The Dictionary of Lost Words(111)

‘BOMB. BOMB. BOMB. BOMB. BOMB.’

Bertie flattened himself against his mattress then scrambled from the bed, knocking me flat. His screaming bounced off the walls so I heard it from all directions.

I got to my hands and knees and looked along the ward. For a disorientating moment, I thought it might have been a Zeppelin attack instead of simple malice.

The ward was almost as it had been when I came in, but everyone was turned our way. My chair was toppled, and Bertie’s bed was askew. He was cowering beneath it, knees up to his chest and hands over his ears. He shivered as if he was naked in a snowdrift. He’d wet himself.

Angus dropped down to the floor behind him, and I thought he’d been tipped out of bed. There were bandages where his feet should have been. Trench foot, he’d said. He dragged himself alongside Bertie.

‘Amico,’ he said in a sing-song way, like a child playing hide-and-seek. ‘Amico, amico.’

The screaming turned to a terrible groaning, and Bertie began to rock back and forth. I crawled towards them and kneeled beside Bertie, wrapping his rocking body in my arms. He was small and frail – barely grown. ‘Sekura,’ I said in his ear.

I thought of all the times Lizzie had sat me in her lap and rocked my worries away, her voice a metronome of calm. ‘Sekura,’ I said, rocking with Bertie. ‘Sekura.’

Then Angus had his arms around both of us, and I felt him slow us down. Bertie’s groaning became a hum, and I whispered my chant. The rocking stopped altogether, and Bertie collapsed onto my breast and wept.



Sister Morley sat me down at the nurses’ desk and brought me a cup of tea. ‘There are a lot of boys like Bertie,’ she said. ‘Not his particular war neurosis – I think that’s unique – but a lot that don’t speak when the doctors say they are perfectly able.’

‘What happens to them?’ I asked.

‘A lot end up at the Netley Hospital in Southampton,’ she said. ‘They’re open to trying all sorts of treatments. Doctor Ostler thinks there might be some merit to your Esperanto therapy and he’s written about it to a colleague there. He’s aware of your work with the Dictionary and thinks your particular expertise might contribute to their linguistic therapy program. He’s hoping you might make a visit and talk to the staff about what you’ve been doing with Bertie.’

‘But Bertie hasn’t said a word,’ I said. ‘And there’s no indication that anything I’ve done has gotten through.’

‘This is the first time he’s been calmed by words instead of chloroform, Mrs Owen. It’s a start.’



I dreamed I was in France. Gareth wore a turban, and Bertie could speak. Angus was rocking me, saying, ‘Sekura, sekura.’ I looked down and my feet were bloody stumps.



When I arrived the next morning Lizzie was already in the Scriptorium, wiping the pigeon-holes with a damp cloth. I could smell the vinegar.

‘Sleep in?’ she said.

‘A bad night.’

She nodded. ‘They’ll be taking the pigeon-holes this morning. If you box up whatever’s in your desk, they can take that too.’

My desk. Not a thing had been packed away. There were even some slips and a page of copy on top. It was like a room in one of those museum houses. I assembled my box and began filling it.

My copy of Samuel Johnson’s dictionary went in first, then Da’s books – what he called his ‘Scrippy library’. I picked up a worn volume of The Thousand and One Nights and turned to the story of Ala-ed-Din. The past came towards me, and I closed the book. I put it in the box with the others.

I cleared the top of my desk and opened the lid. There was a novel I never finished reading. A slip fell from its pages – a dull word, a duplicate, probably. I put it back in the book and put the book in the box. Pencils and a pen. Notepaper. Hart’s Rules with Mr Dankworth’s notes still attached. They all went in.

Then the shoebox full of slips. My slips. The slips Gareth had procured from Lizzie or sneaked into the Scriptorium to borrow. I put them in the box too. Then I folded the flaps down, securing one beneath the other.

‘I think we might be done, Lizzie,’ I said.

‘Almost.’ She dipped her cloth in the bucket and squeezed out the excess water. Then she got on her knees to wipe the last row of pigeon-holes. ‘Now we’re done,’ she said, sitting back on her haunches. I helped her to stand.

An older man and a boy arrived while Lizzie emptied her bucket of water under the ash.

‘They’re all ready to go,’ I said.

The older man pointed to the pigeon-holes closest to the door, and the boy bent to lift one end. They had the same stocky build, the same blond hair. I hoped the war would end before the boy came of age. They took the shelves to a small lorry parked in the driveway.

Lizzie came back with a dustpan and brush.

‘Just when you think there’s nothing more to do.’ She brushed up decades of accumulated dust and dirt that had built up behind the pigeon-holes.

Shelf by shelf, the man and his boy removed all evidence the slips had ever been there.

‘Last one,’ the man said. ‘You want me to come back for that box? It’s for the Old Ash, I take it?’

Is that where I’ll go after this? I thought. It hadn’t been a question, and now it was.