The Dictionary of Lost Words(110)

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. ‘Vesperman?o’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 looking 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.