The Dictionary of Lost Words(82)

Someone bent down beside me and began picking up slips. He had long, beautiful fingers, but the thumb on his left hand was misshapen. Gareth, the compositor. I had a vague memory of this happening before. He picked up one slip after another, dusting each off before handing it to me.

‘You’ll be able to sort them later,’ he said. ‘For now, it’s best to just get them, and you, off this cold floor.’

‘It was my fault,’ I heard myself say.

Gareth didn’t respond, he just continued to hand me the slips. It had been years since I stole his type, and despite his friendliness I had managed to discourage anything more than a polite acquaintance.

‘It’s just a hobby. They don’t really belong here,’ I said.

Gareth paused for a moment, but still said nothing. Then he gathered up the last slip, traced his finger over it and read the word out loud: ‘Pillock.’ He looked up, smiling; lines fanning out from around his eyes.

‘There’s an example of how it is used,’ I said, leaning closer to point out the quotation on the slip.

‘Seems about right,’ he said, reading it. ‘And who’s Tilda Taylor?’

‘She’s the woman who used the word.’

‘These aren’t in the Dictionary, then?’

I stiffened. ‘No. None of them are.’

‘But some are quite common,’ he said, sifting through them.

‘Among the people who use them, they are. But common isn’t a prerequisite for the Dictionary.’

‘Who uses them?’

I was ready now to have the fight I’d shied from just minutes earlier. ‘The poor. People who work at the Covered Market. Women. Which is why they’re not written down and why they’ve been excluded. Though sometimes they have been written down, but they’re still left out because they are not used in polite society.’ I felt exhausted, but defiant. My hands were still shaking, but I was ready to go on. I looked him in the eye. ‘They’re important.’

‘You better keep them safe, then,’ said Gareth, standing as he handed me the last slip. Then he offered his hand and helped me off the floor.

I took the slips back to my desk and put them beneath the lid. Then I turned back to Gareth. ‘Why are you actually here?’ I asked.

He opened his satchel and pulled out proofs for the latest fascicle. ‘ “Sleep to Sniggle”, ’ he said, holding them in the air. ‘If there aren’t too many edits, we could go to print before Christmas.’ He smiled, nodded, then delivered the proofs to Dr Murray’s desk before leaving the Scriptorium. I thought he might turn and smile again, but he didn’t. If he had, I would have told him there were likely to be plenty of edits.



Everyone returned to the Scriptorium after lunch, and I waited for Mr Dankworth to betray me. I was too old to be sent away, but there was enough time and silence for me to imagine a dozen other punishments. All of them began with the humiliation of my pockets being turned out, and ended with me never returning to the Scriptorium.

But Mr Dankworth never mentioned my words to Dr Murray. For days, I watched him, holding my breath every time he had cause to consult the Editor, but they never looked in my direction. I realised that not only were my words of no consequence to Mr Dankworth, but the fact I was spending time on them when I should have been doing Dictionary work was also of no concern.



I was responding to a spelling enquiry, one that had become all too common since the publication of ‘Ribaldric to Romanite’. Why, asked the writer, does the new Dictionary prefer rime when rhyme is so ubiquitous? Habit and good sense insist on the latter. Am I to be judged an illiterate? It was a thankless task as there was no reasonable response. The familiar sound of Gareth’s bicycle was reason enough to leave it unfinished. I put down my pen and looked towards the door.

This was his third visit to the Scriptorium since he had helped pick my words off the floor a few weeks earlier.

‘A nice young man,’ Da had said the first time he noticed Gareth saying hello.

‘As nice as Mr Pope and Mr Cushing?’ I’d asked.

‘I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,’ Da had said. ‘He’s a foreman. One of the few people Mr Hart trusts to convey concerns about style.’ He’d looked at me then and raised his eyebrows. ‘But usually those conversations occur at the Press.’

When the door opened, a pale daylight shone in. The assistants looked up, and Da nodded a greeting before glancing in my direction. Dr Murray stepped down from his stool.

I was too far away to hear what they said, but Gareth was pointing to a section of proof and explaining something to Dr Murray. I could see that Dr Murray agreed: he asked a question, listened, nodded, then he invited Gareth to come over to his desk, and together they examined some of the other pages. Mr Dankworth, I noticed, diligently ignored the entire interaction.

Gareth waited as Dr Murray wrote a quick note to Mr Hart. When it was written, and Gareth had put it in his satchel, the young man and the old walked together into the garden.

I saw them just beyond the door. Dr Murray stretched as he sometimes did when he’d been bent over proofs all morning. Their demeanour changed, became more intimate. Mr Hart was ill with exhaustion, Da had told me, and I guessed a mutual concern.

Dr Murray came back into the Scriptorium alone. I was surprised by the heaviness of the breath that escaped my lungs. He left the door open, and the fresh December air began circulating among the tables. Two of the assistants put on their jackets; Rosfrith pulled a shawl around her shoulders. I did not normally hold with Dr Murray’s idea that fresh air kept the mind sharp, but I had become too warm to think straight, and for once I was glad of it. I returned to the task of justifying rime.