‘You can pay half plus five per cent, or a quarter plus seven per cent, now. Up to you. How’d you like it?’
‘I’d like to pay it all, please,’ I said, handing over the full amount. He seemed surprised at first, but happily counted through the notes and coins, placed the cash in to a money-box, and wrote PAID IN FULL across both pages of the ledgers.
‘And now, I was hoping you could have a look at this for me.’ I pulled out the bookmark and gave it to him.
‘What is it?’
‘I don’t know. That’s where I need your expert eye.’
He fingered it with courteous disdain. ‘It’s a botch job, that’s for sure,’ he said dourly. ‘Look at this flay mark. Done by an amateur, I can tell you that much.’
‘I thought that was a vein.’
‘No. This line, here, is a vein, which shows me that it wasn’t bled immediately after slaughter. It must have been left for quite some time – means the blood had time to putrefy in the veins.’
‘So possibly it had died naturally, and was chanced upon in the wild, by someone who thought its skin would be nice to use for a book.’
‘Possibly. Whatever happened, it was left for some time. The skin should have been removed and cured within minutes, especially in a hot climate.’
‘And how would they cure it?’
He started to relax a little, with the chance to show off his skill. ‘You’d hope the leather you’d buy over here would be brined, or wet-salted. But brining is expensive and you need quantities of hide to wet-salt. So I think this has been dried. The oldest way known to man, but it’s an uneven, unpredictable, uncontrollable process. This has probably been laid over stones, as it’s dry in patches. Done by a cheapskate, that’s for sure. ’Straordinary, really, that you’ve got it at all – leather like this usually stays in the poor countries, as no right-minded man here would buy it. Good tanning is a hard job, madam, that’s the truth, if you think about it; it ain’t easy, drying a hide just enough to stop it rotting, without making the leather all hard and inflexible. But this is plain shoddy; whoever did this should be brought to task. Brings the industry into disrepute, if you think about it.’
‘I’m sorry to trouble you with it,’ I said. ‘I don’t know why I’ve brought it to you at all, really, only that I’d never seen the like before. I’ve already pressed my procurer about it, but he told me precious little about where it came from. I thought at first that it could be a type of pigskin.’
‘Yes, you are right there, tanned pigskin is notoriously poor. But it’s not pig.’ Here he seized his magnifier. ‘Look, them follicles are not arranged in that distinctive triangular pattern, and they don’t go all the way through to the reverse, like the holes left by pig bristles. No, it’s not pig.’
‘And the follicles are random, so I knew it wasn’t goatskin,’ I added. ‘And it’s not dense enough for cowskin either, or oily enough for sealskin. Although that could be to do with the inferior tanning, which I had not considered before you mentioned it.’
‘No, it’s not sealskin.’
‘Could it be lambskin?’
‘Possibly. But what a waste of a good lamb, to spoil it so in the tanning.’
‘Could it be doeskin?’
‘Unlikely. Look how irregular the grain is. It’s a puzzle, really it is. Leave it with me. I like puzzles.’
‘I’m afraid I can’t. But I thank you for your time. While I am here, may I trouble you for some morocco? I will pay now; I don’t want to keep the account open.’
And so he helped me to some more leather, and I bought four fine hides, which he rolled and tied nicely for me, and I was grateful for his help and attention, although I was even more grateful to be leaving behind the bloody streets of Bermondsey and the stink of pure.
When I got back that afternoon I set about paring the leather and cutting the boards for several more books. I could no longer afford to be nervous about the forwarding process. I had just started to hammer the spine of one particularly loathsome edition of Venus School Mistress, when Sylvia glided in. I had not thought to lock the door.
‘Come, Dora. You work so hard. Another hot flannel is in order, I think.’
‘No, Sylvia, I do not feel like it today. Oh, don’t . . . !’ But it was too late. Sylvia had picked a book out of one of the crates, and was opening it. ‘No, Sylvia! Please.’
‘Dora,’ she retorted, holding the book loosely in one hand, but looking straight at me. ‘Don’t “please” me. I know all about Jossie’s books.’ And you know all about my Din, too, you bitch, I wanted to shout. She turned back to the book, opened it properly, and said, ‘Oh! Oh my!’ before snapping it shut. She eased herself down onto Din’s chair by the sewing-frame, and flapped the pages of the manuscript over her face like a fan. ‘I thought I knew. One has to excuse a lot when married to a medic. Still, I suppose these are not a million library shelves away from his anatomical text books, are they?’