The Dictionary of Lost Words : A Novel (2020)

by Williams, Pip

  As the days went on, I brought books from the Scriptorium and read passages I thought he might enjoy. I chose them for rhythm more than words, though I was always careful to check that every word was benign. Poetry seemed to steady his gaze, and sometimes he looked at me with such intent that I imagined something of the meaning might have gotten through. For the rest of June and well into July, I slept soundly.

  By July, Dr Murray was spending almost no time in the Scriptorium. Rosfrith said he was having trouble shifting a cold, but I couldn’t recall him ever letting a cold take priority over the Dictionary – he’d always banished it with the same gruff impatience he used to banish unwanted criticism. But the work continued, with Dictionary staff visiting him in the house, and copy going back and forth. When ‘Trink to Turndown’ was completed, we celebrated around the sorting table with our customary afternoon tea. Dr Murray joined us, paler and thinner than I’d ever seen him.

  It was a quiet celebration. We spoke of words, not war, and Dr Murray proposed a revised timeline for the completion of T. It still seemed optimistic, but no one contradicted him.

  As we ate our cake, Rosfrith leaned towards me. ‘The Periodical is doing a picture spread about the Dictionary for their next publication. They’re organising some photographs of the three editors and their staff.’

  ‘How exciting,’ I said.

  She looked towards her father, his cake untouched. ‘It is, but the photographer is not due until the end of July, and I’m worried …’ But she couldn’t finish the sentence. ‘Would you mind taking a photograph with Mother’s Brownie? Just in case?’

  The Dictionary without Dr Murray. I pushed the thought away. ‘My pleasure,’ I said.

  She rested her hand on my knee, a sad smile on her face. ‘I’m afraid it will mean you can’t be in it.’

  ‘I’ll make sure I’m here when the real photographer comes,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, of course. I’d hate you to be left out of the official spread. You’ve been part of the project for as long as I can remember.’

  Rosfrith went to the house to fetch the Brownie. I’d used it once or twice to take photographs of the Murray family in the garden, but she explained the mechanism again. When Lizzie had cleared the sorting table of tea things, Elsie arranged everyone where she thought they should be.

  There were only seven of us left. Dr Murray was assisted to a chair in front of one of the bookshelves, and Elsie and Rosfrith sat either side of him. Mr Maling, Mr Sweatman and Mr Yockney stood behind.

  I looked through the lens and focused on Dr Murray. It was the same face that used to spy me beneath the sorting table and wink conspiratorially. The same face that looked grave when he read letters from the Press Delegates, or agitated when he read copy from one of the other editors. It was the face that used to delight in slipping into Scottish brogue when he spoke to Da, and that gave way to a restrained smile when Gareth delivered proofs. He sat in the middle of the frame, all the elements of the Dictionary around him: books and fascicles, pigeon-holes bursting with slips, his daughters and assistants. How could it ever be otherwise?

  ‘Something is missing,’ I said.

  I went to the shelf behind Dr Murray’s high desk. There were eight volumes of words, with room for four or five more. In the empty space was the mortarboard Dr Murray used to wear when I was a child. I picked it up and beat the dust off it. I let the tassel slip slowly through my fingers and gave myself the briefest moment with memory. I’d worn it once, when it was just Da and me in the Scriptorium. He’d put it on my head and sat me on Dr Murray’s stool. With a serious face, he’d asked if I approved of the corrections he’d made to the word cat. ‘They are adequate,’ I’d said, and his face had broken into a grin.

  ‘I think you should wear this, Dr Murray.’

  He thanked me, but I could barely hear it.

  Rosfrith helped him position the mortarboard properly, and I took up the camera again.

  ‘Ready,’ I said.

  They all looked towards me, their expressions serious. Until the end of time, I thought. I blinked back tears and took the photograph.

  I dressed for the funeral while Gareth packed the last of his things into his kit bag. He took his greatcoat from the wardrobe, though the day was warm and winter could barely be imagined.

  He came to me and kissed my forehead, brushed his thumbs beneath my eyes and kissed each salty lid. He took up one hand and then the other, buttoning the cuffs of my blouse.

  I attached my hat, tucked my curls in tighter and stood in front of the mirror. Gareth passed behind me, out into the hall. When he came back, he had his brush and his comb. I watched his reflection place them in the bag, and I wondered if I could take them out without him seeing and put them back on the bathroom sink.

  We were ready.

  We stood at the foot of the bed we had shared for barely a month of nights. Our lips came together, and I remembered the first time – the taste of tea sweetened by sugar. This kiss had the taste of oceans. It was gentle and quiet and long. We each imbued it with what we needed it to be. The memory would have to sustain us.

  I caught our reflection. We could have been any couple before the whistle blew to board the train. But I wouldn’t be going to the station. I couldn’t bear it.

  Gareth would be leaving after the funeral. He tied up his bag and hoisted it onto his shoulder. I took my handbag and put in a clean handkerchief. I followed Gareth out of the room but turned at the last moment to make sure nothing had been forgotten. Rupert Brooke’s poems were still by the bed. I raced back and put them in my handbag, then hurried down the stairs.

  At the funeral, I stood with Gareth at the back of the crowd of mourners – two hundred at least, despite the short notice. I wept more than decorum allowed: more than Mrs Murray; more than Elsie and Rosfrith and all the Murray children and grandchildren put together. When the last word was spoken and the family stepped forward, I turned to walk away.

  Gareth’s hand found mine and I pleaded, as quietly as I could, for him to let me go.

  ‘Walk back with Lizzie when it’s all finished,’ I said. ‘I’ll see you at Sunnyside.’

  As I came through the gates, there was a strange stillness. The house was nothing more than the stone that formed it, its pulse and breath all gathered in the churchyard. For the first time in my life, the Scriptorium struck me as an impermanent thing – an old iron shed not worthy of its purpose.

  I opened the kitchen door. The smell of the morning’s bread had grown rich with the day’s heat. It tethered me back in place.

  I took the stairs two at a time and pulled the trunk from under Lizzie’s bed. I felt the weight of it, and calculated the years. Gareth’s gift was loosely wrapped, a handful of new slips scattered on top of it; they are bumf, I thought, to anyone but me.

  I pulled on the string and the paper fell away, as it had the first time. Women’s Words and Their Meanings. The same quick beat of a thrill. But there was a sediment of sorrow this time. And fear. I looked more closely at my gift, searched each page. I wanted to find something that would replace his comb, his greatcoat, his book of poems. It was unreasonable to expect there would be anything, and irrational to think it would make a difference. After the last words, there was nothing but blank end pages.

  Then, on the inside back cover.

  This Dictionary is printed in Baskerville typeface. Designed for books of consequence and intrinsic merit, it has been chosen for its clarity and beauty.

  Gareth Owen

  Typesetter, Printer, Binder

  I raced down the stairs and out into the garden. The door opened, and the Scriptorium took me in. The words I needed were already printed, but I wanted to choose the meaning myself.

  I searched the pigeon-holes, found one word and then the other. I took a clean slip and transcribed.

  LOVE

  A passionate affection.

  I turned the slip over.

  ETERNAL

  Everlasting, endless, beyon
d death.

  Back in Lizzie’s room, I put the slip between the pages of Rupert Brooke’s poems.

  ‘She’ll be upstairs,’ I heard Lizzie say in the kitchen. ‘Her trunk will be open, I could make a bet on that, and the bed and floor will be a mess of words.’

  Then Gareth’s heavy boots on the stairs.

  ‘Ah, Rupert Brooke,’ he said, seeing the book of poetry in my hand.

  ‘You left it by the bed.’ I stood and passed it to him, and he put it in his breast pocket without a glance.

  ‘Find what you were looking for?’ he asked, nodding towards the trunk on the floor, Women’s Words and Their Meanings still open to the back page on the bed.

  I picked up his gift and held it tight to my chest. ‘Did you know I’d accept?’

  ‘I felt you loved me, as I loved you. But I was never sure you’d say yes.’ He enveloped me, the volume of words between us. Then he sat me on Lizzie’s bed and kneeled in front of me. The dictionary was on my lap. ‘I am on every page, Es, same as you.’ He wove his fingers through mine. ‘This is us. And it will still be here long after we’re gone.’

  When he left, I listened to his heavy boots descend the stairs. I counted every step. He said goodbye to Lizzie and must have held her sobbing against him, because all was muffled for a few minutes. Then the kitchen door opened, and I heard Lizzie call out.

  ‘You make sure you come home now, Gareth. I can’t have her living in my room forever.’

  ‘You have my word, Lizzie,’ he called back.

  I sat on Lizzie’s bed until I knew the train had pulled out and Gareth was gone. My funny fingers were stiff from holding his gift. I unfurled them, rubbed them, looked at the trunk still open on Lizzie’s floor and bent to return my volume of words to its nest of slips and letters.

  Then I stopped. A year, it had taken him. Years more, it had taken me. All those women; their words. The joy of having their names written down. The hope that something of them would remain long after they were forgotten.

  Lizzie was already laying out sandwiches as I came down to the kitchen. ‘They’ll have left the cemetery by now,’ she said. ‘No one will blame you for not staying.’ She wiped her hands on her apron and hugged me. I could have stayed there an eternity, but I needed to get to the Press.

  Mr Hart was in the printing room. I’d guessed he would avoid the sandwiches and chat after the funeral; the clatter of the presses and the smell of oil were balm to his melancholy. As the war went on he’d been spending more and more time in there, Gareth had said. As I stood inside the door, I understood why. He saw me, and for an instant it seemed he didn’t know who I was. When he realised, he took a deep breath and came towards me.

  ‘Mrs Owen.’

  ‘Esme, please.’

  ‘Esme.’

  We stood there, silent. I thought about what it might mean to him to lose Dr Murray and Gareth in the same week. Perhaps he thought the same about me.

  I held up Women’s Words and Their Meanings. ‘Please, don’t think badly of him, Mr Hart, but Gareth did this for me. They’re words. Words I collected. He set them in type instead of buying a ring.’ I faltered. Mr Hart just stared at the volume in my hands. ‘I’m hoping he cast plates. I want to print more copies.’

  He took the volume from me and walked over to a small desk at the edge of the room. He sat down. The presses continued their chorus.

  I followed and stood behind him as he turned the pages and traced the words with the tips of his fingers, as if they were brail.

  He closed it with extraordinary care and rested his hand on the cover.

  ‘There are no plates, Mrs Owen. It is too much of an expense to produce plates for small print runs, let alone single copies.’

  Until this moment I had felt a kind of strength, a clarity of purpose that I knew would hold me up. I reached for the other chair and barely got to it in time.

  ‘If the compositor expects changes – edits, corrections – he’ll keep the formes that hold the type. The type is loose, you see. Easy to adjust.’

  ‘Gareth wouldn’t have expected corrections,’ I said.

  ‘He was my best … is my best compositor. It is a rule that we keep the formes for a period.’

  The idea animated us both. We rose together and walked in silence to the composing room. It was half-empty, but Gareth’s old bench was occupied by an apprentice. Mr Hart opened one of the wide drawers that held formes still in use. He opened another, then another. I stopped shadowing him and began to imagine our empty house.

  ‘Here they are.’

  Mr Hart crouched down to the lowest drawer and I crouched with him. Together our fingers traced the type. I closed my eyes and felt the difference under the tips of my funny fingers.

  Words, for me, were always tangible, but never like this. This was how Gareth knew them, and I suddenly wanted to learn how to read them blind.

  ‘Perhaps he anticipated additional copies,’ the old Controller said.

  Perhaps he did.

  I was the first to return to the Scriptorium a few days after the funeral. Dr Murray’s mortarboard was just where I’d left it after taking his photograph less than two weeks earlier. Dust had settled on it again. I couldn’t bring myself to brush it off. The photograph, Rosfrith told me after the funeral, would be in the September issue of the Periodical. Even in her grief, she thought to apologise for my exclusion.

  But that wasn’t the worst news she had to give. ‘We will be moving,’ she said, her eyes filling with tears again. ‘In September. To the Old Ashmolean. All of us. Everything.’

  I was stunned. I stood there as if I hadn’t understood a word she’d said. September was only a month away. ‘What will happen to the Scriptorium?’ I finally asked.

  She shrugged sadly. ‘It will become a garden shed.’

  As I walked towards my desk, trailing my fingers along the shelves of slips, I remembered Da reading me the story of Ala-ed-Din. The Scriptorium had been my cave then. But unlike Ala-ed-Din, I’d had no desire to be released. I belonged to the Scriptorium; I was its willing prisoner. My only wish had been to serve the Dictionary, and that had come true. But my service was contained within these walls. I was bonded to this place as surely as Lizzie was bonded to the kitchen and her room at the top of the stairs.

  I sat at my desk and rested my head for a moment on my arms.

  The weight of a hand on my shoulder. I thought it was Gareth and woke with a start. It was Mr Sweatman. I’d fallen into an exhausted doze.

  ‘Why don’t you go home, Esme?’ he said.

  ‘I can’t.’

  He must have understood, because he nodded and put a pile of slips on my desk.

  ‘New words from A to S,’ he said. ‘They need to be sorted for the supplementary publication, whenever that will be.’

  It was the simplest of tasks, but it would take up time. ‘Thank you, Mr Sweatman.’

  ‘Don’t you think it’s about time you called me Fred?’

  ‘Thank you, Fred.’

  ‘How odd that sounds coming from you. I’m sure we’ll get used to it,’ he said. ‘As we must get used to any change.’

  August 10th, 1915

  My darling Es,

  Ten days since I left and I feel I have been gone an age. Oxford might have been somewhere I visited once, and you a dream. But then I opened my Rupert Brooke, and your slip fell out. The words, your handwriting, the familiar texture of the paper – they will be my daily reminder that you are real.

  I have decided to keep Brooke in my pocket at all times. If I am wounded and must wait for a stretcher, I want to have something to read and your words to calm me. But there is no chance of that for a while. We are stationed at Hébuterne, a small farming village not far from Arras. We’ve been told there is time to settle in, and our days are filled with drills, and loafing. Some of the lads have mistaken the whole adventure for a holiday, having never actually had one, and quite a bit of my time is spent apologising to the mothers of pretty
girls. My French is improving.

  An Indian bicycle troop is stationed nearby. Have you ever met an Indian? I hadn’t. They ride around the village in pairs and are quite a magnificent sight with their turbans and their elaborate moustaches. At least, the older men have moustaches: as with the English, there are plenty of Indian boys who join before they are old enough to have facial hair. I’ve been told they take them as young as ten, but I’ve not seen any quite so young. They would be kept well back, one would hope.

  Last night, in a gesture of camaraderie, we invited the Indian officers to share our evening meal. They barely touched the food, and drank very little, but it was a late night with a lot of laughter. I was one of the greenest officers there, and it turns out I had a lot to learn. There is a whole vocabulary here that I’ve been unaware of, Es. Most of it applies to the trenches in one way or another, and there are plenty of words that would sit well against some of Mabel’s best. But the word I am sending as a gift has been my favourite so far.

  I fashioned the slip from instructions for cooking rice. One of the Indian officers had it scrunched up in his pocket and offered it when I was searching around for a scrap of paper. I was thrilled, knowing how much you would appreciate the Hindi script on the back. The officer’s name is Ajit, and he gave me the origin of the word. He also wanted me to tell you that his name means ‘invincible’ – he insisted I write it on the slip. When I told him I had no idea what my name meant, he gave a wobble of his head and said, ‘That is not good. A man’s name is his destiny.’ By that logic, he is well-suited to war.

  At the moment, life is pretty cushy (see how quickly I’ve absorbed the new vernacular), but I long to hear from you, Es. I’ve been told that we will start receiving post tomorrow, the war office having finally registered our whereabouts. I look forward to an account of your days, and any news from the Press or Scriptorium, and Bertie, of course. Don’t be afraid to include the boring detail: I will delight in it. Please give my regards to Lizzie and visit Mr Hart for me. I will write to him separately, but I fear his depression will not end until this war does. Your company will cheer him.