The Dictionary of Lost Words(81)

Elsie and Rosfrith had their own accompanying sounds, and I loved to hear the hems of their skirts sweep the floor, catching slips that had been carelessly dropped (such windfall, I sometimes thought, and I would watch to see where they ended up so I could collect them if no one else did). The Murray girls – I still thought of them this way, though we had all passed thirty – would also disturb the air with lavender and rose. I would breathe it in as a tonic against the sometimes careless hygiene of the men.

Once in a while, the Scriptorium would be stilled and silent and all mine. It was usually just before the publication of a fascicle: the editors and their senior assistants would meet at the Old Ashmolean to settle last-minute arguments, and Elsie and Rosfrith would take the opportunity to be somewhere else.

Normally, with the Scriptorium to myself, I would wend my way among the tables and shelves, looking for small slips of treasure. But on this particular day, I was in a hurry. I’d spent my morning tea-break in Lizzie’s room, sorting through more slips from the trunk, and now I had a small bundle of women’s words I wanted to catalogue.

I lifted the lid of my desk and took out the shoebox I was using as a pigeon-hole for my words. It was half-full of small bundles of slips, each representing a word, with meanings and quotations from various women pinned together. I spread the new slips across my desk. Some belonged with words I’d already defined; others were new and needed a top-slip. This was what I enjoyed most: considering all the variants of a word and deciding which would be the headword, then fashioning a definition to suit it. I was never alone in this process; without fail, I would be guided by the voice of the woman who used it. When it was Mabel, I would linger a little longer, making sure I got the meaning just right, and imagining her gummy grin when I did.

Lizzie’s pincushion lived in my desk now, and I took a pin to secure quotations for git. Tilda was the first to give me a quotation, but Mabel liked to use it whenever she spoke about a man she did not like. Even Lizzie used it from time to time. So it was an insult, but not vulgar; and Mabel had never used it to refer to Mrs Stiles, so it could only refer to men. I stuck the pin through one corner of the slips and began composing a top-slip in my head.

‘What’s this?’

The pin pricked my thumb and made me gasp. I looked up. Mr Dankworth was beside me, peering at the mess of slips spread across my desk. They were exposed and vulnerable. Clearly not the words I was supposed to be working on.

‘Nothing of any consequence,’ I said, trying to bundle the slips back into a pile and smiling up at him, conscious of how stupid I must look: a grown woman squashed behind a school desk.

He leaned over a little to get a closer look at the words. I tried to push back my chair, but found that I couldn’t. For the moment, I remained stuck while he continued his inspection.

‘If it’s of no consequence, why are you doing it?’ he asked, reaching over me so that I had to bend to avoid him. He picked up the pile of slips.

A sudden memory asserted itself, one I’d thought buried under time and kindness. I was smaller, the desk was similar, but the feeling that I had no control over what would happen next was so strong. I felt winded. I’d allowed myself to imagine my life unfolding differently to that of so many of the women I observed. But at that moment, I felt as constrained and powerless as any of them.

And then I felt furious.

‘It will be of no consequence to you,’ I said. ‘Though it is important.’ I pushed with more force against the chair until Mr Dankworth was obliged to move out of the way.

I stood close to him, as close as we might have been just before a kiss. His forehead was creased as if in permanent concentration, and wiry white hairs sprang from the slick black either side of his perfect part. They were unruly, and I was surprised he hadn’t pulled them out. He stumbled back. I put my hand out for the slips, but he held onto them.

He turned towards the sorting table, taking my slips with him. He spread them out like they were a pack of cards. Then he fingered them, moved them about. Manhandling, I thought. I would write a slip for it when he was done.

Mr Dankworth stopped to read one or two words as if considering their value. I could tell when the philologist in him was intrigued: his forehead softened and the purse of his lips relaxed. I was reminded of those rare times I thought we might have something in common. The longer he considered my words, the more I wondered whether I had overreacted.

My shoulders dropped, and my jaw relaxed. How I longed to talk with someone about women’s words, their place in the Dictionary, the flaws in method that might have meant they were being left out. In that moment, I imagined Mr Dankworth and I as allies.

Suddenly he swept the slips together, unconcerned with their order. ‘You were right and you were wrong, Miss Nicoll,’ he said. ‘Your project is of no consequence to me, but it is also of no importance.’

I was too stunned to respond. When he handed me the pile of slips, my hand shook so much that I dropped them.

Mr Dankworth looked at the slips strewn across the dusty floor and made no move to help pick them up. Instead, he turned back to the sorting table and searched his own papers, found whatever he had come for, and left.

The shake in my hand travelled into every part of my body. I kneeled to gather the slips but could not place them in any kind of order. I couldn’t focus, and they seemed meaningless. When I heard the Scriptorium door open again, I closed my eyes against the dread it might be Mr Dankworth – the humiliation of him seeing me on my knees.