I knock on the pane and point sideways. I hold the man’s gaze until he shrugs, puts the book down and disappears out of sight. A moment later he opens the street door and stares out at me. ‘Yes?’
‘Is this de Havilland’s bindery?’
‘Front door’s on Alderney Street.’
‘I’m looking for Emmett Farmer. The apprentice.’
‘He got sacked,’ he says, and starts to close the door.
I reach into my pocket. He hesitates. ‘I know,’ I say, and let the edge of a half-sovereign show between my thumb and forefinger. ‘Where did he go?’
The man clears his throat and spits on the ground, without emphasis. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Did he go home? Where did he come from?’
‘Somewhere out in the country, I think. Some other bindery.’ He eyes the coin. ‘Why don’t you ask de Havilland?’
‘Did he say anything about where he was going?’
‘Look.’ He shakes his head. ‘He got thrown out in the middle of the night. I wasn’t even awake. I don’t know what he did, or where he went, or whether he’s still alive. He’s probably in a gutter somewhere, like everyone else who’s out of work.’
I lean forward, until I can smell tobacco on his breath. ‘Please. I need to find him.’
‘And it’s more than my job’s worth to talk about bindery business,’ he says, and shuts the door. I hear him walk away. I knock again. I keep knocking until he opens a workshop window and cranes sideways. ‘He left without taking anything with him,’ he says. ‘His coat and knapsack’s still upstairs. No one here knows anything else. Now go away or I’ll call the police.’
He pulls the window shut and latches it. Through the grime I see him go back to his work. He’s telling the truth.
I’m so cold it takes an effort to move. I pick my way across the frozen ruts to the end of the lane, turn one corner and then another. There’s nowhere to go but I keep walking, as if my hopelessness is one step behind me, unable to catch up. I lose my bearings. I must be going in circles, because when I finally come to a halt I’m in Alderney Crescent, outside a gin palace. I look up at the Corinthian columns and the gold letters painted on black: THE PRINCESS. Or perhaps I came here on purpose, I don’t know. It doesn’t matter.
Inside, gaslight reflects off polished brass and dark wood and engraved glass. Warm air gusts into my face, smelling of stale flesh and spilt drink. As soon as I step over the threshold my cheeks begin to tingle where the wind has scraped them raw. I put a shilling on the counter, drink one glass of gin without pausing and order another. Then I sit down in a corner and shut my eyes.
Emmett Farmer has gone. I’ll never find him, even if he’s still in Castleford, and still breathing. I only have de Havilland’s word for it that he was alive when he left the bindery.
I finish the second glass of gin. When I stand up to go back to the bar, my vision slides and I have to pause to focus. I reach out and take hold of a marbled pillar. The edges of things are starting to soften. The glare of the brass is a little dimmer, the world less tawdry. It’s better. I dig in my pocket for more money. At the same time the door opens. A freezing draught kicks at my ankles. A crumpled piece of paper skims the tiles at my feet and presses itself against my shoe. I bend to pick it up and smooth it out on the bar.
It’s a piece of headed notepaper. At the top, there’s a gold crest, and a motto: Liber Vos Liberabit. Underneath it says, Simms and Evelyn, Fine Binders. The rest of the paper is full of instructions in a spidery, careless hand. Go to Madam Halter’s at 89 ALDERNEY ST and ask for MISS PEARL and her speciality. An engagement of at least TWO HOURS is required. Immediately afterwards you are required to attend for binding. Any memories lost through attrition, abuse of drink or any other cause will result in a proportional REDUCTION OF FEE, which has been agreed to be a sum NOT EXCEEDING 10s.
The barman glances at me, takes my money and puts another glass down in front of me. ‘I wouldn’t, if I were you, sir,’ he says. For a second I think he’s talking about the gin. Then he nods at the sheet of paper. ‘I’ve known people go mad, after. They’re full of promises, the binders, but if someone says something before you’ve had time to heal, you can end up knowing you’ve been bound. They say that’s the worst, when you don’t know what you’ve forgotten.’
I roll it into a ball and throw it away. ‘That’s all,’ I say. ‘Thank you.’
He nods, registering my tone. He reaches for a cloth and begins to polish the row of gleaming taps.
But the page is still floating in front of my eyes. I know Madam Halter’s place. It’s classy, relatively speaking; but I’ve heard of Miss Pearl and her … preferences. In spite of myself I can imagine the girl who must have read those instructions. I don’t know any girls younger than Lisette, but somehow I can picture her: gap-toothed, her hair in a plait. In my mind’s eye she walks up the steps to the door and tugs the bell-pull. She’s desperate, and brave. But she doesn’t know what she’s doing. She’s so guileless it hurts. And it will hurt more, when the door opens, and the door behind that … I shake my head, trying to clear it. But I can’t. I can see her so clearly. She’s not like Nell – she’s more like Farmer, somehow, with the same gallant tilt of the head, the same wide-set eyes. What if it was a girl like that?
‘Hey.’ I catch at the barman’s sleeve. ‘Did someone – did you see …?’ I feel light-headed, weak with urgency. It doesn’t make sense, but my stomach is churning. What they’ve done to her is my fault.
‘Yes, sir?’
‘The girl …’ I swallow. She’s not real. ‘I mean, whoever dropped that piece of paper. Did you see them?’
‘Can’t recall, sir.’ He detaches himself. ‘Lost someone, sir?’
‘No. I mean – yes.’ I force myself to sit back. What am I doing? I’m going off my head. She doesn’t even exist. ‘Never mind.’
He gives me a long stare. Finally he says, ‘Your sweetheart made herself a page-turner, has she? Well, plenty more fish in the sea, if I may say so, sir.’
‘What? No. I don’t mean that.’ But I feel so ill I can’t think. As if this girl, and Nell, and my father, and my book are all part of the same thing. Fear crackles in my gut like broken glass. What have I done?
The barman wipes his rag over the bar. It leaves an oily, iridescent sheen. ‘Binders,’ he says, and hawks a lump of phlegm into the spittoon. ‘You seen the queues on Library Row? Turning people away, they are. It’s the weather. Freezing cold and the workhouses full. Give me an honest whore any day.’
‘Yes.’ I bow my head. I can’t bear it. In my mind’s eye I see Madam Halter’s door swinging open. I can see Miss Pearl, waiting at the end of the curtained gallery, all in black. The girl stands at the foot of the stairs, looking up. Panic quickens in her eyes. But the scene blurs into my father’s study, and Nell’s body. Emmett Farmer choking out my name. De Havilland’s waiting room, and his secretary glaring at me over her pince-nez. De Havilland smoothly wishing Farmer dead. I push my fists into my face, until bloody colours blossom against my eyelids.
Perhaps Farmer is dead. Part of me wants to think he is. It’s his fault I feel like this. I was fine before he came. Now I can’t think about anything but what I might have done, and my book, and him. And the way he looked at me, and the way – in spite of everything – it made the blood rush to my heart. No, of course I don’t want him dead. If I could only find him, I could find my book. I could lock it away for ever. I’d never have to wonder why the thought of a girl’s face makes me sick with guilt.
Through the haze of nausea something is niggling at me. Something the barman said. Turning people away, they are … and the workhouses full …
I flounder to my feet before I know why. I sway, pushing my hands into my pockets as if the reason is mixed up with my latchkey and loose change. Then I get hold of it. Hope.
Bindings are for desperate people. People who can’t go anywhere else. And if Emmett Farmer is alive, he must be desperate by now. I
stagger to the door and out into the street. The barman calls something after me, but it’s lost in the cacophony of voices. I slip on a patch of ice and nearly go flying. It’s foolish. I’m drunk. I should go home. But if there’s a chance – any chance at all … I turn my back to the blazing evening sun, hurry around the corner, cross the junction with Alderney Street, and come out on to Library Row.
But the street outside Simms and Evelyn is empty, and they’ve shut for the day. Next to the trade entrance there’s a notice in the window: No Soliciting. A gaggle of women and children are waiting silently on the steps of Barratt and Lowe, huddled against the cold; but that door is closed too, and no one goes in or out. A little further down, an aproned man with a broom is jabbing at a beggar in the doorway of Marden’s. He says, ‘We’re shut, come back tomorrow,’ with weary resignation. The beggar gets up and shuffles away.
None of those people is Emmett Farmer.
I keep walking, past the fine binders and the Bibliophiles Club and the school binders, checking each one as I go. I get further and further away from Alderney Street, and Library Row gets narrower and dirtier and shabbier. Now the shops are down-at-heel, the doorways deep with shadows, and the houses almost meet overhead. The booksellers’ shopfronts are peeling, black paint faded to grey. Their curved windows are cloudy with grime. Above me a rusty book-shaped sign rasps as the wind catches it. Trade Binding, it says across two stylised pages; and on the other side, Pawn Broker. I stop to peer into the shop and catch a glimpse of a cramped room full of cheap trinkets in cabinets, a cluster of people, muttering. A dishevelled woman in an archway looks up as I pass, but she doesn’t call out or beckon to me. An indigo glass bottle glints at her feet, an octagonal label. Laudanum.
A chill wind kicks up rubbish and grit. I pull my coat closer round myself and keep walking.
O’Breen and Sons. Licenst Bookseller. All Stamps Genuine. I pause to look through the window at a dim landscape of shelves and spines. A plump shopkeeper is behind the counter, talking to a woman in tears. He reaches out, pats her cheek, and smirks at her. Behind me a man pulls up in a carriage. He ducks past me through the door in a tang of leather and expensive cologne. I don’t see his face. At the same time a door slams. I look round to see a woman coming out of an alley that runs between two shops. She’s holding two children by the hand. The little one is grizzling; the older one is blank-eyed and dazed. ‘All right, ducky,’ she says, ‘we can go home now.’
I clench my jaw and turn away. I’m wasting my time. If Farmer did come here when de Havilland threw him out, he’s earned his money and gone, long ago. Now he’ll be sleeping it off in an inn somewhere, slack-mouthed, undone.
I come out into a square, hardly wide enough for a carriage to turn. A single unlit streetlamp stands like a gibbet in a meagre drift of ashy snow. A girl is huddled by a cart, shivering and stamping her feet. A couple of men crouch on the kerb, warming themselves at a fire in a bucket. A gust of wind blows the stench of factory smoke into my face. I pull into a doorway to wipe the dust out of my eyes. The strip of sky above the houses is starting to unravel into thick strands of grey. It’ll snow again before nightfall.
On the corner is A. Fogatini, Pawnbroker and Licens’d Bookseller. It’s the smallest and shabbiest of all. It’s famous for it. Fogatini’s, the rubbish heap of memory. One window is roughly bricked up. The other is covered with pages of newspaper that have faded to the colour of old skin. The door opens, setting a bell jangling, and bilious light spills out on to the cobblestones. A man comes out – two men – and they walk towards me, laughing. Instinctively I lower my head.
‘… pass a long winter evening,’ one of them says. ‘Classic Fogatini.’
The other one laughs. ‘Quite right. He’s the absolute best for that sort of thing.’
They go past. Their voices are whirled away in a gust of wind.
I wait until their footsteps have faded. Then I walk towards the wedge of light that’s still gleaming on the cobbles. Through the open door I see piles and shelves and boxes of books. A small boy is sweeping the floor, sending up a cloud of coal dust. In the flickering lamplight I can just make out the label on the box beside the door: INCOMPLETE (TRADE), 1d. The shelf beside it is marked CURIOSITY’S 2s6d EACH. A man turns his back to the draught without looking up from the book he’s holding. There’s no one else in the shop. My head is aching. I should go home. This is the last bindery, and I haven’t found him. As I step back I tread in something soft and the stink of shit wafts through the frosty air.
Outside, set into the wall a little further along, is a smaller door. Next to it there’s a rain-stained notice: For Trade Bindings. Please Knock. We Pay Good Rates. Two men are standing there, arguing; one of them is in shirtsleeves, hugging himself against the cold. He glances round, and for the first time he shows his face.
It’s Emmett Farmer.
A ray of red sunlight blazes over my shoulder, swift as a curtain being drawn back. Shadows sharpen on the pavement. Frost sparkles scarlet on the edges of bricks and window sills. Then it’s gone. My breath comes short. For a second I can’t move. Then the other man says, in a high foreign voice, ‘I told you, half a crown is too much. Suppose we say sixpence.’
I grab Farmer’s arm. I shove him backwards so hard I feel the breath go out of him. ‘No thanks,’ I say over my shoulder, ‘he’s changed his mind.’ Behind me someone clicks his tongue in disgust and shuts the door. Farmer’s feet scrabble on the cobbles. Suddenly I’m taking his whole weight. He sags to the ground. ‘Get up.’ The last time someone’s body was in my arms it was Nell.
‘Lucian.’ He starts to laugh. He doesn’t stop. I drag him to his feet again and steer him towards the nearest doorway.
I fight to keep us both upright. I’m weak at the knees with triumph and euphoria and fury. ‘What on earth do you think you’re doing?’
‘What are you doing?’ His pupils slide upwards and he staggers.
‘Don’t you dare wipe your memory – don’t you dare—’
He blinks. ‘I wasn’t.’
‘I need you to remember. Tell me where my book is and then you can do whatever you want.’
He stares at me. At last he says, ‘I was asking for a job. That was the only one where they even considered it.’
A job. Of course. Not a binding, another apprenticeship. And I dragged him away from the door as though he was about to jump under a train. But it doesn’t matter. I’ve found him, at last. I loosen my grip on his shoulders, but I can’t bring myself to let go of him. ‘I’ve been looking for you for hours.’ At least I sound calmer. ‘I just want my book back. I want to know it’s safe. Where is it?’
‘I haven’t got it.’
‘Where is it?’ I dig my fingers into his shoulder. Another wave of shivering goes through him. I can feel his bones judder in my grip. ‘For goodness’ sake,’ I hiss. I take off my coat and push it at him. But he’s huddled into himself, his eyes half closed. I have to wrap him in it. His skin is freezing.
He says, through rattling teeth, ‘De Havilland threw me out. I didn’t have time to pack.’
‘I know. I heard.’
‘All I want …’ He stops and clears his throat. ‘I want to go home. I’d walk, but in this snow …’
‘You’d freeze to death.’
‘Yes.’ He pushes his arms into the sleeves of the coat and rubs his cheek with one cuff.
‘How much do you need for a bed somewhere?’ I reach into my pocket. The chill is starting to creep through my jacket. ‘Half a crown?’
He stiffens. ‘I’m not asking you for money.’
‘It’s fine. It’s half a crown. Here.’ I hold it out to him. It gleams, a small cold weight in the palm of my glove.
‘No.’ He tries to step back and bumps into the wall. ‘No, I don’t want your money.’
I stare at him. ‘You’d rather work for Fogatini than let me give you half a crown? Two shillings and sixpence? You can’t possibly be serious.’
&n
bsp; He turns his head away. ‘I’m not taking money from you. I’m not a beggar.’
‘It’s not charity. I need my book back. Think of it as payment for that.’
‘I told you before, I haven’t got it.’
‘But you know where it is.’
He exhales through his teeth. ‘I can’t get it. If I could …’ He bows his head, burrowing his chin into the collar of my coat. ‘It’s a long way away. In a bindery on the marshes. Locked in a vault. It’s strong, a big bronze lock, you couldn’t break it open. De Havilland has the key.’
‘De Havilland? He said he didn’t know anything about it.’
‘And you believed him?’ Farmer’s face is in shadow but I see the glitter of his eyes as he glances at me. ‘It doesn’t matter, anyway. I know where your book is, I know where the key is. But I can’t get it. And neither can you.’
‘I offered de Havilland money. A hundred guineas. Surely he would …’
‘He knows. Trust me.’ The words hang in the air. There’s no reason to trust him. He shrugs.
‘If I get the key from him, will you take me there?’ I ask.
He laughs, croakily. ‘He keeps it with him all the time. Even at night. I don’t care who you are, he won’t let you take it. Why do you think he chucked me out into the snow without time to grab my coat?’
There’s a yell and a thud from the crossroads behind us, the clatter of an overturned bucket. The smell of burning paraffin catches the back of my throat. Farmer cranes over my shoulder, his eyes narrowed. A moment later I hear footsteps running the other way and he relaxes.
‘You mean …’ I pull my jacket tighter but I’m getting colder by the second. ‘You tried, and that’s why he sacked you?’
He opens his mouth as if he’s going to speak. But he only nods.
The Binding Page 33
