The Dictionary of Lost Words(56)

I will put all that is relevant in a letter to Dr Murray, and I am confident he will consider my offer an opportunity that will only increase your value to him on your return.

Now, to your father. I have written to tell him of my trip, using ‘nag’ as my excuse (if the current quotations are our guide to its meaning, then it will be recorded that women are the only perpetrators of this particular form of harassment). My plan at this stage is to arrange to see Harry at home, prime him for the news, calm his worst fears (which will all be for your current and future welfare) and make it clear we have it all in hand. Then you must tell him everything – within reason. He is a good man, Esme. He is not a prude or a zealot or a conservative, but he is a father and he loves you very much. You must remember that he wakes every day to a photograph of you in your infant smock. This news will be a shock. He will need time and understanding, and perhaps the opportunity to rant and rave. Allow him this.

Beyond that, there are other things we must discuss, but I think it best to leave them until we sit across from each other with a good pot of tea between us.

So, I will see you this Friday, 11.30am. Don’t be late.

Yours,

Ditte



It was raining – not heavily, but the people walking up and down High Street were opening umbrellas and turning their collars up against the damp. I watched them as Ditte talked. She was scripting the lies and half-truths that would make my absence from the Scriptorium reasonable.

We drank two large pots of tea at the coffee house. When we came out onto the street, the rain had stopped and a weak sun was shining on the damp pavement. I blinked away the glare.





Two weeks later, Da stood with me on the platform waiting for the train that would take me towards Bath. I thought about every conversation we had had since Ditte emerged from our sitting room and gave me the nod to go in and speak with him. We had said so little. Gestures and sighs had punctuated our interactions. He had touched my face and held my funny fingers whenever words failed him. I knew how much he wished that Lily was there and how he thought that if she had been, things would be different. I knew he thought he had failed me, rather than me failing him. But he said none of it, and so I could only return his affection with a touch of my own.

When the train came, he carried my trunk into the second-class carriage and settled me in a seat by the door. He might have said something then, but there were three others already seated around me. He kissed my forehead and stepped out into the corridor, but he didn’t leave immediately. He smiled a sad smile, and I suddenly realised that I would come home completely changed; that contrary to what Ditte had promised, my path, whatever it was, had already been diverted. I stood up then and wrapped my arms around him. He held me until the whistle blew.



Beth was to meet me off the train at Bath, but when I scanned the platform, there was no sign. I disembarked and waited where the porter had left my trunk.

A woman waved. She was taller, slimmer and far more fashionable than Ditte, but there was something similar in the shape of her nose. I smiled as she approached.

‘It’s criminal that this is the first time I’ve met you,’ she said, taking me in an unexpected hug that nearly toppled me.

‘Of course, I know all about you,’ Beth said when we were seated in the back of the cab.

I flushed and looked down at my lap.

‘Oh, not just that,’ she said, as if that was trivial. ‘You are Edith’s favourite topic of conversation, and I never tire of hearing about you.’ She leaned in. ‘You must forgive us, Esme. We are a couple of spinsters without a dog; we must discuss something.’

Ditte and Beth lived between Bath Station and Royal Victoria Park, so the cab ride was short. We stopped in front of a three-storey terraced house, identical in every way to the terraced houses that stretched left and right. Beth saw me staring up at the attic windows.

‘It was left to us,’ she said, ‘so we’d never have to marry. It’s far too big, of course, but we have a lot of guests, and a woman comes every morning to clean. Mrs Travis insists we keep the rooms on the top floor closed. Saves on dusting, she says. She has very little aptitude for dusting, so we’ve agreed.’

All those rooms, I thought. I would have dusted my own if they’d invited me when I was fourteen.

Beth was younger than Ditte and her opposite in almost every way, yet there seemed to be no tension or argument between them. I’d always thought that Ditte was like the trunk of a great tree: anchored securely to what she knew to be true. After just a few days in Bath, I began to think of Beth as the canopy. In mind and body, she responded to whatever forces came her way. Despite her fifty years she shimmered, and I was mesmerised.

I had a week’s grace – ‘to settle in,’ Beth said – then she began inviting visitors for afternoon tea. ‘We can’t talk about you all of the time,’ she teased.

On the day our first visitors were due to arrive, the sisters called me downstairs to lay a tray in preparation. ‘Mrs Travis is an ordinary housekeeper,’ Ditte said, as she transferred the cake from a cooling rack to a plate, ‘but her Madeira is unrivalled.’

‘Perhaps I’ll stay in my room,’ I said.

‘Nonsense,’ said Beth, coming into the kitchen. ‘It will play out perfectly. We will talk about Edith’s revision of her English history and then her employment of you will make perfect sense to everyone.’ She leaned in and said in a conspiratorial tone, ‘You are not without a reputation of your own, you know.’