The Dictionary of Lost Words(26)

Mr Hart glanced at me as I approached, but didn’t pause in his conversation with Mr Bradley. The conversation turned out to be a debate, and I had the feeling it would continue until Mr Hart prevailed. He did not have the stature of the second editor, and his suit was not of the same quality, but his face was stern where Mr Bradley’s was kindly. It was only a matter of time. The compositor caught my eye and smiled, as if apologising for the older men. He was a good deal taller than both of them, lean and clean-shaven. His hair was almost black, his eyes almost violet. I recognised him then. A boy from St Barnabas. I’d spent a lot of time watching the boys play in their yard when none of the girls would play with me in ours. I could tell he didn’t recognise me.

‘May I ask how you spell forgo?’ he asked, leaning towards me.

‘Really, they’re still talking about that?’ I whispered. ‘That’s why I’m here.’

His brow creased, but before he could ask anything else, Mr Hart addressed me.

‘Esme, how is your father?’

‘Very well, sir.’

‘Is he here?’

‘No, Dr Murray sent me.’ I handed over the note, a little crushed by my nervous hand.

Mr Hart read it and nodded slowly in agreement. I noticed the twirled ends of his moustache turn up a little. He passed the note to Mr Bradley.

‘This should settle things, Henry,’ he said.

Mr Bradley read the note and the ends of his moustache remained still. He conceded the argument about forgo with a gentlemanly nod of the head.

‘Now, Gareth. If you could show Mr Bradley the mats for get,’ said Mr Hart, while he shook the editor’s hand.

‘Yes, sir,’ the compositor said. Then to me, ‘Nice to meet you, miss.’

But we haven’t really met, I thought.

He turned towards his bench, and Mr Bradley followed.

I went to say goodbye to Mr Hart, but he had already moved on to another bench and was checking an older man’s work. I would have liked to follow him, to understand what each man was working on. Most were setting type from manuscripts: in each case, the piles of uniform pages were in a single hand. Just one author. I looked towards the bench where Mr Bradley now stood with the young compositor. There were three piles of slips tied with string. Another pile was unbound, half the words already in type and the other half waiting.

‘Miss Nicoll.’

I turned and saw Mr Hart holding open the door. I wove back through the rows of benches.

Over the next few months, Dr Murray gave me several notes to deliver to the Controller. I took them gladly, hoping for another opportunity to visit the composing room. But every time I knocked on Mr Hart’s office door, he would answer.

He only asked me to stay if an immediate reply had been sought from Dr Murray, and on those occasions I was not invited to sit. I thought this an oversight rather than a preference on Mr Hart’s part, because he always seemed harried. He would rather be in the composing room too, I thought.

In the mornings I belonged to Mrs Ballard, but I showed little aptitude. ‘There’s more to it than licking the bowl clean,’ she said every time another cake sank or was found, on tasting, to be missing some key ingredient. It was a relief to both of us that my time in the kitchen was being curtailed by errands for the Dictionary. Since becoming Dr Murray’s occasional delivery girl, I felt more comfortable in the Scriptorium. My misdemeanours may not have been forgotten, but at least my usefulness was being noticed.

‘By the time you return with that book I will have two entries written that would not have been written otherwise,’ Mr Sweatman said once. ‘Keep this up and we’ll be done before the century is out.’



My chores for Mrs Ballard completed, I took off my apron and hung it on the hook of the pantry door.

‘You’re happier,’ Lizzie said, pausing over the vegetables she was preparing.

‘Time,’ I said.

‘It’s the Scrippy,’ she said, with a cautious look that confused me. ‘The longer you spend over there the more you seem like your old self.’

‘That’s a good thing, isn’t it?’

‘For sure, it’s a good thing.’ She pushed a pile of chopped carrots into a bowl then began slicing parsnips in half. ‘I just don’t want you to be tempted,’ she said.

‘Tempted?’

‘By the words.’

I realised then that there had been no words. There had been errands of all kinds, books and notes and verbal messages, but no words. No proofs. I hadn’t been trusted with a single slip.

I had an errands basket by the door of the Scriptorium. Every day there were books to return to various places, and a list for borrowing. There were quotations to check at the Bodleian, letters to post, and notes to deliver to Mr Hart and sometimes to scholars at the colleges.

On one particular day, there were three letters set aside for Mr Bradley. They often turned up at the Scriptorium, and it was my job to deliver them to him in his Dictionary Room at the Press. This room was nothing like the Scriptorium: it was just an ordinary office, not much bigger than Mr Hart’s, even though Mr Bradley had three assistants working with him. One of them was his daughter, Eleanor. She was about twenty-three, the same age as Hilda Murray, but she already looked matronly. Whenever I visited, she offered me tea and a biscuit.