In the Scriptorium, two of the newer assistants began to spend their breaks talking about coming face-to-face with the Kaiser and winning the war before it could start. They were young and pale and thin. They wore spectacles, and if they’d been in any fights at all they would have been awkward scraps over library books or proper grammar. Neither could approach Dr Murray without a hesitant step and a stutter, so I judged them unlikely to persuade the Kaiser to give up Belgium. The older assistants had more sober conversations, their faces darkening in a way that rarely occurred during their disagreements about words. Mr Rawlings had lost a brother in the Boer War, and he told the younger men that there was no glory in killing. They nodded, polite. They didn’t notice the waver in his voice, and before he was out of earshot they were talking again about the particulars of joining up, wondering how long they would have to train before they were sent into the fray. Mr Rawlings bent under the weight of it.
‘This war is going to slow the Dictionary down,’ I heard Mr Maling say to Dr Murray. ‘It’s a gun they want in their hand, not a pencil.’
From then on, I woke every morning with a dread fear.
No one slept on the night of August 3rd, even if they took to their beds and tried. Our two young assistants travelled to London and spent the balmy night carousing in Pall Mall, waiting for word that Germany had withdrawn from Belgium. It didn’t come. As Big Ben chimed the first hour of a new day, they sang ‘God save the King’.
The next day, they returned to the Scriptorium full of a bravado that didn’t suit them. They approached Dr Murray together and told him they had volunteered. ‘Both of you are short-sighted and unfit,’ I heard Dr Murray say. ‘You’d do more good for your country if you stayed here.’
It was impossible to concentrate, so I rode to the Press. I’d never known it to be so quiet. In the composing room, only half the benches had a man standing at them.
‘Just two?’ Gareth said, when I told him what had happened at the Scriptorium. ‘Sixty-three men marched out of the Press this morning. Most were volunteers in the Territorial Force, but not all. There would have been sixty-five, except Mr Hart pulled two out by the collars who he knew to be underage. Said he’d give them a hiding after their mothers had.’
Mr Maling was right: the war slowed the Dictionary down. Within a few months, there were only women and old men left in the Scriptorium. Mr Rawlings, who was not quite old, had left because of a nervous complaint, and there was a space at the end of the sorting table once more. No one filled it.
Over at the Old Ashmolean, Mr Bradley’s and Mr Craigie’s teams were similarly reduced, and Mr Hart was down to half his printing and compositing staff.
I’d never worked so hard.
‘You’re enjoying this,’ Gareth said, as he stood beside my desk one day, waiting for me to finish an entry.
I’d been given more responsibility, and I couldn’t deny I was happy about it. He took an envelope out of his satchel.
‘No proofs?’ I said.
‘Just a note for Dr Murray.’
‘Are you the errand boy now?’
‘My duties have multiplied. The juniors have all signed up.’
‘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
