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

  ‘This will help,’ said Lizzie, coming up beside me. She held out a sturdy stick.

  I tried to fashion a sentence that would convince her to let me return to the cottage, but she shook her head. She pushed the stick into my hand, and I noticed her cheeks were red from exertion and her eyes were bright. She held onto the stick until she was sure I wouldn’t drop it, as if passing the baton in a relay. I tightened my grip, and she released hers. Then she turned and led the way up the narrow path.

  It was a relief when the path veered away from the trees. It cut a wobbly and fathomless trail across the hill, as if the sheep who made it were trying to reduce the incline. Lizzie trusted it to lead her in the right direction, and I found my tread falling rhythmically behind hers. We walked in silence until Lizzie saw a stile.

  ‘This way,’ she said.

  Lizzie tried to pull up her skirts to climb the wooden structure, but as she released one hand to steady herself, the fabric dropped and caught on the weathered timber. I hadn’t thought to bring a split skirt, and neither had she. I should have known better – I’d spent a year in Scotland, where walking was the only relief from that dreadful school, and shorter split skirts were part of the uniform. But Lizzie had never left Oxford, and she had packed for both of us.

  Lizzie began to laugh. ‘We’ll wear trousers tomorrow,’ she said.

  ‘We can’t wear trousers.’

  ‘We have no choice. All the clothes in that wardrobe at the cottage belong to a man,’ she said. ‘I’m sure no one will mind if we borrow them.’

  The next day, Lizzie laid two pairs of trousers on the bed for us to change into after breakfast.

  ‘Have you ever worn trousers, Lizzie?’ I asked when I joined her in the kitchen.

  ‘Never in my life,’ she said, smiling as if she knew the pleasure that awaited.

  Lizzie had cooked oats overnight in the low heat of the range. She drizzled them with fresh cream from the Lloyds and topped them with apples she had stewed before I woke.

  ‘Everything aches,’ I said, holding the edges of the chair to lower myself into it.

  ‘I know,’ Lizzie said. ‘But it’s a wholesome ache, not a knackered ache.’

  ‘An ache is an ache.’

  ‘I can’t recall a day when I haven’t had an ache in some part of my body. This is the first time I’ve thought it might be a sign of good, not ill.’

  I took up my spoon and stirred the apple and cream into the porridge. There was an ache in the centre of me that I couldn’t shift, but that morning I did feel it a little less urgently.

  After breakfast, Lizzie pulled on a large pair of trousers and an oversized shirt.

  ‘They’re too big, Lizzie.’

  ‘Nothing a belt won’t fix,’ she said, searching the wardrobe for one. ‘And who’s around to judge?’

  ‘Mr Lloyd could pop in at any time.’

  She coloured a little, but shrugged. ‘He don’t seem the type to judge.’

  My trousers were made for a smaller man, or perhaps the same man when he was young. They were short in the leg but a better fit around the waist. Lizzie insisted I too wear an oversized shirt so she wouldn’t have to wash my blouses each day.

  ‘There’s a pair of thick socks in the drawer,’ Lizzie said. ‘They’ll keep your ankles from getting scratched.’

  Down in the kitchen, Lizzie bent to my boots then to her own. She found hats on a hook at the back of the pantry door and placed them on our heads. Then she took the walking stick she’d saved from the day before and put it in my hand.

  We stood opposite each other, fully dressed, and Lizzie took me in. ‘You look like a wanderer,’ she said, then she looked down at her own attire and turned around so I could admire the full effect. She chuckled, and the chuckle turned to a laugh, and the laugh overwhelmed her until her eyes streamed and her nose ran. She was right. I imagined the townsfolk of Oxford throwing bread ends and coppers into our hats. I didn’t laugh, but I couldn’t stop a smile.

  We walked after breakfast and every afternoon. I kept the stick, but needed it less as I began to feel stronger. I hadn’t known, exactly, that I’d been weak, but the walking and Lizzie’s porridge and Mrs Lloyd’s cakes were reviving something in me. I slept less and noticed more.

  Lizzie no longer blushed when Mr Lloyd spoke to her. She met his eye and, if he asked, she gave him her opinion without looking down. After a week, Mrs Lloyd began bringing her cakes in person. She would accompany Mr Lloyd or Tommy in the afternoon and stay after they had set the fires. It became Lizzie’s habit to bake biscuits every morning and to lay the kitchen table for tea every afternoon. She laid it for four, though Mr Lloyd always declined. ‘I’d only stop you ladies talking of what you will,’ he said one day, backing out of the kitchen with his hat pressed against his belly, a slight bend to his back as if he were taking leave of the king.

  As soon as he was gone, Lizzie would arrange a plate with biscuits and generous slices of Mrs Lloyd’s cake. Then she would put the kettle on to boil and busy herself with tea leaves and pot. Mrs Lloyd, already seated in the chair facing the stove, would start up the conversation wherever they had left off the day before. Their banter always went back and forth like a game of badminton, as if they’d known each other their entire lives. I felt I was seeing Lizzie as she might have been.

  I caught myself wondering why Mrs Lloyd never stood to lend a hand – I had plenty of time to ponder, as my reserve had deflected all polite attempts at inclusion. I rejected all the obvious reasons: rudeness, laziness, fatigue from tending her own hearth and four boys. In the end, I decided it was kindness. There was nothing demanding about Mrs Lloyd’s manner, and she didn’t watch the tea being poured in order to judge its strength. She was simply acknowledging that this was Lizzie’s kitchen, Lizzie’s little cottage, and she was her guest. I’d been watching Lizzie make tea my whole life, but it was always for the Murrays, Mrs Ballard (who always watched the tea being poured) or for me: her mistress, her boss or her charge. The thought shocked me. I’d never once seen Lizzie with a friend.

  I started making my excuses. With little protest, Lizzie began to lay the table for two.

  Shropshire had been organised as a kind of treatment for my depression. I couldn’t have thought about it so clearly before, but as the heaviness of living without Her began to lift I realised I might have thrown myself into the Cherwell if I’d had the wherewithal to think of it.

  The hill demanded payment, and I knew I would never reach the top without the pain of the climb in my lungs and legs, no matter how fit I became. I’d complained about it those first few days – sat down and cried for lack of breath, and other things. I didn’t want to be there. But Lizzie had never let me turn back.

  ‘It’s the kind of pain that achieves something,’ she said.

  ‘What does it achieve?’ I moaned.

  ‘Time will tell,’ she said, pulling me to my feet.

  Then one afternoon I made it to the top without tears or complaint. I stood with my hands on my hips, breathing in the cooling air and looking beyond the valley towards Wales. I’d seen the view every day for weeks, but it was the first time I’d cared for it.

  ‘I wonder what those hills are called,’ I said.

  ‘Wenlock Edge, according to Mr Lloyd,’ said Lizzie.

  I looked at her in surprise. What else did she know?

  She stopped watching me so closely after that, and sometimes, when she and Mrs Lloyd had more anecdotes than one pot of tea could accommodate, she let me walk the hills alone.

  ‘I’m a bondmaid to the Dictionary,’ I heard Lizzie say to Mrs Lloyd one afternoon as I pulled on my boots.

  ‘And you say young Esme is one of them that finds the words?’ said Mrs Lloyd.

  Lizzie laughed and I threw her a look. ‘You could say that,’ she said, giving me a wink.

  ‘I can’t think of anything more boring,’ said Mrs Lloyd. ‘Do you remember having to write the same word over and over till all the letters sla
nted the same way? Numbers made more sense to me. Their meaning never changes.’

  ‘I never did make all the letters slant the same way,’ said Lizzie.

  ‘There’s many that don’t,’ said Mrs Lloyd, taking another biscuit.

  I picked up the walking stick that now leaned by the door.

  ‘Will you be alright?’ said Lizzie. Her voice was light, but her gaze was watchful.

  ‘I will,’ I said. ‘Enjoy your tea.’

  As I climbed the hill, I wondered what Lizzie and Mrs Lloyd were talking about. It was the first time I’d cared to think about it, and I was shocked that I’d been so self-absorbed. Sheep scattered from the path as I walked along, but they didn’t go far. They watched me pass, and I was reminded of the scrutiny of scholars when I walked into the reading room at Cambridge. It wasn’t an uncomfortable thought. I’d felt a little triumphant then, and I felt a little triumphant now. As though perhaps I’d achieved something.

  Lizzie climbed out of the buggy, and Tommy climbed out after her. ‘I’ll get that, Miss Lester,’ he said, reaching for the basket of provisions in the back.

  ‘Thank you, Tommy,’ said Lizzie. She watched him take the basket into the kitchen then looked up at Mrs Lloyd. ‘Lovely morning, Natasha. For sure, I’ll miss our outings.’

  Natasha. What an exotic name for a farmer’s wife. I continued to watch them through the open window of the bedroom. Mrs Lloyd shimmied across the front seat of the buggy and leaned down to rest her hand on Lizzie’s upturned cheek. ‘Bostin,’ I heard her say. I didn’t know what it meant, but Lizzie seemed to. She covered Mrs Lloyd’s hand with hers as if she were grateful for the comment. They carried on their farewell in quieter tones. When I saw Tommy heading back to the buggy, I hurried down the stairs to say my own goodbye and wave them off.

  As soon as we were back in the house, I turned to Lizzie. ‘What did Mrs Lloyd mean when she said bostin?’

  Lizzie turned towards the stove, intent on getting the kettle on to boil.

  ‘Oh, it’s just an endearment.’

  ‘But I’ve never heard it before.’

  ‘Nor me,’ Lizzie said, taking our teacups from beside the basin, where I’d left them to dry that morning. ‘Natasha said it once or twice, and other people besides. I thought it was a foreign word so I asked where it was from.’

  ‘What did she say?’ I searched my pockets, but they were empty. Lizzie poured hot water into the pot to warm it. She opened the tin of tea in readiness.

  ‘The word’s from here – not foreign at all.’

  I looked around the kitchen, but there was nothing to write on or with.

  ‘There’s a notebook and pencils in the top drawer beside your bed,’ Lizzie said, picking up the pot and rotating it to warm the sides. ‘You fetch them first.’

  Lizzie was sitting at the table when I came back down; our cups were steaming, and there were a plate of biscuits and a pair of scissors beside the pot. ‘To cut the page down to size,’ Lizzie said.

  When I was ready, she began. I was reminded of old Mabel, and the reverence she gave to this process. What was it that made them sit up straighter and check their thoughts before they spoke? Why did they care so much?

  ‘Bostin,’ Lizzie said, pronouncing the n with care. ‘It means lovely.’ She blushed.

  ‘Can you put it in a sentence?’

  ‘I can, but you must write Natasha’s name below it.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Lizzie Lester, my bostin mairt.’

  I wrote out the slip, then cut another.

  ‘And mairt? What does that mean?’

  ‘Friend,’ said Lizzie. ‘Natasha is my friend, my mairt.’

  I guessed at the spelling, and looked forward to adding these new words to my trunk. It had been a while since I had thought about it.

  Tomorrow we would be gone from Cobblers Dingle. I was going to miss the waves of green hills. I would miss the silence. When we first came, I found it too quiet, my thoughts too loud. But the silence had turned out not to be complete: the valley hummed and sang and bleated. When my thoughts had been heard and argued with, and when some kind of peace had been struck, I’d begun to listen to the valley like some would listen to music or a holy chant. There was solace in its rhythm, and it slowed the beat of my heart.

  I seemed better, according to Ditte. Her letters had been regular, even if mine, in the beginning, had not. I had recently regained the habit of writing to her, and apparently this was one sign of my improving health. Another, Ditte wrote, was an unexpected letter from Lizzie.

  Mrs Lloyd penned it. How brave of Lizzie to ask. She wrote that ‘Everything is high or deep or endless – there’s no shortage of places to do yourself in, yet Essy comes home every time with no sign of trying.’ If only everyone was as straight-speaking as her.

  Was I better? Before Shropshire I’d felt broken, as though I would fall should the scaffold of my work be removed. I didn’t feel that now, but there was a fine crack through the middle of me, and I suspected it might never mend. I remembered Lizzie apologising to Mrs Lloyd the first time she stayed to chat, for the chip in the cup.

  ‘A chip doesn’t stop it from holding tea,’ Mrs Lloyd had said.

  As our final day ended, the sky blushed pink – a parting gift, I thought. Lizzie had made a picnic of cheese, bread and Mrs Lloyd’s sweet cucumber pickle. She laid it on the lawn beside the cottage.

  ‘God is in this place,’ she said, without shifting her gaze from Wenlock Edge.

  ‘Do you think so, Lizzie?’

  ‘Oh, yes. I feel him more here than I ever have in church. Out here it’s like we’re stripped of all our clothes, of the callouses on our hands that tell our place, of our accents and words. He cares for none of it. All that matters is who you are in your heart. I’ve never loved him as much as I should, but here I do.’

  ‘Why is that?’ I asked.

  ‘I reckon it’s the first time he’s noticed me.’

  For a very long time, neither of us spoke. The sun broke through a long brushstroke of cloud and came down over Wenlock Edge and the Long Mynd behind it – one was like a shadow of the other.

  ‘Do you think he’ll forgive me, Lizzie?’ It was barely more than a thought, but I knew I’d spoken the words.

  Lizzie stayed silent, and the Long Mynd finally made a memory of the setting sun, leaving a landscape of blue hills. When she got up and went into the cottage, I realised it was not God’s forgiveness I cared about; it was hers. I imagined her dilemma. She wanted to reassure me, but couldn’t lie with God’s face turned on her.

  The drone that had been filling my ears since She was born, the shade that had been drawn over my eyes, the dull feeling in my arms and legs and breasts – they lifted all at once. I could hear and see and feel with an intensity that stole my breath and frightened me. I shivered, suddenly cold. There was the faintest smell of coal smoke and the sounds of birds calling their own to roost, their songs as clear and distinct as church bells. My face was wet with loss and love and regret. And woven through it all there was a thread of shameful relief.

  Lizzie came out with a rug, crocheted in all the colours of an autumn wood. She wrapped it around my shoulders and weighed it down with her solid arms.

  ‘It’s not his place to forgive you, Essymay,’ she whispered into my ear. ‘It’s no one’s but yours.’

  Lizzie and I stepped from the train. We put our cases down and pulled the collars of our coats higher against the November chill. Shropshire had been our Indian summer, and Oxford felt like winter. As we waited for a cab to take us to Sunnyside, I had to remind myself that behind the hard stone of all the buildings, a river flowed.

  At Sunnyside, scarlet leaves still clung to the ash between the Scriptorium and the kitchen. Lizzie and I stood beneath it to say our goodbyes. It had a heaviness about it, this farewell, as if we were leaving to travel in different directions, when in fact we were back on shared and familiar ground. But something had shifted. Lizzie wa
s different, or perhaps it was just that now I saw her differently, as a woman who existed beyond my need for her. When we’d left Oxford I’d been her charge, as always. Now we embraced as friends, comfort going in both directions. In Shropshire, we had each found something we’d longed for, but as I held her, I feared Lizzie’s new confidence would be too fragile to survive who she had to be in Oxford. She had her own concerns for me, and she voiced them into the quiet space of our embrace.

  ‘It’s not about forgiveness, Essymay. We can’t always make the choices we’d like, but we can try to make the best of what we must settle for. Take care not to dwell.’

  She searched my face, but I couldn’t give her the assurance she wanted. I hugged her a little tighter, but promised nothing.

  Mrs Ballard was leaning on a walking stick and holding the kitchen door for Lizzie. I turned towards the Scriptorium. It was time to return to our lives.

  Every time I came home, the Scriptorium seemed smaller. I’d been grateful for it when I returned from Ditte’s: it had wrapped around me, and as long as I’d stayed within its word-lined walls I’d felt protected. This time was different. I stood in the doorway, my travelling bag still heavy in my hand, and wondered how I would fit.

  There were three new assistants. Two had joined the sorting table, and the other was set up at a new desk a little too close to my own. Da saw me hovering, and his face broke into a smile that threatened to overwhelm me. He pushed back his chair in such haste that it toppled. As he tried to catch it, the papers he was working with went flying. I dropped my bag and went to help, bending to reach beneath the sorting table for a stray slip. I handed it to Da, who took my hand and held it to his lips. Then he searched my face, as Lizzie had just done.

  I nodded, gave a small smile. He was satisfied, but there was so much to say and too many people looking on. Work around the sorting table was suspended, and I felt stupid for coming straight to the Scriptorium instead of going home. But I’d known Da would be working, and I was afraid of an empty house.