened tonight has loosened my hatred, like a knot of phlegm I need to cough up. ‘If you think they’re parasites, why do you pay them? If they’re arseholes, why do you collect their shit?’

  I want him to get angry. Even if I’m afraid of him. It would be a point to me, if he got angry. He doesn’t.

  ‘You’re quite right, boy. It was unkind of me to use that metaphor.’ He leans back and puts his arms behind his head. His gaze rests on the display cabinet next to the window. If you didn’t know, you’d think he was smiling gently at the ostrich egg and the bits of intricately carved ivory.

  I turn my head sharply away and stare into the hearth. The fire has almost died. Grey ash lies thick on the embers. One curled length of charred leather has dropped into the bottom of the grate. The flames have eaten half of the words, but a few singed letters still stand out. METT MER. Two hours ago I had never heard of Emmett Farmer and now half of his name makes me shiver. I cross my arms over my chest.

  My father shifts in his chair. I know without looking that he’s turned his eyes to me.

  I say, ‘What was it this time?’

  His smile stays the same.


  ‘Nell’s memories. Tell me, do you change your modus operandi? Do you alternate seduction and blackmail and rape?’ My voice breaks. How easily I can imagine it. Does that mean I’m like him, if I can see it all so clearly?

  ‘Lucian, you know my library is at your disposal. Any time you feel curious …’

  He enjoys it. He loves knowing that I know.

  The gaslight flares and the raised ropes of plaster on the ceiling sway and tremble. When the jet subsides the room seems darker than before, and smaller.

  The clock chimes. It’s earlier than I thought. My father stretches and rolls his head back. I push myself to my feet. He watches me but he doesn’t say anything.

  ‘Goodnight.’

  ‘Goodnight.’ He yawns. ‘Oh – Lucian.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘If you see Nell, tell her she’s got a day to clean this rug or I’ll take it out of her wages.’

  Someone has lit the lamps in my bedroom. There’s a fire in the hearth, too. I stand as close to it as I can. At first I’m shivering. Then suddenly I’m too hot and I break out in a sweat. I turn to the window and pull open the curtains. A cold draught dries the moisture on my forehead. Raindrops patter against the window like something desperate to get in. Beyond my reflection the darkness is thick and blurred. The two lamps on either side of the gate glimmer through a veil of rain.

  I turn back into the room. It’s not like my father’s study. It’s almost empty: bed, chair, dressing table, chest. But in the lamplight the bare white walls are the colour of sandstone, soft with shadows. Everything else is tinged with flame-colours. Darkness clings to the edges of the furniture. The coverlet on my bed gleams like silk. If I felt safe anywhere, I’d feel safe here.

  I’m chilly again. I wrap myself in a dressing gown and pull the chair towards the fireplace. I sit there for a few moments, staring at the fire. But I can’t resist long. I get up again and go to the chest at the foot of my bed. Underneath the blankets I’ve improvised a secret compartment. The bottle of brandy is half full but that’s not what I’m looking for. I take out the other bundle and sit down again to unwrap it.

  The cloth falls to the floor. The lamp is too far away to read by, but I don’t want to get up. I know the book almost by heart, anyway.

  Childhood Memories of William Langland, Esquire.

  My father gave it to me on my twelfth birthday. It was the first book I ever read all the way through. I’d seen books before, of course. We had them at school. The masters told us over and over again how precious they were. Priceless, they said. One of my friends was beaten for getting an ink-stain on one. But the subjects were doddering old scholars, desperate to earn a few pence before they died. Who cared about a life spent teaching geometry, or experimenting with prisms, or keeping bees? The library was where you went to hide, or cry, or (later) have quick, ungentle assignations. No one went there to read. When you went through the door you could hear the infinitesimal creak of books on the shelves, telling you to mind your own business. They were there to impress the parents, like the stained glass in the windows or the new cricket pavilion.

  William Langland was different. That day … My mother made an occasion of every birthday, making a fuss of us with a brittle enthusiasm that could turn to sharpness in a heartbeat. She was the one who gave us presents, not my father. That year I’d had my cricket bat, or my fencing foil, or whatever it was, and I’d thanked her for it as fervently as I could. I’d had a birthday tea, and a cake with decorations in Scheele’s green that had to be taken off before we ate it. There were girls in frilled frocks, and other boys like me in Norfolk suits, and their nursemaids, who filled the room and made my mother’s lips tighten with dislike. My head began to ache from too much sugar. As the other children started to leave I tried to slip outside onto the lawn, but my mother summoned me in again immediately. ‘Your father would like to see you in his study,’ she said, in the blank, disinterested voice she always used when she spoke about him. I thought I must have done something wrong. But when I went to him he ruffled my hair and put a parcel into my hands.

  He watched as I unwrapped it. It was in a dark blue wrapping, stamped with gold. I undid the paper and didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know what I felt. At last I said, ‘Thank you,’ and opened it, anxious to look away from my father’s eyes.

  The frontispiece was a coloured plate. A forest on an autumn afternoon, the sun low over a moss-covered stone wall, bracken tinged with gold. I smelt the sweet applish scent of cooling earth and damp undergrowth. For a second I was there, not in my father’s study at all.

  I think I thanked him again. I think he showed me the title page, and the stamps that confirmed Langland had consented and that the bookseller had a licence. I think he told me how much it had cost. None of that mattered. I went upstairs and read it nearly all the way through. I was so absorbed I didn’t hear the dinner gong; I didn’t see Abigail when she came into the nursery to light the lamps. I was swept away on a gentle current of memory: wide fields and deep woods, a tree-house, a pet otter, an adventure in an old quarry … A plump, humorous mother, a father who could ride and poach, three older brothers, a trusty farmer’s son who could always be relied on in a scrape … It was only at bedtime, when my nurse plucked it away from me, that I blinked and knew where I was, or who.

  How many times have I read it, since then? I can shut my eyes and see Langland’s village from the steep path that ran up to the top of the down. I can feel the hum of chalk under my back, under the sparse grass. I can smell wild thyme and sun-warmed soil.

  At the end of the book he was married. I always liked that part least. If I could express to the gentle reader one fraction of the joy that filled me as my dearest Agnes smiled at me under her crown of flowers, I would count my sacrifice well made … But now I spread my hand to the fire and imagine the brush of orange-flower petals falling through my fingers.

  I was such a fool. I got to know those memories so well they might have been my own; but I never thought about Langland himself, or how the book came to be bound. The memories were from years ago, and I guessed he was long dead; but I didn’t understand, not really. Not until that night, only a year ago. Less than a year. Back when I was my father’s favourite.

  It was last autumn, a week or so before I was meant to take my entrance exam. It was early evening, starting to get dark. I was in my father’s study after a lesson. Dr Ledbury had just left. I could still hear his voice in the hall, as Abigail gave him his hat. I suppose I must have been thinking about the text we had been translating. I stared idly across the room at my father’s curiosity cabinet. The peacock feathers were pressed against the glass like ferns in a vivarium. One of the maids must have moved the Oriental dagger when she dusted it, and it was hanging crooked. I got up and tried the door, in case it was unlocked.

  I felt the whole cabinet swing outward.

  There was a tiny moment of resistance as the fireproof seal opened. Behind the cabinet was a bookshelf, set into the wall. I stared at rows of books – cheap cloth-bound books, most of them, not like the ones at school. The names niggled at me, as if they should have been familiar: Marianne Smith. Mary Fletcher. Abigail Turner. I suppose I should have known then, but I had never heard the servants’ surnames. And I don’t think I’d ever seen a book by a woman. Maybe that was why I slid one off the shelf. I sat down on the arm of the armchair and leant sideways to turn up the oil-lamp.

  I can’t remember how long it took me to realise what they were.

  When my father came home I was in his chair, staring into the ashes of the fire. The wick of the lamp needed trimming, so the mantle was dim with soot.

  I heard Abigail answer the door to him. I imagined him brushing her arm – the faintest touch, like a breath – as she took his coat. He murmured something, and she laughed.

  He was whistling a tune when he came into the study. When he saw me he paused, just for a second. Then he lit the gas and turned to me in the sudden flare of light, still whi
stling.

  ‘I see you’ve found my little library,’ he said.

  It was the first time I thought I could fight with him and win. I was wrong. When I threatened to tell the Castleford Herald, he only shrugged; when I threatened to tell my mother, he raised an eyebrow and said, ‘My dear boy, your mother has a genius for not seeing what doesn’t suit her. But if you think her book would look well next to the others …’

  I never took my entrance exam. Three days later I was packed off to my uncle’s house in the country.

  Now I get to my feet. William Langland falls to the floor, but I don’t pick it up. I don’t want to think about those long months, when loneliness rotted me away from the inside. White fields under snow, the black woods, the way I could walk for hours and not see another soul – and if I did, it was only a glimpse of a poacher, muffled to the eyes, who slipped away so quickly I wasn’t sure I hadn’t imagined him. A Turning dinner with my uncle, who was drunk before the soup was taken away. A rainy spring, the world flaring green. High hot summer. Afternoons that crept past as slowly as the sunlight through my window. Half a year, as worthless as the bits of rubbish that I found in the bottom of my trunk when I came home: a torn jeweller’s receipt, a few pheasant’s feathers, a broken wooden egg painted with flowers.

  Forget it. I bend and pick up the book. I smooth the cover. When I left, I told my father I’d burnt it. I wanted him to see that I wasn’t like him. But I didn’t do it. I’ve come close to putting it on the fire, but I can’t bear to. William Langland is dead and it wouldn’t do him any good – but that’s not the reason. If he were here, I’d buy his memories from him at any price. I’d take his childhood like a shot. I wouldn’t hesitate. And that makes me as bad as my father. Worse – because Langland must have been desperate. How could he have chosen to give up those memories, otherwise?

  I put it down on the window sill. Rain rattles against the glass. The sky is orange in the distance, through the bare trees. Another factory fire on the other side of Castleford. Not one of ours. The rain will put it out, probably. If not, we’re the right side of the wind.