The Dictionary of Lost Words(72)

‘She has a word for you,’ Lizzie said, and I looked up, startled. For a moment I wasn’t sure who she was talking about. ‘Says she’s been saving it. I wouldn’t ask, but I don’t reckon Mabel’s long for this place.’



I rose early and dressed with unnecessary care. I was nervous about seeing Mabel. Ashamed it had taken me so long. When the morning post fell through the slot in the door, I was glad for the distraction. It was one of Tilda’s sporadic postcards. The picture on the front was of the Houses of Parliament in Westminster.

November 2nd, 1908

My dear Esme,

You told me once that you wished our slogan was ‘Words not Deeds’ instead of ‘Deeds not Words’, and I laughed at your naivety. So, when I heard about Muriel Matters chaining herself to the grille in the Ladies’ Gallery in the House of Commons, I could not help but think of you.

It was an ingenious act of attention seeking (I’m sure Mrs Pankhurst wishes she had thought of it), but it will be her words that move minds. She is the first woman to speak in the House of Commons, and her words were intelligent and eloquently spoken. Hansard may not record them, but the newspapers have. She is Australian, apparently. Perhaps it is the right to speak in her own Parliament that gives her the confidence to speak in ours.

‘We have sat behind this insulting grille for too long,’ she said. ‘It is time that the women of England were given a voice in legislation which affects them as much as it affects men. We demand the vote.’

‘Here, here!’ we must all shout.

With fondness,

Tilda

Australia, I thought. She will be able to vote. I put the postcard in my pocket and hoped the thought of Her having a better life on the other side of the world would protect me from regret.



Lizzie and I paused amid the morning crowd jostling in front of the fruit stall.

‘I have a long list,’ said Lizzie. ‘I’ll join you soon.’

She left, but for a moment I stayed where I was. I could see Mabel’s stall, pathetic in its poverty, its lack of custom. Mrs Stiles’ flower-filled buckets were a cruel contrast.

I approached, and Mabel acknowledged me with a bob of her head, as if she’d only seen me the day before. She was skeletal in her rags, and her voice was an echo of itself. What breath she had gurgled in her chest, damp and dangerous. When I leaned in to hear what she had to say, her decay was overpowering. All that was left on her crate were a few broken things and three whittled sticks. One I recognised from the last time I’d seen her, almost a year before. It was the head of a crone, finely carved.

I picked it up. ‘Is this you, Mabel?’

‘In better days,’ she whispered.

The other two sticks were poor attempts at carving, made by hands that could barely hold a knife. I picked them up and turned them round and felt all the grief of knowing they were her last.

‘Still a penny?’

A cough wracked her and she spat into a rag. ‘Not worth a penny,’ she managed to say.

I took three coins from my purse and put them on the crate.

‘Lizzie says you have a word for me.’

She nodded. As I reached for my slips and pencil, she reached into the folds of her clothes. Mabel brought out a fistful of paper slips and put them on the crate between us. Then she turned her face up to mine and made a sound that made me think she was going to spit again. But it was a laugh, and her rheumy eyes were smiling.

‘She ’elped,’ Mabel said looking over at Mrs Stiles, who was straightening her flower buckets. ‘Told ’er I’d shut me gob whenever there was ladies sniffin’ ’round ’er flowers. Better for business, I told ’er. She ’ad to agree.’ Again, her drowning laugh.

I picked up the slips, crushed and grubby from where they’d been stored. They were the right size, with the contents more or less as I would write them.

‘When?’ I asked.

‘When you went away. Thought you’d need cheerin’ on yer return. Whatever ’appened.’ She reached into her clothes again. ‘I saved this for you, too.’

Another carving, exquisite in its detail. Familiar.

‘Taliesin,’ Mabel said. ‘Merlin. Me ’ands gave up after that.’

I took more coins from my purse.

‘Na, lass,’ Mabel said, waving the coins away. ‘A gift.’

I had been avoiding Mabel, but now the state of her, this kindness and the reason for it, ambushed me. I felt paralysed, unable to raise a defence against memory. Like a vessel, I filled with sadness until I could no longer hold it, and it spilled, soaking my face.

‘I ’eard you got the morbs,’ Mabel said, refusing to look away. ‘Only natural.’

Lizzie was there then, at my side, a pocket handkerchief in her hand, an arm around my shoulders. ‘Mabel will be alright,’ she said, misunderstanding. ‘Won’t you, Mabel?’

Mabel held my gaze a moment longer, then brought her hand to her chin and struck the thinker’s pose. After a moment, she said, ‘Nah, I don’t reckon I will.’ And as if to emphasise her point, the last word turned into a phlegmy cough so violent I thought it would shake her bones loose. It was enough to bring me back to myself.

‘Enough joking,’ Lizzie said, her hand gentle on Mabel’s back.