The Bookbinder

by Pip Williams

Now goddess, child of Zeus, tell the old story for our modern times. Find the beginning. —Homer, The Odyssey, translated by Emily Wilson

‘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.

Those who want to know what Shakespeare thinks must not neglect what his fools say.

Why do we have so many books? I liked to ask. To expand your world, she would always say.

‘An adventure,’ she said. ‘A chance to do something important. My ticket out of this place.’ Things she’d heard.

‘War is always a stern God,’ Oberon began, ‘but he never offered such a face of steel – especially to you women – as he does today. Your men leave you – you know not where – you may hear from them but their letters contain no postmark and they do not contain a word of what you would most like to know…’

This time he kept the cap off. Held it against him like a man asking for pennies. ‘It’s a book of words.’ ‘They usually are.’ He laughed, put on his cap. ‘Women’s words. A friend has been collecting them, writing them down. Giving them meanings.’ He was smiling, despite himself. ‘Sounds like a dictionary.’ ‘That’s exactly what it is.’

The Dictionary of Lost Words!!!!

‘But the words won’t be in the New English Dictionary,’ he said.

Reading was such a quiet activity, and the reader in their parlour or leaning against the trunk of a tree would never imagine all the hands their book had been through, all the folding and cutting and beating it had endured. They would never guess how noisy and smelly the life of that book had been before it was put in their hands. I loved that I knew this. That they didn’t.

Bonefolders of various shapes for page folding and leatherwork, brushes for glue and glaire and gilt, tools for decorating leather and cloth, a gilding cushion, linen, tape and shears. My sewing box was where

‘A book would be worthless if its pages were misaligned, or it was sewn poorly.’

‘But you’ve used a different typeface,’ I said. ‘What is it?’ ‘Baskerville,’ he said. ‘Why?’ A pause, like the white space between paragraphs. He was thinking of her. ‘For its clarity and beauty.’ He let the sheets fall back into a neat pile. ‘I wouldn’t know where to start with the folding – the pages are all out of order.’

‘Quality control,’ I said. ‘Every text block gets the same treatment, but don’t worry, it won’t be seen. The end papers will cover it.’

‘Do you always work on the Dictionary?’ ‘Most compositors have a speciality. Mine is dictionaries.’ ‘How long have you been setting type for the New English Dictionary?’ ‘Since my first year as an apprentice.

‘Strength and flexibility,’ Eb said. ‘A book needs both.’

next. He placed the ninth section and I saw him pause. There is satisfaction in sewing the parts of a book together. Binding one idea to the next, one word to another, reuniting sentences with their beginnings and ends. The process of stitching can become an act of reverence, and when there are more sections on the frame than on the bench, you begin to anticipate the moment the parts become a whole.

‘Yes, actually.’ And I began to tell her about the women’s words. Tilda sipped her drink and became unusually attentive. A strange smile played on her lips. ‘That would be Esme,’ she said. ‘I wondered if you knew her. I saw your name.’ ‘More than once, I hope. I’ve introduced Esme to a whole world of words.’

‘An Oxford Pamphlet.

Corresponds To october 1914 Oxford pamphlets. I understand this was the first printing of the Walter Raleigh essay

Might Is Right by Sir Walter Raleigh.’

It is a very dangerous doctrine when it becomes the creed ...

A nation of men who mistake violence for strength, and c...

hardly knew what I was doing until I’d done it. It was a thin volume, cloth-covered. Its identity worn away from handling. A privilege, small enough to fit in the pocket of my coat.

A book thief?

‘So you don’t enjoy your work?’ I felt trapped. A quick glance toward Mrs Stoddard. ‘Not always.’ ‘And why is that?’ ‘Because it can be boring.’ ‘Oh, but you are surrounded by books, words, ideas—’ ‘Water, water everywhere, Miss Bruce, nor any drop to drink.’ She smiled. ‘Coleridge,’ she said. ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,’ I said, lobbing the shuttlecock back over the net.

I’d offer to walk her as far as Walton Well Bridge, but she’d always decline. There’s nothing in the dark that can hurt me, she once said.

Did something bad happened?

‘I have fried them with butter and garlic, salt and pepper. It is not hard.’ ‘Butter and garlic,’ said Maude. ‘Butter makes everything taste good,’ said Lotte. ‘Garlic makes everything taste better.’

grieving. But Kitchener’s face soon replaced them. He pointed at boys too young and men too old and all those in between who failed to wear a uniform. He stared them down with an attitude of accusation under his huge moustache.

written. I scraped at the black with the edge of a knife; I held the page up to the lamp. I finally threw it on the table. ‘What don’t they want us to know?’ I said. ‘Truth,’ Maude said, without pausing in her folds.

How Can War Ever Be Right? Gilbert Murray, again. War, he wrote, is the enemy of social progress, friendliness and gentleness, art, literature and learning. He had always been an advocate of peace, he wrote.

He’d finished half his tea before it struck me. This child, who was sent to France to be a man, would always need someone to spoon food into his mouth and hold a cup to his lips.

And then there was Maude. My sister had a simplicity that unnerved people, an honesty that made them uncomfortable.

Seems like autism . Though the author denies it

‘What is wrong?’ he asked. ‘I feel like I’m being denied something.’ ‘You are being spared something,’ he said. ‘What am I being spared?’ ‘The discomfort of looking at the mess the war has made.’

My thumbs traced the scars drawn all over his fingers. I looked up, took in the mask again. It was like the censor’s pen: it hid what the war had done, was doing. It hid him.

Let me summarise their demise, Ma liked to say when we came to tend the graves on All Hallows’ Eve. A cough, bad luck, a runny fart. Lust, foul play and a broken heart.

‘I come here because this is where the dead belong, where they can be at peace. I want to bury them, Peggy.’

If the spiritualists were right, I thought, and it were possible to have consciousness beyond death, then I would welcome lovers to sit on my grave one day, and I would gladly lie with the restless dead if it meant the living could be in peace.

‘Did you ever read the whole story?’ ‘Yes. In French. And you?’ It was my turn to laugh. ‘I’m from Jericho, Bastiaan, not Oxford. I left school at twelve, and Homer was not on the curriculum at St Barnabas – not in English and certainly not in Ancient Greek.’ ‘But why not in English?’ ‘There was no point. Our destinies were too ordinary to bother the gods, and our journeys would take us no further than the Press.’

All in Baskerville typeface. Clear and beautiful.

20 February 1917

Huuge time jump

Normally I wouldn’t worry, but my ward is filling up with boys who can barely breathe (and we’re down a third of our nursing staff). The French call it ‘la grippe’,

Spanish Flu

‘He came. Life is so constructed, that the event does not, cannot, will not, match the expectation. That whole day he never accosted me. Thwarted affection,’ she said. ‘It must be a novel. But which one?’ She looked more closely at the section. ‘Page four hundred and fifteen. A long one.’ ‘Villette,’ I said. ‘The printed sheets have just arrived in the bindery.’

‘I’ve been folding and collating the exam papers for years,’ I said. ‘Well, I think you’ve answered the question of appetite. Miss Bruce will be thrilled.’ Appetite, I thought. I’d been hungry my whole life.

Women’s Words and Their Meanings, edited by Esme Nicoll. I turned the pages, each one full of words that had been overlooked, the names of women who had been overlooked. She’d collected them on scraps of paper, Mr Owen had said.

The Dictionary of Lost Words

many memories, all folded together. Do you think the Trojan War was Helen’s fault? It would have been quite easy for Jane Eyre to marry St John. Why do you think she didn’t? Can you understand why Mrs Graham ran away to Wildfell Hall? It was important to her that I understood.

It might be a dangerous thing for Mr Darwin’s theories to be applied to people. When I asked why, she looked at Maude. How should we judge who is fit and who isn’t, Peg? Should it be how clever you are, or how rich? Or should it be how kind you are, the unique way you see the world, or maybe how often you make others smile? She tickled me then, and I thought nothing more of it.

I looked again at Women’s Words and Their Meanings. Words that no one valued, spoken by women that no one would have remembered if she hadn’t...

I began to unbutton his fly, but Bastiaan covered my hand and lifted it to his mouth. He kissed. ‘Are you sure?’ I said. He smiled. ‘It is one of those things that has suffered in translation.’ ‘What is?’ ‘The idea that fucking is the most important thing.’ I loved that he said fucking. My favourite English word, he’d told me. ‘But isn’t it the most important thing?’ He shook his head. ‘I used to think so.’ ‘What changed?’ ‘Your pleasure. It is something I can see, and feel on my skin. I can smell it and taste it and hear it.’ ‘You might not be the only one.’

‘I had tea with our librarian at Somerville yesterday,’ she said. ‘English breakfast or Darjeeling?’ I sniped. ‘Darjeeling,’

‘I want to write the books, Bastiaan. I want my ideas to be printed, I want my experience to count. I want to share something—’ ‘But not with me.’ ‘Of course with you, but I can’t be a wife and mother and a scholar as well. It just isn’t possible, and I can’t deny you those things that you want.’

‘Oh, Bastiaan, I know I have to choose.’ The truth. I could not take it back and he could not deny it.

‘If a book doesn’t look right, it becomes waste. If I can, I bring them home.’ ‘Waste?’ She raised her eyebrows. ‘It’s a matter of perspective.’ She re-read