The Dictionary of Lost Words : A Novel (2020)

by Williams, Pip

  Only in his sleep would I see him this unguarded. I was surprised to realise that I longed to see him sleep. The thought pierced my heart.

  Gareth stood up straight and moved his head from side to side, stretching out his neck. The movements must have caught Mr Hart’s eye, because the Controller suggested a correction to the type on the forme he was inspecting, then walked towards his manager. Gareth saw him, and there was the slightest tightening of muscles in his shoulders and face: an adjustment to being observed. I too began to walk towards Gareth. When he saw me, a smile broke across his face and he was entirely familiar again.

  ‘Esme,’ he said. His delight warmed every part of me.

  Only then did Mr Hart realise I was there. ‘Oh, yes, of course.’ There was an awkward silence as Mr Hart and I both wondered whether we were getting in the way of the other’s conversation with Gareth.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘Perhaps I should wait in the corridor?’

  ‘Not at all, Miss Nicoll,’ said Mr Hart.

  ‘Mr Hart,’ said Gareth, bringing us all back to the business we were there for. ‘Edits from Sir James?’

  ‘Yes.’ Mr Hart approached Gareth at his bench. ‘It’s as you anticipated. I’m tempted from now on to let you make the change when you notice it; it would save a damn lot of time.’ Then, remembering me, he made a grudging apology for his language. Gareth suppressed a grin.

  When they’d finished discussing the edits, Gareth asked if he could take his break early.

  ‘Yes, yes. Take an extra quarter-hour,’ said Mr Hart.

  ‘You’ve flustered him,’ Gareth said, as Mr Hart walked away. ‘I’ll just finish setting this line.’

  I watched as Gareth selected small bits of metal type from the tray in front of him. His hand moved quickly, and the stick was soon full. He turned it out into the forme and rubbed his thumb.

  ‘Do you think Mr Hart was serious when he said he’d let you make changes to the copy before setting it in type?’

  Gareth laughed. ‘Good God, no.’

  ‘But you must be tempted,’ I said carefully.

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘Well, I’d never thought much about it before, but seeing you here I realise you spend your life with words, putting them in their place. Surely you’ve developed opinions about what reads well.’

  ‘It’s not my job to have opinions, Es.’ He wasn’t looking at me, but I could see a smile hovering by the edge of his mouth.

  ‘I’m not sure I could like a man without opinions,’ I said.

  He smiled then. ‘Well, in that case, let’s just say that I have more opinions about the copy that comes from the Old Ashmolean than I do about the copy that comes from the Scriptorium.’ He stood to remove his apron. ‘Do you mind if we stop by the printing room?’

  The printing room was in full operation, huge sheets of paper coming down like the wings of a giant bird or being rolled off large drums in quick succession; the old way and the new, Gareth said. Each had a rhythm for the ear and the eye, and I found it strangely soothing to see the pages pile up.

  Gareth led me to one of the old presses. I felt the air shift as the giant wing descended.

  ‘Harold, I have that part you asked for.’ Gareth took a small wheel-like part from his pocket and gave it to the old man. ‘If you have trouble fitting it, I can come back this afternoon and do it.’

  Harold took the part, and I noticed his hands shaking ever so slightly.

  ‘Esme, may I introduce Harold Fairweather. Harold is a master printer, recently come out of retirement – isn’t that right, Harold?’

  ‘I’m doing my bit,’ said Harold.

  ‘And this is Miss Esme Nicoll,’ Gareth continued. ‘Esme works with Dr Murray on the Dictionary.’

  Harold smiled. ‘Where would the English language be without us?’

  I looked at the pages coming off the printer. ‘Are you printing the Dictionary?’

  ‘That I am.’ He nodded towards a pile of printed sheets.

  I picked up the edge of one, held it between my thumb and fingers and rubbed the paper. I was anxious not to touch the words in case the ink was still wet. I had an image of smudging one and the word being erased from the vocabulary of whoever bought the fascicle that the page belonged to.

  ‘These old presses have personalities,’ Harold was saying. ‘Gareth knows this one as well as anyone.’

  I looked at Gareth, ‘Is that so?’

  ‘I started on the presses,’ he said. ‘I was apprenticed to Harold when I was fourteen.’

  ‘When it plays up he’s the only one can coax it to behave, even before we lost half the mechanics,’ said Harold. ‘Don’t know how I’ll get on without him.’

  ‘I can’t imagine why you’d have to get on without him,’ I said.

  ‘Hypothetical, miss,’ he replied quickly.

  ‘You should visit more often,’ Gareth said as we walked along Walton Street. ‘Hart is in the habit of docking a quarter-hour from our lunch break these days, not adding it.’

  ‘Dr Murray’s the same. It’s like the Scriptorium and the Press are their battlegrounds. They have no other contribution to make.’ As soon as I said it, I regretted it.

  ‘Hart’s always been a hard taskmaster,’ Gareth said. ‘But if he isn’t careful he’ll lose more men to his unreasonable demands than to the war.’

  We walked into the heart of Jericho. It was crowded with lunchtime activity, and Gareth nodded at every second person. Every family was connected to the Press in some way.

  ‘Will he lose you?’ I said.

  Gareth paused. ‘He’s particular, occasionally moody, and he drives himself and his staff harder than necessary, but he and I have a way of working that suits us both. I’ve grown fond of him over the years, Es. I think it’s mutual.’

  I’d seen it myself, many times. Gareth had an ease and confidence that softened Mr Hart as it softened Dr Murray.

  We turned into Little Clarendon Street and walked towards the tea shop. ‘But will he lose you?’ I asked again.

  Gareth pushed open the door, and the bell above tinkled. I stood on the threshold, waiting for him to reply.

  ‘You heard Harold,’ he said. ‘Hypothetical.’

  He guided me to a table at the back and pulled out the chair for me to sit.

  ‘I saw the look he gave you,’ I said, as he pulled out his own chair. ‘It was an apology.’

  ‘He knows compliments make me uncomfortable.’

  Gareth couldn’t look at me. Instead, he looked around for the waitress. He caught her eye and turned back to examine the menu.

  ‘What do you fancy?’ he said, without looking up.

  I reached my hand across the table and enfolded his. ‘I fancy the truth, Gareth. What are you planning?’

  He looked up. ‘Essy …’ But nothing came after it.

  ‘You’re scaring me.’

  He reached into his trouser pocket and pulled something out. He held it in his fist between us, and I saw his face flush and his jaw clench.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked.

  His fingers curled back, revealing the crushed remains of a white feather.

  ‘Put it away,’ I said.

  ‘It was tied to the back door at the Press,’ Gareth said.

  ‘So, it could be for anyone. Hundreds of people work there.’

  ‘I know that. I don’t think it was for me, necessarily. But it makes you think.’

  The waitress interrupted, and Gareth ordered.

  ‘You’re too old,’ I said.

  ‘Thirty-six is not too old. And it’s better than being twenty-six, or sixteen, for God’s sake. Those boys have barely lived.’

  The waitress put the pot of tea between us. I barely breathed as she carefully placed the teacups and milk jug.

  As soon as she moved away, I said, ‘You sound like you want to go.’

  ‘Only the young or stupid would want to go to war, Essy. No, I don’t want to go.’

 
; ‘But you’re thinking about it.’

  ‘It’s impossible not to.’

  ‘Well, think about me instead.’ I heard the child in my voice, the desperate plea. I hadn’t asked this of him before, and I’d avoided any sentiment that might encourage more than friendship.

  ‘Oh, Essy. I never stop thinking about you.’

  When the sandwiches arrived the waitress didn’t fuss over their placement, but our conversation ceased nonetheless. Neither of us was brave enough to resume it, and we spent the next fifteen minutes eating without a word.

  After lunch we walked along the towpath of Castle Mill Stream. Snowdrops carpeted the bank as if challenging winter to do a better job.

  ‘I have a word for you,’ Gareth said. ‘It already exists, but the Dictionary doesn’t show it being used like this. I thought it should be in your collection.’ He took a slip out of his pocket, a bright white square of paper that I knew had been cut from one of the giant sheets used in the presses. He read it silently to himself, and I wondered if he wanted to change his mind and keep it.

  At the next bench, we sat.

  ‘I set the type for this word, a while ago now.’ He continued to hang onto it. ‘It means so many things, but the way this woman used it made me think something might be missing from the Dictionary.’

  ‘Who was the woman?’ But I knew before he answered.

  ‘A mother.’

  ‘And the word?’

  ‘Loss,’ he said.

  The papers were full of it. Since the war had begun, we could have filled a whole volume with quotations containing loss. The casualty lists in the Times of London kept a count of it, and the Battle of Ypres had overwhelmed its pages. The dead included Oxford men. Press men. Jericho boys Gareth had known since they were small. Loss was a useful word, and terrible in its scope.

  ‘Can I see it?’

  Gareth looked again at the slip, then passed it to me.

  LOSS

  ‘Sorry for your loss, they say. And I want to know what they mean, because it’s not just my boys I’ve lost. I’ve lost my motherhood, my chance to be a grandmother. I’ve lost the easy conversation of neighbours and the comfort of family in my old age. Every day I wake to some new loss that I hadn’t thought of before, and I know that soon it will be my mind.’

  Vivienne Blackman, 1915

  Gareth put a hand on my shoulder. It was reassuring. I felt the gentle squeeze, the caress of his thumb. Something more than friendship that I couldn’t discourage. But he had no idea.

  I’ve lost my motherhood. The words had forced a memory: kindly eyes in a freckled face; an anchor during pain. Sarah, my baby’s mother. Her mother. I tried to recall something of Her, but Her smell lingered only as words I’d once written down and stored in the trunk. When I closed my eyes, I saw nothing of Her face, though I remembered writing that Her skin was translucent, Her lashes barely there. This woman, Vivienne Blackman, knew something of me. It was something Gareth could not possibly imagine.

  ‘Who is she?’ I asked.

  ‘Her three boys worked at the Press. They all joined the 2nd Ox and Bucks in August. And two of them were just boys; too young for sense – though sense can make cowards of older men.’ He saw his words register on my face and quickly went on. ‘Mr Hart was unwell, so she told me.’

  ‘Does she have other children?’ I asked.

  He shook his head. We said no more.

  … I will pray for the safe return of your boys.

  Your dearest friend, Lizzie

  I gave Lizzie the pages I’d scribed. She folded them carefully and put them in an envelope, then she took her fourth biscuit.

  ‘Tommy will be ever so lonely without his brothers,’ she said.

  ‘Do you think he’ll sign up?’

  ‘If he does, it’ll break Natasha’s heart.’

  ‘Lizzie, do you ever wish you could tell Natasha your deepest secrets without having to write them through me?’ I asked.

  ‘I got no deep secrets, Essymay.’

  ‘If you did, would you want her to know, even though it might change what she thought of you?’

  Lizzie’s hand went to her crucifix, and she looked down at the table. She had always given God the credit for any wisdom she gave me. I had long ceased to believe he had anything to do with it.

  She lifted her head. ‘I reckon I might want her to know, if it was something that mattered to me, or something that explained me somehow.’

  Her answer made my stomach churn. ‘Would it matter, though, if you kept your secret?’

  Lizzie got up to put more hot water in the teapot.

  ‘I don’t think he’ll judge you,’ she said.

  I whipped around, but her back was to me. I had no way of reading her face. She might have been talking about God, or she might have been talking about Gareth. I hoped she was talking about both.

  A clear night ushered in a blue-sky day and a glittering frost. But the cold morning didn’t last, and my coat felt heavy as I peddled towards the Press with Dr Murray’s proof corrections.

  Mr Hart’s office door was half-open. I knocked but there was no reply. I peeked around and saw that he was at his desk, his head in his hands. Another mother, I thought. There had been a small article in the Oxford Times about the number of men from the Press who had signed up, the number who had died. The loss of so many staff would delay the publication of some significant books, it said. Including Shakespeare’s England.

  I did not believe it was Shakespeare’s England bowing the Controller’s head, and suddenly the article seemed callous. To name a book but not a single man. I stepped back from the doorway and knocked louder. Mr Hart looked up this time, a little dazed, a little frightened. I handed him the corrected proofs.

  Next, I went to find Gareth, but he wasn’t in his office. I found him in the composing room, leaning over his old bench.

  ‘Can’t stay away from it?’ I said.

  Gareth looked up from the type. His smile unconvincing. ‘Too many empty benches,’ he said. ‘The printing room is the same. Only the bindery is at full strength now, though a few of the women have signed on to the Voluntary Aid Detachment.’ He wiped his hands on his apron.

  ‘Perhaps Mr Hart should think about employing women as printers and compositors.’

  ‘It’s been raised, but it’s not a popular idea. Inevitable, though, I think.’

  ‘Mr Hart looks awful.’

  Gareth took off his apron and we walked together to where other identical aprons hung on individual hooks. ‘I think he’s falling into one of his depressions,’ he said. ‘It’s understandable. This place is like a village; everyone is related to someone, and each death ripples through it.’

  When we crossed the quad, it struck me for the first time just how quiet it really was. Instead of walking towards Jericho, I directed Gareth down Great Clarendon Street. ‘It’s not too cold,’ I said. ‘I thought we could walk along the Castle Mill Stream. I’ve brought sandwiches.’

  I could think of nothing ordinary to say as we walked, though Gareth seemed not to notice. We turned into Canal Street and passed St Barnabas Church. It was only as we were on the towpath that he asked if everything was alright. I tried to smile, but was completely unsuccessful.

  ‘You’re making me nervous,’ he said.

  I chose a quiet spot dappled with weak sunshine. Gareth took off his coat and spread it on the ground, and I placed mine beside his. We sat, too close for the acrimony I thought would come. I took the sandwiches out of my satchel and passed him one.

  ‘Say it,’ he said.

  ‘Say what?’

  ‘Whatever is on your mind.’

  I searched his face. I didn’t want anything to change the way he looked at me, but I also wanted him to understand me completely. My mind swirled with images and emotion, and I could not recall a single word of what I had rehearsed. I felt breathless. Got to my feet. Walked beside the stream, gulping air, but still I couldn’t breathe. Gareth called after me, but
the rushing in my ears made him sound far away.

  I would tell him about Her, I knew that. Though I might not be forgiven. I felt sick, but I turned back.

  We sat opposite each other. Each on our own coat, Gareth looking down now, stunned and silent. I’d told him everything. I’d said words I’d been afraid of – virgin, pregnant, confinement, birth, baby, adopted – and I was calmer. The nausea had gone.

  I watched Gareth, detached. I might have lost him, but the loss of Her was certain. He might have been disappointed in me, but I was disappointed in myself.

  I rose and started walking away. When I looked back he was still sitting where I’d left him, his hand was stroking the coat I’d left behind.

  Along Canal Street, I found the doors to St Barnabas were open. I sat in the Morning Chapel. I don’t know how long I’d been there before Gareth found me and put my coat over my shoulders. He sat beside me. When he took my arm sometime later, I let him lead me back out into the winter sunshine.

  When we arrived back at the Press, I collected my bicycle and insisted I could ride back to the Scriptorium alone.

  Gareth looked at me – no acrimony, but there was a sadness.

  ‘It doesn’t change anything,’ he said.

  ‘How can it not?’

  ‘I don’t know. It just doesn’t.’

  ‘But it might, over time.’

  He shook his head. ‘I don’t think so. The war has made the present more important than the past, and far more certain than the future. How I feel right now is all I can rely on. And after all that you’ve told me, I think I love you more.’

  Few words have as many variants as love. I felt it resonate deep in my chest and knew it to mean something different to any other version I’d heard or uttered. But the sadness on Gareth’s face remained. He took my hand and kissed the scars, then he turned and went into the Press.

  When I stirred the next morning, the house felt frigid. I could hardly raise my body from the bed. Gareth’s words should have been a relief, but they were tempered by his sadness. He was holding something back from me, as I had from him. I shivered and wished that Lizzie was there.