‘Here they are.’
Mr Hart crouched down to the lowest drawer and I crouched with him. Together our fingers traced the type. I closed my eyes and felt the difference under the tips of my funny fingers.
Words, for me, were always tangible, but never like this. This was how Gareth knew them, and I suddenly wanted to learn how to read them blind.
‘Perhaps he anticipated additional copies,’ the old Controller said.
Perhaps he did.
I was the first to return to the Scriptorium a few days after the funeral. Dr Murray’s mortarboard was just where I’d left it after taking his photograph less than two weeks earlier. Dust had settled on it again. I couldn’t bring myself to brush it off. The photograph, Rosfrith told me after the funeral, would be in the September issue of the Periodical. Even in her grief, she thought to apologise for my exclusion.
But that wasn’t the worst news she had to give. ‘We will be moving,’ she said, her eyes filling with tears again. ‘In September. To the Old Ashmolean. All of us. Everything.’
I was stunned. I stood there as if I hadn’t understood a word she’d said. September was only a month away. ‘What will happen to the Scriptorium?’ I finally asked.
She shrugged sadly. ‘It will become a garden shed.’
As I walked towards my desk, trailing my fingers along the shelves of slips, I remembered Da reading me the story of Ala-ed-Din. The Scriptorium had been my cave then. But unlike Ala-ed-Din, I’d had no desire to be released. I belonged to the Scriptorium; I was its willing prisoner. My only wish had been to serve the Dictionary, and that had come true. But my service was contained within these walls. I was bonded to this place as surely as Lizzie was bonded to the kitchen and her room at the top of the stairs.
I sat at my desk and rested my head for a moment on my arms.
The weight of a hand on my shoulder. I thought it was Gareth and woke with a start. It was Mr Sweatman. I’d fallen into an exhausted doze.
‘Why don’t you go home, Esme?’ he said.
‘I can’t.’
He must have understood, because he nodded and put a pile of slips on my desk.
‘New words from A to S,’ he said. ‘They need to be sorted for the supplementary publication, whenever that will be.’
It was the simplest of tasks, but it would take up time. ‘Thank you, Mr Sweatman.’
‘Don’t you think it’s about time you called me Fred?’
‘Thank you, Fred.’
‘How odd that sounds coming from you. I’m sure we’ll get used to it,’ he said. ‘As we must get used to any change.’
August 10th, 1915
My darling Es,
Ten days since I left and I feel I have been gone an age. Oxford might have been somewhere I visited once, and you a dream. But then I opened my Rupert Brooke, and your slip fell out. The words, your handwriting, the familiar texture of the paper – they will be my daily reminder that you are real.
I have decided to keep Brooke in my pocket at all times. If I am wounded and must wait for a stretcher, I want to have something to read and your words to calm me. But there is no chance of that for a while. We are stationed at Hébuterne, a small farming village not far from Arras. We’ve been told there is time to settle in, and our days are filled with drills, and loafing. Some of the lads have mistaken the whole adventure for a holiday, having never actually had one, and quite a bit of my time is spent apologising to the mothers of pretty girls. My French is improving.
An Indian bicycle troop is stationed nearby. Have you ever met an Indian? I hadn’t. They ride around the village in pairs and are quite a magnificent sight with their turbans and their elaborate moustaches. At least, the older men have moustaches: as with the English, there are plenty of Indian boys who join before they are old enough to have facial hair. I’ve been told they take them as young as ten, but I’ve not seen any quite so young. They would be kept well back, one would hope.
Last night, in a gesture of camaraderie, we invited the Indian officers to share our evening meal. They barely touched the food, and drank very little, but it was a late night with a lot of laughter. I was one of the greenest officers there, and it turns out I had a lot to learn. There is a whole vocabulary here that I’ve been unaware of, Es. Most of it applies to the trenches in one way or another, and there are plenty of words that would sit well against some of Mabel’s best. But the word I am sending as a gift has been my favourite so far.
I fashioned the slip from instructions for cooking rice. One of the Indian officers had it scrunched up in his pocket and offered it when I was searching around for a scrap of paper. I was thrilled, knowing how much you would appreciate the Hindi script on the back. The officer’s name is Ajit, and he gave me the origin of the word. He also wanted me to tell you that his name means ‘invincible’ – he insisted I write it on the slip. When I told him I had no idea what my name meant, he gave a wobble of his head and said, ‘That is not good. A man’s name is his destiny.’ By that logic, he is well-suited to war.
At the moment, life is pretty cushy (see how quickly I’ve absorbed the new vernacular), but I long to hear
