The Dictionary of Lost Words(96)

‘It’s impossible not to.’

‘Well, think about me instead.’ I heard the child in my voice, the desperate plea. I hadn’t asked this of him before, and I’d avoided any sentiment that might encourage more than friendship.

‘Oh, Essy. I never stop thinking about you.’

When the sandwiches arrived the waitress didn’t fuss over their placement, but our conversation ceased nonetheless. Neither of us was brave enough to resume it, and we spent the next fifteen minutes eating without a word.

After lunch we walked along the towpath of Castle Mill Stream. Snowdrops carpeted the bank as if challenging winter to do a better job.

‘I have a word for you,’ Gareth said. ‘It already exists, but the Dictionary doesn’t show it being used like this. I thought it should be in your collection.’ He took a slip out of his pocket, a bright white square of paper that I knew had been cut from one of the giant sheets used in the presses. He read it silently to himself, and I wondered if he wanted to change his mind and keep it.

At the next bench, we sat.

‘I set the type for this word, a while ago now.’ He continued to hang onto it. ‘It means so many things, but the way this woman used it made me think something might be missing from the Dictionary.’

‘Who was the woman?’ But I knew before he answered.

‘A mother.’

‘And the word?’

‘Loss,’ he said.

The papers were full of it. Since the war had begun, we could have filled a whole volume with quotations containing loss. The casualty lists in the Times of London kept a count of it, and the Battle of Ypres had overwhelmed its pages. The dead included Oxford men. Press men. Jericho boys Gareth had known since they were small. Loss was a useful word, and terrible in its scope.

‘Can I see it?’

Gareth looked again at the slip, then passed it to me.





LOSS


‘Sorry for your loss, they say. And I want to know what they mean, because it’s not just my boys I’ve lost. I’ve lost my motherhood, my chance to be a grandmother. I’ve lost the easy conversation of neighbours and the comfort of family in my old age. Every day I wake to some new loss that I hadn’t thought of before, and I know that soon it will be my mind.’

Vivienne Blackman, 1915

Gareth put a hand on my shoulder. It was reassuring. I felt the gentle squeeze, the caress of his thumb. Something more than friendship that I couldn’t discourage. But he had no idea.

I’ve lost my motherhood. The words had forced a memory: kindly eyes in a freckled face; an anchor during pain. Sarah, my baby’s mother. Her mother. I tried to recall something of Her, but Her smell lingered only as words I’d once written down and stored in the trunk. When I closed my eyes, I saw nothing of Her face, though I remembered writing that Her skin was translucent, Her lashes barely there. This woman, Vivienne Blackman, knew something of me. It was something Gareth could not possibly imagine.

‘Who is she?’ I asked.

‘Her three boys worked at the Press. They all joined the 2nd Ox and Bucks in August. And two of them were just boys; too young for sense – though sense can make cowards of older men.’ He saw his words register on my face and quickly went on. ‘Mr Hart was unwell, so she told me.’

‘Does she have other children?’ I asked.

He shook his head. We said no more.



… I will pray for the safe return of your boys.

Your dearest friend, Lizzie

I gave Lizzie the pages I’d scribed. She folded them carefully and put them in an envelope, then she took her fourth biscuit.

‘Tommy will be ever so lonely without his brothers,’ she said.

‘Do you think he’ll sign up?’

‘If he does, it’ll break Natasha’s heart.’

‘Lizzie, do you ever wish you could tell Natasha your deepest secrets without having to write them through me?’ I asked.

‘I got no deep secrets, Essymay.’

‘If you did, would you want her to know, even though it might change what she thought of you?’

Lizzie’s hand went to her crucifix, and she looked down at the table. She had always given God the credit for any wisdom she gave me. I had long ceased to believe he had anything to do with it.

She lifted her head. ‘I reckon I might want her to know, if it was something that mattered to me, or something that explained me somehow.’

Her answer made my stomach churn. ‘Would it matter, though, if you kept your secret?’

Lizzie got up to put more hot water in the teapot.

‘I don’t think he’ll judge you,’ she said.

I whipped around, but her back was to me. I had no way of reading her face. She might have been talking about God, or she might have been talking about Gareth. I hoped she was talking about both.



A clear night ushered in a blue-sky day and a glittering frost. But the cold morning didn’t last, and my coat felt heavy as I peddled towards the Press with Dr Murray’s proof corrections.

Mr Hart’s office door was half-open. I knocked but there was no reply. I peeked around and saw that he was at his desk, his head in his hands. Another mother, I thought. There had been a small article in the Oxford Times about the number of men from the Press who had signed up, the number who had died. The loss of so many staff would delay the publication of some significant books, it said. Including Shakespeare’s England.