EPILOGUE

The Alcuin Press, Welwyn Garden City, December 1949. With a sigh, the compositor, wearing his ink-stained blue overalls, looked at the order that had come from upstairs. If there was one thing he hated, it was publishers who requested changes to the text after the formes had been stereotyped. That’s what the galleys were for, wasn’t it, picking up final corrections? Well, he was damned if he was going to reset any of this. And anyway, with the cost, it was out of the question – the boss would never allow it.

What he was about to do was crude, but doing it well required a degree of skill and brought a certain satisfaction. The essence of the task was to alter the existing metal type without letting the reader see that any change had been made. It had to look as if what was there before had never existed, and what was there afterwards had been intended all along.

He checked the carefully written order slip again, noting its instruction:

290/39 2 + 2 = 5 SHOULD READ 2 + 2 = [blank]

It was simple enough. When the type had been set, the compositor must have mistakenly added the character ‘5’ to line 39 on page 290. He could see why it was a mistake – it was an absurdity. The author must have meant ‘4’, but orders were orders; perhaps there was a good reason to leave it blank.

He scanned the large metal plates spread out before him. By a stroke of luck, it turned out to be an easy job: ‘5’ was the last character on the last line of the page, which meant that, when it had been removed, there would be no tell-tale blank space. He reached into the bag at his feet and pulled out a mallet and a small round iron bar. Carefully lining up the ‘5’, he gave the tool a tap, flattening the character into the soft metal. Next he inked the plate and pressed a sheet of paper to it, using a hand roller.

Peeling it back, he looked at the altered line. His aim had been slightly off and he’d also removed part of the equals symbol, which now looked rather deformed. It was a bugger but couldn’t be helped. The rectified passage now read:

Almost unconsciously he traced with his finger in the dust on the table:

2 + 2 =