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

  He hooked my arm through his and turned me towards the new assistants.

  ‘Mr Cushing, Mr Pope, this is my daughter, Esme.’

  Mr Cushing and Mr Pope both stood. One was tall and fair, the other short and dark, and each offered a hand in greeting then pulled it back to allow the other to go first. My own hand hung awkwardly, unshaken, between us. If they weren’t so preoccupied with each other I might have wondered if they were avoiding the touch of melted skin, but they laughed. Then each urged the other to proceed, and the farce continued.

  ‘Just bow to the young lady and try not to bang your heads,’ said Mr Sweatman from the other side of the sorting table. ‘You see what happens when you leave us, Esme? We must make do with music-hall comedians.’

  Mr Cushing, the taller, bowed, which gave Mr Pope the opportunity to take my hand.

  ‘Well, that’s cheating,’ said Mr Cushing.

  ‘Opportunistic, my friend. Fortune favours the bold.’

  They began addressing me in turns. They were pleased to meet me, had heard so much about my work on the Dictionary, were delighted when Da told them about my research for Miss Thompson – they had studied her history of England at school. They hoped my lungs had felt the benefit of my time in Shropshire. I blushed at the thought I’d been the topic of conversation, at the truth and lies of it.

  ‘Dr Murray will be glad for the sight of you, Miss Nicoll,’ said Mr Cushing. ‘Only yesterday, he mentioned in passing that we take up twice the room but produce half the copy of the young woman who works at the back of the Scriptorium. I presume that is you, and it is a pleasure.’ Again, he bowed.

  ‘We weren’t offended,’ Mr Pope was quick to say. ‘We’re blow-ins. Here for the semester. Our reward for studying philology. I think I’ve learned more this past month than I would in a year at Balliol. I also take my hat off to you, Miss Nicoll.’

  There was an audible sigh from the back of the Scriptorium.

  ‘You are disturbing the peace, Mr Pope,’ Da said with a smile.

  ‘Quite,’ said Mr Pope, and he and Mr Cushing nodded towards me and lowered themselves back into their chairs.

  Da took my elbow and led me to the back of the Scriptorium.

  ‘Mr Dankworth, may I introduce my daughter, Esme.’

  Mr Dankworth finished the edit he was making, rose from his chair and offered a curt nod. ‘Miss Nicoll.’

  I returned the nod and the greeting, and he sat back down. His attention was back on the pages in front of him before Da and I had turned to leave.

  ‘Not a blow-in,’ Da said, when we were out of earshot.

  The next day, the Scriptorium was even more crowded. Dr Murray was sitting at his high desk, and Elsie and Rosfrith Murray were moving about the shelves as they so often did when their father was at work. They each greeted me with an embrace, the warmth of which was unprecedented but not unwelcome.

  ‘I hope you are quite well now, Esme,’ Elsie said quietly, and I wondered what story she had been told. But before there was any more conversation, Dr Murray interrupted.

  ‘Ah, good,’ he said, when he saw me standing with his daughters. He came over with a sheet of paper in one hand and a pile of slips in the other. ‘The etymology of prophesy has caused Mr Cushing some concern. It is obvious where he has strayed.’ Mr Cushing caught my eye and nodded in agreement. ‘Perhaps you could review his efforts and make the necessary corrections? They will need to be ready for typesetting in a week.’ Dr Murray handed me the materials. Then, as an afterthought, he said, ‘A good walk. It does one the world of good, don’t you agree?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ I said.

  He looked at me as if trying to judge the truth of my answer, then he turned and went back to his work.

  I made my way around the sorting table, said good morning to Mr Sweatman and bonan matenon to Mr Maling, and rested my hand on Da’s shoulder for just a moment. He patted my hand, and when he turned to look towards the back of the Scriptorium, I realised it was a conciliatory gesture. I could barely see my cherished workspace beyond the bulk of Mr Dankworth, whose desk had been placed perpendicular to mine.

  When I was closer, I saw that the surface of my desk was piled with books and papers that I knew I hadn’t left there a month ago. I remembered the stray slips with women’s words sitting inside it, waiting to join the others in the trunk under Lizzie’s bed. Anxiety fluttered in my chest.

  Mr Dankworth must have heard me approach, but he didn’t turn around. I stood beside him for a moment, taking him in. He was large, not fat, and everything about him was as neat as a pin. His dark hair was short and parted in a straight line, right down the middle. He had no beard and no moustache, and his fingernails were as well-kept as a woman’s. He must have chosen to sit with his back to everyone.

  ‘Good morning, Mr Dankworth,’ I said.

  He glanced at me. ‘Good morning, Miss Nicoll.’

  ‘Please, call me Esme.’

  He nodded and looked back to his work.

  ‘Mr Dankworth, I was wondering if I could reclaim my desk?’ There was no indication he’d heard me. ‘Mr Dankworth, I …’

  ‘Yes, Miss Nicoll, I heard you. If I could finish this entry, I’ll attend to it.’

  ‘Oh, of course.’ I stood, waiting for permission to proceed. How easily I was put in my place.

  He continued to bend over his proofs. From where I stood, I could see ruler-straight lines through unwanted copy and neat corrections noted in margins. His left elbow rested on the desk, and his hand massaged his temple as if coaxing the words out of his brain. I recognised something of my own attitude in this posture, and my first impression of him, not at all charitable, moved a little towards the positive.

  A minute passed. Then another.

  ‘Mr Dankworth?’

  His hand fell with a thump against the desk, and his head jerked up. I saw his shoulders lift with a deep breath and imagined his eyes rolled towards the heavens. He pushed his chair back and moved between his desk and mine. There was barely room for him.

  ‘Let me help you,’ I said, picking up a book from my desk and trying to catch his eye.

  He took it from me, his eyes averted. ‘No need; there’s an order. I’ll do it.’

  He removed the last book, and I waited, fingertips kneading my skirt, to see if he would turn back to my desk and lift the lid. For a moment, I was back at school, lined up with all the other girls ready for inspection. The insides of our desks, our stockings, our drawers. I never understood why they mattered. Mr Dankworth returned to his chair, and the sound of its protest brought me back to the Scriptorium. He’d finished. My desk was bare. But there was now a wall of books along the front and side edge of Mr Dankworth’s desk. An effective screen.

  I sat down and spread out the pile of slips for prophesy. I ordered them by date, then referred to the notes Mr Cushing had prepared.

  A week went by, and the Scriptorium felt like an old friend I had to reacquaint myself with. Mr Pope and Mr Cushing rose from their chairs every time Elsie, Rosfrith or I entered, and competed to help or pay the nicest compliments. Their loquaciousness was an irritation to almost everyone except Da, who rewarded their attentions to me with small smiles and nods. Dr Murray was not so encouraging.

  ‘Gentlemen, the more words you employ to flatter the ladies the fewer you define. Your constant use of the English language is, in fact, doing it a disservice.’ They quickly turned to their work.

  Mr Dankworth was a different matter altogether. The only words that passed between us were related to the inevitable inconvenience of me having to pass by his desk to get to mine. ‘Excuse me, Mr Dankworth’; ‘My apologies, Mr Dankworth’; ‘Your satchel, Mr Dankworth, perhaps you could keep it under your desk so I don’t have to keep stepping over it?’

  ‘He’s very good at what he does,’ Da said one evening as I was preparing dinner. A maid now came four afternoons a week, which left three dinners for us to cook ourselves. Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management wa
s stained with my efforts, but I wasn’t improving.

  ‘He has an eagle-eye for inconsistency and redundancy, and he rarely makes mistakes.’

  ‘But he’s odd, don’t you think?’ I brought the hashed cod to the table. It sat like a stagnant pool within its mashed potato border.

  ‘We’re all a bit odd, Esme, though perhaps lexicographers are odder than most.’

  ‘I don’t think he likes me very much.’ I served Da and then myself.

  ‘I don’t think he likes people very much; doesn’t understand them. You mustn’t take it personally.’ Da took a sip of water and cleared his throat. ‘And what about Mr Pope and Mr Cushing? How do you find them?’

  ‘Oh, very pleasant. And funny, in a fumbling way.’ The cod was overcooked and under-salted. Da seemed not to notice.

  ‘Yes. Nice young men. Is there one you prefer? Good families I’m told, both of them.’ He took another sip of water. ‘I wonder, Essy. Do you … I mean, would you consider …’

  I put down my knife and fork and looked at him. Beads of perspiration were gathering at his temples. He loosened his tie.

  ‘Da, what are you trying to say?’

  He took his handkerchief and wiped his brow. ‘Lily would have had all this in hand.’

  ‘Had what in hand?’

  ‘Your future. Your security. Marriage and such.’

  ‘Marriage and such?’

  ‘It never occurred to me that it was something I should arrange. Ditte would normally … but it doesn’t seem to have occurred to her either.’

  ‘Arrange?’

  ‘Well, not arrange. Facilitate.’ He looked down at his food then back up at me. ‘I failed you, Essy. I wasn’t paying attention; I wasn’t really sure what I should be paying attention to, and now …’

  ‘And now, what?’

  He hesitated. ‘And now you’re twenty-five.’

  I stared him down. He looked away. We ate in silence for a while.

  ‘What exactly is a good family, Da?’

  I could see he was relieved the subject had shifted a little.

  ‘Well, I suppose for some it’s about reputation. Others, money. For others it might be education or good works.’

  ‘But what does it mean for you?’

  He wiped his mouth with a napkin, then placed his knife and fork on the empty plate.

  ‘Well?’

  He came around to my side of the table and sat beside me. ‘Love, Essy. A good family is one where there is love.’

  I nodded. ‘Thank goodness for that, because I have neither education nor money, and my reputation relies on secrets and lies.’ I pushed my own plate away in frustration. The fish was inedible.

  ‘Oh, my dear, dear girl. I know I’ve let you down, but I don’t know how to fix things.’

  ‘Do you still love me, after everything that has happened?’

  ‘Of course I do.’

  ‘Then you have not let me down.’ I took up his hand and stroked the freckled skin on the back. It was dry, but the palm of his hand and the pads of his fingers were as smooth as silk. They always had been, and I’d always found it curious. ‘I have made mistakes, Da, and I have made choices. One of those choices was not to seek a marriage.’

  ‘Would it have been possible?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, I think so. But it was not what I wanted.’

  ‘But, Essy, life is hard for women who aren’t married.’

  ‘Ditte seems to cope. Eleanor Bradley seems happy; Rosfrith and Elsie aren’t engaged, as far as I know.’

  He searched my face, trying to understand what I was saying, what it meant. He was editing the future he thought I would have, excising the wedding, the son-in-law, the grandchildren. A sadness clouded his eyes. I thought of Her.

  ‘Oh, Da.’ Tears fell, and neither of us wiped our cheeks. ‘I have to think that I’ve made the right decisions. Please, please, just keep loving me. It’s what you do best.’

  He nodded.

  ‘And promise me.’

  ‘Anything.’

  ‘Don’t try to fix things. You are a brilliant lexicographer but not a matchmaker.’

  He smiled. ‘I promise.’

  The Scriptorium was an uncomfortable place for a while. Though I demurred, and Da stopped encouraging their efforts to impress me, Mr Pope and Mr Cushing were slow to understand. ‘They are a bit slow with everything,’ Da commented with an apologetic smile.

  But the source of most of my discomfort was Mr Dankworth. Before he arrived, my desk had the perfect amount of privacy and perspective. I could do my work without interference, and when I paused I needed only to lean a fraction to my right to have a view of the sorting table and of Dr Murray on his perch. If I leaned a fraction further, I could see who came and went through the Scriptorium door. Now, when I looked to my right, my view was the bulk of Mr Dankworth’s hunched shoulders and the perfect part of his hair. I felt imprisoned.

  Then he began scrutinising my work.

  I was the least qualified assistant in the Scriptorium; even Rosfrith outranked me, having finished her schooling. But no one brought it to my attention quite like Mr Dankworth. He had a particular way of interacting with each and every person in the Scriptorium based on where he thought they sat in the hierarchy. He practically bowed in front of Dr Murray. He deferred to Da and Mr Sweatman, and he ignored Mr Cushing and Mr Pope on the grounds, I suppose, that they were ‘blow-ins’. He had a strange reaction to Elsie and Rosfrith – I’m not sure he knew one from the other, having never met either’s eye, but he skirted around them both as if they represented a ledge from which he might fall. He never corrected them or questioned them, though, and I came to think their father’s name protected them from his scrutiny and disdain. Those, he reserved chiefly for me.

  ‘This is not right,’ he said one day when I came back from eating my lunch. He was standing by my desk and holding a small square of paper in his large hand. I recognised it as a variant meaning I had pinned to the proof I was editing.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Your syntax is not clear. I have rewritten it.’

  I manoeuvred past him and sat at my desk. Sure enough, a new square of paper was pinned to the proof with Mr Dankworth’s precise handwriting. It said what it should say, and I tried to figure out how it was different to what I had written.

  ‘Mr Dankworth, may I have my original?’

  He didn’t answer, and when I looked up I could see it was too late. He was by the grate, watching it burn.

  Christmas still hung from trees, inside and out. As we walked towards Sunnyside, Da pointed out every decorated version he spied through the windows of sitting rooms along St Margaret’s Road. We’d made a game of this once, searching these private spaces for the grandest or most charming tree, trying to guess what gifts were underneath and the nature of the children who would rush to unwrap them. It wasn’t a game I wanted to play now. I hadn’t counted Christmas among my losses, but it became clear that I’d given it away when I’d given Her away. As Da tried to pull me out of the reflective mood I’d settled into, I wondered what else I had forfeited.

  The Scriptorium was empty when we arrived. We would have it to ourselves, Da said, until Mr Sweatman, Mr Pope and Mr Cushing returned on Wednesday. The Murrays were in Scotland until the new year, and the other assistants would trickle in towards the end of the week.

  ‘And Mr Dankworth?’ I asked.

  ‘First Monday of the new year,’ Da said. ‘You have a whole week without him looking over your shoulder.’

  The relief must have been plain on my face. He smiled. ‘Not every gift is wrapped and under the tree.’

  The next few days passed in a nostalgic blur. Each morning we collected the post, which I sorted and reviewed and delivered to the desk of the intended recipient. If there were slips, they became my morning’s work.

  When Mr Sweatman returned, he spent a few minutes pacing the room and casting his eye over the sorting table and the smaller desks. ‘It may
look as if Cushing and Pope have just stepped out for lunch, but I am reliably informed that by mutual agreement they will not be returning,’ he said at last. ‘Murray calculated their contribution in the negative and suggested they pursue careers in banking. Jolly good advice, Pope said, and they all shook hands.’

  Their places at the sorting table were strewn with papers and books.

  ‘I’ll tidy up then, shall I?’ I opened the covers of one or two books to identify their owners.

  ‘An excellent idea,’ said Mr Sweatman. ‘And when it’s cleared, it should suit Mr Dankworth perfectly, don’t you think?’

  I looked at him. ‘Do you think he’ll prefer it?’

  ‘It was always Murray’s intention that Dankworth sit with the rest of us, but Cushing and Pope needed supervision and there wasn’t the room. I have no doubt your peace will be restored before we’ve all acquired the habit of writing 1908 instead of 1907.’

  My peace was not restored. Mr Dankworth said that he had established ways of working that would be disturbed if he moved to the sorting table. Of course, I thought. It would be far harder to review my corrections if he moved.

  Mr Sweatman made the suggestion regularly, but Mr Dankworth was consistent in his reply that he was comfortable with the current arrangement, thank you very much, curt nod.

  As the days lengthened towards spring, my mood lightened. I looked forward to errands outside the Scriptorium and I wore a triangular path between Sunnyside, the Press and the Bodleian Library.

  I was taking books from the basket by the door and putting them in the crate attached to the back of the bicycle when Dr Murray came up to me.

  ‘Corrected proofs for Mr Hart, and the slips for romanity.’ He handed me three pages with editing marks all over them and a small bundle of slips, ordered and numbered and tied with string. As I was putting them in my satchel, one of the corrections caught my eye. It would have to wait. I walked my bicycle out onto the Banbury Road and headed towards Little Clarendon Street.