The Dictionary of Lost Words(65)

‘There’s a pair of thick socks in the drawer,’ Lizzie said. ‘They’ll keep your ankles from getting scratched.’

Down in the kitchen, Lizzie bent to my boots then to her own. She found hats on a hook at the back of the pantry door and placed them on our heads. Then she took the walking stick she’d saved from the day before and put it in my hand.

We stood opposite each other, fully dressed, and Lizzie took me in. ‘You look like a wanderer,’ she said, then she looked down at her own attire and turned around so I could admire the full effect. She chuckled, and the chuckle turned to a laugh, and the laugh overwhelmed her until her eyes streamed and her nose ran. She was right. I imagined the townsfolk of Oxford throwing bread ends and coppers into our hats. I didn’t laugh, but I couldn’t stop a smile.



We walked after breakfast and every afternoon. I kept the stick, but needed it less as I began to feel stronger. I hadn’t known, exactly, that I’d been weak, but the walking and Lizzie’s porridge and Mrs Lloyd’s cakes were reviving something in me. I slept less and noticed more.

Lizzie no longer blushed when Mr Lloyd spoke to her. She met his eye and, if he asked, she gave him her opinion without looking down. After a week, Mrs Lloyd began bringing her cakes in person. She would accompany Mr Lloyd or Tommy in the afternoon and stay after they had set the fires. It became Lizzie’s habit to bake biscuits every morning and to lay the kitchen table for tea every afternoon. She laid it for four, though Mr Lloyd always declined. ‘I’d only stop you ladies talking of what you will,’ he said one day, backing out of the kitchen with his hat pressed against his belly, a slight bend to his back as if he were taking leave of the king.

As soon as he was gone, Lizzie would arrange a plate with biscuits and generous slices of Mrs Lloyd’s cake. Then she would put the kettle on to boil and busy herself with tea leaves and pot. Mrs Lloyd, already seated in the chair facing the stove, would start up the conversation wherever they had left off the day before. Their banter always went back and forth like a game of badminton, as if they’d known each other their entire lives. I felt I was seeing Lizzie as she might have been.

I caught myself wondering why Mrs Lloyd never stood to lend a hand – I had plenty of time to ponder, as my reserve had deflected all polite attempts at inclusion. I rejected all the obvious reasons: rudeness, laziness, fatigue from tending her own hearth and four boys. In the end, I decided it was kindness. There was nothing demanding about Mrs Lloyd’s manner, and she didn’t watch the tea being poured in order to judge its strength. She was simply acknowledging that this was Lizzie’s kitchen, Lizzie’s little cottage, and she was her guest. I’d been watching Lizzie make tea my whole life, but it was always for the Murrays, Mrs Ballard (who always watched the tea being poured) or for me: her mistress, her boss or her charge. The thought shocked me. I’d never once seen Lizzie with a friend.

I started making my excuses. With little protest, Lizzie began to lay the table for two.

Shropshire had been organised as a kind of treatment for my depression. I couldn’t have thought about it so clearly before, but as the heaviness of living without Her began to lift I realised I might have thrown myself into the Cherwell if I’d had the wherewithal to think of it.

The hill demanded payment, and I knew I would never reach the top without the pain of the climb in my lungs and legs, no matter how fit I became. I’d complained about it those first few days – sat down and cried for lack of breath, and other things. I didn’t want to be there. But Lizzie had never let me turn back.

‘It’s the kind of pain that achieves something,’ she said.

‘What does it achieve?’ I moaned.

‘Time will tell,’ she said, pulling me to my feet.

Then one afternoon I made it to the top without tears or complaint. I stood with my hands on my hips, breathing in the cooling air and looking beyond the valley towards Wales. I’d seen the view every day for weeks, but it was the first time I’d cared for it.

‘I wonder what those hills are called,’ I said.

‘Wenlock Edge, according to Mr Lloyd,’ said Lizzie.

I looked at her in surprise. What else did she know?

She stopped watching me so closely after that, and sometimes, when she and Mrs Lloyd had more anecdotes than one pot of tea could accommodate, she let me walk the hills alone.

‘I’m a bondmaid to the Dictionary,’ I heard Lizzie say to Mrs Lloyd one afternoon as I pulled on my boots.

‘And you say young Esme is one of them that finds the words?’ said Mrs Lloyd.

Lizzie laughed and I threw her a look. ‘You could say that,’ she said, giving me a wink.

‘I can’t think of anything more boring,’ said Mrs Lloyd. ‘Do you remember having to write the same word over and over till all the letters slanted the same way? Numbers made more sense to me. Their meaning never changes.’

‘I never did make all the letters slant the same way,’ said Lizzie.

‘There’s many that don’t,’ said Mrs Lloyd, taking another biscuit.

I picked up the walking stick that now leaned by the door.

‘Will you be alright?’ said Lizzie. Her voice was light, but her gaze was watchful.

‘I will,’ I said. ‘Enjoy your tea.’

As I climbed the hill, I wondered what Lizzie and Mrs Lloyd were talking about. It was the first time I’d cared to think about it, and I was shocked that I’d been so self-absorbed. Sheep scattered from the path as I walked along, but they didn’t go far. They watched me pass, and I was reminded of the scrutiny of scholars when I walked into the reading room at Cambridge. It wasn’t an uncomfortable thought. I’d felt a little triumphant then, and I felt a little triumphant now. As though perhaps I’d achieved something.