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 the 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 got through. For the rest of June and well into July, I slept soundly.

July 1915

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 their next publication. They’re organising some photographs of the three editors and their staff.”

“How exciting,” I said.

She looked towards her father, his cake untouched. “It is, but the photographer is not due until the end of July, and I’m worried…” But she couldn’t finish the sentence. “Would you mind taking a photograph with Mother’s Brownie? Just in case?”