The Dictionary of Lost Words

by Pip Williams

  This is no time to be strong, my dear girl. Harry was father and mother to you, and his passing will leave you feeling lost. My own father was very dear to me, and I know a little of how your heart must ache. Let it ache.

  My father still echoes in my mind whenever I need good counsel; I suspect yours will do the same in time. In the interim, make the most of that young man you have become so attached to. ‘Lily would like him very much,’ Harry said in his last letter. Did he ever tell you? There could be no higher blessing.

  I expect you are camping in Lizzie’s room. I will go straight to Sunnyside from the train.

  All my love,

  Ditte

  As promised, Ditte led me away from all the well-wishers. We didn’t say goodbye; we just walked into the garden, past the Scriptorium and out onto the Banbury Road. On St Margaret’s Road, I realised Gareth was with us, just a few steps behind. We walked in silence until we got to the towpath along Castle Mill Stream.

  ‘Harry took this walk every Sunday afternoon, Gareth,’ Ditte said. Gareth fell into step beside me.

  ‘He came here to discuss the week with Lily. Did you know that, Esme?’

  I didn’t.

  ‘I say discuss, but it was a meditation, really. He would walk along this path with his head full of the week’s concerns, and by the time he arrived at Walton Bridge the most pressing would have asserted itself. He told me he would sit and consider it from Lily’s perspective.’ She looked to see if she should continue. I hoped she would, but I was mute.

  ‘Of course you were the main topic of conversation, but I was surprised to hear that he would also consult Lily on everything from what to wear to some function to whether he should buy lamb or beef for Sunday lunch – on the few occasions he decided to tackle a roast with all the trimmings.’

  I felt the smallest smile, remembering the beef, raw or burnt, and our Sunday strolls into Jericho.

  ‘Truly,’ Ditte said, squeezing my arm.

  It was a gift, this story. As I listened to Ditte, my memories of life with Da were subtly touched up, like a painter might add a daub of colour to give the impression of morning light. Lily, always so absent, suddenly wasn’t.

  ‘There it is,’ Ditte said, as we approached the bridge. ‘This was their spot.’

  I’d walked under it so often, but now it looked completely different. Gareth took my hand, then he led me to the bench at the edge of the path and sat close enough to feel me trembling.

  This wasn’t how it was supposed to happen, I thought. But was I thinking about Da or Gareth? Gareth had never held my hand before. I’d thought I’d have Da forever.

  We sat. The stream barely moved beneath the bridge, but small disturbances broke the surface every now and then. I could easily imagine Da sitting there, letting his thoughts ebb and flow.

  ‘Someone’s left flowers,’ Gareth said.

  I looked to where he was pointing, as did Ditte, and saw a bunch of flowers laid carefully beside the arch of the bridge. They were not fresh, but they hadn’t completely expired. Two or three blooms still held some shape and colour.

  ‘Oh, my,’ I heard Ditte say with a catch in her voice. ‘They’re for Lily.’

  I was confused. Gareth shifted closer to me.

  Tears ran quietly along the creases around Ditte’s eyes. ‘I was with him the first time, after her funeral. I had no idea he was still bringing her flowers.’

  I looked around, half expecting to see him. It had only been a few days, but I was getting used to this trick of grief, and for the first time I was not overcome. The breath that filled my lungs felt easier. Before I let it go, I caught the decaying scent of rush daffodil. Da had never liked them, but he’d told me they were Lily’s favourite.

  I couldn’t escape Da’s absence. I felt it when I turned onto Observatory Street, and when I opened the door to our house, I had to force myself to step over the threshold. Lizzie stayed for a few weeks, and the smell of Da’s pipe faded beneath the smells of her cooking. In the morning, I rose when she rose and we walked together to Sunnyside. I’d help her in the kitchen for an hour to make up some of the time she lost by staying with me, and when the first person arrived at the Scriptorium I would cross the garden and go in.

  There was a space at the sorting table that no one filled. Perhaps it was out of respect for me, but from where I sat I saw the way Mr Sweatman tucked in Da’s chair, and how often Mr Maling looked in that direction with a query on his tongue. Dr Murray got older in the weeks and months after Da died. He stared along the length of the sorting table and made no effort to look for a new assistant. I hated the space that Da had left and avoided looking at it whenever I came into the Scriptorium.

  Grief was all I could feel. It crowded my thoughts and filled my heart and left no room for anything else. I walked out with Gareth every now and then. If it rained we would have lunch in Jericho, but if the weather was fine we walked along the Cherwell. Hawthorn marked the months since Da’s death: berries ripened, then leaves fell. We wondered if the winter might bring snow. I took Gareth’s friendship for granted. I needed it to fill the void and couldn’t contemplate anything more or less than what it was. When he sought to take my arm in his, I didn’t notice until the gesture had been withdrawn.

  Christmas loomed, and my aunt insisted I visit her and my cousins in Scotland. Without Da, they seemed almost like strangers. I made excuses and travelled to Bath instead, where Ditte and Beth administered liberal amounts of good humour, pragmatism and Madeira cake. I returned to Oxford feeling lighter than when I’d left.

  I walked into the Scriptorium on the third day of 1914 and there was a new lexicographer sitting where Da had once sat. Mr Rawlings wasn’t young and he wasn’t old. He was unremarkable and oblivious to who had sat in that spot at the sorting table before him.

  It was an enormous relief to us all.

  There was a new hum in the Scriptorium. I felt it as an animal might when there is a decrease in air pressure before a storm. The prospect of war had heightened our senses. All over Oxford, young men were getting about with more spring. Their strides were longer and they talked louder – or so it seemed. The students had always raised their voices above the necessary volume in order to impress a pretty girl or intimidate a townie, but in the past the topics had varied. Not anymore. Student and townie alike talked of nothing but war, and it seemed that most of them couldn’t wait for it to come.

  In the Scriptorium, two of the newer assistants began to spend their breaks talking about coming face-to-face with the Kaiser and winning the war before it could start. They were young and pale and thin. They wore spectacles, and if they’d been in any fights at all they would have been awkward scraps over library books or proper grammar. Neither could approach Dr Murray without a hesitant step and a stutter, so I judged them unlikely to persuade the Kaiser to give up Belgium. The older assistants had more sober conversations, their faces darkening in a way that rarely occurred during their disagreements about words. Mr Rawlings had lost a brother in the Boer War, and he told the younger men that there was no glory in killing. They nodded, polite. They didn’t notice the waver in his voice, and before he was out of earshot they were talking again about the particulars of joining up, wondering how long they would have to train before they were sent into the fray. Mr Rawlings bent under the weight of it.

  ‘This war is going to slow the Dictionary down,’ I heard Mr Maling say to Dr Murray. ‘It’s a gun they want in their hand, not a pencil.’

  From then on, I woke every morning with a dread fear.

  No one slept on the night of August 3rd, even if they took to their beds and tried. Our two young assistants travelled to London and spent the balmy night carousing in Pall Mall, waiting for word that Germany had withdrawn from Belgium. It didn’t come. As Big Ben chimed the first hour of a new day, they sang ‘God save the King’.

  The next day, they returned to the Scriptorium full of a bravado that didn’t suit them. They approached Dr Murray together an
d told him they had volunteered. ‘Both of you are short-sighted and unfit,’ I heard Dr Murray say. ‘You’d do more good for your country if you stayed here.’

  It was impossible to concentrate, so I rode to the Press. I’d never known it to be so quiet. In the composing room, only half the benches had a man standing at them.

  ‘Just two?’ Gareth said, when I told him what had happened at the Scriptorium. ‘Sixty-three men marched out of the Press this morning. Most were volunteers in the Territorial Force, but not all. There would have been sixty-five, except Mr Hart pulled two out by the collars who he knew to be underage. Said he’d give them a hiding after their mothers had.’

  Mr Maling was right: the war slowed the Dictionary down. Within a few months, there were only women and old men left in the Scriptorium. Mr Rawlings, who was not quite old, had left because of a nervous complaint, and there was a space at the end of the sorting table once more. No one filled it.

  Over at the Old Ashmolean, Mr Bradley’s and Mr Craigie’s teams were similarly reduced, and Mr Hart was down to half his printing and compositing staff.

  I’d never worked so hard.

  ‘You’re enjoying this,’ Gareth said, as he stood beside my desk one day, waiting for me to finish an entry.

  I’d been given more responsibility, and I couldn’t deny I was happy about it. He took an envelope out of his satchel.

  ‘No proofs?’ I said.

  ‘Just a note for Dr Murray.’

  ‘Are you the errand boy now?’

  ‘My duties have multiplied. The juniors have all signed up.’

  ‘I’m glad you’re not a junior, then,’ I said.

  ‘I had to fight for this particular errand,’ Gareth went on. ‘We’re also down compositors and printers, and Mr Hart has asked foremen and managers to fill in where possible. He’d glue me to my old bench if he could, but I wanted to see you.’

  ‘I don’t suppose Mr Hart is taking the new circumstances in his stride.’

  Gareth looked at me like it was an understatement. ‘If he’s not careful the rest of us will sign up too.’

  ‘Don’t say that,’ I said. He’d put words to the fear I woke up with.

  The heat and heady excitement of August had given way to a damp autumn. Dr Murray developed a cough, and Mrs Murray insisted he avoid the Scriptorium. ‘As cold as an icebox,’ she said, and it was barely an exaggeration, even when the grate was ablaze.

  ‘Nonsense,’ was his reply, but they must have come to a compromise because from then on Dr Murray arrived at ten every morning and left at two – unless Mrs Murray wasn’t home to notice, in which case he would stay until five, his rough and faltering breath an incentive for us all to work harder and longer. He barely spoke of the war except to grumble about the inconvenience to the Dictionary. Despite our efforts, output had slowed and printing was backing up. Years were added to the expected completion date. I probably wasn’t the only person wondering if Dr Murray would live to see it.

  Ditte and other trusted volunteers were pushed into greater service, and every day brought proofs and new copy from all over Britain. Dr Murray had even begun sending proofs to Dictionary staff fighting in France. ‘They’ll be grateful for the distraction,’ he said.

  When I opened the first envelope from across the Channel, I could barely breathe. There were smudges of dirt from its journey. I imagined the route it must have taken, and the hands it must have passed through. I wondered if all the men who had touched it were still alive. I didn’t recognise the handwriting, but I knew the name on the back of the envelope. I tried to remember him but could only conjure an image of a small, pale-faced young man hunched over his desk at one end of the Dictionary Room in the Old Ashmolean. He usually worked with Mr Bradley, and Eleanor Bradley had described him as quietly brilliant but socially terrified. His corrections were thorough and needed little from me. Dr Murray was right, I thought. He must have been grateful for the distraction.

  The following week, I met Gareth for lunch at a pub in Jericho.

  ‘It’s a pity Mr Hart can’t send copy to France for printing,’ I said. Gareth was quiet, and I was filling the silence with my story. ‘I like the idea of giant presses being dragged to the front, and soldiers being equipped with metal type instead of bullets.’

  Gareth stared at his pie, poking holes in the pastry with his fork. He looked up and frowned. ‘You can’t make light of this, Es.’

  I felt my face heat, then realised he was on the verge of tears. I reached across the table and took his free hand.

  ‘What’s happened?’ I asked.

  He took a long time to reply, never taking his eyes from mine. ‘It just feels pointless.’ He looked back down at his food.

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘I was resetting type for sorrow.’ He drew a quick breath and looked to the ceiling. I gave up his hand so he could wipe his face.

  ‘Who?’ I asked.

  ‘They were apprentices. Been at the Press barely two years.’ He paused. ‘Started together, left together. Thick as thieves.’

  He pushed the pie out of the way and put his elbows on the table, held his head in his hands. He stared at the tablecloth and finished his story. ‘Jed’s mother came to the composing room looking for Mr Hart. Jed was the youngest of the two, not even seventeen. She came to tell Mr Hart that he won’t be coming back.’ He looked up then. ‘She was a wreck, Essy. Deranged. Jed was her only child, and she couldn’t stop saying that he was only turning seventeen next week. Over and over, like the fact of it would bring him back because he should never have been there in the first place.’ He took a deep breath. I blinked to hold back my own tears. ‘Someone found Mr Hart, and he took her to his office. We could hear her wailing as he led her down the hall.’

  I pushed my own plate away. Gareth drank half his glass of stout.

  ‘It was impossible to return to that word,’ he said. ‘It made me sick just looking at the type. The war’s only been going a couple of months, and they think it will be years. How many Jeds will there be?’

  I had no answer.

  He sighed. ‘I suddenly couldn’t see the point,’ he said.

  ‘We have to keep doing what we do, Gareth. No matter what that is. Otherwise we’re just waiting.’

  ‘It would be good to feel I was doing something useful. Typesetting sorrow won’t take the sorrow away. Jed’s mother will feel what she feels, no matter what is written in a dictionary.’

  ‘But maybe it will help others to understand what she is feeling.’

  Even as I said it, I wasn’t convinced. Of some experiences, the Dictionary would only ever provide an approximation. Sorrow, I already knew, was one of them.

  Barely a week went by that didn’t bring another mother to the Controller’s door with the news her son would not be returning. The editors at the Scriptorium and Old Ashmolean were not so burdened, but neither were they immune. By virtue of education or connection, the lexicographers became officers, though their learning hardly equipped them to be leaders of men. Staff at the Press were from a broader spectrum – part of the fodder classes, Gareth said. He stopped telling me every time someone from the Press had died.

  The door to Mr Hart’s office was ajar. I knocked and pushed it open a little wider.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, without looking up from his papers.

  I walked towards his desk, but still he didn’t look up. I cleared my throat. ‘Last-minute edits, Mr Hart. Speech to spring.’

  He looked up, the creases between his brows deepening as he took the proofs and the note from Dr Murray. He read the note and I saw his jaw clench. Dr Murray wanted another edit – the third or fourth, I wasn’t sure. I wondered if the plates had been cast. I dared not ask.

  ‘Illness doesn’t make him less pedantic,’ Mr Hart said.

  It wasn’t meant for me, so I remained quiet. He stood and walked towards the door. He didn’t ask me to wait, so I followed him.

  The composing room was quiet of talk, but there was
a percussive clicking of type being placed in sticks then turned out into formes that would hold a whole page of words. I waited by the door as Mr Hart approached the nearest bench. The compositor was young – no longer an apprentice, but too young for the war. He looked nervous as Mr Hart cast an eye over his forme. I wondered how easily mistakes could be noticed when everything was back-to-front. Mr Hart seemed satisfied and patted the assistant on the back, then he moved towards the next bench. Dr Murray’s edits would have to wait.

  I remained just inside the door and searched the room. Gareth was at his old bench: despite now being a manager, he was needed to set type for a few hours a day. I watched him like a stranger might. There was something unfamiliar about him. His face was more intent than I’d ever seen it and his body surer. It struck me that we are never fully at ease when we are aware of another’s gaze. Perhaps we are never fully ourselves. In the desire to please or impress, to persuade or dominate, our movements become conscious, our features set.

  I’d always thought him lean, but watching him work, his shirtsleeves rolled up and the muscles in his forearms taut, I noticed the elegance of his strength. In his concentration and the fluidity of his movements, he looked to me like a painter or a composer, his placement of type as deliberate as notes on a sheet of music.

  I felt a pang of guilt. I knew too little of what he did. I’d assumed it was nothing more than mechanical monotony. After all, the words were chosen by the editors, the meanings suggested by writers. All he had to do was transcribe them. But that was not what I saw. He studied a slip then made a selection of type. He placed it, considered it, took a pencil from behind his ear and made notes on the slip. Was he editing? With the surety of having solved a problem, he removed the type and replaced it with a better arrangement.