The Dictionary of Lost Words(93)
‘I’m glad you’re not a junior, then,’ I said.
‘I had to fight for this particular errand,’ Gareth went on. ‘We’re also down compositors and printers, and Mr Hart has asked foremen and managers to fill in where possible. He’d glue me to my old bench if he could, but I wanted to see you.’
‘I don’t suppose Mr Hart is taking the new circumstances in his stride.’
Gareth looked at me like it was an understatement. ‘If he’s not careful the rest of us will sign up too.’
‘Don’t say that,’ I said. He’d put words to the fear I woke up with.
The heat and heady excitement of August had given way to a damp autumn. Dr Murray developed a cough, and Mrs Murray insisted he avoid the Scriptorium. ‘As cold as an icebox,’ she said, and it was barely an exaggeration, even when the grate was ablaze.
‘Nonsense,’ was his reply, but they must have come to a compromise because from then on Dr Murray arrived at ten every morning and left at two – unless Mrs Murray wasn’t home to notice, in which case he would stay until five, his rough and faltering breath an incentive for us all to work harder and longer. He barely spoke of the war except to grumble about the inconvenience to the Dictionary. Despite our efforts, output had slowed and printing was backing up. Years were added to the expected completion date. I probably wasn’t the only person wondering if Dr Murray would live to see it.
Ditte and other trusted volunteers were pushed into greater service, and every day brought proofs and new copy from all over Britain. Dr Murray had even begun sending proofs to Dictionary staff fighting in France. ‘They’ll be grateful for the distraction,’ he said.
When I opened the first envelope from across the Channel, I could barely breathe. There were smudges of dirt from its journey. I imagined the route it must have taken, and the hands it must have passed through. I wondered if all the men who had touched it were still alive. I didn’t recognise the handwriting, but I knew the name on the back of the envelope. I tried to remember him but could only conjure an image of a small, pale-faced young man hunched over his desk at one end of the Dictionary Room in the Old Ashmolean. He usually worked with Mr Bradley, and Eleanor Bradley had described him as quietly brilliant but socially terrified. His corrections were thorough and needed little from me. Dr Murray was right, I thought. He must have been grateful for the distraction.
The following week, I met Gareth for lunch at a pub in Jericho.
‘It’s a pity Mr Hart can’t send copy to France for printing,’ I said. Gareth was quiet, and I was filling the silence with my story. ‘I like the idea of giant presses being dragged to the front, and soldiers being equipped with metal type instead of bullets.’
Gareth stared at his pie, poking holes in the pastry with his fork. He looked up and frowned. ‘You can’t make light of this, Es.’
I felt my face heat, then realised he was on the verge of tears. I reached across the table and took his free hand.
‘What’s happened?’ I asked.
He took a long time to reply, never taking his eyes from mine. ‘It just feels pointless.’ He looked back down at his food.
‘Tell me.’
‘I was resetting type for sorrow.’ He drew a quick breath and looked to the ceiling. I gave up his hand so he could wipe his face.
‘Who?’ I asked.
‘They were apprentices. Been at the Press barely two years.’ He paused. ‘Started together, left together. Thick as thieves.’
He pushed the pie out of the way and put his elbows on the table, held his head in his hands. He stared at the tablecloth and finished his story. ‘Jed’s mother came to the composing room looking for Mr Hart. Jed was the youngest of the two, not even seventeen. She came to tell Mr Hart that he won’t be coming back.’ He looked up then. ‘She was a wreck, Essy. Deranged. Jed was her only child, and she couldn’t stop saying that he was only turning seventeen next week. Over and over, like the fact of it would bring him back because he should never have been there in the first place.’ He took a deep breath. I blinked to hold back my own tears. ‘Someone found Mr Hart, and he took her to his office. We could hear her wailing as he led her down the hall.’
I pushed my own plate away. Gareth drank half his glass of stout.
‘It was impossible to return to that word,’ he said. ‘It made me sick just looking at the type. The war’s only been going a couple of months, and they think it will be years. How many Jeds will there be?’
I had no answer.
He sighed. ‘I suddenly couldn’t see the point,’ he said.
‘We have to keep doing what we do, Gareth. No matter what that is. Otherwise we’re just waiting.’
‘It would be good to feel I was doing something useful. Typesetting sorrow won’t take the sorrow away. Jed’s mother will feel what she feels, no matter what is written in a dictionary.’
‘But maybe it will help others to understand what she is feeling.’
Even as I said it, I wasn’t convinced. Of some experiences, the Dictionary would only ever provide an approximation. Sorrow, I already knew, was one of them.
Barely a week went by that didn’t bring another mother to the Controller’s door with the news her son would not be returning. The editors at the Scriptorium and Old Ashmolean were not so burdened, but neither were they immune. By virtue of education or connection, the lexicographers became officers, though their learning hardly equipped them to be leaders of men. Staff at the Press were from a broader spectrum – part of the fodder classes, Gareth said. He stopped telling me every time someone from the Press had died.