Sam made no response, but turned and said quietly to me, ‘Hand me them leaflets; I need some bumf for the latrine.’
It took me a while to realise he was providing the sentence I’d asked for. I wrote it on the slip and added his name. ‘Why bumf ? Where does it come from?’ I asked.
‘I probably shouldn’t say, Mrs Owen.’
‘Call me Esme. And don’t be afraid of offending me, Sam. I know more crass words than you could imagine.’
He smiled and said, ‘Bum fodder. There’s plenty of it comes from headquarters. Not worth reading but worth its weight in gold when you got the runs. Sorry, missus.’
‘I got a word, miss,’ another man shouted.
‘And me.’
‘If you want something crass,’ said a man missing an arm, ‘come sit by my bed for a while.’ With the only hand left to him, he patted the edge of his bed, then puckered his thin lips into a kiss.
Sister Morley, who was in charge of the ward, strode over to me. The banter stopped.
‘Could I have a word please, Mrs Owen.’
‘She’s got plenty, sister,’ said my one-armed suitor. ‘Just check her pockets.’
I rested my hand on Sam’s shoulder. ‘Can I visit tomorrow?’
‘I’d like that, missus.’
‘It’s Esme, remember?’
‘A new patient came in yesterday,’ said Sister Morley as we left the ward. ‘I was wondering if you would sit with him. I’ll give you a basket of bandages to roll; that should keep your hands busy.’
‘Of course,’ I said, grateful she hadn’t asked me to turn out my pockets.
We walked the long corridors to another ward. They all looked remarkably alike: two rows of beds, and the men tucked into them like children. Some were sitting up, almost ready to go back out and play; others were supine and barely moving.
Private Albert Northrop sat up in his bed, but there was something about his vacant stare that made me think he wasn’t going anywhere else for a while.
‘Do they call you Bert? Or Bertie?’ I asked him.
‘We call him Bertie,’ said Sister Morley. ‘We don’t know if that’s his preference, because he doesn’t speak. He can hear well enough, apparently, yet he’s somehow unable to comprehend the meaning of words – with one exception.’
‘Which is?’ I asked.
Sister Morley put her hand on Bertie’s shoulder and nodded her goodbye. He just stared ahead. Then she walked me back along the ward. Only when we were out of earshot did she answer my question.
‘The word is bomb, Mrs Owen. If he hears it, he responds with absolute terror. A learned response, according to the psychiatrist: it’s an unusual form of war neurosis. He was at the Battle of Festubert, but he seems unable to recall any of it. When he’s shown photographs of the men he served with, he shows no sign of recognition. Not even his own possessions seem familiar to him. His physical wounds were relatively minor; I fear the injury to his mind will take longer to heal.’ She looked back towards Bertie. ‘If there is reason to take out one of your little slips of paper while you sit by his bed, Mrs Owen, that will be some small cause for celebration.’
Sister Morley bade me goodnight and said she hoped to see me at six pm the following day.
‘And by the way,’ she said, ‘every patient on this ward has been instructed not to say the word, though none are too keen on it themselves. We would all be most grateful if you could avoid it also.’
I didn’t stay long by Bertie’s bed that day. I rolled bandages and rattled on about my day. At first, I would glance at his face to see if he registered anything I said. When it was clear he didn’t, I took a liberty and examined his features. He was a child, it seemed to me. There were more spots on his face than whiskers.
I continued to visit Sam and two other boys from the Press who soon came through Radcliffe, but Bertie became my distraction. Talking to Bertie, I was able to enter a bubble where the war did not exist. I spoke mostly about the Dictionary, about the lexicographers and their particular habits. I described my childhood under the sorting table and the joy of sitting on Da’s knee and learning to read from the slips. He seemed to register none of it.
‘You’re not falling in love with him, are you?’ Gareth teased when he was home on a day’s leave.
‘What’s to fall in love with? I don’t know what he thinks of anything. Besides, he’s only eighteen.’
As the days went on, I brought books from the Scriptorium and read passages I thought he might enjoy. I chose them for rhythm more than words, though I was always careful to check that every word was benign. Poetry seemed to steady his gaze, and sometimes he looked at me with such intent that I imagined something of the meaning might have gotten through. For the rest of June and well into July, I slept soundly.
By July, Dr Murray was spending almost no time in the Scriptorium. Rosfrith said he was having trouble shifting a cold, but I couldn’t recall him ever letting a cold take priority over the Dictionary – he’d always banished it with the same gruff impatience he used to banish unwanted criticism. But the work continued, with Dictionary staff visiting him in the house, and copy going back and forth. When ‘Trink to Turndown’ was completed, we celebrated around the sorting table with our customary afternoon tea. Dr Murray joined us, paler and thinner than I’d ever seen him.
It was a quiet celebration. We spoke of words, not war, and Dr Murray proposed a revised timeline for the completion of T. It still seemed optimistic, but no one contradicted him.
As we ate our cake, Rosfrith leaned towards me. ‘The Periodical is doing a picture spread about the Dictionary for
