The Dictionary of Lost Words(109)

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 bereaved. The slips were familiar but half forgotten. I kept stopping to remember.



I lifted my meal from Bertie’s tray. ‘Vesperman?o,’ 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 vesperman?o 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.