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

  ‘So, what’s your big secret, Essymay?’ she asked.

  I’d almost forgotten. I stopped clapping, reached into the pocket of my pinny and pulled out the slip that had landed in my lap earlier that morning.

  ‘What kind of secret is that?’ asked Lizzie, taking the slip in her hand and turning it over.

  ‘It’s a word, but I can only read this bit.’ I pointed to bondmaid. ‘Can you read the rest for me?’

  She moved a finger across the words, just as I had done. After a while, she handed it back.

  ‘Where did you find it?’ she asked.

  ‘It found me,’ I said. And when I saw that wasn’t enough, ‘One of the assistants threw it away.’

  ‘Threw it away, did they?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, without looking down, even a little bit. ‘Some words just don’t make sense and they throw them away.’

  ‘Well, what will you do with your secret?’ Lizzie asked.

  I hadn’t thought. All I’d wanted was to show it to Lizzie. I knew not to ask Da to keep it safe, and it couldn’t stay in my pinny forever.

  ‘Can you keep it for me?’ I asked.

  ‘I s’pose I can, if you want me to. Though I don’t know what’s so special about it.’

  It was special because it had come to me. It was almost nothing, but not quite. It was small and fragile and it might not mean anything important, but I needed to keep it from the fire grate. I didn’t know how to say any of this to Lizzie, and she didn’t insist. Instead, she got to her hands and knees, reached under her bed and pulled out a small wooden trunk.

  I watched as she drew a finger through the thin film of dust that covered the scarred top. She wasn’t in a hurry to open it.

  ‘What’s inside?’ I asked.

  ‘Nothing. Everything I came with has gone into that wardrobe.’

  ‘Won’t you need it to go on journeys?’

  ‘I won’t be needing it,’ she said, and released the latch.

  I placed my secret in the bottom of the trunk and sat back on my haunches. It looked small and lonely. I moved it to one side, and then to the other. Finally, I retrieved it and cradled it in both hands.

  Lizzie stroked my hair. ‘You’ll have to find more treasures to keep it company.’

  I stood, held the slip of paper as high as I could above the trunk and let go, then I watched it float down, swaying from side to side until it came to rest in one corner of the trunk.

  ‘This is where it wants to be,’ I said, bending down to smooth it flat. But it wouldn’t flatten. There was a lump under the paper lining that covered the bottom of the trunk. The edge had already lifted, so I peeled it back a little more.

  ‘It’s not empty, Lizzie,’ I said, as the head of a pin revealed itself.

  Lizzie leaned over me to see what I was talking about.

  ‘It’s a hat pin,’ she said, reaching down to pick it up. On its head were three small beads, one on top of the other, each a kaleidoscope of colour. Lizzie turned it between her thumb and finger. As it spun, I could see her remembering it. She brought it to her chest, kissed me on the forehead then placed the pin carefully on her bedside table, next to the small photograph of her mother.

  Our walk home to Jericho took longer than it should, because I was small and Da liked to meander while he smoked his pipe. I loved the smell of it.

  We crossed the wide Banbury Road and started down St Margaret’s, past tall houses standing in pairs with pretty gardens and trees shading the path. Then I led us on a zigzagging route through narrow streets where the houses were tightly packed, one against the other, just like slips in their pigeon-holes. When we turned into Observatory Street, Da tapped his pipe clean against a wall and put it in his pocket. Then he lifted me onto his shoulders.

  ‘You’ll be too big for this soon,’ he said.

  ‘Will I stop being a littlun when I get too big?’

  ‘Is that what Lizzie calls you?’

  ‘It’s one of the things she calls me. She also calls me cabbage and Essymay.’

  ‘Littlun I understand, and Essymay, but why does she call you cabbage?’

  Cabbage always came with a cuddle or a kind smile. It made perfect sense, but I couldn’t explain why.

  Our house was halfway down Observatory Street, just past Adelaide Street. When we got to the corner, I counted out loud: ‘One, two, three, four, stop right here for our front door.’

  We had an old brass knocker shaped like a hand. Lily had found it at a bric-a-brac stall in the Covered Market – Da said it had been tarnished and scratched, and there’d been river sand between the fingers, but he’d cleaned it up and attached it to the door on the day they were married. Now, he took his key from his pocket and I leaned down and covered Lily’s hand with mine. I knocked it four times.

  ‘No one’s home,’ I said.

  ‘They will be soon.’ He opened the door and I ducked as he stepped into the hall.

  Da set me down, put his satchel on the sideboard and bent to pick the letters off the floor. I followed him down the hall and into the kitchen and sat at the table while he cooked our dinner. We had an occasional maid come three times a week to cook and clean and wash our clothes, but this wasn’t one of her days.

  ‘Will I go into service when I stop being a littlun?’

  Da jiggled the pan to turn the sausages then looked across to where I sat at the kitchen table.

  ‘No, you won’t.’

  ‘Why not?’

  He jiggled the sausages again. ‘It’s hard to explain.’

  I waited. He took a deep breath and the thinking lines between his eyebrows got deeper. ‘Lizzie is fortunate to be in service, but for you it would be unfortunate.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘No, I don’t suppose you do.’ He drained the peas and mashed the potatoes, and put them on our plates with the sausages. When he finally sat at the table, he said, ‘Service means different things to different people, Essy, depending on their position in society.’

  ‘Will all the different meanings be in the Dictionary?’

  His thinking lines relaxed. ‘We’ll search the pigeon-holes tomorrow, shall we?’

  ‘Would Lily have been able to explain service?’ I asked.

  ‘Your mother would have had the words to explain the world to you, Essy,’ Da said. ‘But without her, we must rely on the Scrippy.’

  The next morning, before we sorted the post, Da held me up and let me search the pigeon-holes containing S words.

  ‘Now, let’s see what we can find.’

  Da pointed to a pigeon-hole that was almost too high, but not quite. I pulled out a bundle of slips. Service was written on a top-slip, and beneath that: Multiple senses. We sat at the sorting table, and Da let me loosen the string that bound the slips. They were separated into four smaller bundles of quotations, each with its own top-slip and a definition suggested by one of Dr Murray’s more trusted volunteers.

  ‘Edith sorted these,’ Da said, arranging the piles on the sorting table.

  ‘You mean Aunty Ditte?’

  ‘The very same.’

  ‘Is she a lexi—, lexiographa, like you?’

  ‘Lexicographer. No. But she is a very learned lady and we are lucky she has taken on the Dictionary as her hobby. There’s not a week goes by without a letter from Ditte to Dr Murray with a word, or copy for the next section.’

  Not a week went by when we didn’t get our own letter from Ditte. When Da read them aloud, they were mostly about me.

  ‘Am I her hobby too?’

  ‘You are her goddaughter, which is much more important than a hobby.’

  Although Ditte’s real name was Edith, when I was very small I struggled to say it. There were other ways to say her name, she’d said, and she let me choose my favourite. In Denmark she would be called Ditte. Ditte is sweeter, I sometimes thought, enjoying the rhyme. I never called her Edith again.

  ‘Now, let’s see how Ditte has defined service,’ Da said.
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br />   A lot of the definitions described Lizzie, but none of them explained why service might mean something different for her and for me. The last pile we looked at had no top-slip.

  ‘They’re duplicates,’ Da said. He helped me read them.

  ‘What will happen to them?’ I asked. But before Da could answer, the Scriptorium door opened and one of the assistants came in, knotting his tie as if he had only just put it on. When he was done it sat crooked, and he forgot to tuck it into his waistcoat.

  Mr Mitchell looked over my shoulder at the piles of slips laid out on the sorting table. A wave of dark hair fell across his face. He smoothed it back but there wasn’t enough oil to hold it.

  ‘Service,’ he said.

  ‘Lizzie’s in service,’ I said.

  ‘So she is.’

  ‘But Da says it would be unfortunate for me to be in service.’

  Mr Mitchell looked at Da, who shrugged and smiled.

  ‘When you grow up, Esme, I think you could do whatever you wanted to do,’ Mr Mitchell said.

  ‘I want to be a lexicographer.’

  ‘Well, this is a good start,’ he said, pointing to all the slips.

  Mr Maling and Mr Balk came into the Scriptorium, discussing a word they had been arguing about the day before. Then Dr Murray came in, his black gown billowing. I looked from one man to another and wondered if I could tell how old they were from the length and colour of their beards. Da’s and Mr Mitchell’s were the shortest and darkest. Dr Murray’s was turning white and reached all the way to the top button of his waistcoat. Mr Maling’s and Mr Balk’s were somewhere in-between. Now they were all there, it was time for me to disappear. I crawled beneath the sorting table and watched for stray slips. I wanted more than anything for another word to find me. None did, but when Da told me to run along with Lizzie my pockets were not completely empty.

  I showed Lizzie the slip. ‘Another secret,’ I said.

  ‘Should I be letting you bring secrets out of the Scrippy?’

  ‘Da said this one is a duplicate. There’s another one that says exactly the same thing.’

  ‘What does it say?’

  ‘That you should be in service and I should do needlepoint until a gentleman wants to marry me.’

  ‘Really? It says that?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘Well, I could teach you needlepoint,’ Lizzie said.

  I thought about it. ‘No thank you, Lizzie. Mr Mitchell said I could be a lexicographer.’

  For the next few mornings, after helping Da with the post, I’d crawl to one end of the sorting table to wait for falling words. But when they fell, they were always quickly retrieved by an assistant. After a few days I forgot to keep an eye out for words, and after a few months I forgot about the trunk under Lizzie’s bed.

  ‘Shoes?’ Da said.

  ‘Shiny,’ I replied.

  ‘Stockings?’

  ‘Pulled up tight.’

  ‘Dress?’

  ‘A bit short.’

  ‘Too tight?’

  ‘No, just right.’

  ‘Phew,’ he said, wiping his brow. Then he took a long look at my hair. ‘Where does it all come from?’ he muttered, trying to flatten it with his big, clumsy hands. When red curls sprang between his fingers, he made a game of catching them, but he didn’t have enough hands. As one lock was tamed, another escaped. I began to giggle, and he threw his hands in the air.

  Because of my hair, we were going to be late. Da said that was fashionable. When I asked him what fashionable meant, he said it was something that mattered a lot to some and not at all to others, and it could be applied to everything from hats to wallpaper to the time you arrived at a party.

  ‘Do we like to be fashionable?’ I asked.

  ‘Not usually,’ he said.

  ‘We’d better run, then.’ I took his hand and dragged him along at a trot. We were at Sunnyside ten minutes later, just a little out of breath.

  The front gates were decorated in As and Bs of every size, style and colour. Colouring my own letters had kept me quiet for hours in the previous week, and I was thrilled to see them among the As and Bs of all the Murray children.

  ‘Here comes Mr Mitchell. Is he fashionable?’ I asked.

  ‘Not at all.’ Da held out his hand as Mr Mitchell approached.

  ‘A big day,’ Mr Mitchell said to Da.

  ‘A long time coming,’ Da said to Mr Mitchell.

  Mr Mitchell kneeled down so we were face to face. Today there was enough oil in his hair to keep it in place. ‘Happy birthday, Esme.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Mitchell.’

  ‘How old are you now?’

  ‘I turn six today, and I know this party isn’t for me – it’s for A and B – but Da says I can have two pieces of cake anyway.’

  ‘Only right.’ He pulled a small packet from his pocket and handed it to me. ‘You can’t have a party without presents. These are for you, young lady. With any luck you’ll be using them to colour the letter C before your next birthday.’

  I unwrapped a small box of coloured pencils and beamed at Mr Mitchell. When he stood up, I saw his ankles. He wore one black sock and one green.

  A long table was set up under the ash, and it looked exactly as I’d imagined. There was a white cloth covered with plates of food and a glass bowl full of punch. Coloured streamers hung in the branches of the tree and there were more people than I could count. No one wanted to be fashionable, I thought.

  Beyond the table, the younger Murray boys were playing tag, and the girls were skipping. If I went over, they would invite me to play – they always did – but the rope would feel awkward in my hand, and when I was in the middle I could never keep the rhythm. They would encourage, and I would try again, but there was no fun for anyone when the rope kept stalling. I watched as Hilda and Ethelwyn turned the rope, counting the turns with a song. Rosfrith and Elsie were in the middle, holding hands and jumping faster and faster as their sisters sped up. Rosfrith was four, and Elsie was just a few months older than I was. Their blonde braids flew up and down like wings. The whole time I watched, the rope never stalled. I touched my own hair and realised Da’s braid had come loose.

  ‘Wait here,’ said Da. He walked around the crowd towards the kitchen. After a minute he was back, Lizzie at his heels.

  ‘Happy birthday, Essymay,’ she said, taking my hand.

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘To get your present.’

  I followed Lizzie up the narrow stairs from the kitchen. When we were in her room, she sat me on the bed and reached into the pocket of her pinny.

  ‘Close your eyes, me little cabbage, and hold out both hands,’ she said.

  I closed my eyes and felt a smile spread across my face. A fluttering danced across my palms. Ribbons. I tried not to let the smile fall; there was a box of ribbons beside my bed, overflowing.

  ‘You can open your eyes.’

  Two ribbons. Not shiny and smooth like the one Da had tied around my hair that morning, but each was embroidered on its ends with the same bluebells that were scattered across my dress.

  ‘They ain’t slippery like the others, so you won’t lose them so easy,’ Lizzie said as she started pulling her fingers through my hair. ‘And I think they’ll look very nice with French braids.’

  A few minutes later, Lizzie and I returned to the garden. ‘The belle of the ball,’ Da said. ‘And just in time.’

  Dr Murray stood in the shade of the ash, a huge book on the small table in front of him. He tapped a fork on the edge of his glass. We all went quiet.

  ‘When Dr Johnson undertook to compile his dictionary, he resolved to leave no word unexamined.’ Dr Murray paused to make sure we were all listening. ‘This resolve was soon eroded when he realised that one enquiry only gave occasion to another, that book referred to book, that to scratch was not always to find, and to find was not always to be informed.’

  I tugged on Da’s sleeve. ‘Who is Dr Johnson?’

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sp; ‘The editor of a previous dictionary,’ he whispered.

  ‘If there’s already a dictionary, why are you making a new one?’

  ‘The old one wasn’t quite good enough.’

  ‘Will Dr Murray’s be good enough?’ Da put a finger to his lips and turned back to listen to what Dr Murray was saying.

  ‘If I have been more successful than Dr Johnson, it has been owing to the goodwill and helpful co-operation of many scholars and specialists, most of them men whose time is much occupied but whose interest in this undertaking has led them willingly to place some of it at the Editor’s service, and freely to contribute of their knowledge to the perfection of the work.’ Dr Murray began to thank all the people who had helped compile the words for A and B. The list was so long my legs started to ache from standing. I sat down on the grass and started pulling up blades, peeling back the layers to reveal the tenderest green shoots and nibbling on them. It was only when I heard Ditte’s name that I looked up, and soon after that I heard Da’s and those of the other men who worked in the Scriptorium.

  When the speech was over and Dr Murray was being congratulated, Da walked over to the volume of words and lifted it from where it rested.

  He called me over and made me sit with my back against the rough trunk of the ash. Then he put the heavy volume in my lap.

  ‘Are my birthday words in it?’

  ‘They certainly are.’ He opened the cover and turned the pages until he reached the first word.

  A.

  Then he turned a few more pages.

  Aard-vark.

  Then a few more.

  My words, I thought, all bound in leather, the pages trimmed in gold. I thought the weight of them would hold me to that place forever.

  Da put A and B back on the table, and the crowd swallowed it up. I feared for the words. ‘Be careful,’ I said. But no one heard.

  ‘Here comes Ditte,’ said Da.

  I ran towards her as she came through the gates.

  ‘You missed the cake,’ I said.

  ‘I would call that perfect timing,’ she said, bending down and kissing me on the head. ‘The only cake I eat is Madeira. It’s a rule and it helps keep me trim.’