Enjoy this sneak peek into the new novel by Pip Williams, a companion to her internationally bestselling debut, The Dictionary of Lost Words. Available at the end of March, The Bookbinder of Jericho explores another little-known slice of history with Williams’ celebrated insight into the perspectives of women within it.
August 1914
I stood on one side of the gathering bench, opposite Aggie. Piles of sections stretched along both sides, along an upper and a lower tier, waiting to be gathered into The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. It was an enormous book, made up of eighty-five sections, give or take, each folded thrice to make sixteen pages.
I fingered the section that brushed my thigh. The front pages. It would be the last I gathered but the first to be read. It included the title page, a list of illustrations and the contents – The Tempest, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Merry Wives of Windsor – the rest of the plays and all the poems. I swiped a section from the top tier onto my left forearm, took a step to the left and swept up the next section, then the next. It took a few moments to get my rhythm – for my body to remember the dance. Then I was moving along the length of the long bench, my legs crossing one in front of the other, my hand a blur as it passed over the piles of sections. The click of my heels and the swish of paper created the music I moved to. The hubbub of the bindery fell away, and if my hips moved more than necessary, well, who could say for sure that the movement didn’t increase my speed?
I swept the front pages onto the pile in my arm – I had half of a single book – and gave the pile to Maude. She tapped each edge against the table, then married my sections to those being gathered by Aggie on the other side.
I looked to my partner across the gathering bench – the slightest of nods – then off we went for another turn of the dance floor.
Every title section signalled a complete block of text, and Maude piled one atop the other. There were fifteen before I paused to check that she had not been diverted from her task – my sister’s hands also had a habit of dancing, but to a tune all their own. The text blocks were all perfectly neat and tidy, and if nothing interrupted Maude, they would continue to be.
I finished my lap and put the pile of sections in front of Maude. I removed my cardigan.
‘It’s warm,’ I said. ‘All this dancing.’
‘Warm.’ She nodded as she tapped the edges. The text blocks were beginning to overwhelm her workspace.
‘Stop for a minute, Maudie,’ I said. I looked for Lou and saw her returning from the sewing machines with an empty trolley.
‘Do you have another load for me, Maude?’ Lou asked.
Maude held up a fan. She’d unfolded the last section I’d gathered – once, twice – then let her fingers dance around until the section was something useful.
‘It’s warm,’ she said, handing Lou the fan. ‘Maudie—’ I began.
‘Just what I need,’ said Lou. She took the fan and moved it in front of her face – enough so we all felt the breeze. Then she passed the fan to me. ‘Sometimes I think you put her up to it, Peg.’ She smiled.
Lou began her check of each new text block – an expert flick through the section. If they were in the correct order and the right way up, she’d initial the last page and pop it on the trolley headed for the machine sewers.
I looked around the bindery. Mrs Hogg was instructing one of the newer girls, and Mrs Stoddard was in her office.
‘Lavatory break, Aggie. If anyone asks.’ I picked up the text block that belonged to Maude’s fan and walked toward the cloakroom. In truth, I could have taken just the ruined section – the rest of the block was perfect – but what use did I have for just the title and contents?
I put Shakespeare in my bag.
•••
Butterflies slowed our pace along the towpath – meadow browns and common blues busy among the tall grass and nettles, the folds of their wings irresistible to Maude.
Rosie and Old Mrs Rowntree were sitting on deckchairs among Rosie’s verge garden.
‘Welcome home, girls,’ Rosie said. ‘We’ve been waiting for you.’
She pointed to two empty chairs and held up a pot of tea. Maude stepped between flowerpots and hugged Rosie.
She bent to kiss the cheek of Old Mrs Rowntree. Two shaky hands held Maude’s face.
‘Yours is a smile to chase away woe, Miss Maude.’ Then Old Mrs Rowntree patted the chair beside her. ‘Tell me about your day.’
Maude offered up fragments of conversation and Old Mrs Rowntree nodded and exclaimed in all the right places.
‘I’ll join you in a bit,’ I said to Rosie.
‘Take your time,’ she said.
Back on our narrowboat, Calliope, I took the text block from my bag and went to sit on our bed. I fanned through the pages.
We already had Shakespeare – sonnets, plays – individually and as collections. But we didn’t have the complete works. There’d never been the money, or the opportunity. Still, it was so big I needed to inspect it before deciding if it was worth sewing and giving a berth.
I liked the introduction, and when I turned to the sonnets, something about the typeface drew my eye along. I read a few and decided I’d keep the lot. I left the text block beside my sewing frame on the table, grabbed two shawls and went to join the others.
‘I lost myself in the fine words of Mr Shakespeare,’ I said, to account for the time I’d taken. I put a shawl across
Maude’s shoulders and sat in the empty chair.
‘Which words, Peg?’ asked Old Mrs Rowntree.
‘The sonnets.’
‘I like the sonnets,’ she said. ‘More than the plays.’
‘Do you have a favourite, Ma?’ asked Rosie.
‘Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed, but then begins a journey in my head.’ She frowned, shook her head. ‘I used to know it by heart.’
‘You would have had cause to recite it when you were younger, Ma.’
‘It wasn’t really about hard work,’ said Old Mrs Rowntree. ‘It was about missing someone you love. About how their face comes to you in the dark and quiet of night and starts you thinking.’
She looked down at the rug on her knees and tried to adjust it, but her right hand began its violent shake. Maude put her own hand on top of the old woman’s and smiled when the shaking stopped. Then Old Mrs Rowntree placed her left hand on top of Maude’s, and Maude accepted the invitation to play. Rosie and I watched as their hands slipped from bottom to top, getting faster and faster until Old Mrs Rowntree declared Maude the winner.
•••
Night took its time to fall, and Maude refused to go to bed while she could still see what was beyond the windows of our narrowboat. I set up my sewing frame, positioning it so I had one arm on either side, like a harpist might sit with her harp. While Maude folded butterflies, I bound one section after another to the cords.
When I reached The Taming of the Shrew I put down my needle and palm shield and massaged the muscle between my thumb and forefinger.
‘I’m weary with toil,’ I said.
‘Haste me to my bed,’ Maude said, not looking up from her folding. I watched her hands sculpt the paper into a butterfly with wings that slid over each other, as in life.
You are my toil, I thought as I rose from the table. I pulled a section from the pile I had not yet bound, then kissed Maude’s crown and whispered, ‘Haste us to our bed, the world has gone dark.’
Later, when Maude’s breath had lengthened into sleep, I took up the loose section of The Complete Works. There was light left in the candle, so I read Old Mrs Rowntree’s sonnet. Number twenty-seven. The old woman had remembered it right – if not the whole verse, at least the sentiment. And I wondered how many nights the Rowntrees would have to journey in their heads before this war was fought and their Jack was home.
The candle guttered and I snuffed it.
