ACT 2, SCENE 11

BY THE OXFORD CANAL NEAR WALTON WELL BRIDGE

ESME and GARETH.

GARETH: Walton Well Bridge.

ESME: Yes.

GARETH: It’s an enchantment.

ESME: Yes.

GARETH: And a picnic!

ESME: Yes! (beat) War, of course.

GARETH: Yes.

ESME: But you are thirty-six.

GARETH: Yes.

ESME: It’s unfair, I know. But I’m so glad that you are not obliged to go.

GARETH: Lizzie has packed well! I think all the Murrays’ butter has gone into our flan.

ESME: Well. I shall selfishly enjoy that, too. Tea?

GARETH: In a minute.

ESME: What’s the matter? This was supposed to be my birthday treat.

GARETH: I have something for you.

He pulls out a satchel, extracts a proof-sized parcel (large double foolscap-size pages).

ESME: Not proofs, surely?

GARETH: Proof, of a sort.

It holds a leather-bound volume.

ESME: My heavens. Oh.

WORDS SIGNAGE: WOMEN’S WORDS AND THEIR MEANINGS edited by ESME NICOLL

ESME: ‘Women’s Words and their Meanings. By Esme Nicoll.’ Oh. My.

GARETH: It has taken nearly a year, Essy. Lizzie was my co-conspirator. Word by word. Slip by slip. Taken from your treasure chest and sneaked back into it before you knew something was missing.

ESME: Oh, Gareth … All the words?

GARETH: Not all. But all that pertained to women. They were very well prepared, as it happens. Top-slips and quotation slips. Pinned in alphabetical – and chronological – and semantic – order.

ESME: What you must have thought of me!

GARETH: It was the women in the bindery department who were most engaged with that!

ESME: Lawks, as Mabel would say.

GARETH: I did most of it myself, not just the typesetting – I chose the paper and worked the press. And cut the pages. And the women in the bindery department showed me how to do the binding and embossing too. Half the press was in on it in the end.

ESME: It is the most beautiful gift of my life, Gareth Owen.

GARETH: It was this or a ring, Esme.

ESME: I repeat. The most beautiful.

GARETH: I love your fine mind. I love your quick thoughts. I love your ambition. I love your secrecy. I love your kindness. I love your determination. I love your fears and anxieties and your loyalty and precision. And I love your bewitching body and sweet face and riotous hair.

She kisses him.

ESME: There is only one word.

She writes it on a slip. Gives it to him.

GARETH: ‘Love’. (beat) One more.

WORDS SIGNAGE: LOVE

He turns it over. Writes on the back. Gives it to her.

ESME: ‘Eternal’.

WORDS SIGNAGE: ETERNAL

She starts to kiss him again. He stops her.

GARETH: There’s something else, Esme.

ESME: I thought there might be. Could you tell me tomorrow so that this day can stand alone?

GARETH: Well. If I did that, I would be winning you with a partial truth, wouldn’t I?

ESME: Yes.

GARETH: And you would not approve of that, would you?

ESME: No.

GARETH: I have been accepted for Officers’ Training. I start next week and will finish on the 4th of May.

ESME: I thought so.

Silence.

GARETH: Esme?

ESME: We’ll get married on May the 5th.

She puts the slip of ‘Love’ and ‘Eternal’ into his breast pocket.

TRANSITION TO … SENSE OF VAST DISTANCES BETWEEN THEM, CHAOS AND DARKNESS

LOCATIONS SIGNAGE: ENGLAND AND FRANCE, 1915

ESME: I hope this letter reaches you.

GARETH: Your letter has at last arrived.

ESME: The irony of you leaving for the front on the day of James Murray’s funeral has settled in my heart like a stone. The world has ended at the letter T.

GARETH: We are stationed at Hébuterne, (‘É-bu-terne’) a small village not far from Arras. Oh. Esme. Words in this experience are new and strange.

ESME: We are to move to the Old Ashmolean, did you hear? They will dismantle the Scriptorium. What is the point of it, after all, without Sir James?

GARETH: Here’s a word for you. ‘Doolally’. It was used to refer to a lad who was sent a roll of lavatory paper from home and used the lot to bandage his eyes. When his mates finally tore it off, he was blind … War mad. ‘Doolally’.

ESME: ‘War mad’ you say. I visited the local infirmary. There are soldiers there who are not unable but won’t speak. (beat) It made me think of our book. So I went to see Mr Hart at the press. He told me, no, they have not retained the plates. But then he said, ‘We do still have the forms that hold the type.’ My love? I am going to print more copies of our book.

GARETH: We are now at the Front, Es. How to convey it? I can tell you that the trench is cramped and dark, the mud is black and cold, the air gags with piss and rats, and the sound of a flute played by a German soldier is more beautiful and more melancholy than any sound I’ve ever heard.

ESME: I stayed behind to finish the cleaning of the Scrippy. And … What an irony. Behind my desk I found some slips. They were the lost slips for my first rescued word. All the quotations for ‘bondmaid’. I couldn’t even feel the nostalgia of it. Gareth. I am so lonely for you. Without you, nothing makes sense.

GARETH: My darling Es. It has been three days. Is that possible? It feels like a thousand. It feels – endless. We were already exhausted, but we had to keep fighting. But mostly we weren’t fighting. Mostly we were dying. Half my company is dead.

ESME: My – our – additional copies of Women’s Words and their Meanings arrived today, so our small ghost dictionary will have a life in the world after all. Fancy that.

GARETH: And now there is time to rest, but we can’t. Our minds cannot be quiet. Everyone is writing home. I am writing too – to the wives of three men and the mothers of four. This is now my job. Es. Essy. Esme. My love.

ESME: Gareth? My long journey with the Dictionary is done. I have been offered a job working with soldiers suffering from war neurosis at a hospital in Southampton. I intend to take it. Once, this would have felt like a bitter loss. Now it seems a small thing compared to my longing for you.

GARETH: I am spent, my darling Es. Everything I see and hear is destruction and distress. But then I reach for the slips in my breast pocket, and when I do, I have an image of you in my heart that I can almost – touch. I feel you with me, Esme? Love. Eternal. Esme.

ESME is with LIZZIE in the kitchen of her house. She has the trunk with her.

LIZZIE: You’re up early?

ESME: I could say the same to you.

LIZZIE: It’s good to see you smile.

ESME: Well. I had a moment, you know? Everything felt quiet.

A moment.

FX: A CREAKING GATE

ESME: The morning post. He’s early, too.

LIZZIE: Esme …

A moment.

ESME: He’s too early, isn’t he?

LIZZIE: He’s much too early.

FX: KNOCK ON DOOR

LIZZIE: I’ll go.

ESME: No. No, stay here, Lizzie. It will be for me.

WORDS SIGNAGE: TELEGRAM RE WWI FORMAT:

‘Regret to inform you Lieutenant Gareth Owen killed in action France September 1915.’

FX: ‘LOCH LOMOND’. As it plays out, we move to …

TRANSITION

The two women move around the space, putting things to rights, perhaps a bit like ESME’S movements after HARRY’S death, small comfort connections. The balm of the domestic.

ESME pulls out the trunk.

LIZZIE: The old trunk?

ESME: I want to send it to her – my little Australian. One day.

LIZZIE: That’s a good thought. (picks up a slip) Look at them all! What’s this?

ESME: Aaagh! ‘Bondmaid’. Dreadful word. ‘Slavegirl’. There. In my da’s writing.

LIZZIE: Well. Yes. But you’ve always said a word can change its meaning depending on who uses it.

ESME: True.

LIZZIE: So maybe ‘bondmaid’ can mean more than what this old slip here says? More than your da and all those other men say.

ESME: Lizzie?

LIZZIE: It’s my word, too, Esme. I’ve been a bondmaid to you since you were small, and I’m glad for every day of it.

ESME and LIZZIE pack the trunk containing the treasury of lost words, plus the copy of Women’s Words and their Meanings, into a large box, bind it with twine and address it.

ESME places the trunk centre stage and she and LIZZIE move into the shadows until the young ESME may reappear during the next scene.

MEGAN BROOKS enters.