A Place in the Margins

The man at the bindery door had brought the wrong kind of paper.

Noor could see that before he took it out of the bag. The corners had curled against the rain, and a stripe of water ran down the side where his umbrella had funnelled it. He held the bag as if keeping it upright would undo what had already happened.

“If that is the delivery,” she said, “I am going to need a minute before I speak to you politely.”

“It is my breakfast.”

She looked again. Through the thin paper she could make out the shape of a pastry.

“In that case, my condolences.”

He smiled without appearing to decide whether she wanted him to. Behind him, the narrow lane shone black under the first proper rain of September. A van was trying to turn where no van had ever successfully turned. From the florist next door came the patient voice of someone explaining this to its driver.

“Eli Mercer,” he said. “I am supposed to have a key.”

The key was in an envelope beside Noor's account book. She had been avoiding both. Her landlord had let the upstairs studio for six weeks, beginning today, and had described the tenant as quiet. He had also described the building's heating as reliable. Noor felt entitled to reserve judgment.

“Through that door, up the stairs. The back window sticks. Please don't force it. The delivery people will assume you are me.”

“Should I correct them?”

“Only if they ask you to pay.”

He reached for the envelope, then stopped. A small blue book lay open on a support beside it. The cover had come away at one hinge; a customer's name was written on a separate card. Eli shifted his bag to the other hand, making room rather than putting it on the table. Noor noticed.

“Do you make those?” he asked.

“New books, yes. That one needs someone with different training. I'm arranging an assessment.”

“It looks as though it has been loved.”

“Sometimes love is hard on hinges.”

She heard the sentence after she said it and wished she had chosen a less personal one. Eli did not look at her as if it were an invitation to ask about her life. He took his key.

“I'll try not to test the floorboards.”

By eleven he had tested them thoroughly. There were footsteps, a scrape, a thump, and then a silence sufficiently long to make Noor imagine an injury. She was deciding whether to go upstairs when he appeared at the connecting door holding the leg of a table.

“I think this was a previous condition.”

“Did the landlord call it sturdy?”

“He called it a worktable.”

“A statement of ambition.”

They stood looking at the detached leg. Noor had a spare trestle table behind a stack of packaging. It had belonged to her aunt, who used to conduct her accounts on it and complain that figures became worse when written down. Noor could carry it upstairs herself, but Eli was already here, and the day contained more work than pride could reasonably manage.

They moved the table together. At the tight turn on the landing, Eli waited for her to say which end to lift. He did not announce that he had it when he didn't. Upstairs, he had unpacked one suitcase, a kettle and a tin of brushes. No television. No enormous speakers. On the windowsill sat a drawing of a railway platform with an empty bench at its centre.

“You are an artist,” Noor said.

“An illustrator. This month, a rather late illustrator.”

“What are you late for?”

“A book about journeys that don't go according to plan.”

She looked at the table leg in his hand.

“At least the research is going well.”

He laughed. The sound was lower than she expected, and she became unhelpfully aware of being alone with him in the little bright room.

Downstairs, the account book remained open at the same number. Her aunt had retired in June. Noor had taken over the bindery in July with enough savings to try, not enough to stop counting. Custom notebooks sold unevenly. Repairs she could competently undertake paid slowly. Every customer seemed to need a small exception, and she had been granting them as if generosity were a substitute for a business plan.

At four, Eli knocked again. He had a fresh pastry in a box.

“For the table.”

“The table has very specific dietary requirements.”

“Then perhaps you could help it.”

He left the box and went upstairs before she could turn it into an exchange of favours. Noor ate standing at the sink, away from the work. It was still warm. She did not regard this as a significant development.

That evening, she wrote beneath the expenses: Upstairs tenant, six weeks. Shared electricity arrangement to check.

After a moment she added: Ask him not to leave food near the books.

She was not sure whether the second line was a warning or an excuse.

On Wednesday, Eli came downstairs with a drawing of the bindery's front window.

He had drawn the uneven shelves and the empty hook where Noor's aunt used to hang her cardigan. He had drawn the brass bell above the door too large. It looked capable of summoning ships.

“I can change the bell,” he said, seeing her look at it.

“Please don't. It might improve trade.”

“Would you mind if I put it in my sketchbook? Not the commission. Just my own work.”

“You are asking after drawing it?”

“I'm asking before sharing it.”

That distinction was enough to make her examine him more carefully. He had paint on the side of one finger and the deliberate stillness of a person accustomed to waiting for other people to finish looking.

“You may share the window. Not customers or their things.”

He nodded and wrote something on the back. No argument about how public a shop was. No amused explanation that he understood privacy. He simply recorded what she had said.

Noor had an appointment at ten with the owner of a small hotel who wanted forty guest books for its rooms. She had prepared three samples, all too elaborate. For two weeks she had been calculating ways to provide work she could not afford at a price the hotel had not agreed to pay.

Eli glanced at the samples. “Which one do you want them to choose?”

“The one they can afford.”

“That wasn't my question.”

She almost told him that illustration must be a relaxing profession if it allowed time for such distinctions. Instead she picked up the simplest sample, grey cloth with an inset label.

“This one. It opens comfortably. It doesn't demand that someone have an important thought before writing in it.”

He ran a finger above the margin without touching the paper. “Room for a hand.”

“Exactly.”

“Then perhaps tell them that.”

The hotel owner arrived seven minutes late, admired the most expensive sample and asked whether it could be made cheaper. Noor heard herself explaining the work involved. Halfway through, she stopped and put the grey book between them.

“I recommend this version for the rooms. The more decorative one would suit reception, where it would be used differently. I can quote for those separately.”

The woman turned a page. “That would be sensible.”

Sensible was not an order, but by Friday Noor had a deposit for twenty grey books and one reception book. She had also promised a delivery date she could meet without staying awake until dawn. It felt suspiciously like a trick.

She found Eli on the stairs and told him.

“You sold the book you wanted to make,” he said.

“Twenty of them.”

“Then I should probably stop standing where you need to carry things.”

On Saturday they ate lunch at the bakery across the square. It was not a date. Noor had said she was going for a sandwich, and Eli had said he needed one, and neither had supplied a name for the arrangement. He ordered soup, which complicated her definition but did not disprove it.

He had grown up near a larger city, moved away for work, moved again, and spent the previous year staying in places whose owners called them temporary even when he paid by the month. His next commission might involve a winter studio in Northbridge. Nothing was signed.

“Do you like moving?” she asked.

“I like arriving.”

“That is not quite the same.”

“No.” He moved his spoon along the edge of the bowl. “I used to think I could make them the same by not staying long enough to notice.”

Noor told him about taking over from her aunt. She did not tell him about the former partner who had described the bindery as her little project while expecting her to contribute half the rent from it. She did not tell him that after leaving him she had become fiercely competent at carrying things alone, including things that were too heavy.

Instead she said, “I have a cupboard full of paper I bought because it was beautiful, not because anyone wanted it.”

“I have a suitcase full of paint that travelled farther than I did last year.”

“Does it pay its share?”

“It considers itself inspirational.”

They walked back by the long route. At the narrow bridge, a cyclist rang a bell and Noor stepped sideways. Eli moved with her, his hand briefly touching the back of her coat. He withdrew it at once.

It was an ordinary touch, useful for an ordinary reason. She thought about it while cutting labels. When she realised she had made the same measurement three times, she put down the ruler and went to make tea.

Upstairs, a chair moved. The building no longer sounded empty between customers. Noor had not known she was listening for that.

The idea began with twelve sheets of paper that were the wrong shade of white.

They were leftovers from a cancelled order, thick and pleasant to hold. Noor had been moving them between shelves for months. Eli saw them when he brought down the spare kettle he had discovered in his studio cupboard.

“They look like a book waiting for a subject.”

“They look like money I cannot get back.”

“Could it be both?”

The autumn makers' market was four weeks away, on the final Saturday of his stay. Noor had booked a table before her aunt retired. So far she intended to take notebooks, a few albums and the expression of a woman who had overestimated her free time.

Eli opened his sketchbook to a drawing of the lane in early morning. In it, the florist stood with one boot on the pavement, trying to shake water out of the other. Noor laughed before she could help it.

“You must ask her.”

“I did. She said to make the flowers more expensive.”

They imagined a small book of Ashmere: not a history, not a tourist guide, just a dozen familiar corners and the things people said about them. Eli would make the drawings. Noor would design and bind the books. Twenty-four copies, numbered as a small edition, with a separate display copy. They would ask permission for recognisable people and any contributions. No private stories accidentally turned into merchandise.

Noor took out her account book.

Eli looked surprised. “Now?”

“Before I become excited enough to be stupid.”

They listed paper, printing, cloth, thread, packaging and their own time. They agreed what each would contribute, what they would reimburse first, and how they would divide the remaining receipts. They agreed neither could order more copies or use the other's work elsewhere without asking. Noor wrote a simple record for them both to keep.

It was not romantic. That was one of the reasons she liked it.

At the bottom, Eli wrote: Working title: The Way We Go Home.

Noor read it twice.

“Too sentimental?” he asked.

“Possibly. We can be sentimental in pencil.”