The Dictionary of Lost Words(44)

‘I couldn’t act to save my life,’ Bill said. ‘Which is why I’m so good at dressmaking.’

‘Really?’

‘And carpentry and front-of-house and anything else that may be required.’ His hand brushed against mine. ‘And you? Have you ever been tempted?’

I shook my head. Bill’s fingers flirted with mine, and I didn’t move them away.

‘Can you feel it?’ he asked, stroking the scarred skin.

‘Yes, but it’s far away, as if you were touching me through a glove.’

It was a poor explanation. His touch was like a whisper in my ear, the breath of it spreading through my whole body and making me shudder.

‘Does it hurt?’

‘Not at all.’

‘How did it happen?’

When I was little, the answer had been a complicated knot of emotion in the middle of my chest – I’d had no words to explain it. But Bill’s hand was steady around mine, and I craved its warmth.

‘There was a slip …’ I began.

‘A word?’

‘I thought it was important.’

Bill listened.



Time in the Scriptorium had always stretched and contracted to fit my moods, but it had rarely dragged. Since meeting Tilda and Bill, I had found myself looking at the clock more often.

For weeks, every performance of Much Ado about Nothing was played to a full theatre. I’d been to three Saturday matinees and taken Da to an evening performance. As I sat at my desk, the hands of the clock seemed stuck on half-three.

Dr Murray returned from a meeting with the Press Delegates and spent a full half-hour translating his dressing-down into a dressing-down of the assistants. ‘Three years into the letter M and we’ve only published up to mesnalty,’ he boomed. I tried to recall what mesnalty meant: a legal term, the kind Da and I rarely played with. But its root was mesne, which reminded me of mense, meaning generous, kind, tactful. Da had spent longer than usual collating quotations and fashioning definitions. In the end, Dr Murray had drawn a line through several of them. I looked to where Da was sitting and knew he didn’t regret a minute spent with that lovely word.

When the lecture was over, the silence was profound. The clock showed four. Dr Murray sat at his high desk reading proofs with more agitation than usual. The assistants barely straightened from their work; none spoke. No one dared leave before five o’clock.

When the hour struck, there was a collective tilt of heads towards Dr Murray, but he remained as he was and the work continued. At half-five, another turning of heads. From where I sat, it looked choreographed. I let out a small sound, and Da turned. As quiet as a mouse, his look cautioned. Still Dr Murray sat, his pencil poised to correct and excise.

At six o’clock, Dr Murray put the proofs he’d been working on in an envelope and rose from his desk. He walked towards the door of the Scriptorium and placed the envelope in the tray, ready to be taken to the Press in the morning. He looked back at the sorting table where the heads of all seven assistants were still bent, their pencils paused in hopeful anticipation of release.

‘Do you not have homes to go to?’ Dr Murray asked.

We relaxed. The storm was over.

‘Do you have a word for me, Essy?’ Da asked as he closed the door to the Scriptorium.

‘Not tonight. I’m taking Lizzie to the theatre, remember?’

‘Again?’

‘Lizzie’s never been.’

He looked at me. ‘Much Ado about Nothing, I suppose?’

‘I think she’ll find it funny.’

‘Has she been to a play before?’

‘Not that she’s told me.’

‘You don’t think the language will …’

‘Da, what a thing to say.’ I kissed him on the forehead and walked towards the kitchen, a flutter of uncertainty rising.

Lizzie had been adjusting her one good dress for years. It had never been fashionable, but I’d always thought its shamrock green made her look lighter. As we walked along Magdalen Street, I thought it made her look pale. Lizzie crossed herself as we passed the church.

‘Oh, Lizzie, there’s a stain.’ I touched a greasy patch above her waist.

‘Mrs B needed help with the basting,’ she said. ‘She’s not so steady as she used to be, and it splashed as she took it from the oven.’

‘Could you not wipe it clean?’

‘Best to soak it, and there was no time. I figured it was only you and me and no one would pay it any mind.’

It was too late to change plans – Tilda and Bill would be waiting at Old Tom. I looked at Lizzie through their eyes. She was thirty-two, barely older than Tilda, but her face was lined and her hair hung lank, grey already mixing with the brown. Rather than reminding me of a Pears soap advertisement, her shape was tending towards that of Mrs Ballard. I’d barely noticed before.

‘Shouldn’t we turn down George Street?’ Lizzie said, as I continued straight into Cornmarket.

‘Actually, Lizzie, I thought you might like to meet my new friends. We’ve arranged a drink at Old Tom before the play.’

‘Who’s Old Tom?’

‘It’s a pub, on St Aldate’s.’ Her arm was in mine, and I felt her stiffen.



Bill’s smile was wide, and Tilda gave a wave as we entered Old Tom. Lizzie hesitated in the doorway as I’d seen her hesitate on the threshold of the Scriptorium.