The Dictionary of Lost Words(13)
When the year turned, the sorting table seemed to have shrunk. I crawled beneath it one afternoon and hit my head when I crawled out.
‘Look at the state of your dress,’ Lizzie said when she collected me for afternoon tea. It was patterned with smudges and dust. She beat off what she could, ‘It ain’t ladylike to crawl about the Scrippy, Essymay. I don’t know why your father lets you.’
‘Because I’m not a lady,’ I said.
‘You ain’t a cat, either.’
When I returned to the Scriptorium, I navigated the perimeter. I trailed my funny fingers over shelves and books and collected little wads of dust. I wouldn’t mind being a cat, I thought.
Mr Sweatman winked at me as I passed near him.
Mr Maling said, ‘Kiel vi fartas, Esme?’
I said, ‘I’m well, thank you, Mr Maling.’
He looked at me and raised his eyebrows. ‘And in Esperanto you would say?’
I had to think. ‘Mi fartas bone, dankon.’
He smiled and nodded. ‘Bona.’
Mr Crane took a deep breath to let everyone know I was a disturbance.
I considered slinking beneath the sorting table, but didn’t. It was a grown-up decision, and I felt a sulk take hold as if someone other than me had made it. Instead, I found a space between two shelves and shuffled awkwardly into place, disturbing cobwebs and dust and two lost slips.
They’d been hidden beneath the shelf on my right. I picked up one and then the other. C words, only recently lost. I tucked them away then looked over to the sorting table. Mr Crane sat closest, and there was another word by his chair. I wondered if he even cared.
‘She’s light-fingered,’ I heard Mr Crane say to Dr Murray. Dr Murray turned my way, and a chill spread through me. I thought I might turn to stone. He returned to his high desk and picked up a proof. Then he walked over to Da.
Dr Murray tried to make it look as though they were talking about the words, but neither looked at the proof. When Dr Murray had moved away, Da looked along the length of the sorting table to the gap between the shelves. He caught my eye and signalled towards the Scriptorium door.
When we were standing under the ash, Da held out his hand. I just looked at it. He said my name louder than he’d ever said it before. Then he made me turn out my pockets.
The word was flimsy and uninteresting, but I liked the quotation. When I put it in his hand, Da looked at it as if he didn’t know what it was. As if he didn’t know what he should do with it. I saw his lips move around the word and the sentence that contained it.
COUNT
‘I count you for a fool.’ – Tennyson, 1859
For a very long time he said nothing. We stood there in the cold as if we were playing a game of statues and neither of us wanted to be the first to move. Then he put the slip in his trouser pocket and steered me towards the kitchen.
‘Lizzie, would it be alright if Esme spent the rest of the afternoon in your room?’ Da asked, closing the door behind him to keep in the heat of the range.
Lizzie put down the potato she was peeling and wiped her hands on her apron. ‘ ’Course, Mr Nicoll. Esme is always welcome.’
‘She’s not to be entertained, Lizzie. She’s to sit and think about her behaviour. I’d rather you didn’t keep her company.’
‘As you wish, Mr Nicoll,’ said Lizzie, though neither she nor Da seemed able to look each other in the eye.
Alone upstairs and sitting against Lizzie’s bed, I reached into the sleeve of my dress and pulled out the other word, counted. Whoever wrote it had beautiful handwriting. A lady, I was sure, and not just because the quotation was from Byron. The words were all curves and long limbs.
I reached under Lizzie’s bed and pulled out the trunk. I always expected it to feel heavier, but it slid across the floorboards without effort. Inside, slips covered the bottom like a carpet of autumn leaves, and Ditte’s letters rested among them.
It wasn’t fair that I was in trouble when Mr Crane had been so careless. The words were duplicates, I was sure – common words that many volunteers would have sent in. I put both hands in the trunk and felt the slips shift through my fingers. I’d saved them all, just as Da thought he was saving the others by putting them in the Dictionary. My words came from nooks and crannies and from the discard basket in the centre of the sorting table.
My trunk is like the Dictionary, I thought. Except it’s full of words that have been lost or neglected. I had an idea. I wanted to ask Lizzie for a pencil but knew she wouldn’t disobey Da. I looked around her room, wondering where she would keep them.
Without her in it, Lizzie’s room felt unfamiliar – as if it might not belong to her. I got off the floor and went to the wardrobe. It was a relief to see her old winter coat with the top button that didn’t quite match the others. She had three pinnies and two dresses; her Sunday best, once shamrock-green, was now paled like summer grass. I brushed it with my hand and saw strips of shamrock where Lizzie had let out the seams. When I opened her drawers, all I could see were underthings, an extra set of bed linen, two shawls and a small wooden box. I knew what was in the box. Just the other day, Mrs Ballard had decided it was time I knew about monthlies, and so Lizzie had shown me the rags and the belt that she kept in there. I hoped never to see them again, so I left the box closed and shut the wardrobe door.