The Dictionary of Lost Words : A Novel (2020)

by Williams, Pip

  August 28th, 1897

  My dear Esme,

  As always it was a joy to come across your familiar hand as I was sifting through yesterday’s post. There were one or two letters from the Scriptorium besides yours: one from Dr Murray and another from Mr Sweatman. The letter ‘I’ is causing a bit of bother – all those prefixes, where should they stop?! I was grateful to put off the work to read about your summer back in Oxford.

  But you told me almost nothing, other than that the weather was stifling. Six months in Scotland and it seems you’ve acclimatised to the chilly damp and boundless space. I wonder if you miss the ‘sweep of hills towards troubled sky and the unfathomable depths of the loch’?

  Do you remember writing this after your first few weeks at Cauldshiels? I read it and was reminded of your father’s love of that place. The rugged solitude restored him, he said. I can’t say I shared his view. Hills and lochs are not in my blood as they are in yours.

  But is it possible I have misunderstood your descriptions of the landscape; that your beautiful language has disguised your thoughts? Because your request has come as something of a surprise.

  From all accounts, you are thriving at Cauldshiels. Near the top of your class in a number of subjects, ‘continually questioning’ according to Miss McKinnon. This is the fundamental attribute of scholars and liberals, my father always thought.

  Your letters, without exception, describe an ideal education for a young woman of the twentieth century. My goodness, the twentieth century! I think this is the first time I have written it down. It will be your century, Esme, and it will be different to mine. You will need to know more.

  I am flattered that you think I could tutor you in all you need to learn; so flattered, in fact, and so taken with the idea of having you live with us, that I discussed it for hours with Beth. Between us we could do an adequate job of history and literature and politics. We could add something to what you know of French and German, but the natural sciences and mathematics are beyond us. And then there is the time that would be required. We simply do not have enough of it.

  You remind me that I have promised to always take your side, but when it comes to your education I think I would fail you. By declining your request, I hope I am taking the side of an older Esme. I hope you will one day agree.

  I have written to Mrs Ballard and asked her to bake you a batch of ginger-nut biscuits. I think they will keep well on the long journey back to school and nourish you well into the first week of the new term.

  Please write to me once you have settled back in. The account of your days is always a pleasure to read.

  My love, as always,

  Ditte

  I sat on the edge of my bed and looked over at my school trunk. Up until that moment, I had been sure it would accompany me to Ditte and Beth’s house in Bath. I read Ditte’s letter again. My love, as always. I screwed up the letter, threw it on the floor and ground it under my foot.

  Da and I ate dinner in silence. I don’t think Ditte had even bothered to discuss it with him.

  ‘Early start tomorrow, Essy,’ he said as he took the plates to the kitchen.

  I said goodnight and climbed the stairs.

  Da’s room was almost dark, but when I pulled back the curtains, the last light of the long day came in. I turned to the wardrobe. ‘Open sesame,’ I whispered, longing for an earlier time. I reached past Lily’s dresses and brought out the polished box. It smelled of beeswax, recently applied. I opened it and strummed the letters with my funny fingers, as if they were strings on a harp. I wanted Lily to speak. To give me the words that would convince Da to keep me. But she was silent.

  My strumming stopped. The envelopes at the end were out of tune, not blue or white but the cheap undyed brown of Cauldshiels. I took out the last and moved to the window to read what I had written.

  I remembered every word. How could I not? I had written them over and over and over again. They were not the words I had chosen. Those words had been torn up. Your father will only worry, said Miss McKinnon. Then she dictated something appropriate. Again, she said, as she tore the new pages. Neater, or he’ll think you are not improving, not trying. They are a jolly group of girls … a wonderful excursion … perhaps I will become a teacher … I managed an A on my history test. My grades were the only truth. Again, she said. Don’t slouch. The other girls had gone to bed. I sat in that cold room until the clock struck midnight. You have been spoiled, Miss Nicoll. Your father knows this as well as anyone. Complaining about mild discomforts will only prove the point. Then she laid out the last three attempts and asked me to choose the one that showed the best penmanship. Not the last. It was almost illegible. My funny fingers were bent as if still holding a pen. The pain of moving them was unbearable. That one, Miss McKinnon. Yes, dear, I think so too. Now off to bed.

  And here it was. Treasured, as Lily’s letters were treasured. False words giving false comfort to a man forced to be mother and father both. Perhaps I was a burden.

  There was one letter for every week I had been away. I took them all from the box and removed the pages. There was nothing of me in any of them. How could Da have believed them? When I returned the envelopes to the box, they were empty of words – but never more meaningful.

  I slept badly. Resentments and confusion about Ditte and Cauldshiels – and even Da – gathered strength in the dark. Eventually I gave up trying to silence them.

  Da was snoring, a predictable rumble that had always comforted me when I woke in the night. It comforted me now; it meant he wouldn’t wake. I got out of bed and dressed, took a candle and matches from my bedside table and put them in my pocket. Then I slipped out of my room, down the stairs and into the night.

  The sky was clear and the moon almost full. The black of night only played around the edges of things. When I arrived at Sunnyside, the Murray house stood dark and still, and I thought I could hear the collected breath of the family’s slumber.

  I pushed on the gate. The house stretched towards the sky, as if suddenly alert, but no light flickered in the windows. I slipped through the gap and left the gate ajar then skirted the boundary, keeping to the deep dark under the trees, until I was looking at the Scriptorium.

  In the moonlight it looked like any other shed, and I was annoyed I’d thought it was more. As I got closer, I could see its frailty; gutters laced with rust, paint peeling from the window frames – a wad of paper stopping the draft where the timber was rotted.

  The door opened as it always did, and I stood on the threshold waiting for my eyes to adjust. Moonlight through dirty windows cast long shadows around the room. I could smell the words before I could see them, and memories tumbled over themselves; I used to think this place was the inside of a genie’s lamp.

  I took Ditte’s letter from my pocket. It was still crumpled, so I found a space on the sorting table and smoothed it out as best I could. I lit the candle and felt the small thrill of defiance. Draughts competed to bat the flame this way and that, but none were strong enough to blow it out. I made a space on the sorting table and dripped some wax to hold the candle. I made sure it stuck fast.

  The word I wanted was already published, but I knew where to find the slips. I ran my finger along a row of pigeon-holes until I came to ‘A to Ant’. My birthday words. If the Dictionary was a person, Da told me once, ‘A to Ant’ would be its first tentative steps.

  I pulled a small pile of slips from the pigeon-hole and unpinned them from their top-slip.

  Abandon.

  The earliest example was more than six hundred years old, and the words that made it were malformed and difficult. As I read through the slips the quotations got easier, and when I was almost at the bottom of the pile I found one I liked. The quotation was not much older than me, and it was written by a Miss Braddon.

  I found myself abandoned and alone in the world.

  I pinned the slip to Ditte’s letter, then read it again. Alone in the world.

  Alone had a pigeon-hole all
to itself, with bundles of slips piled one on top of the other. I took out the topmost and untied its string. The slips had been separated into various senses, each with a top-slip showing the definition. I knew that if I got A and B off the shelf, I would find the definitions on the top-slips transcribed into columns, their quotations below.

  It was Da who had written the definition I settled on. I read his tight script: Quite by oneself, unaccompanied, solitary.

  I wondered briefly if he had spoken to Lily about all the ways to be alone. Lily would never have sent me to school.

  I unpinned the top-slip from its quotation slips – its job was done, after all – and put the quotations back into their pigeon-hole. Then I returned to the sorting table and pinned Da’s definition to Ditte’s letter.

  Then a sound. A long note in the quiet. It was the gate: its unoiled hinge.

  I looked around the Scriptorium for somewhere I might hide. I felt the galloping beat of panic. I couldn’t have the words taken from me. They explained me. I reached under my skirt and shoved the letter with its attached slips into the waistband of my drawers. Then I took up the candle from the table.

  The door opened and moonlight flooded in.

  ‘Esme?’

  It was Da. Relief and anger rose.

  ‘Esme, put the candle down.’

  It tilted. Wax dripped onto proofs spread across the sorting table, sealing them together. I saw what he saw. Imagined what he imagined. Wondered if I could actually do it.

  ‘I would never —’

  ‘Give me the candle, Esme.’

  ‘But you don’t understand, I was just …’

  He blew out the candle and collapsed into a chair. I watched the wisp of smoke wobble upward.

  I turned out my pockets and there was nothing, not a single word. I thought he might ask to check my socks, my sleeves, and I looked at him as if I had nothing to hide. He just sighed and turned to leave the Scriptorium. I followed. When he whispered to close the door quietly, I did as I was told.

  Morning was only beginning to colour the garden. The house was still dark, except for a single wavering light in the topmost window above the kitchen. If Lizzie looked out, she would see me. I could almost feel the weight of the trunk as I dragged it from under her bed.

  But Lizzie and the trunk were as far away as Scotland. Not seeing them before I left would be my punishment.

  Da visited Cauldshiels during the Easter break. He’d had a letter from his sister, my real aunt. She was concerned about me. Had I always been so reserved? She remembered me differently, full of questions. She was sorry she had not visited earlier – it was difficult – but she’d noticed bruises across the backs of my hands, both of them. Hockey, I’d said. Rubbish, she wrote to Da.

  He told me all this on the train back to Oxford. We ate chocolate, and I told him I never played hockey. I looked over his shoulder at my reflection in the darkened window of the carriage. I looked older, I thought.

  Da was holding both my hands in his, and his thumbs were circling my knuckles. The bruises on my good hand had faded to a sickly yellow, barely visible, but there was a red welt across the back of my right hand. The puckered skin always took longer to heal. He kissed them and held them against his wet cheek. Would Da keep me? I was too scared to ask. Your mother would know exactly what to do, he’d say, and then he’d write to Ditte.

  I took my hands from his, then lay down along the carriage seat. I didn’t care that I was as tall as an adult. I felt as small as a child, and I was so tired. I pulled my knees up to my chest and hugged them. Da draped his coat over me. Pipe tobacco, darkly sweet. I closed my eyes and inhaled. I hadn’t known I’d been missing it. I pulled the coat closer, buried my face in its scratchy wool. Beneath the sweet was sour. The smell of old paper. I dreamed I was under the sorting table. When I woke, we were in Oxford.

  Da didn’t wake me the next day, and it was late afternoon when I finally came down the stairs. I thought to spend the hours before dinner in the warmth of the sitting room, but when I opened the door I saw Ditte. She and Da were seated on either side of the hearth, and their conversation froze when they saw me. Da repacked his pipe and Ditte came over to where I stood. Without any hesitation she wrapped her heavy arms around me, trying to fold my gangly frame into her stout one. As if she still could. I was rigid. She let go.

  ‘I’ve made enquiries at the Oxford High School for Girls,’ Ditte said.

  I wanted to scream and cry and rail at her, but I did none of these. I looked to Da.

  ‘We should have sent you there in the first place,’ he said sadly.

  I returned to bed and only came down again when I heard Ditte leave.

  Ditte wrote to me every week after that. I let her letters sit on the sideboard by the front door, unopened, and when three or four had gathered Da would take them away. After a while, Ditte included her pages to me in her letters to Da. He would leave them on the sideboard, unfolded, begging to be read. I’d glance at the writing, absorb a few lines without meaning to, then grab the pages in my fist and crumple them into a ball to be thrown into a dustbin or fire.

  The Oxford High School for Girls was on the Banbury Road. Neither Da nor I mentioned how close it was to the Scriptorium. I was welcomed by the few girls from St Barnabas who had gone there, but I limped through the rest of the school year. The headmistress called Da to her office to inform him that I had failed my exams. I sat in a chair outside the closed door and heard her say, ‘I can’t recommend she continue.’

  ‘What will we do with you?’ Da said, as we walked back towards Jericho.

  I shrugged. All I wanted to do was sleep.

  When we arrived home there was a letter for Da from Ditte. He opened it and began reading. I saw his cheeks colour and his jaw clench, then he went into the sitting room and closed the door. I stood in the hall, waiting for bad news. When he came out, he had the pages Ditte had written for me in one hand. With the other he stroked the length of my arm until our hands were clutching. ‘Can you ever forgive me,’ he said. He put the pages on the sideboard. ‘I think you should read this one.’ Then he went into the kitchen to fill the kettle.

  I picked up the letter.

  July 28th, 1898

  My dear Esme,

  Harry writes that you are still not yourself. He skirts the truth of it, of course, but he described you as ‘distant’, ‘preoccupied’ and ‘tired’ in a single paragraph. Most alarming, he reports that you avoid the Scrippy and spend all day in your room.

  I was hoping things would be different for you once you were away from Cauldshiels and home with your father, but it’s been three months. Now that the summer is here, I’m hoping your mood may lift by degrees.

  Are you eating, Esme? You were so thin when I saw you last. I asked Mrs Ballard to spoil you with treats and, until Harry informed me you’d barely left the house, it was some comfort to imagine you sitting on your stool in her kitchen while she baked you a cake. In my mind you are younger, wearing a yellow polka-dot apron tied right up across your chest. That’s how I found you once when I visited Oxford. Were you nine, or ten? I can’t recall.

  Something was happening at Cauldshiels, wasn’t it, Esme? The thing is, your letters never said. But your letters, now that I think about it, were too perfect. When I read them now, I see they could have been written by anyone; and yet they are in your distinctive hand.

  The other day I re-read how you had walked to the Roman fort of Trimontium, written a poem in the Romantic style of Wordsworth and done satisfactorily in a mathematics test. I wondered whether you had enjoyed the hike and been proud of your poem. The absence of words was the clue, but I didn’t see it.

  I should have paid more attention to what was missing in your letters, Esme. I should have visited. I would have, if not for Beth’s illness. When that passed, the headmistress advised against it. Too disruptive mid-term, she said. I took her word.

  Harry wanted you home much sooner (truth be told, Harry never wanted you
to leave). It was me, my dear Esme, who suggested his concerns were unfounded, that boarding school would take a while to get used to for a child accustomed to the local parish school and lunchtimes spent in the Scriptorium. I told him to give it another year, that things might change for the better.

  After collecting you at Easter, Harry sent me the most direct letter of his life. You wouldn’t be going back, he said, whatever my opinion on the subject. You remember I travelled to Oxford the next day. When I saw you, I found no quarrel with his decision.

  We barely spoke, you and I. I had hoped that time would restore you, but it seems you need more. You are in my heart, dear girl, even if I have been dislodged from yours. I hope it is not permanent.

  I have enclosed a news clipping that I thought might be important to you. I do not want to presume but have found it difficult not to. Please forgive my blind eye.

  Yours, with deepest love always,

  Ditte

  I folded the pages around the tiny news clipping and put them in my pocket. For the first time in a long time I would have something to put in the trunk when I visited Lizzie’s room.

  ‘What’ve you got there, Essy?’ said Lizzie, coming into her room and pulling her dirty pinny up over her head.

  I looked at the tiny article clipped from the paper. It was just a single sentence, no more than a quotation. A teacher has been dismissed from Cauldshiels School for Young Ladies following the admission of a student to hospital.

  ‘Just words, Lizzie,’ I said.

  ‘There’s no “just words” for you, Essymay, ’specially if they end up in the trunk. What do they say?’

  ‘They say I wasn’t alone.’

  During the day I helped Mrs Ballard in the kitchen, and I only ventured towards the Scriptorium in the late afternoon, when almost everyone had left. I’d hesitate in the doorway, like Lizzie used to do, and watch Hilda moving around the pigeon-holes. She filed slips and removed them; she wrote letters and corrected proofs. All the while, Dr Murray sat like a wise owl at his high desk. Sometimes he would invite me in and sometimes he wouldn’t.