I pulled on the string and the paper fell away, as it had the first time. Women’s Words and Their Meanings. The same quick beat of a thrill. But there was a sediment of sorrow this time. And fear. I looked more closely at my gift, searched each page. I wanted to find something that would replace his comb, his greatcoat, his book of poems. It was unreasonable to expect there would be anything, and irrational to think it would make a difference. After the last words, there was nothing but blank end pages.
Then, on the inside back cover.
This Dictionary is printed in Baskerville typeface. Designed for books of consequence and intrinsic merit, it has been chosen for its clarity and beauty.
Gareth Owen
Typesetter, Printer, Binder
I raced down the stairs and out into the garden. The door opened, and the Scriptorium took me in. The words I needed were already printed, but I wanted to choose the meaning myself.
I searched the pigeon-holes, found one word and then the other. I took a clean slip and transcribed.
LOVE
A passionate affection.
I turned the slip over.
ETERNAL
Everlasting, endless, beyond death.
Back in Lizzie’s room, I put the slip between the pages of Rupert Brooke’s poems.
‘She’ll be upstairs,’ I heard Lizzie say in the kitchen. ‘Her trunk will be open, I could make a bet on that, and the bed and floor will be a mess of words.’
Then Gareth’s heavy boots on the stairs.
‘Ah, Rupert Brooke,’ he said, seeing the book of poetry in my hand.
‘You left it by the bed.’ I stood and passed it to him, and he put it in his breast pocket without a glance.
‘Find what you were looking for?’ he asked, nodding towards the trunk on the floor, Women’s Words and Their Meanings still open to the back page on the bed.
I picked up his gift and held it tight to my chest. ‘Did you know I’d accept?’
‘I felt you loved me, as I loved you. But I was never sure you’d say yes.’ He enveloped me, the volume of words between us. Then he sat me on Lizzie’s bed and kneeled in front of me. The dictionary was on my lap. ‘I am on every page, Es, same as you.’ He wove his fingers through mine. ‘This is us. And it will still be here long after we’re gone.’
When he left, I listened to his heavy boots descend the stairs. I counted every step. He said goodbye to Lizzie and must have held her sobbing against him, because all was muffled for a few minutes. Then the kitchen door opened, and I heard Lizzie call out.
‘You make sure you come home now, Gareth. I can’t have her living in my room forever.’
‘You have my word, Lizzie,’ he called back.
I sat on Lizzie’s bed until I knew the train had pulled out and Gareth was gone. My funny fingers were stiff from holding his gift. I unfurled them, rubbed them, looked at the trunk still open on Lizzie’s floor and bent to return my volume of words to its nest of slips and letters.
Then I stopped. A year, it had taken him. Years more, it had taken me. All those women; their words. The joy of having their names written down. The hope that something of them would remain long after they were forgotten.
Lizzie was already laying out sandwiches as I came down to the kitchen. ‘They’ll have left the cemetery by now,’ she said. ‘No one will blame you for not staying.’ She wiped her hands on her apron and hugged me. I could have stayed there an eternity, but I needed to get to the Press.
Mr Hart was in the printing room. I’d guessed he would avoid the sandwiches and chat after the funeral; the clatter of the presses and the smell of oil were balm to his melancholy. As the war went on he’d been spending more and more time in there, Gareth had said. As I stood inside the door, I understood why. He saw me, and for an instant it seemed he didn’t know who I was. When he realised, he took a deep breath and came towards me.
‘Mrs Owen.’
‘Esme, please.’
‘Esme.’
We stood there, silent. I thought about what it might mean to him to lose Dr Murray and Gareth in the same week. Perhaps he thought the same about me.
I held up Women’s Words and Their Meanings. ‘Please, don’t think badly of him, Mr Hart, but Gareth did this for me. They’re words. Words I collected. He set them in type instead of buying a ring.’ I faltered. Mr Hart just stared at the volume in my hands. ‘I’m hoping he cast plates. I want to print more copies.’
He took the volume from me and walked over to a small desk at the edge of the room. He sat down. The presses continued their chorus.
I followed and stood behind him as he turned the pages and traced the words with the tips of his fingers, as if they were brail.
He closed it with extraordinary care and rested his hand on the cover.
‘There are no plates, Mrs Owen. It is too much of an expense to produce plates for small print runs, let alone single copies.’
Until this moment I had felt a kind of strength, a clarity of purpose that I knew would hold me up. I reached for the other chair and barely got to it in time.
‘If the compositor expects changes – edits, corrections – he’ll keep the formes that hold the type. The type is loose, you see. Easy to adjust.’
‘Gareth wouldn’t have expected corrections,’ I said.
‘He was my best … is my best compositor. It is a rule that we keep the formes for a period.’
The idea animated us both. We rose together and walked in silence to the composing room. It
