When I arrived at the Press, I shoved my bicycle between two others, angry that there was never enough room to park it easily. I strode across the quad, scowling at the men and searching the women’s faces; if they knew about the force-feeding, it didn’t show. I wondered how many of them felt as useless as I did.
Instead of going to Mr Hart’s office, I walked to the composing room. The slip with the compositor’s name was in my pocket. I took it out and looked it over, though there was no need for a reminder. By the time I reached the room my steps had slowed.
Gareth was setting type. He didn’t look up as I came in, but I didn’t feel like waiting for an invitation. I took a deep breath and began to walk between the benches of type.
The men nodded and I nodded back, my anger dissipating with each friendly gesture.
‘Hello, miss. You looking for Mr Hart?’ said someone familiar whose name I didn’t know.
‘Actually, I wanted to say hello to Gareth,’ I said. I barely recognised the confident voice as my own.
It didn’t seem to matter to anyone that I was wandering around the composing room, and it occurred to me that the intimidation I always felt might have been of my own creation. By the time I was at Gareth’s bench, the emotion that had propelled me was exhausted, my confidence spent.
He looked up, his face still set in concentration. Then a smile broke through. ‘Well, this is a nice surprise. Esme, isn’t it?’
I nodded, suddenly aware I’d prepared nothing to say.
‘Do you mind if I just finish setting this section? My stick is nearly full.’
Gareth held the ‘stick’ in his left hand. It was a kind of tray that held lines of metal type. He kept it all in place by pressing his thumb tight against it. His right hand flew around the bench in front of him, gathering more type from small compartments that reminded me of Dr Murray’s pigeon-holes on a tiny scale; each was dedicated to a single letter instead of bundles of words. Before I knew it, his stick was full.
His eyes flicked up, and he noticed my interest. ‘The next step is to turn it out into the forme,’ he said, indicating a wooden frame beside his bench. ‘Does it look familiar?’
I looked at the forme. Except for a gap where the new type would go, it was the size and shape of a page of words – but what page of words, I could not tell. ‘It looks like a different language.’
‘It’s back-to-front, but it will be a page in the next Dictionary fascicle, as soon as I’ve made this correction.’
He put the stick down very carefully and rubbed his thumb.
‘Compositor’s thumb,’ he said, holding it up for me to have a closer look.
‘I should know better than to stare.’
‘You’re welcome to stare. It’s a mark of my trade, that’s all.’ He stepped down from his stool. ‘We all have one. But I’m sure you didn’t come here to talk about thumbs.’
I’d come into the composing room in defiance of some perceived bar. Now, I felt foolish.
‘Mr Hart,’ I fumbled. ‘I thought I might find him here.’ I looked around as if he might be hiding behind one of the benches.
‘I’ll see if I can find out where he is.’ Gareth dusted the seat of his stool with a white cloth. ‘You can sit here if you like, while you wait.’
I nodded and let him push the stool beneath me. I looked at the type still held on the stick. It was almost impossible to decipher; not just because the letters were back-to-front, but because there was so little differentiation from the background. It was all gun-metal grey.
If the other compositors had been interested in the strange woman talking to Gareth, they no longer were. I picked up a bit of type from the nearest compartment.
It was like a tiny stamp, the letter slightly raised on the end of a piece of metal about an inch long and not much wider than a toothpick. I pressed it against the tip of my finger – it left the imprint of a lowercase e.
I looked at the stick again. He said it would fit into a page of the Dictionary. It took a while, but the words finally started to make sense. When they did, I felt a rising panic.
b. Common scold: a woman who disturbs the peace of the neighbourhood by her constant scolding
Was that what they were, those women in Winson Green? I looked at the proofs beside the forme. It appeared this type wasn’t being set for the first time; rather, Gareth was attending to edits. There was a note from Dr Murray pinned to the edge of an entry.
No need to define SCOLD’S BRIDLE; simply cross-reference to the relevant entry for BRANKS.
I read the entry that would be edited.
c. scold’s bit, bridle: an instrument of punishment used in the case of scolds etc., consisting of a kind of iron framework to enclose the head, having a sharp metal gag or bit which entered the mouth and restrained the tongue.
I imagined them being held down, their mouths forced open, a tube shoved in, their cries muted. What damage must it do to the sensitive membrane of their lips and mouths and throats? When the procedure was over, would they even be able to speak?
I searched the bench and picked each letter from a different compartment: the s, the c, the o, the l, the d. They had a weight, these letters. I rolled them about in my hand. My skin prickled with their sharp edges and was marked by the ink of forgotten pages.
The door of the composing room opened, and Gareth walked in with Mr Hart. I put the type in my pocket and pushed back the stool.
‘The first corrections for the letter T,’
