The following week, I met Gareth for lunch at a pub in Jericho.
‘It’s a pity Mr Hart can’t send copy to France for printing,’ I said. Gareth was quiet, and I was filling the silence with my story. ‘I like the idea of giant presses being dragged to the front, and soldiers being equipped with metal type instead of bullets.’
Gareth stared at his pie, poking holes in the pastry with his fork. He looked up and frowned. ‘You can’t make light of this, Es.’
I felt my face heat, then realised he was on the verge of tears. I reached across the table and took his free hand.
‘What’s happened?’ I asked.
He took a long time to reply, never taking his eyes from mine. ‘It just feels pointless.’ He looked back down at his food.
‘Tell me.’
‘I was resetting type for sorrow.’ He drew a quick breath and looked to the ceiling. I gave up his hand so he could wipe his face.
‘Who?’ I asked.
‘They were apprentices. Been at the Press barely two years.’ He paused. ‘Started together, left together. Thick as thieves.’
He pushed the pie out of the way and put his elbows on the table, held his head in his hands. He stared at the tablecloth and finished his story. ‘Jed’s mother came to the composing room looking for Mr Hart. Jed was the youngest of the two, not even seventeen. She came to tell Mr Hart that he won’t be coming back.’ He looked up then. ‘She was a wreck, Essy. Deranged. Jed was her only child, and she couldn’t stop saying that he was only turning seventeen next week. Over and over, like the fact of it would bring him back because he should never have been there in the first place.’ He took a deep breath. I blinked to hold back my own tears. ‘Someone found Mr Hart, and he took her to his office. We could hear her wailing as he led her down the hall.’
I pushed my own plate away. Gareth drank half his glass of stout.
‘It was impossible to return to that word,’ he said. ‘It made me sick just looking at the type. The war’s only been going a couple of months, and they think it will be years. How many Jeds will there be?’
I had no answer.
He sighed. ‘I suddenly couldn’t see the point,’ he said.
‘We have to keep doing what we do, Gareth. No matter what that is. Otherwise we’re just waiting.’
‘It would be good to feel I was doing something useful. Typesetting sorrow won’t take the sorrow away. Jed’s mother will feel what she feels, no matter what is written in a dictionary.’
‘But maybe it will help others to understand what she is feeling.’
Even as I said it, I wasn’t convinced. Of some experiences, the Dictionary would only ever provide an approximation. Sorrow, I already knew, was one of them.
Barely a week went by that didn’t bring another mother to the Controller’s door with the news her son would not be returning. The editors at the Scriptorium and Old Ashmolean were not so burdened, but neither were they immune. By virtue of education or connection, the lexicographers became officers, though their learning hardly equipped them to be leaders of men. Staff at the Press were from a broader spectrum – part of the fodder classes, Gareth said. He stopped telling me every time someone from the Press had died.
The door to Mr Hart’s office was ajar. I knocked and pushed it open a little wider.
‘Yes,’ he said, without looking up from his papers.
I walked towards his desk, but still he didn’t look up. I cleared my throat. ‘Last-minute edits, Mr Hart. Speech to spring.’
He looked up, the creases between his brows deepening as he took the proofs and the note from Dr Murray. He read the note and I saw his jaw clench. Dr Murray wanted another edit – the third or fourth, I wasn’t sure. I wondered if the plates had been cast. I dared not ask.
‘Illness doesn’t make him less pedantic,’ Mr Hart said.
It wasn’t meant for me, so I remained quiet. He stood and walked towards the door. He didn’t ask me to wait, so I followed him.
The composing room was quiet of talk, but there was a percussive clicking of type being placed in sticks then turned out into formes that would hold a whole page of words. I waited by the door as Mr Hart approached the nearest bench. The compositor was young – no longer an apprentice, but too young for the war. He looked nervous as Mr Hart cast an eye over his forme. I wondered how easily mistakes could be noticed when everything was back-to-front. Mr Hart seemed satisfied and patted the assistant on the back, then he moved towards the next bench. Dr Murray’s edits would have to wait.
I remained just inside the door and searched the room. Gareth was at his old bench: despite now being a manager, he was needed to set type for a few hours a day. I watched him like a stranger might. There was something unfamiliar about him. His face was more intent than I’d ever seen it and his body surer. It struck me that we are never fully at ease when we are aware of another’s gaze. Perhaps we are never fully ourselves. In the desire to please or impress, to persuade or dominate, our movements become conscious, our features set.
I’d always thought him lean, but watching him work, his shirtsleeves rolled up and the muscles in his forearms taut, I noticed the elegance of his strength. In his concentration and the fluidity of his movements, he looked to
