a half step towards it.
‘Dinner,’ Alta said. ‘Emmett, sit down, you look like you’re about to faint. Heavens, no one’s even laid the table. I hope the pie’s in the oven.’ She put a pile of plates down beside me. ‘Bread? Beer? Honestly, I might as well be a scullery maid …’ She disappeared into the pantry.
‘Emmett,’ Pa said, without turning round. ‘There’s a letter on the table. You’d better read it.’
I slid it towards me. The writing blurred into a shapeless stain on the paper. ‘My eyes are too dusty. Tell me what it says.’
Pa bowed his head, the muscles bunching in his neck as if he was dragging something heavy. ‘The binder wants an apprentice.’
Ma made a sound like a bitten-off word.
I said, ‘An apprentice?’
There was silence. A slice of moon shone through the gap in the curtains, covering everything in its path with silver. It made Pa’s hair look greasy and grey. ‘You,’ he said.
Alta was standing in the pantry doorway, cradling a jar of pickles. For a second I thought she was going to drop it, but she set it down carefully on the dresser. The knock of glass on wood was louder than the smash would have been.
‘I’m too old to be an apprentice.’
‘Not according to her.’
‘I thought …’ My hand flattened on the table: a thin white hand that I hardly recognised. A hand that couldn’t do an honest day’s work. ‘I’m getting better. Soon …’ I stopped, because my voice was as unfamiliar as my fingers.
‘It’s not that, son.’
‘I know I’m no use now—’
‘Oh, sweetheart,’ Ma said. ‘It’s not your fault— it’s not because you’ve been ill. Soon you’ll be back to your old self again. If that was all … You know we always thought you’d run the farm with your father. And you could have done, you still could – but …’ Her eyes went to Pa’s. ‘We’re not sending you away. She’s asking for you.’
‘I don’t know who she is.’
‘Binding’s … a good craft. An honest craft. It’s nothing to be afraid of.’ Alta knocked against the dresser, and Ma glanced over her shoulder as she swung her arm out swiftly to stop a plate from slipping to the floor. ‘Alta, be careful.’
My heart skipped and drummed. ‘But … you hate books. They’re wrong. You’ve always told me – when I brought that book home from Wakening Fair—’
A look passed between them, too quick to interpret. Pa said, ‘Never mind about that now.’
‘But …’ I turned back to Ma. I couldn’t put it into words: the swift change of subject if someone even mentioned a book, the shiver of distaste at the word, the look on their faces … The way she’d dragged me grimly past a sordid shopfront – A. Fogatini, Pawnbroker and Licens’d Bookseller – one day when I was small and we got lost in Castleford. ‘What do you mean, it’s a good craft?’
‘It’s not …’ Ma drew in her breath. ‘Maybe it’s not what I would have wanted, before—’
‘Hilda.’ Pa dug his fingers into the side of his neck, kneading the muscle as though it ached. ‘You don’t have a choice, lad. It’ll be a steady life. It’s a long way from anywhere, but that’s not a bad thing. Quiet. No hard labour, no one to tempt you off the straight and narrow …’ He cleared his throat. ‘And they’re not all like her. You settle down and learn the trade, and then … Well. There’re binders in town who have their own carriages.’
A tiny silence. Alta tapped the top of a jar with her fingernail and glanced at me.
‘But I don’t – I’ve never – what makes her think that I—?’ Now none of them would meet my eyes. ‘What do you mean, I’ve got no choice?’
No one answered. Finally Alta strode across the room and picked up the letter. ‘“As soon as he is able to travel”,’ she read out. ‘“The bindery can be very cold in winter. Please make sure he has warm clothes.” Why did she write to you and not Emmett? Doesn’t she know he can read?’
‘It’s the way they all do it,’ Pa said. ‘You ask the parents for an apprentice, that’s how it works.’
It didn’t matter. My hands on the table were all tendons and bones. A year ago they’d been brown and muscled, almost a man’s hands; now they were no one’s. Fit for nothing but a craft my parents despised. But why would she have chosen me, unless they’d asked her to? I spread my fingers and pressed, as if I could absorb the strength of the wood through the skin of my palms.
‘What if I say no?’
Pa clumped across to the cupboard, bent down and pulled out a bottle of blackberry gin. It was fierce, sweet stuff that Ma doled out for festivals or medicinal purposes, but he poured himself half a mug of it and she didn’t say a word. ‘There’s no place for you here. Maybe you should be grateful. This’ll be something you can do.’ He tossed half the gin down his throat and coughed.
I drew in my breath, determined not to let my voice crack. ‘When I’m better, I’ll be just as strong as—’
‘Make the best of it,’ he said.
‘But I don’t—’
‘Emmett,’ Ma said, ‘please … It’s the right thing. She’ll know what to do with you.’
‘What to do with me?’
‘I only mean – if you get ill again, she’ll—’
‘Like in a lunatic asylum? Is that it? You’re packing me off to somewhere miles from anywhere because I might lose my wits again at any moment?’
‘She wants you,’ Ma said, clutching her skirts as if she was trying to squeeze water out of them. ‘I wish you didn’t have to go.’
‘Then I won’t go!’
‘You’ll go, boy,’ Pa said. ‘Heaven knows you’ve brought enough trouble on this house.’
‘Robert, don’t—’
‘You’ll go. If I have to truss you up and leave you on her doorstep, you’ll go. Be ready tomorrow.’
‘Tomorrow?’ Alta spun round so fast her plait swung out like a rope. ‘He can’t go tomorrow, he’ll need time to pack – and there’s the harvest, the harvest supper … Please, Pa.’
‘Shut up!’
Silence.
‘Tomorrow?’ The blotches on Ma’s cheeks had spread into a flush of scarlet. ‘We never said …’ Her voice trailed off. My father finished his gin, swallowing with a grimace as if his mouth was full of stones.
I opened my mouth to tell her it was all right, I’d go, they wouldn’t
