The Dictionary of Lost Words(101)

‘You’re lucky to have Lizzie, you know,’ Gareth said, putting me down.

‘I do know. I also know I’m lucky to have you.’ Without discussion, I took Gareth’s hand and led him up the stairs.

I opened the door to Da’s old room. The bed had a new coverlet, quilted and detailed with Lizzie’s delicate stitches. I’d never slept there, and now I was glad of it. It was our bridal bed.

We weren’t shy about our bodies, but we guarded what we knew, and what we didn’t. When a memory of Bill came unbidden, I was horrified. I remembered his finger tracing the parting of my hair and continuing down my face and the length of my body, making excursions along the way. ‘Nose,’ he had whispered close to my ear. ‘Lips, neck, breast, belly button …’

I shivered, and Gareth pulled back a little. I took his hand and kissed his palm. Then I guided his fingers down the length of my body, making excursions along the way.

‘Mount of Venus,’ I said, when we reached the soft tangle of hair.



Gareth had a commission with the 2nd Ox and Bucks but was given a month before he had to report to Cowley Barracks. Though Dr Murray could hardly spare me, he agreed to shorter days. In the afternoons, I walked from the Scriptorium to the Press, where I found Gareth showing men who were too young, too old, or too short-sighted how to hold a rifle. The Press was training a home guard.

I watched him, as I’d watched him before. He was showing a boy no older than fifteen how to hold a rifle. He placed the boy’s left hand under the barrel; the other hand he positioned around the stock, moving the boy’s index finger back so only the tip was resting on the trigger. He was as focused as if he were selecting type and placing it in his stick to make a word. I saw him stand back to assess the boy’s stance. He gave an instruction, and the boy shifted the rifle from his shoulder closer to his chest.

When the boy pretended to shoot, as if playing at being a cowboy, Gareth lowered the barrel to point at the ground and spoke to him. I couldn’t hear what he said, but I saw something in the boy’s face that made me recall something Lizzie had told me when she found out Gareth was to be an officer. ‘The army could do with a grown man leading them lads. Posh accents don’t seem to be up to the job, according to what I hear.’ She was right. Gareth had the authority to lead. I’d seen it with the younger compositors, and in the printing room too. I tried to imagine it in France, but couldn’t.

We walked along Castle Mill Stream. Gareth was wearing his uniform, and although he complained that it looked too new, everyone we passed greeted him with a nod or a smile or a vigorous shake of the hand. Only one person looked away as we approached: a young man, his civilian clothes conspicuous.

I’d stopped wishing that Gareth hadn’t signed up, but I couldn’t stop thinking that he was walking towards death. The notion kept me awake at night and I’d watch him sleep. It had me touching him unnecessarily, and at odd times. I wanted to know what he thought about everything, and I tired him out with questions about good and evil, and whether we English were one and Germans the other. I was trying to uncover more layers so that if he died I would be left with more.

Gareth was recalled from leave after the Battle of Festubert. The ‘In Memoriam’ list in the Times of London included four hundred men from the Ox and Bucks. We’d been married less than a month.

‘I’m not being sent to France, Es.’

‘But you will be.’

‘It’s likely. But there are a hundred new recruits who need training before they’re sent anywhere, so I’ll be at Cowley for a while. I’m close enough to catch one of the new autobuses into Oxford. I could meet you for lunch. And on my days off, I can come home.’

‘But I’ve grown used to your lumpy mashed potatoes – and I think I may have forgotten how to wash dishes,’ I said, trying to be lighthearted. But I’d spent too many evenings in solitude over the past few years not to know how lonely I was going to be. ‘What will I do with myself?’

‘The hospitals are calling for volunteers,’ he said, glad to think he’d found a solution. ‘Not all the boys are from around here, and some never get a visitor.’

I nodded, but it was no solution.



When Gareth went to Cowley Barracks, he left bits of himself behind. His civilian clothes hung ready to wear in our wardrobe. A comb with strands of hair still in its teeth – black and wiry grey – sat on the bathroom sink. By the bed, a collection of poems by Rupert Brooke was open face-down, the spine bent in half. I picked it up to see what poem Gareth had been reading. ‘The Dead’. I put it down again.



I took refuge in the Scriptorium. How long, I wondered, before the slips began to mention this war?

Ditte had sent me Back of the Front by Phyllis Campbell. I kept it in my desk and would read it when everyone else had left for the day. Her war was so different to the war in the papers.

It is context, Da had always said, that gives meaning.

German soldiers had skewered the babies of Belgian women, she wrote, then raped the women and cut off their breasts.

I thought about all the German scholars whom Dr Murray consulted about the Germanic etymology of so many English words. They had been silent since the start of the war. Or silenced. Could those gentle men of language do these things? And if a German could commit such acts, why not a Frenchman or an Englishman?