The Dictionary of Lost Words(9)

‘Do I have a syllabus at St Barnabas?’

‘You’ve only just started, so reading and writing are all that’s on your syllabus. They’ll add subjects as you get older.’

‘What will they add?’

‘Hopefully something less domestic than cucumber-and-watercress soup. Now, may I continue?’

‘Yes, please.’

‘Miss Fernley had insisted that Lily make the soup for our club lunch. It was awful; everyone thought so, and some even said it out loud. I’m afraid Lily may have overheard, because she retreated to the club-house and busied herself with wiping tables that didn’t need wiping.

‘Poor Lily,’ I said.

‘Well, you might not think so when you hear the rest of the story. If it wasn’t for that awful soup, you might never have been born.’

I knew what was coming and held my breath to hear it.

‘Somehow, your father managed to empty his bowl. I was dumbfounded, but then I watched him take that bowl into the kitchen and ask Lily for a second helping.’

‘Did he eat that too?’

‘He did. And between mouthfuls, he asked Lily question after question, and her face went from that of a shy and awkward girl to a confident young woman in the space of fifteen minutes.’

‘What did he ask her?’

‘That I can’t tell you, but by the time he’d finished eating, it was as if they had known each other all their lives.’

‘Did you know they would get married?’

‘Well, I remember thinking how fortunate it was that Harry knew how to boil an egg, because Lily was never going to like spending too much time in the kitchen. So, yes, I think I did know they would get married.’

‘And then I was born and then she died.’

‘Yes.’

‘But when we talk about her, she comes to life.’

‘Never forget that, Esme. Words are our tools of resurrection.’

A new word. I looked up.

‘It’s when you bring something back,’ Ditte said.

‘But Lily will never really come back.’

‘No. She won’t.’

I paused, trying to remember the rest of the story. ‘And so, you told Da you will be my favourite aunt.’

‘I did.’

‘And that you will always take my side, even when I’m troublesome.’

‘Did I say that?’ I turned to look at her face. She smiled. ‘It’s exactly what Lily would have wanted me to say, and I meant every word.’

‘The end,’ I said.





At breakfast one morning, Da said, ‘The C words would certainly cause consternation considering countless certifiable cases kept coming.’ It took me less than a minute to work it out.

‘Kept,’ I said. ‘Kept starts with a K not a C.’

His mouth was still full of porridge; I was that quick.

‘I thought throwing in certifiable might have tricked you,’ he said.

‘But that must start with a C; it’s from the word certain.’

‘It certainly is. Now, tell me which quotation you like best.’ Da pushed a page of dictionary proofs across the breakfast table.

It had been three years since the picnic to celebrate A and B, but they were still working on the proofs for C. The page had been typeset but some of the lines had been ruled out, and the margins were messy with Da’s corrections. Where he’d run out of room, he’d pinned a scrap of paper to the edge and written on that.

‘I like the new one,’ I said, pointing to the scrap of paper.

‘What does it say?’

‘To certefye this thinge, sende for the damoysell; and then shal ye know, by her owne mouthe.’

‘Why do you like it?’

‘It sounds funny, like the man who wrote it couldn’t spell and was making up some of the words.’

‘It’s just old,’ Da said, taking back the proof and reading what he’d written. ‘Words change over time, you see. The way they look, the way they sound; sometimes even their meaning changes. They have their own history.’ Da ran his finger under the sentence. ‘If you took away some of the Es, this would almost look modern.’

‘What’s a damoysell?’

‘It’s a young woman.’

‘Am I a damoysell?’

He looked at me, and the tiniest frown twitched his eyebrows.

‘I’ll be ten next birthday,’ I said, hopeful.

‘Ten, you say? Well, that settles it. You will be a damoysell in no time.’

‘And will the words keep changing?’

The spoon stopped midway to his mouth. ‘It’s possible, I suppose, that once the meaning is written down it will become fixed.’

‘So you and Dr Murray could make the words mean whatever you want them to mean, and we’ll all have to use them that way forever?’

‘Of course not. Our job is to find consensus. We search through books to see how a word is used, then we come up with meanings that make sense of them all. It’s quite scientific, actually.’

‘What does it mean?’

‘Consensus? Well, it means everyone agrees.’

‘Do you ask everyone?’

‘No, clever-boots. But I doubt a book’s been written that we haven’t consulted.’