The Dictionary of Lost Words(40)

On other days, when Lizzie wasn’t with me, I’d visit certain stallholders who I knew had a way with words. They spoke with accents from far up north or the south-west corner of England. Some were Gypsy or travelling Irish, and they came and went. They were mostly women, old and young, and few of them could read the words they’d given me once I wrote them down. But they loved to share them. Over a few years I’d managed to collect more than a hundred. Some words, I discovered, were already in the pigeon-holes, but so many were not. When I was feeling in the mood for something salacious, I would always visit Mabel.



A woman I’d never seen before was picking through Mabel’s wares in the same distracted way I usually did. They were deep in conversation, and I was reluctant to interrupt. I hung back among the buckets of flowers at Mrs Stiles’ stall.

I bought flowers from Mrs Stiles every week, but my association with Mabel over the past few years had been noted, and the florist was not friendly. This made lingering all the more awkward.

‘Have you decided what you want?’ Mrs Stiles had come from behind her counter to straighten flowers that didn’t need straightening.

I heard Mabel snort at something the woman said. Looking over, I glimpsed pale skin and a rouged cheek as the woman averted her face, just slightly, to avoid the rank breath that I knew assailed her. I wondered why she was still there; pity only required a moment. I had an uncanny sense I was watching myself, as others might have watched me – as Mrs Stiles must surely have watched me.

The florist was waiting for some kind of response, so I drifted towards the bucket of carnations. Their pastel symmetry was bland and somehow repellent, but they were well placed to see Mabel’s visitor more clearly. I bent slightly, as if inspecting the bunches, and felt Mrs Stiles’ barely restrained disapproval. Petals fell from some lilac blooms she was adjusting with too much vigour.

‘For you, Mabel,’ I said a few minutes later, handing over a small posy of lilacs, their scent an obvious relief to Mabel’s new acquaintance. I dared not look back at the florist, but Mabel was shameless. She took the posy and critically inspected its wrapping of brown paper and simple white ribbon. ‘It’s the flowers that matter,’ she said too loudly, then held them to her nose with exaggerated delight.

‘How do they smell?’ asked the young woman.

‘Couldn’t tell you. ’Aven’t smelled nothin’ for years.’ Mabel handed her the blooms, and the woman buried her face in them, sucking in their scent.

With her eyes closed, I could take her in. She was tall, though not as tall as me, and her figure curved like that of a woman in a Pears’ Soap advertisement. Above a high lace collar, her skin was pale and without blemish. Honey-blonde hair hung in a lose braid down her back, and she wore no hat.

She laid the flowers down between a barnacled bell that was unlikely to ever ring again and the whittled face of an angel.

I picked up the whittling. ‘I haven’t seen this one before, Mabel.’

‘Finished this mornin’. ’

‘Is she someone you know?’ I asked.

‘Me before I lost me teeth.’ Mabel laughed.

The woman made no move to leave, and I wondered if I’d interrupted some private conversation they were waiting to resume. I took my purse from my pocket and searched for the right coins.

‘Thought you’d like ’er,’ Mabel said. At first I thought she was talking about the young woman, but she picked up the whittled angel and accepted my coins.

‘My name’s Tilda,’ the woman said, offering her hand.

I hesitated.

‘She don’t like shakin’ ’ands,’ said Mabel. ‘Scared you might flinch.’

Tilda looked at my fingers then straight in my eyes. ‘Not much makes me flinch,’ she said. Her grip was firm. I was grateful.

‘Esme,’ I said. ‘Are you a friend of Mabel’s?’

‘No, we’ve just met.’

‘Kindred spirits, I reckon,’ said Mabel.

Tilda leaned in. ‘She insists I’m a dollymop.’

I didn’t understand.

‘Look at ’er face. Never ’eard of a dollymop.’ Mabel was not so discrete, and Mrs Stiles made it known she’d taken offence with a scraping of buckets and a mumbled protest. ‘Come on, girl,’ Mabel said to me. ‘Take out yer slips.’

Tilda cocked her head.

‘She collects words,’ said Mabel.

‘What kinds of words?’

‘Women’s words. Dirty ones.’

I stood dumb, caught with no adequate explanation. It was as though Da had asked me to turn out my pockets.

But Tilda was interested, not appalled. ‘Really?’ she said, taking in the loose fit of my jacket and the daisy chain Lizzie had embroidered around the edge of the sleeves. ‘Dirty words?’

‘No. Well, sometimes. Dirty words are Mabel’s speciality.’

I took out my bundle of blank slips and a pencil.

‘Are you a dollymop?’ I asked, not sure how offensive it might be but curious to try the word out.

‘An actress, though to some it’s the same thing.’ She smiled at Mabel. ‘Our friend tells me that treading the boards was how she got into her particular line of work.’

I began to understand and wrote dollymop in the top-left corner of a slip I’d cut from a discarded proof. These slips were becoming favourites, though the pleasure I took in crossing out the legitimate words and recording one of Mabel’s on the other side was never without an echo of shame.