No more words passed between us. He didn’t ask, and I didn’t answer, but I felt those moments like the rhythm of a poem. They were the preface to everything that would come after, and already I was plotting it out. I held his face, felt it differently against the skin of each hand, then brought it near. His lips were warm against mine, the taste of tea still pleasant on his tongue. His hand on the small of my back asked nothing, but I leaned in, wanting him to feel the shape of me. The flan cooled and remained uneaten.
‘Where is it, then?’ asked Lizzie when I came into the kitchen.
We both looked at my hand, as unadorned as it always had been.
‘Is there anything you don’t know, Lizzie Lester?’
‘A whole lot, but I know he loves you and you love him, and I thought I’d find a ring on that finger when you came back from your picnic.’
I took the thin volume from my own satchel and put it on the kitchen table in front of her. ‘He gave me something far more precious than a ring.’
Smiling, she wiped her hands on her apron, then checked them before touching the leather. ‘I knew the words would win you, all bound and beautiful. I told him as much when he showed me. Then he showed me where my own name was printed and made me a cup of tea while I blubbered.’ Tears sprang again and she wiped them quickly away. ‘But he never said he had no ring.’
She pushed the volume back towards me. I wrapped it in the brown paper and tied the string. ‘Can I pop upstairs, Lizzie?’
‘Don’t tell me you’re going to hide it away!’
‘Not forever. But I’m not ready to share it.’
‘You are a funny one, Essymay.’
If Gareth would fit, I’d have locked him in my trunk and hidden the key. But it was too late for that. Mr Hart and Dr Murray had been writing letters for months to get him into officers’ training.
Officers’ training finished on the 4th of May. We were to be married on the 5th, a Wednesday. Dr Murray gave everyone in the Scriptorium two paid hours to wish us well.
I slept in Lizzie’s room the night before, and in the morning she dressed me in a simple cream frock with a double skirt and high lace collar. She’d embroidered leaves around the cuffs and hems, and added tiny glass beads here and there, ‘so when the sun shines on you it will look like morning dew’.
Dr Murray was unwell, but he offered to accompany me to St Barnabas in a cab. At the last minute, I declined. The sun was shining, and I knew Gareth would be walking from the Press with Mr Hart and Mr Sweatman. I hadn’t seen Gareth for the three months of his officers’ training, and I liked the thought of bumping into him as our routes converged on Canal Street.
Mrs Murray took three hasty photographs of me under the ash tree, one with Dr Murray, one with Ditte, and one with Elsie and Rosfrith. As she was packing the camera away, I asked if she would take one more.
Lizzie hovered by the kitchen door, awkward in her new dress. I waved her over. She shook her head.
‘Lizzie,’ I called. ‘You must. It’s my wedding day.’
She came, her head slightly bowed against all the eyes turned towards her. When she stood beside me, I saw her mother’s pin, brilliant against the dull green of her felt hat.
‘Turn this way a little, Lizzie,’ I said. I wanted the camera to catch the pin. I would give her the photograph as a gift.
Gareth wore his officer’s uniform for the wedding. He stood taller than I remembered, and I wondered if it were an illusion or the benefit of being released from the work of typesetting. He was handsome, and I was as beautiful as I had ever been. These were our first impressions as we approached St Barnabas from different ends of the street.
Inside, I stood with Gareth in front of the vicar. Mr Hart stood to Gareth’s left; Ditte stood to my right. Four rows of pews were occupied by Dictionary and Press staff, with Dr and Mrs Murray, Mr Sweatman, Beth and Lizzie in the front. There might have been more, but Gareth’s closest friends from the Press were in France, and Tilda had joined the Voluntary Aid Detachment. Her matron at St Bartholomew’s in London would not give her leave to come.
I have no memory of what was said. I can’t recall the face of the vicar. I must have spent a long while looking into the bouquet that Lizzie had gathered for me, because its delicate white flowers and strong scent stayed with me. Lily of the valley. When Ditte reached to take them so that Gareth could put his ring on my finger, I refused to let them go.
We came out of the church and were caught in a downpour of rice thrown by a small group of women from the Press bindery. Then I saw the choir of printers and compositors, apron-clad. Gareth and I stood, delighted, holding each other’s arms as they sang ‘By the Light of the Silvery Moon’.
Rosfrith took a photograph. For a terrible moment, I imagined us frozen on a mantelpiece, Gareth remaining ageless; me old and wrapped in shawls, sitting alone by a fire.
We walked in procession through the streets of Jericho. When we got to Walton Street, the bindery women and the printers’ choir returned to the Press, and some of Mr Bradley’s and Mr Craigie’s staff walked back towards the Old Ashmolean. The rest of us continued to Sunnyside, where we had sandwiches and cake beneath the ash. It reminded me of all the afternoon teas we’d had over the years to celebrate the completion of
