The Dictionary of Lost Words(23)

‘I’ve made enquiries at the Oxford High School for Girls,’ Ditte said.

I wanted to scream and cry and rail at her, but I did none of these. I looked to Da.

‘We should have sent you there in the first place,’ he said sadly.

I returned to bed and only came down again when I heard Ditte leave.



Ditte wrote to me every week after that. I let her letters sit on the sideboard by the front door, unopened, and when three or four had gathered Da would take them away. After a while, Ditte included her pages to me in her letters to Da. He would leave them on the sideboard, unfolded, begging to be read. I’d glance at the writing, absorb a few lines without meaning to, then grab the pages in my fist and crumple them into a ball to be thrown into a dustbin or fire.

The Oxford High School for Girls was on the Banbury Road. Neither Da nor I mentioned how close it was to the Scriptorium. I was welcomed by the few girls from St Barnabas who had gone there, but I limped through the rest of the school year. The headmistress called Da to her office to inform him that I had failed my exams. I sat in a chair outside the closed door and heard her say, ‘I can’t recommend she continue.’

‘What will we do with you?’ Da said, as we walked back towards Jericho.

I shrugged. All I wanted to do was sleep.

When we arrived home there was a letter for Da from Ditte. He opened it and began reading. I saw his cheeks colour and his jaw clench, then he went into the sitting room and closed the door. I stood in the hall, waiting for bad news. When he came out, he had the pages Ditte had written for me in one hand. With the other he stroked the length of my arm until our hands were clutching. ‘Can you ever forgive me,’ he said. He put the pages on the sideboard. ‘I think you should read this one.’ Then he went into the kitchen to fill the kettle.

I picked up the letter.

July 28th, 1898

My dear Esme,

Harry writes that you are still not yourself. He skirts the truth of it, of course, but he described you as ‘distant’, ‘preoccupied’ and ‘tired’ in a single paragraph. Most alarming, he reports that you avoid the Scrippy and spend all day in your room.

I was hoping things would be different for you once you were away from Cauldshiels and home with your father, but it’s been three months. Now that the summer is here, I’m hoping your mood may lift by degrees.

Are you eating, Esme? You were so thin when I saw you last. I asked Mrs Ballard to spoil you with treats and, until Harry informed me you’d barely left the house, it was some comfort to imagine you sitting on your stool in her kitchen while she baked you a cake. In my mind you are younger, wearing a yellow polka-dot apron tied right up across your chest. That’s how I found you once when I visited Oxford. Were you nine, or ten? I can’t recall.

Something was happening at Cauldshiels, wasn’t it, Esme? The thing is, your letters never said. But your letters, now that I think about it, were too perfect. When I read them now, I see they could have been written by anyone; and yet they are in your distinctive hand.

The other day I re-read how you had walked to the Roman fort of Trimontium, written a poem in the Romantic style of Wordsworth and done satisfactorily in a mathematics test. I wondered whether you had enjoyed the hike and been proud of your poem. The absence of words was the clue, but I didn’t see it.

I should have paid more attention to what was missing in your letters, Esme. I should have visited. I would have, if not for Beth’s illness. When that passed, the headmistress advised against it. Too disruptive mid-term, she said. I took her word.

Harry wanted you home much sooner (truth be told, Harry never wanted you to leave). It was me, my dear Esme, who suggested his concerns were unfounded, that boarding school would take a while to get used to for a child accustomed to the local parish school and lunchtimes spent in the Scriptorium. I told him to give it another year, that things might change for the better.

After collecting you at Easter, Harry sent me the most direct letter of his life. You wouldn’t be going back, he said, whatever my opinion on the subject. You remember I travelled to Oxford the next day. When I saw you, I found no quarrel with his decision.

We barely spoke, you and I. I had hoped that time would restore you, but it seems you need more. You are in my heart, dear girl, even if I have been dislodged from yours. I hope it is not permanent.

I have enclosed a news clipping that I thought might be important to you. I do not want to presume but have found it difficult not to. Please forgive my blind eye.

Yours, with deepest love always,

Ditte

I folded the pages around the tiny news clipping and put them in my pocket. For the first time in a long time I would have something to put in the trunk when I visited Lizzie’s room.



‘What’ve you got there, Essy?’ said Lizzie, coming into her room and pulling her dirty pinny up over her head.

I looked at the tiny article clipped from the paper. It was just a single sentence, no more than a quotation. A teacher has been dismissed from Cauldshiels School for Young Ladies following the admission of a student to hospital.

‘Just words, Lizzie,’ I said.

‘There’s no “just words” for you, Essymay, ’specially if they end up in the trunk. What do they say?’

‘They say I wasn’t alone.’





During the day I helped Mrs Ballard in the kitchen, and I only ventured towards the Scriptorium in the late afternoon, when almost everyone had left. I’d hesitate in the doorway, like Lizzie used to do, and watch Hilda moving around the pigeon-holes. She filed slips and removed them; she wrote letters and corrected proofs. All the while, Dr Murray sat like a wise owl at his high desk. Sometimes he would invite me in and sometimes he wouldn’t.