The Dictionary of Lost Words : A Novel (2020) Read online

  ‘But what does it actually mean?’ I asked Mabel again.

  She looked at me, all gums. She loved it when I asked her to explain a word. ‘You got yer pencil and paper, lass? Yer goin’ ta wan’ ta write this one down.’

  I shook Lizzie’s hand from my arm. ‘You go, Lizzie. I’ll catch up.’

  ‘Esme, if anyone overhears you talking like that … well, Mrs Ballard will know before we’re even home.’

  ‘It’s alright, Lizzie. Mabel and I are going to whisper,’ I said, turning to look sternly at the old woman. ‘Aren’t we, Mabel?’

  She nodded like a waif waiting for a bowl of soup. She wanted her words written down.

  I took a blank slip from my pocket and wrote Cunt in the top-left corner.

  ‘It’s yer quim,’ Mabel said.

  I looked at her, hoping the sense of what she’d just said would find me, as it sometimes did after a second or two, but I was stumped.

  ‘Mabel, that doesn’t help.’ I took another slip and wrote Quim in the top-left corner. ‘Put cunt in a sentence for me,’ I said.

  ‘I got an itchy cunt,’ she said, scratching the front of her skirts.

  It helped, but I didn’t write it down. ‘Is it the same as crotch?’ I whispered.

  ‘You is dim, lass,’ said Mabel. ‘You got a cunt, I got a cunt, Lizzie got a cunt, but old Ned over there, he ain’t got a cunt. Get it?’

  I leaned in a little closer, holding my breath against Mabel’s stink. ‘Is it the vagina?’ I whispered.

  ‘Fuck, yer a genius, you are.’

  I pulled back, but not before the full force of her exhaled laugh hit me in the face. Tobacco and gum disease.

  I wrote: Woman’s vagina; insult. Then I crossed out Woman’s.

  ‘Mabel, I need a sentence that makes it crystal clear what it means,’ I said.

  She thought, went to say something, stopped, thought some more. Then she looked at me, a childish joy spreading across the complicated landscape of her face.

  ‘You ready, lass?’ she asked. I leaned against her crate and wrote her words: There was a young harlot from Kew, who filled her cunt up with glue. She said with a grin, if they pay to get in, they’ll pay to get out of it too.

  Her laughter spawned a violent fit of coughing, which required a few swift slaps on the back to ease.

  When she was recovered, I wrote, Mabel O’Shaughnessy, 1903 beneath the quotation.

  ‘And quim?’ I asked.‘Does it mean the same thing?’

  She looked up at me, still amused, ‘’Tis the juices, lass,’ she flicked her tongue in and out against her cracked lips. ‘Mine ain’t sweet no more, but once,’ she rubbed her thumb against two fingers. ‘I’d eat well ’cos of me juices. The men loves to think they got you goin’. ’

  I thought I understood. I wrote: Vaginal discharge during intimate relations.

  ‘Is it also an insult?’ I asked

  ‘’Course,’ Mabel said. ‘Quim’s just proof of yer shame. The likes of us use it just the same as we use cunt.’ Then she looked towards the flower stall. ‘She and ’er old man are fuckin’ quims, and there’s no doubt about it.’

  I added: Insult.

  ‘Thanks, Mabel,’ I said, putting the slips back in my pocket.

  ‘You don’t want a sentence?’

  ‘You’ve given me plenty. I’ll choose the best when I get home,’ I said.

  ‘So long as me name goes on it,’ she said.

  ‘It will. No one else would want to claim it.’

  She gave another gummy grin and presented me with one of her whittled sticks. ‘A mermaid.’

  Da would love it. I took two coins from my purse.

  ‘Worth an extra penny, I reckon,’ said Mabel.

  I gave her two more, one for each word, then went to find Lizzie.

  ‘And what did Mabel have to say for herself?’ asked Lizzie on the walk back to Sunnyside.

  ‘Quite a lot, actually. I ran out of slips.’

  I waited for Lizzie to ask more questions, but she had learned not to. When we arrived at Sunnyside, she invited me in for tea.

  ‘I need to check something in the Scriptorium,’ I said.

  ‘You won’t put your new words in the trunk?’

  ‘Not yet. I want to check to see how cunt was defined for the Dictionary.’

  ‘Esme.’ Lizzie looked desperate. ‘You can’t say that word out loud.’

  ‘So you know it?’

  ‘No. Well, I know of it. I know it’s not a word for polite society. You mustn’t say it, Essymay.’

  ‘Alright,’ I said, delighted at the effect the word had. ‘Let’s just call it the C-word.’

  ‘Let’s not call it anything. There is no reason it ever needs to be used.’

  ‘Mabel says it’s a very old word. So it should be in the volume for C. I want to see how close I came to defining it.’

  The Scrippy was empty, though Da’s and Mr Sweatman’s jackets were still on the backs of their chairs. I went to the shelf behind Mr Murray’s desk and took down the second volume of words. C was even bigger than A and B; it had taken half my childhood to compile. When I searched its pages, Mabel’s word was not there.

  I returned the volume and began searching the pigeon-holes for C. They were dusty from lack of attention.

  ‘Looking for something in particular?’ It was Mr Sweatman.

  I folded Mabel’s slips into my hand and turned. ‘Nothing that can’t wait until Monday,’ I said. ‘Is Da with you?’

  Mr Sweatman took his jacket off the back of his chair. ‘Stopped by the house to have a quick word with Dr Murray. He should be here any minute.’

  ‘I’ll wait for him in the garden,’ I said.

  ‘Righto. I’ll see you on Monday.’

  I lifted the lid of my desk and placed the slips between the pages of a book.

  I began going to the Covered Market alone. Whenever my work took me to the Bodleian or the Old Ashmolean, I would make a detour through the crowded alleyways of stalls and shops. I wandered slowly; I loitered at the window of the milliner so I could eavesdrop on the grocer and his boy standing on the street; I took my time choosing fish on Fridays in the hope of catching an unfamiliar word passed between the fishmonger and his wife.

  ‘Why won’t Dr Murray include words that aren’t written down?’ I asked Da as we walked to the Scriptorium one morning. I had three new slips in my pocket.

  ‘If it’s not written down, we can’t verify the meaning.’

  ‘What if it’s in common use? I hear the same words over and over at the Covered Market.’

  ‘They may be commonly spoken, but if they are not commonly written they will not be included. A quotation from Mr Smith the greengrocer is simply not adequate.’

  ‘But some nonsense from Mr Dickens the author is?’

  Da looked at me sideways.

  I smiled. ‘Jog-trotty, remember?’

  Jog-trotty had caused considerable debate around the sorting table a few years earlier. It had seventeen slips, but they all contained the same quotation. It was the only quotation, as far as Mr Maling could ascertain.

  It’s rather jog-trotty and humdrum.

  ‘But it’s Dickens,’ said one assistant. ‘It’s nonsense,’ said another. ‘It’s for an editor to decide,’ said Mr Maling. And as Dr Murray was away, it fell to the newest editor, Mr Craigie. He must have admired Dickens, because it was included in H to K.

  ‘Touché,’ said Da. ‘So, give me an example of a word you’ve heard at the market.’

  ‘Latch-keyed,’ I said, remembering the way Mrs Stiles at the flower stall had said it to a customer, and her glance in my direction.

  ‘You know, that word sounds familiar.’ He looked pleased. ‘I think you might find that there’s already an entry.’

  Da’s pace increased, and when we arrived at the Scriptorium he went straight to the shelf that held the fascicles. He removed ‘Lap to Leisurely’ and began leafing through it, repeating ‘latch-keyed’ under
his breath.

  ‘Well, a latch-key is used to unlock a night gate, but latch-keyed isn’t here.’ He moved to the pigeon-holes, and I followed.

  Except for us, the Scriptorium was empty. I felt like a child again. Latch-keyed would be in the middle somewhere, I thought. Not too high and not too low.

  ‘Here it is.’ Da took a small pile of slips to the sorting table. ‘Ah, I remember now – I wrote the entry. Latch-keyed means to be furnished with a latch-key.’

  ‘So, someone who’s latch-keyed can come and go as they please?’

  ‘That is the suggestion.’

  I looked over his shoulder and read the top-slip. There were various definitions in Da’s writing.

  Unchaperoned; undisciplined; referring to a young woman with no domestic constraint.

  ‘All the quotations are from the Daily Telegraph,’ said Da, passing me one.

  ‘And why should that matter?’

  ‘Believe it or not, Dr Murray has asked that very same question.’

  ‘Of whom?’

  ‘Of the Press Delegates when they want to cut costs. Cutting costs means cutting words. According to them, the Daily Telegraph is not a credible source, and its words are expendable.’

  ‘I suppose the Times is a credible source?’

  Da nodded.

  I looked at the slip he’d given me.

  LATCH-KEYED

  ‘All latch-keyed daughters and knicker-bockerred maidens, and discontented people generally.’

  Daily Telegraph, 1895

  ‘It isn’t a compliment, then?’

  ‘That depends on whether you think young ladies should always be chaperoned, disciplined and under domestic constraint.’ He smiled, then became serious. ‘In general, I think it would be used to criticise.’

  ‘I’ll put them away,’ I said.

  I gathered up the slips. As I walked back to the pigeon-holes, I put latch-keyed daughters in the sleeve of my dress. Superfluous to need, I thought.

  By the end of 1902 I’d become confident collecting my own words, but at the Scriptorium, I was still running errands and adding new quotations to piles of slips that had already been sorted years earlier by volunteers. I found myself becoming frustrated by the definitions that some words were given. I was tempted to draw a line through so many, but it was not my place. Temptation, though, can only be resisted for so long.

  ‘Esme, is this your handiwork?’

  Da pushed a proof across the breakfast table and pointed to a scrap of paper pinned to its edge. The handwriting was mine. There was nothing in his tone that indicated my edit was good or bad. I stayed silent.

  ‘When did you do it?’ he asked

  ‘This morning,’ I said, not looking up from my bowl of porridge. ‘You left it out when you went to bed last night.’

  Da sat reading what I’d penned.

  MADCAP

  Often applied playfully to young women of lively or impulsive temperament.

  ‘On the boards, she was the merriest, gayest, madcap in the world.’

  Mabel Collins, The Prettiest Woman in Warsaw, 1885

  I looked up. Da was waiting for an explanation. ‘It captures a sense that wasn’t there,’ I said. ‘I’ve taken the quotation from another sense that it wasn’t at all suited to. I often think the volunteers have got it quite wrong.’

  ‘As do we,’ Da said. ‘Which is why we spend so long rewriting them.’

  I blushed, realising Da had left the proof out because he was still working on it. ‘You’ll come up with something better, but I thought I might save you a little time if I drafted it,’ I said.

  ‘No. I’d finished with it. I thought my definitions were adequate.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘I was wrong.’ He took the proof and folded it. For a moment, we were silent.

  ‘Perhaps I could make more suggestions?’

  Da raised his eyebrows.

  ‘About the meanings given to words,’ I said. ‘When I’m sorting them and adding new slips, perhaps I could write suggestions on any top-slips that I think are …’ I paused, unable to criticise.

  ‘Inadequate?’ Da said. ‘Subjective? Judgemental? Pompous? Incorrect?’

  We laughed.

  ‘Perhaps you could,’ he said.

  My request hung in the air while Dr Murray considered me over his spectacles.

  ‘Of course you can,’ he said, finally. ‘I look forward to seeing what you come up with.’

  I’d had a speech ready in case he denied me, and so I was caught short by his easy agreement. I stood, stunned, in front of his desk.

  ‘Whatever you suggest is likely to be refined,’ he said. ‘Your perspective, however, will be grist to the mill of our endeavour to define the English language.’ He leaned forward then, and his whiskers twitched at the edges of his mouth. ‘My own daughters are fond of pointing out the inherent biases of our elderly volunteers. I’m sure they will be glad to have you on their side.’

  From then on I did not feel superfluous, and the task of sorting slips took on a new challenge. Da would inform me whenever one of my suggestions made it into a fascicle. The proportion increased with my confidence, and I kept a tally on the inside of my desk: a little notch for every meaning penned and accepted. As the years passed, the inside of my desk became pitted with small achievements.

  I enjoyed the freedom of having a salary, and I became familiar with a number of the traders at the Covered Market. I continued to join Lizzie on Saturday mornings, but with my own basket to fill, and an allowance from Da for groceries. When we were done with the food shopping, I would take her into the draper’s shop. Bit-by-bit I was replacing everything in our house that was worn out or depressingly functional. I enjoyed spending my money in this way, although Da only sometimes noticed. The last shop we’d go into was always the haberdashery, and it was my greatest joy to buy Lizzie a new thread.

  On other days, when Lizzie wasn’t with me, I’d visit certain stallholders who I knew had a way with words. They spoke with accents from far up north or the south-west corner of England. Some were Gypsy or travelling Irish, and they came and went. They were mostly women, old and young, and few of them could read the words they’d given me once I wrote them down. But they loved to share them. Over a few years I’d managed to collect more than a hundred. Some words, I discovered, were already in the pigeon-holes, but so many were not. When I was feeling in the mood for something salacious, I would always visit Mabel.

  A woman I’d never seen before was picking through Mabel’s wares in the same distracted way I usually did. They were deep in conversation, and I was reluctant to interrupt. I hung back among the buckets of flowers at Mrs Stiles’ stall.

  I bought flowers from Mrs Stiles every week, but my association with Mabel over the past few years had been noted, and the florist was not friendly. This made lingering all the more awkward.

  ‘Have you decided what you want?’ Mrs Stiles had come from behind her counter to straighten flowers that didn’t need straightening.

  I heard Mabel snort at something the woman said. Looking over, I glimpsed pale skin and a rouged cheek as the woman averted her face, just slightly, to avoid the rank breath that I knew assailed her. I wondered why she was still there; pity only required a moment. I had an uncanny sense I was watching myself, as others might have watched me – as Mrs Stiles must surely have watched me.

  The florist was waiting for some kind of response, so I drifted towards the bucket of carnations. Their pastel symmetry was bland and somehow repellent, but they were well placed to see Mabel’s visitor more clearly. I bent slightly, as if inspecting the bunches, and felt Mrs Stiles’ barely restrained disapproval. Petals fell from some lilac blooms she was adjusting with too much vigour.

  ‘For you, Mabel,’ I said a few minutes later, handing over a small posy of lilacs, their scent an obvious relief to Mabel’s new acquaintance. I dared not look back at the florist, but Mabel was shameless. She took the posy and critically inspected its
wrapping of brown paper and simple white ribbon. ‘It’s the flowers that matter,’ she said too loudly, then held them to her nose with exaggerated delight.

  ‘How do they smell?’ asked the young woman.

  ‘Couldn’t tell you. ’Aven’t smelled nothin’ for years.’ Mabel handed her the blooms, and the woman buried her face in them, sucking in their scent.

  With her eyes closed, I could take her in. She was tall, though not as tall as me, and her figure curved like that of a woman in a Pears’ Soap advertisement. Above a high lace collar, her skin was pale and without blemish. Honey-blonde hair hung in a lose braid down her back, and she wore no hat.

  She laid the flowers down between a barnacled bell that was unlikely to ever ring again and the whittled face of an angel.

  I picked up the whittling. ‘I haven’t seen this one before, Mabel.’

  ‘Finished this mornin’. ’

  ‘Is she someone you know?’ I asked.

  ‘Me before I lost me teeth.’ Mabel laughed.

  The woman made no move to leave, and I wondered if I’d interrupted some private conversation they were waiting to resume. I took my purse from my pocket and searched for the right coins.

  ‘Thought you’d like ’er,’ Mabel said. At first I thought she was talking about the young woman, but she picked up the whittled angel and accepted my coins.

  ‘My name’s Tilda,’ the woman said, offering her hand.

  I hesitated.

  ‘She don’t like shakin’ ’ands,’ said Mabel. ‘Scared you might flinch.’

  Tilda looked at my fingers then straight in my eyes. ‘Not much makes me flinch,’ she said. Her grip was firm. I was grateful.

  ‘Esme,’ I said. ‘Are you a friend of Mabel’s?’

  ‘No, we’ve just met.’

  ‘Kindred spirits, I reckon,’ said Mabel.

  Tilda leaned in. ‘She insists I’m a dollymop.’

  I didn’t understand.

  ‘Look at ’er face. Never ’eard of a dollymop.’ Mabel was not so discrete, and Mrs Stiles made it known she’d taken offence with a scraping of buckets and a mumbled protest. ‘Come on, girl,’ Mabel said to me. ‘Take out yer slips.’