The present was a book, carefully protected by bubble wrap and old newspapers and that came as no surprise. The title was A Short Treatise on the Finer Points of Bookbinding. But it was not the text that seized Joly’s attention, though deep down he knew already that, one day, this would become his Bible.
The front cover was tanned and polished to a smooth golden brown. He’d never come across anything quite like it. To the touch, it had slight bumps, like a soft sandpaper. The spine and back cover felt more like suede. But what entranced him was not the texture of the binding.
At first sight, he thought the cover bore a logo. But with a second glance, he realised his mistake. In the bottom corner was a design in blue-black. A picture of a flying dove, with broad outstretched wings.
He held his breath as he recalled kissing Lucia’s toes. Recalled the delicate heart shape traced in ink upon her ankle. Recalled, with a shiver of fear and excitement, Zuichini’s admiration of the tattooist’s work, the way those dark and deadly little eyes kept being drawn to Lucia’s tender, honey-coloured skin.
He settled back on the hard seat. The countryside was passing by outside, but he paid it no heed. Sanborn understood him better than he understood himself. After searching for so long, he’d finally found what he was looking for. Soon he would return to La Serenissima. And there Zuichini would share with him the darkest secrets of the bookbinder’s craft. He would teach him how to make the book that Sanborn craved. A book for all three of them to remember Lucia by.
Homework
Phil Lovesey
English Homework
Judy Harris — Year 10
In your opinion, is Hamlet merely faking his madness, or is he really insane?
This term we have been studying Hamlet, a play written ages ago by William Shakespeare. It’s quite good, though the words are all strange for modern people to really understand. There’s lots of stuff that is really, really old that Sir had to try and explain to us before it made any sense, not that most of the class seemed bothered, goofing around as usual.
Most of us thought the film was way better than the book, but that Mel Gibson bloke still used all the old words, so that when there wasn’t much going on except him talking, I noticed quite a few of the class were either mucking about or texting. I even told Sir about this after one lesson but all he did was sort of smile at me and say Shakespeare wasn’t for everyone, and maybe it was better for me if the class didn’t think I was telling tales — which seemed quite harsh, as I was only trying to help him.
The story of Hamlet goes like this: There’s this prince (Hamlet) who lives in another country a long time ago. His dad dies, and his mum marries Hamlet’s uncle, so he doesn’t get to become king. He gets real mad about this and reckons his mum’s a bit of a whore, especially when the ghost of his dad comes back and tells Hamlet that the pair of them were an item before he died, and that the uncle even dripped poison into his ear and murdered him to get off with Hamlet’s mum and become king.
This was quite a spooky bit in the film, the ghost thing, and most of the class were watching except Cheryl Bassington who was texting her boyfriend under the desk. He’s an apprentice plumber who lives down our road, and I often see him pick her up on his crappy little motorbike thing. She says they’ve ‘done it’ loads of times, which I think is really lame at her age, as I reckon you should save yourself for someone who really loves you.
Hamlet has a woman who loves him. Her name’s Ophelia and she sort of hangs around the palace pining for him. It’s that Helena Bonham Carter in the film, and all the lads in the class were right crude about her in her nightie. Steve Norris made a sort of ‘joke’ about boning-Bonham-Carter which even Sir sniggered at, but I just thought was sick. I think Ophelia’s really sad because she really does love Hamlet, and when he starts acting a bit mental, she gets really upset. He even tells her that he never loved her, and that she should go away and become a nun. Even Polonius (her own dad) uses Ophelia to test if Hamlet really is mad, which seems well odd — but then he gets stabbed behind a curtain, which serves him right for being such a bad dad in the first place.
My Dad wouldn’t ever do such a thing to me, regardless of what the papers said about him at the time of the robbery.
It seems that in Hamlet everyone’s only after power and are prepared to do anything to get it even if it means killing their family, marrying incestuously, using their kids, or faking madness that really hurts people. I think that’s very bad of all them. Ophelia is so cut up about Hamlet being horrible to her that she goes and drowns herself, not that he seems that bothered about it. And neither were the boys in the class, either, who asked for that bit to be shown again, as they reckoned you could see Helena Bonham Carter’s tits through her wet nightie. Thank goodness someone tells Hamlet’s brother what a schemer he is so that he comes back really angry and tries to kill Hamlet in a duel.
We all thought the ending was right crap because nearly everyone dies. Hamlet, his uncle, his mum, Ophelia’s bother; they all end up dead in this big hall, either poisoned or stabbed with poison-tipped swords. Dave Coles reckoned the Macbeth we studied in SATS for Year 9 was better because there were real nude women to perv over, and hangings and beheadings and stuff. When I told him I’d hated that film, loads of people laughed at me and I felt right stupid, especially as Sir didn’t tell them off for being cruel.
Maybe that was the moment I decided to do what I’ve done to you, Sir. Perhaps it was the moment it all made a sort of sense. Like I’ve written, some people just want power and don’t really care about other people’s feelings. Like you, just two terms into the school and obviously wanting to be the trendy young teacher, joining in with them laughing, not stopping it like other teachers would have done. Perhaps it was simply another all too quickly forgotten moment for you. But believe me, Sir, it went in deep with me. Well deep.
That night I told my mum about what had happened in your class, how you’d let them laugh. She was cooking — well, I say cooking — putting a ready-meal in the microwave for Uncle Tony for his tea, more like. Because she has to have it on the table for him when he gets in, or there’s trouble. He rings on his mobile from The Wellington Arms, tells her to have it ready in five minutes, then suddenly she’s all action, heaving herself up from the sofa and sending me up to my room as she gets it done.
Once, his meal wasn’t ready and I heard the result. Lots of shouting, then a scream. Mum’s scream. Then what sounded like moaning. I didn’t come down until the door slammed half an hour later. Mum wouldn’t look at me, sort of flinched when I tried to put my arm around her. She was trying to stick a torn-up photo of her and dad back together, but her hands were shaking too much, and she was trying not to cry. I asked if I could help. It was nice photo — her and Dad on honeymoon in Greece, both looking right young and happy on the beach in front of all these white hotels. She swore at me and told me to get back upstairs to my room.
Hamlet used to love his dad as well. Then he went away to some college somewhere, and when he came back his dad was dead, and his uncle had married his mum. The problem is that his dad is now a ghost and tells him he was murdered, which makes Hamlet very angry. He also doesn’t know if his mind is being tricky with him, so he decides to set a trap to find out if his uncle is really guilty or not. So, Hamlet gets these actors to do a play sort of like his uncle killing his dad, then watches his uncle’s reaction. He wants to ‘prick his conscience’.