The Midnight Press and other Oxford stories by OxPens Various

Author:OxPens Various [Various, OxPens]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Oxford eBooks
Published: 2014-12-04T00:00:00+00:00

THE MIDNIGHT PRESS

JANE STEMP

The scullery door was locked, and the front door, but Thomas didn’t listen to servants’ gossip for nothing. They said the scullery door-frame was so rotten that the tongue of the lock could be levered back with a pen-knife, leaving never a trace behind: and they were right.

He closed the door, hoping that Mr Curtis the apothecary, who lived on the right-hand side, wasn’t watching. Mistress Cleeve on the other side would say nothing, even if she did happen to see him. Thomas picked his way across some seeding onions to the gap in Mistress Cleeve’s hedge, wriggled under her currant bushes, and made for the passage that led through her house.

Out on Broad Street, Thomas’s heartbeat calmed. He took a deep breath of horse-smelling, wood-smoky air, looked carefully around in case of seeing anyone he knew, and crossed to the Turl, where James Fletcher’s printing shop was half-hidden inside the old city wall. All at once he had to dodge between two houses and hide; there was Uncle James himself, backing out of the doorway and arguing as he went.

‘No, sir, I will not publish your poem: I would not three years ago, and I will not now. Oxford is not the place for it, sir, whatever your Dolbens and Agutters may say. Now, if you will excuse me, I have pressing business.’ He pulled the door abruptly shut, leaving the customer inside, and walked towards Northgate with not a glance to spare for the sunshine or the autumn leaves.

Thomas slithered out of hiding, opened the door very carefully, and looked straight – or it would have been straight, if he had not had to look up as well – into the face of a girl about his own age. ‘Who are you?’ he demanded.

She laced her fingers across the front of her stomacher. ‘I am Margaret Rivington, and I might ask the same of you.’

It was one of those moments when Thomas would have liked to be taller. ‘You’re one of the London book-sellers. I'm Thomas Robinson.’ Above the shop, at the head of the stairs, there was a click as the house door opened, revealing a familiar figure: his grandfather.

‘Oh.’ Margaret wrinkled her nose, but stepped back to let him in. ‘Rachel’s son. Papa said she married a schoolmaster.’

His father was Master of Magdalen College School, but Thomas let it pass, and peered into the dimness. Uncle James’s printing shop was barely fourteen feet square, and the printing-presses took up most of that. As well as Margaret, there was a young man in black, white Geneva bands at his neck, and another man in the corner whom Thomas could not quite make out. ‘I’m sorry my uncle was so ungracious, sir,’ he said to the young man, who was shifting uneasily from foot to foot and clutching a bundle of papers. ‘He was late to meet my family and my other uncle at St Giles’ Fair, and he’s always cross when he’s late. Perhaps he will feel differently about your book when he comes back.

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