‘So take Nathaniel with you, to prove it.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. It would be a hindrance. I must be able to speak lucidly. And to show him unencumbered how my figure has returned. Besides, it will increase his curiosity, to make him wait.’
I paused, before assuring her that we would indeed look after Nathaniel today. ‘It will just be for this morning,’ I soothed Pansy. ‘I will be able to help you this afternoon, once I have taken care of some business. Mr Diprose is due this morning, you see.’ Pansy curtsied. Then I went over to the tea-caddy, and took out half a crown. ‘Here you are,’ I said as I gave it Sylvia. ‘I think you’ll need to take a cab, looking as beautiful as that.’ I kissed her, and whispered ‘good luck’ into her ear.
She looked at the coin, and said a quiet ‘thank you’. She planted a kiss on Nathaniel’s brow, and stroked his forelock with her gloved finger, then left the house.
‘Nobody’s asking you to leave, Pansy,’ I said. ‘And don’t you dare go considering it. I need you, and I will ensure your happiness so as you stay with me. Why don’t you take Lucinda and Nathaniel out to buy some sherbet?’ I gave her some pennies. ‘There might be some spring greens in the market, even. Take some air for yourself.’
As I waved them out of the door, I could see an old hansom turning into the street. I shut the door, smoothed my hair and adjusted my cap, then hastened through the door into the bindery and locked it behind me.
Diprose seemed unusually pert and dapper this morning, albeit in his habitual ungainly way.
‘Tell the nigger to go,’ was the first thing he said to me, sotto voce.
‘Good day to you too, Mr Diprose,’ I retorted as I went over to Din to tell him he could leave for the morning.
We watched as he hung up his apron and left. I locked the door behind him, and made a show of checking that the door into the house was locked. Then I pulled the strong-box out from under the tooling-bench, unlocked it, unwrapped the casing from the red velvet, and laid it on the bench.
It certainly did not rank as the best binding I had ever produced. The design was too simple, and the leather was not special enough to warrant such lack of ornament. Still, Diprose proceeded with a ceremonious air. He removed the manuscript from its muslin bag; he kept it closed throughout, so I could only see the spine and end-papers, which were marbled vellum.
Together we fixed the book onto its binding. It was intricate work, and our hands worked closely, holding tension here and tying cords there, but it only served to remind me of the lack of intimacy I had with this man who brought me so much wealth, and so little true happiness, and of the power in the air in this exact same spot when Din held some leather for me here so recently. But the book, when finished, did look remarkably good, and in certain lights, the leather was beautiful, welcoming, and touchable.
Then Diprose reached into his pocket, and pulled out a long, thin strip of metal, like a ruler, which had a small square cut out of the centre.
‘Now, finally, I need you to tool an inscription for me. It must be here.’ He turned to the back of the book, and pointed to the thin strip of folded leather at the bottom of the inside cover, below the end-paper. ‘Let me see . . .’ He perused my lettering tools. ‘Your smallest font, lower case . . .’ He pulled one out of the rack, and experimented with pushing the tool through the square in the metal. ‘These will do. A perfect fit. I will need you to tool an inscription, but you must not know what it says.’
‘How am I to do that, then?’
‘You will draw a grid on the leather according to my instructions, then I will tell you which letter you must tool through this hole in each square; the metal will cover up the words, so you shall only see the letter you are working on.’
‘But I shall be able to work out what it says according to the order of the letters.’
‘I shall instruct you to tool the letters in a random order.’
‘Mr Diprose, forgive me, but it will be impossible to align the letters perfectly like that. Letters are never spaced according to a square grid; I always position them by eye.’
‘Mrs Damage, impossible n’est pas français,’ Diprose cajoled. ‘My other bookbinders accept this occasional practice. Do not cause trouble for me, now. Of course I accept some inevitable loss of aesthetic. Come, come, girl. It is the only way.’
So, despite myself, I marked out a grid of twenty-six identical squares, to fit the selected tool size, and Diprose held the metal over the grid, revealing only one square at a time – first in the middle, then close to the beginning, then right at the end, and so on, in random order – instructing me on the letters to use in each square. Having tooled blind, we then had to do the same with the gold.