The Dictionary of Lost Words(79)

‘Thank you, Lizzie, I’ll take it from here.’ Rosfrith took the towel and led me up the stairs to her bedroom.

I was older than Rosfrith by almost two years, and yet I’d always felt younger. As she searched through her wardrobe for clothes that might fit me, I saw in her the self-assured practicality of her mother. Mrs Murray was as entitled to a damehood as Dr Murray was to a knighthood, Da had said. ‘Without her, the Dictionary would have faltered long ago.’

How reassuring it must be to know how you should act: like having a definition of yourself written clearly in black type.

‘You’re taller, and thinner, but I think these will fit.’ Rosfrith laid a skirt, blouse, cardigan and undergarments on her bed, then left me to change.

Before I stepped out of my own skirt, I searched the pockets. In one, there was a handkerchief, a pencil and a wad of damp blank slips. I went to throw the wad in the wastepaper basket and couldn’t help but look at the papers on Rosfrith’s desk. Everything was neatly arranged. There was a photograph of her father after receiving his knighthood, and one of the whole family in the garden of Sunnyside. There were proofs and letters at various stages of completion. I recognised the recipient of the letter she’d been working on most recently. It was the governor of Winson Green Gaol. Dear Sir, it said. I wish to object. That was as far as she had gone. Beside it was a copy of the Times of London.

From my other pocket, I pulled out the type I’d stolen from Gareth, and the slip with his name on it. It was almost translucent from the rain, but his name was still visible.

After I’d changed into Rosfrith’s clothes, I wrapped the type in my damp handkerchief and put it in one of the skirt pockets. I picked up the slip with Gareth’s name on it. He knew I’d taken the type. I’d be too ashamed to visit him again. I dropped the slip in the wastepaper basket.

Then I turned again to Rosfrith’s desk. The Times of London gave the women in Winson Green more column space. Tilda wasn’t one of them; not this time, I thought. Charlotte Marsh was the daughter of artist Arthur Hardwick Marsh. Laura Ainsworth’s father was a respected school inspector. Mary Leigh was the wife of a builder. This was how the women were defined.

Bondmaid. It came back to me then, and I realised that the words most often used to define us were words that described our function in relation to others. Even the most benign words – maiden, wife, mother – told the world whether we were virgins or not. What was the male equivalent of maiden? I could not think of it. What was the male equivalent of Mrs, of whore, of common scold? I looked out the window towards the Scriptorium, the place where the definitions of all these words were being bedded down. Which words would define me? Which would be used to judge or contain? I was no maiden, yet I was no man’s wife. And I had no desire to be.

As I read how the ‘treatment’ was administered, I felt the ghost of a gag reflex and the pain of a tube scraping membrane from cheek to throat to stomach. It was a kind of rape. The weight of bodies holding you down, restraining your clawing hands and kicking feet. Forcing you open. At that moment, I wasn’t sure whose humanity was more compromised: the women’s or the authorities’. If the authorities’, then the shame was all of ours. What, after all, had I done to help the cause since Tilda left Oxford?

Rosfrith returned and we descended the stairs together. ‘Are you a suffragette, Rosfrith?’ I asked.

‘I don’t sneak out at night and smash windows, if that’s what you’re asking. I would prefer to call myself a suffragist.’

‘I don’t think I could do what some women do.’

‘Starve yourself or be a public nuisance?’

‘Neither.’

Rosfrith paused on the staircase and turned to me. ‘I don’t think I could, either. And I can’t imagine … well, you’ve read the papers. But militancy isn’t the only way, Esme.’

Rosfrith resumed her descent and I followed, two steps behind. There was so much I wanted to ask her, but despite us both having grown up in the shadow of the Dictionary, I felt we were worlds apart.

We lingered a while in the kitchen doorway, watching the rain. ‘I’d best make a run for it,’ Rosfrith said eventually. ‘But you’ve been wet enough for one day – wait here in the warm till it’s passed. We certainly can’t have you catching cold.’ She opened her umbrella and trotted the distance between kitchen and Scriptorium.

Lizzie was crouched in front of the range. ‘Look at your face, Essymay. What on earth is wrong?’

‘The papers, Lizzie. You’d be shocked to know what is going on.’

‘No need to read the papers; the Market serves just as well.’ She shovelled coal onto the rising flames and shut the heavy cast-iron door with a bang. She looked stiff as she pulled herself up to standing.

‘And are they talking about what’s happening to the suffragettes in Birmingham?’ I said.

‘Yes. They’re talking about it.’

‘Are they angry? About the hunger strikes and the forced feeding?’

‘Some are,’ she said as she began slicing vegetables and putting them in a large pot. ‘Others think they’re going about things all wrong. That you catch more flies with honey.’

‘But do they think they deserve what’s happening to them? It’s torture.’