“Did you make this book, sir?” Jem asked when they’d finished.
“From start to finish, my boy. Wrote it, etched it, printed it, colored it, stitched and bound it, then offered it for sale. With Kate’s help, of course. I couldn’t have done it without Kate.” He gazed at his wife and she gazed back. To Jem it felt as if they were holding the ends of a rope and pulling it tight between them.
“Did you use this press?” he persisted.
Mr. Blake put a hand on one of the handles. “I did. Not in this room, mind. We were living in Poland Street then. Across the river.” He gripped the handle and pulled it so that it moved a little. Part of the wood frame groaned and cracked. “The hardest part of moving to Lambeth was getting the press here. We had to take it apart, and get several men to move it.”
“How do it work?”
Mr. Blake beamed with the look of a man who has found a fellow fanatic. “Ah, it’s a beautiful sight, my boy. Very satisfying. You take the plate you’ve prepared-have you ever seen an etched plate? No? Here’s one.” He led Jem to one of the shelves and picked up a flat rectangle of metal. “Run your finger over it.” Jem felt raised lines and swirls on the smooth, cold copper. “So. First we ink the plate with a dauber”-he held up a stubby piece of wood with a rounded end-“then wipe it, so that the ink is only on the parts we want printed. Then we put the plate on the bed of the press-here.” Mr. Blake set the plate down on the table part of the press, near the rollers. “Then we take the piece of paper we’ve prepared and lay it over the plate, and then blankets over them. Then we pull the handles towards us”-Mr. Blake pulled the handle a little and the rollers turned-“and the plate and paper get caught up and pass between the rollers. That imprints the ink onto the paper. Once it’s gone through the rollers, we take it out-very carefully, mind-and hang it to dry on those lines above our heads. When they’re dry we color them.”
While Jem listened intently, touching the different parts of the press as he had been longing to, and asking Mr. Blake questions, Maggie grew bored and turned away to flip through the book once more. She had not looked much at books-since she couldn’t read, she had little use for them. Maggie had hated school. She’d gone when she was eight to a charity school for girls in Southwark, just over from Lambeth, where the Butterfields had lived before. To her it had been a miserable place, where the girls were crowded into a room together to trade fleas and lice and coughs, and where beatings occurred daily and indiscriminately. After roaming the streets, she had found it hard to sit still in a room all day, and could not take in what the schoolmistress was saying about letters and figures. It was all so much duller than being out and about in Southwark that Maggie either wriggled or fell asleep, and then was beaten with a thin stick that cut through skin. The only cheering sight in the school was the day Dick Butterfield came to school with his daughter after finding yet another set of welts on her back that he had not made himself, and walloped the schoolmistress. Maggie never went back after that, and until Jem and Mr. Blake recited the song together, she had never regretted not being able to read.
Mr. Blake’s book of songs surprised her, for it didn’t look like any book she had ever seen. Most books contained words with the odd picture thrown in. Here, though, words and pictures were entwined; at times it was hard to tell where the one ended and the other began. Maggie turned page after page. Most of the pictures were of children either playing or with grown-ups, and all of them seemed to be in the countryside-which according to Mr. Blake was not the big, empty, open space that she’d always imagined, but contained, with hedgerows as boundaries and trees to shelter under.
There were several pictures of children with their mothers-the women reading to them, or giving them a hand up from the ground, or watching them as they slept-their childhoods nothing like Maggie’s. Bet Butterfield of course could never have read to her, and was more likely to shout at Maggie to pick herself up than reach out a hand to her. And Maggie doubted she would ever wake to find her mother sitting by her bed. She looked up, blinking rapidly to rid her eyes of tears. Mrs. Blake was still leaning in the doorway, her hands in her apron. “You must have sold a lot o’ these to stay in this house, ma’am,” Maggie said, to hide her tears.
Maggie’s statement appeared to bring Mrs. Blake out of a reverie. She pushed herself off of the doorjamb and ran her hands down her skirt to straighten it. “Not so many, my dear. Not so many. There’s not many folk understand Mr. Blake, you see. Not even these songs.” She hesitated. “Now I think it’s time for him to work. He’s had a fair few interruptions today, haven’t you, Mr. Blake?” She said this tentatively, almost fearfully, as if frightened of her husband’s response.
“Of course, Kate,” he answered, turning away from the printing press. “You’re right, as ever. I’m always getting distracted by one thing or another, and Kate’s always having to pull me back.” He nodded to them and stepped out of the room.
“Damn,” Maggie said suddenly. “I forgot Mam’s beer!” She left Songs of Innocence on the table and hurried to the door. “Sorry, Mrs. Blake, we’ve to go. Thanks for showing us your things!”
5
After fetching the tankard where she’d left it by the wall in Astley’s field, Maggie ran to the Pineapple at the end of Hercules Buildings, Jem at her side. As they were about to go in, he looked around, and to his surprise spied his sister, pressed against the hedge across the road and stepping from one foot to the other. “Maisie!” he cried.
Maisie started. “Oh! Ar’ernoon, Jem, Maggie.”
“What you doin’ here, Miss Piddle?” Maggie demanded as they crossed over to her. “Weren’t you goin’ to say hallo?”
“I’m-” Maisie broke off as the door to the Pineapple opened and Charlie Butterfield stepped out. Her bright face fell.
“Damn,” Maggie muttered as Charlie caught sight of them and wandered over. He scowled when he recognized Jem. “What you hangin’ about for, country boy?”
Maggie stepped between them. “We’re just gettin’ Mam some beer. Jem, would you go in and get it for me? Tell ’em it’s for the Butterfields and Pa’ll pay for it at the end of the week.” Maggie preferred to keep Jem and Charlie separate if she could; they’d hated each other from the start.
Jem hesitated-he didn’t much like going into London pubs on his own-but he knew why Maggie was asking him. Grabbing the tankard, he ran across to the Pineapple and disappeared inside.
When he was gone Charlie turned his attention to Maisie, taking in her guileless face, her silly frilled cap, her slim form and small breasts pushed up by her stays. “Who’s this, then?” he said. “An’t you goin’ to introduce us?”
Maisie smiled a Piddle Valley smile. “I’m Maisie-Margaret, like Maggie. I’m Jem’s sister. Are you Maggie’s brother? You two look just alike, except that one be dark and t’other fair.”
Charlie smiled at her in a way that Maggie didn’t trust. She could see him guzzling Maisie’s innocence. “What you doin’ in the street, Maisie?” he said. “You waitin’ for me?”
Maisie giggled. “How could I do that when I ne’er saw you before? No, I be waiting-for someone else.”
Her words seemed to make the pub door open, and John Astley stepped out, accompanied by a girl who made costumes for the circus. They were laughing, and his hand was giving her a little push in the small of her back. Without looking at the trio, they turned and walked down a path that skirted the Pineapple and led back to the Astley stables. Maggie knew there was an empty stall at the end where he often brought his women.