by Pip Williams
Eternal Love,
Gareth
CUSHY
From the Hindi word ‘khush’, meaning ‘pleasure’ (Ajit ‘invincible’ Khatri).
‘Don’t get used to your cushy quarters, Lieutenant; you’ll soon be in the trenches and up to your arse in mud.’
Lt Gerald Ainsworth, 1915
In the weeks after Gareth left, I had imagined him dying a hundred different ways. My sleep had been restless, and I woke with dread. So his first letter was a tonic.
‘Lizzie. A letter!’
‘Who from? The King?’ She smiled and made herself comfortable at the table, ready to hear it.
‘It does sound a bit like a holiday, doesn’t it?’ I said, when I’d read it through.
‘It does. And he’s made an interesting friend, by the sound.’
‘Yes. Mr Invincible. Which reminds me.’ I took the slip from the envelope and read what Gareth had written on it.
‘Isn’t it a wonderful word?’ I said. ‘I’ve decided to use it as often as I can.’
‘You’ll have more cause than me.’
More letters arrived, one every few days, and August passed into September. There was little sign that work had slowed since Dr Murray died, and as no one packed a box or cleared a shelf I thought, maybe, the Scriptorium would stay as it was. When Mr Sweatman (‘Fred’ never came easily) started to give me words to research, I felt some equilibrium return to my days. I resumed my errands to the Old Ashmolean and to the Press. Mr Hart was indeed in a depressed mood, but contrary to Gareth’s hope, I was unable to bring him any cheer.
Every weekday at five o’clock, I went straight from the Scriptorium to the Radcliffe Infirmary. On Saturdays I was there most of the afternoon. There was almost always a boy from the Press in one of the beds. If they’d just come in, the sisters would make sure I was told and the boy would become part of my rounds, but most were not short of visitors. The Radcliffe was a stone’s throw from the Press, and the women of Jericho had claimed it. The wards were full of mothers and sisters and sweethearts fussing over wounded strangers in the way they would fuss over their own, if they could. When a local boy came in they’d swarm around, trading biscuits and toffee for scraps of news that might convince them their own boys were still alive.
I’d always have my evening meal with Bertie.
‘He still doesn’t comprehend anything,’ Sister Morley said. ‘But he seems to eat more when you’re beside him.’
The Radcliffe provided my dinner on the same tray as Bertie’s. It was always bland and repetitive. Sister Morley apologised and blamed rationing, but I didn’t mind: it meant I didn’t have to go home and cook for one.
‘Bertie,’ I said. He gave no response. ‘I came across a word today that I think you might like.’
‘He don’t like any words, Mrs Owen,’ his neighbour said.
‘I know that, Angus, but the doctors only use familiar words. This will be unfamiliar.’
‘Well, how will he know what it means?’
‘He won’t. But I’ll explain it.’
‘But you got to use familiar words to explain it.’
‘Not necessarily.’
Angus laughed. ‘You got your work cut out, missus.’
‘Well, if you keep eavesdropping, you at least will leave here with a larger vocabulary.’
‘Reckon I know all the words I need,’ he said.
Bertie ate his meal like any other man, and for its duration I could imagine him burping at the end and saying, ‘Excuse me, missus,’ like so many of them did. But when he’d had enough, he resumed his forward gaze and was as silent as ever.
‘Finita,’ I said.
Bertie’s eyes registered nothing.
‘What does that mean?’ asked Angus.
‘It means finished.’
‘What language is it?’
‘Esperanto.’
‘Never heard of it.’
‘It’s made up, in a way,’ I said. ‘It’s meant to be easy enough for anyone to learn – it was created to foster peace between nations.’
‘And how’s that going, missus?’
I smiled wearily as my gaze settled on the end of Angus’s bed: no feet beneath the sheet.
‘Still,’ he went on, ‘if it helps old Bertie here, it might not have been a waste of time making it up.’ He nodded towards Bertie’s tray. ‘Can I have the leftovers if he’s finished?’
I picked up the plate of food and took it over to Angus.
‘How do you say thanks in Esperanto?’ he asked.
I had a list of words in my pocket, but this one I knew by heart: ‘Dankon.’
‘Well, dankon, Mrs Owen.’
‘Ne dankinde, Angus.’
Mrs Murray knocked, then opened the door to the Scriptorium. We all looked up from our desks.
‘It begins,’ she announced, and with a cheerless expression she ushered in a boy wearing the familiar apron of the Press. He pushed in a trolley stacked with flattened cardboard boxes.
‘The Press has offered to help with the move and will be sending a boy each afternoon with a trolley. They will take whatever boxes you have packed to the Old Ashmolean.’ She looked as though she was about to say more, but no words came. We watched her look around the room, taking in the shelves of pigeon-holes, the books, the stacks of paper. It should have been a private moment. Her eyes settled at last on Dr Murray’s desk, on the mortarboard resting on the shelf beside Q to Sh. She turned and left.
Rosfrith and Elsie got up to follow their mother. ‘You can leave the boxes on the floor,’ Rosfrith said as she passed the trolley boy. ‘I’m sure we’ll be able to figure out how to assemble them.’
Work could not stop, but assembling boxes became our morning-tea activity. At lunchtime, we’d pack them with old dictionaries and all the books and journals we could do without. A boy would turn up each afternoon at three o’clock to take them away.
Every day, the Scriptorium cast off a little more of itself. In the last week of September, the final boxes were filled with the paraphernalia that each assistant needed to do their job. The mood was sombre, and on their last day the assistants left without ceremony; there was very little of the Scriptorium to farewell.
I wasn’t ready to leave. I volunteered to stay back and box up all the slips for storage or rehousing at the Old Ashmolean. Besides me, Mr Sweatman was the last to finish packing. He closed up his box and left it on the sorting table to be picked up by the Press boy. Then he came to say goodbye.
‘Are you thinking of staying?’ he said, looking at my desk and its contents, exactly where they had always been.
‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘You were such a rowdy bunch; I’ll get more work done now you’re gone.’
He sighed, all the chaff gone out of him. I stood up and embraced him.
Alone, I finally dared to look around. The sorting table stood solid and familiar; the pigeon-holes were still full of slips, but the shelves were empty and the desks were clean. The shuffling of papers and scratching of pens had ceased. The Scriptorium had lost almost all its flesh, and the bones resembled nothing more than a shed.
I spent the next few weeks shifting back and forth between the Scriptorium and the Radcliffe Infirmary.
I touched Bertie’s hand. ‘Mano,’ I said. Then I pointed to mine. ‘Mano.’
‘You’ll not want to do this alone, Essymay,’ said Lizzie. She must have seen me arrive and was coming across the garden towards the Scriptorium.
‘You have enough to do,’ I said.
‘Mrs Murray managed to get an extra girl in for a few weeks. My mornings are yours.’
I kissed Lizzie on the cheek, then I opened the Scriptorium door.
Empty shoeboxes covered the sorting table.
‘Akvo,’ I said, and Bertie took the cup of water. He had long fingers, and the callouses of soldiering had almost disappeared. Beneath them the skin was soft. Not a labourer, I thought. Perhaps a clerk.
It felt like the work of the be
reaved. The slips were familiar but half forgotten. I kept stopping to remember.
I lifted my meal from Bertie’s tray. ‘Vespermanĝo,’ I said. I drank my tea, ‘Teon.’
I stacked the slips in small bundles beside the shoeboxes. If they were loose, Lizzie tied them with string and placed one bundle beside another until the shoebox was full. Then I wrote the contents on the front, adding Store or Old Ash. It seemed extraordinary to me that the slips were such a good fit, as if Dr Murray had designed the shoeboxes too.
‘Why does he always get his vespermanĝo first?’ Angus asked.
‘He doesn’t make a fuss, like some,’ I said.
Lizzie closed the lid on another box and put it to one end of the sorting table.
‘Halfway there,’ she said.
‘Amico.’ I pointed to myself. ‘Amico.’ I pointed to Angus.
‘What makes you think I’m his friend?’ said Angus.
‘I’ve seen you talking to him, using the Esperanto words. That’s friendship, I think.’
I bundled the last slips and gave them to Lizzie to tie. The pigeon-holes were completely empty. It felt as though my life to that moment was gone.
‘This must be what it feels like to be excised from a proof,’ I said.
‘And that means?’ said Lizzie.
‘Removed, cut out, erased.’
‘This is an important one, Angus,’ I said, holding my list of Esperanto words, ‘but I have no idea how to define it for him.’
‘What is it?’
‘Sekura.’
‘What does it mean?’
‘Safe.’
We sat in silence for a while, Angus holding his chin in mock thought, me staring at the word and coming up blank, Bertie between us both, unresponsive.
‘Hug him, missus,’ said Angus.
‘Hug him?’
‘Yeah. I reckon the only time any of us feel really safe is when our mum’s hugging us.’
The sorting table was covered in shoeboxes, each labelled and full of slips.
‘Mrs Murray is organising for the pigeon-holes to be taken to the Old Ashmolean soon,’ I said to Lizzie.
‘We’ll give them a good clean then and our job will be done.’
‘Sekura,’ I said as I hugged Bertie.
I’d been hugging him when I arrived and when I left, and once or twice in between. But he remained rigid. This time, I felt his body yield.
‘Bertie?’ I said, when I finally pulled back and could look into his eyes. But there was nothing. I hugged him again. ‘Sekura.’
Again, he yielded, his head coming down towards my chest.
September 28th, 1915, Loos
My darling Es,
My word of the week is doolally. It was used to refer to a lad who was sent a roll of lavatory paper from home and used the whole lot to bandage his eyes. When his mates finally tore it off, the poor bugger was blind. He was ridiculed for faking, but he genuinely couldn’t see a thing. War neuroses, according to the doctor. Doolally, according to his mates. I suppose it’s an easier word to relate to – leaves room for a laugh.
I’m beginning to feel the English language is burdened by this war, Es. Everyone I meet has a new word for toilet paper, and I’ve not heard one that doesn’t accurately convey its origin or the experience of using it. Yet only a handful of words exist to convey a thousand horrors.
Horror. It’s war-weary. It is the word we use when we have no words. Perhaps some things are not meant to be described – at least, not by the likes of me. A poet, perhaps, could arrange words in a way that creates the itch of fear or the heaviness of dread. They could make an enemy of mud and damp boots and raise your pulse just at the mention of them. A poet might be able to push this word or that to mean something more than what has been ordained by our Dictionary men.
I am not a poet, my love. The words I have are pale and slight against the hulking force of this experience. I can tell you it is wretched, that the mud is muddier, the damp damper, the sound of a flute played by a German soldier more beautiful and more melancholy than any sound I have ever heard. But you will not understand. There is not a word in Dr Murray’s dictionary that can rise to the challenge of the stench in this place. I could compare it to the fish market on a hot afternoon, to a tannery, a morgue, a sewer. It is all of those things, but it is the way it enters you, becomes a taste and a cramping in your throat and belly. You will imagine something awful, but it is worse. And then there is the slaughter. It comes to you in the Times. The ‘Roll of Honour’. Column after column of names in Monotype Modern. I have no way of describing the wrenching of my soul when the ember of a fag still glows in the mud, though the lips that held it have been blown away. I lit that fag, Es. I knew it would be his last. This is how we do it. We light fags, we nod, we hold their gaze. Then we send them over the top. There are no words.
And now there is time to rest, but we can’t. Our minds will never be quiet. It will start up again, and so everyone is writing home. To the wives of three men and the mothers of four, I will be the letter-writer. We have been told not to describe it, as if that is even possible, but some have tried. It is my job, tonight, to censor them, and I have blacked out the words of boys who are barely literate as well as boys who might become poets, so their mothers continue to think the war a glory and a good fight. I do it gladly, for their mothers, but from the start I have thought of you, Es, and how you would try to rescue what these boys have said so you can understand them better. Their words are ordinary, but they are assembled into sentences that are grotesque. I’ve transcribed every one, and I include the pages with this letter. I have not corrected or truncated, and each sentence has its owner’s name beside it. I could think of no one better to honour them than you.
Eternal Love,
Gareth
P.S. Ajit was not invincible.
Our house was dark except for the hall light, but it was all I needed. I sat on the bottom stair, my coat still on, and read Gareth’s letter again. Then I read all the words he had blacked out for others and transcribed for me. Hours passed, and a chill stole into me. I looked at the date of Gareth’s letter; it was already five days old.
I walked to Sunnyside, crept into the kitchen and up the stairs. Lizzie was snoring. I opened the door as quietly as I could, took the spread from the foot of her bed and made a nest of it on the floor.
In the morning, I was roused by Lizzie’s quiet movement around the room. When she noticed me watching her, she scolded me for not waking her in the night. I told her about Gareth’s letter, and she helped me into her bed. Her body’s warmth still clung to the sheets.
‘I’ll start cleaning the Scrippy. You sleep,’ she said, tucking me in like she used to.
But I couldn’t sleep. When she was gone, I leaned under the bed and dragged out the trunk. Women’s Words and Their Meanings: he said he was on every page. I brought it into bed with me, smelled the leather and turned to the first page. I read every word. A year, it had taken him.
When our work in the Scriptorium was done, I was glad to still have the Radcliffe to go to. Perhaps Gareth would end up there, I thought as I walked towards it. What might he be missing? An arm, a leg? His mind, like Bertie?
‘Evenin’, missus,’ said Angus. ‘Vespermanĝo’s been and gone. Me and Bertie had a lovely chat about the potatoes. I reckon they was mashed with akvo. He silently agreed.’
‘I’m quite well, Angus. Thank you.’
‘Well, that don’t make a lotta sense. I didn’t ask how you was, but I suppose I might as well. You alright?’
‘Oh, just tired.’
‘Well, there’s a new one on the ward. A loudmouth. No respect. Giving the nurses a terrible time. One-armed sniper I heard them call him, on account of his sharp shooting in France and his sharp talking in here. Been at Radcliffe a while, they say. The other ward must have had enough of him.’ I followed Angus’s gaze.
The new patient was familiar from my first day at the infirmary. When he saw me looki
ng over, he puckered his thin lips into a kiss. I ignored him and turned to Bertie.
‘You still collecting words?’ It was the one-armed sniper. ‘That coward won’t give you none. Clammed up at the first sign of trouble, he did.’
‘Just ignore him, missus.’
‘Good advice, Angus.’
But ignoring didn’t work.
‘I’ve got a word that’ll blow you away.’
Some men are very kind, and some men are not. It makes no difference whose uniform they wear. There was no mistaking what word was shouted – it was precise and well-aimed, and it was repeated over and over, even after it had hit its mark.
‘BOMB. BOMB. BOMB. BOMB. BOMB.’
Bertie flattened himself against his mattress then scrambled from the bed, knocking me flat. His screaming bounced off the walls so I heard it from all directions.
I got to my hands and knees and looked along the ward. For a disorientating moment, I thought it might have been a Zeppelin attack instead of simple malice.
The ward was almost as it had been when I came in, but everyone was turned our way. My chair was toppled, and Bertie’s bed was askew. He was cowering beneath it, knees up to his chest and hands over his ears. He shivered as if he was naked in a snowdrift. He’d wet himself.
Angus dropped down to the floor behind him, and I thought he’d been tipped out of bed. There were bandages where his feet should have been. Trench foot, he’d said. He dragged himself alongside Bertie.
‘Amico,’ he said in a sing-song way, like a child playing hide-and-seek. ‘Amico, amico.’
The screaming turned to a terrible groaning, and Bertie began to rock back and forth. I crawled towards them and kneeled beside Bertie, wrapping his rocking body in my arms. He was small and frail – barely grown. ‘Sekura,’ I said in his ear.
I thought of all the times Lizzie had sat me in her lap and rocked my worries away, her voice a metronome of calm. ‘Sekura,’ I said, rocking with Bertie. ‘Sekura.’