Against the mottled grey of the windows the binder’s chair stood out in silhouette. It was straight-backed and simple – less comfortable than the one nearest to the door – but somehow I knew it was Seredith’s chair. I drew the other one out from the table, hearing the legs bump as I dragged it over the uneven floor, and sat down. How many people had waited here to have their memories taken away? Enough to wear a path into the floorboards, coming and going …
How did it feel? I could imagine the sick fear in the pit of your stomach, the terror that flickered when you tried to see past the point of no return, to the person you would be … But the moment itself? To have something wrenched out of the deepest part of you – how did that feel? And afterwards, when you had a hole inside you … I saw again the blankness in Milly’s eyes as she left, and clenched my jaw. Which was worse? To feel nothing, or to grieve for something you no longer remembered? Surely when you forgot, you’d forget to be sad, or what was the point? And yet that numbness would take part of your self away, it would be like having pins-and-needles in your soul …
I took a deep breath. It was too easy to imagine sitting here, in this seat; I ought to put myself in Seredith’s chair. What would it be like to be her? To look into someone’s eyes and then do – that – to them? The thought of it made me feel sick, too. Whichever way you looked at it … Seredith had called it helping. But how could that be right?
I stood up, caught my ankle on the side of the table, and steadied myself on the back of the chair. The carving cut into my palm, not hard enough to hurt but enough to take me by surprise. I looked down at the shape of it, the gleam of bluish light on the wooden scroll.
So many times it had been the light catching on something that brought on the illness. The latticed sun falling on the hall floor, the slant of daylight seen through a half-open door … I knew how it began, the bright shape – not quite a memory – that fitted like a key into a hole in my mind, and the sickness that spilt out. And now I felt the same shock of recognition and fear. I cringed instinctively, waiting for the blackness to swallow me. It would be the end, the abyss. Now that I was here, in the place I was most afraid of … the source, the heart.
My knees gave way. I dropped into the chair, bracing myself as if for a crash. But my mind stayed steady. A beam creaked, a mouse scratched in the thatch above the window. The darkness rolled and sucked like a tide, at arm’s length; and then, instead of drowning me, it receded.
I held my breath. Nothing happened. The darkness drew back and back, until I felt exposed, drenched in grey daylight until my eyes watered.
Time passed. I looked down at my hands on the scrubbed table. When I’d left home, they’d been dead white and spidery. Now there was a callous on my left forefinger from paring leather with a knife that was too blunt, and my left thumbnail was long so that I could position a finishing tool without burning myself. But it was the shape of them – thin but not bony, strong but not bulky – that made me see them for the first time. They weren’t a farmer’s hands – not like Pa’s – but they weren’t an invalid’s hands, either. I would have known that they were a bookbinder’s hands; and not just because they were mine.
I turned them over and looked at the lines on my palms that were supposed to tell me who I was. Someone – was it Alta? – had once told me that your left hand showed the fate you were born with, and your right showed the fate you made for yourself. My right hand had a deep, long line down the centre, cutting my whole palm in half. I imagined another Emmett, the Emmett who might have taken over the farm, the way my parents always planned: an Emmett who hadn’t got ill, and hadn’t ended up here, alone. I saw him look back at me with a grin, pushing his chilblained hands into his pockets, and then turn towards home, whistling.
I bowed my head and waited for the sudden sadness to pass; but it didn’t. Something gave way inside me, and I started to cry.
At first it was as involuntary as being sick: great paroxysms like retching, each spasm driven by an unpitying reflex that made me gasp and sob for air. But slowly the urgency eased, and I had the time to catch a lungful of air between sobs; and then at last I wiped the wetness and snot off my face, and opened my eyes. The sense of loss was still sharp enough to make the tears rise again, but I blinked them away and this time I managed to master my breath.
When I raised my head the world was empty, clear, like a cut field. I could see for miles, I could see where I was. There’d been shadows at the corners of my vision for so long I’d grown used to them, but now they had gone. This quiet room wasn’t terrible, it was only a room; the chairs where two people could sit opposite each other were only chairs.
I paused for a moment, testing the place where the fear had been, as though I was checking a rotten tooth with my tongue. Nothing – or no, maybe a sharp faint echo of pain: not the dull ache of decay but something cleaner, like a gap that was already healing. There was a scent in the air like earth after rainfall, as if everything had been freshly remade.
I picked up the keys and left without locking the door behind me.
I was ravenous. I found myself in the pantry, gorging on pickles out of a jar – and then, sated, I was so exhausted I couldn’t see straight. I’d meant to take a bowl of soup up to Seredith, but I fell asleep at the kitchen table with my head on my arms. When I woke up the range had gone out and it was nearly dark. I lit it again – covering myself and the clean floor with ash – and then hurriedly warmed the soup and carried it up to Seredith’s room. The bowl was only slightly hotter than tepid, but no doubt she’d be asleep anyway. I pushed the door open with my foot and peered round.
She was awake, and sitting up. The lamp was lit, and a glass bowl of water was perched in front of it to focus the light on a shirt she was patching. She looked up at me and smiled. ‘You look better, Emmett.’
‘Me?’
‘Yes.’ She peered at me and her face changed. Her fingers grew still, and after a moment she put the shirt down. ‘Sit.’
I put the tray on the table next to her bed and drew the chair up beside her. She reached out and pushed my jaw with one finger, tilting my face towards the lamplight. It wasn’t the first time she’d touched me – she’d often corrected my grip, or leant close to me to show me how something should be done – but this time I felt it tingling on my skin.
She said, ‘You’ve made your peace with it.’
I looked up, into her eyes. She nodded to herself. Then, with a long sigh, she sat back against her pillows. ‘Good lad,’ she said. ‘I knew you would, sooner or later. How does it feel?’
I didn’t answer. It was too fragile; if I talked about it, even to her, it might break.
She smiled at the ceiling, and then slid her eyes sideways to include me. ‘I’m glad. You suffered worse than most, with the fever. No more of that for you. Oh’ – she shrugged, as if I’d spoken – ‘yes, other things, it won’t ever be easy, there’ll always be a part of you missing, but no more nightmares, no more terrors.’ She stopped. Her breath was shallow. Her pulse fluttered in the skin above her temple.
‘I don’t know anything,’ I said. It took an effort to say it. ‘How can I be a binder when I don’t even know how it works—’
‘Not now. Not now, or it’ll turn into a deathbed binding.’ She laughed, with a noise like a gulp. ‘But when I’m well again I’ll teach you, lad. The binding itself will come naturally, but you’ll need to learn the rest …’ Her voice tailed off into a cough. I poured a glass of water and offered it to her, but she waved it away without looking. ‘Once the snows have gone we’ll visit a friend in Littlewater. She was my …’ She hesitated, although it might only have been to catch her breath. ‘My master’s last apprentice, after I left him … She lives in the village with her family, now. She’s a good binder. A midwife, too,’ she added. ‘Binding and doctoring always used to go together. Easing the pain, easing people into life and out of it.’