The Dictionary of Lost Words : A Novel (2020)

by Williams, Pip

  ‘I’ll live,’ he said. ‘What did you do to make that bloke so angry? He was making a beeline for the two of you.’

  ‘Bastard,’ said Tilda. Gareth’s head swung her way. ‘Oh, not you. You are our knight in shining armour,’ she curtsied theatrically, her smile mocking. Gareth saw it for what it was and looked awkward.

  ‘Tilda,’ I said, taking her arm. ‘This is Gareth. He works at the Press. He’s a friend of mine.’

  ‘A friend?’ she said, raising her eyebrows.

  I ignored her but couldn’t look Gareth in the eye. ‘Gareth, this is Tilda. We met years ago, when her theatre troupe came to Oxford.’

  ‘Nice to meet you, Tilda,’ Gareth said. ‘Are you here for a play or for this?’ He surveyed the confusion.

  ‘Esme invited me, and Mrs Pankhurst thought it an opportunity to raise awareness, so here I am.’

  There was so much shouting, and a siren. Women were being chased down Broad Street. ‘I think we should go,’ I said.

  Tilda hugged me. ‘You go – I think you’re in good hands,’ she said. ‘But come to Old Tom on Friday evening. We have so much to catch up on.’ Then she turned to Gareth. ‘And you must come too. Promise me you will.’

  Gareth looked to me for direction. Tilda watched on, waiting to see how I would respond. It was as if no time had passed since last I’d seen her. Daring and fear battled it out inside me. I did not want fear to win.

  ‘Of course,’ I said, looking back at Gareth. ‘Perhaps, we could go together?’

  His grin split the fragile seal of his cut lip, which started bleeding again. I reached into the pocket of my dress but found I had no handkerchief.

  ‘A bit of paper would do the trick,’ he said, trying to keep the smile in his eyes from spreading to his lips. ‘It’s little worse than a shaving cut.’

  I extracted a blank slip and tore the corner off it. He dabbed at his lip with the sleeve of his shirt, then I placed the bit of paper on the cut. It stained red immediately, but held.

  ‘I’ll see you both on Friday,’ Tilda said, winking at me. Then she turned toward Broad Street, where the fray seemed to be concentrating.

  Gareth and I turned in the opposite direction.

  ‘Esme! Good Lord, what happened?’ Rosfrith saw us as we walked in through the gates of Sunnyside. She looked to Gareth for an explanation.

  ‘The procession to the Martyrs’ Memorial got out of hand,’ he said.

  Gareth and I had barely spoken on our walk up the Banbury Road. Tilda had unsettled us and rendered us both shy.

  ‘This happened at the procession?’ said Rosfrith. She looked me up and down. My skirt was torn and soiled, my hair had come loose, my cheek smarted from where I’d continued to rub it to remove the filth of that man’s hatred. ‘Oh dear,’ she continued. ‘Mamma was there with Hilda and Gwyneth. It was wise of you to go together, though it doesn’t seem to have helped you,’ she said.

  I found my tongue. ‘Oh, no, we met quite by accident. I don’t know how Gareth came to be there.’

  She looked from Gareth to me, sceptical.

  I was unable to hold her gaze and turned to Gareth. ‘Why were you there?’

  ‘Same reason you were,’ he said.

  ‘I’m not sure why I was there,’ I said, as much to myself as to him.

  Just then, Mrs Murray walked in through the gates with her eldest and youngest daughters. All three were unscathed and excited. Rosfrith ran to them.

  Gareth walked with me to the kitchen and I introduced him to Lizzie. He helped explain what had happened.

  ‘Let me give you something for that lip.’ Lizzie dampened a clean cloth and passed it to him.

  He removed the scrap of paper and held it up for us both to see. ‘Stopped me bleeding to death, this did.’

  ‘What on earth is it?’ asked Lizzie, peering at it.

  ‘The edge of a slip,’ Gareth said, smiling in my direction.

  ‘I really am grateful, you know,’ I said. ‘That man was terrifying. It was unfair of Tilda to mock you.’

  ‘She was just testing me.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Making sure I was on the right side.’

  I smiled. ‘And are you on the right side?’

  He smiled back. ‘Yes, I am.’

  He seemed more sure than I was, and part of me felt ashamed. ‘Sometimes I think there may be more than two sides,’ I said.

  ‘You’d do well not to take the side of the suffragettes,’ Lizzie said. ‘They’re slowing things down with all their mischief.’ She handed Gareth a glass of water.

  ‘Thank you, Miss Lester,’ he said.

  ‘You call me Lizzie. I don’t answer to anything else.’

  We watched as he drank it down. When he finished, he took the glass to the sink and rinsed it. Lizzie looked at me in astonishment.

  ‘People have always taken different roads to get to the same place,’ Gareth said when he turned back to face us. ‘Women’s suffrage won’t be any different.’

  When Gareth left, Lizzie sat me down and washed my face. She brushed out my hair and rolled it back into a bun.

  ‘Never met a man like him,’ she said. ‘Except maybe your da. He also rinses his cup.’

  She had the same look on her face that Da did whenever Gareth visited the Scriptorium. I ignored her.

  ‘You never did say why you was there,’ she said.

  I couldn’t tell her about Tilda. It was the one topic we avoided, and the events of the day wouldn’t help to elevate her in Lizzie’s eyes. ‘I was coming home from the Bodleian,’ I said.

  ‘Would have been quicker to come along Parks Road.’

  ‘There was so much anger, Lizzie.’

  ‘Well, I’m just glad you weren’t badly hurt, or arrested.’

  ‘What are they so scared of?’

  Lizzie sighed. ‘All of them are scared of losing something; but for the likes of him that spat in your face, they don’t want their wives thinking they deserve more than they’ve got. Makes me glad to be in service when I think that men like that might be the alternative.’

  The day was almost over when I returned to the Scriptorium. Tilda’s postcard was sitting on top. I read it again then wrote a new slip, in duplicate.

  SISTERHOOD

  ‘I’m glad you have joined the sisterhood and will be adding your voice to the cry.’

  Tilda Taylor, 1912

  I searched the fascicles. Sisterhood was already published. The main sense referred, in one way or another, to the sisterhood experienced by nuns. Tilda’s quotation belonged with the second sense: Used loosely to denote a number of females having some common aim, characteristic or calling. Often in a bad sense.

  I went to the pigeon-holes and found the original slips. Newspaper clippings made up most of the quotations. In a clipping about females who agitate on questions they know nothing about, a volunteer had underlined the shrieking sisterhood. The most recent slip, from an article written in 1909, described women of the suffragette type as a highly educated, screeching, childless, and husbandless sisterhood.

  They were all insulting, and I was heartened to think that Dr Murray had rejected them. Even so, I rewrote the published definition on a new slip, leaving off in a bad sense, and pinned a copy of Tilda’s quotation in front of it. Then I put them in the pigeon-holes reserved for supplementary words.

  When I turned away from the shelves, Da was watching me.

  ‘What do you think of newspapers as a source of meaning?’ he asked.

  ‘What else did you see?’

  He smiled, but it seemed an effort. ‘I don’t mind what you add to the pigeon-holes, Essy. Even if your quotations don’t come from a text, they might encourage the search for something similar. The closest we can get to understanding new words is newspaper articles. James spends quite a bit of his time these days arguing for their validity.’

  I thought about the clippings I’d just read. ‘I’m not sure,’ I said. ‘They often seem no be
tter than opinion, and if you want opinion to define what something means then you should at least consider all sides. Not all sides have a newspaper to speak for them.’

  ‘It’s a good thing, then, that some of them have you.’

  Da and I sat together in the sitting room, both of us trying to make conversation and failing; both of us trying not to let the other see our eagerness for the knock on the door. It was already six o’clock. Da was facing the window onto the street. Whenever his eyes registered someone passing, I held my breath for the sound of the gate then released it when the gate did not sing.

  Da looked more animated than he had in a while. When I’d told him Gareth had offered to accompany me to Old Tom, Da had smiled as if relieved, but I couldn’t interpret it. Was he glad I had a chaperone for my meeting with Tilda, or was he glad I had a gentleman caller? He must have thought the latter would never happen. Whichever it was, it was the first time in weeks that the lines on his forehead had relaxed.

  ‘You’ve been looking tired lately, Da.’

  ‘It’s the letter S. Four years and we’re not even halfway through. It’s sapping, stupefying, soporific …’ He paused to think of another word.

  ‘Slumberous, somnolent, somniferous,’ I offered.

  ‘Excellent,’ he said, with a smile that took me back to our word games of years ago. Then he looked past me, through the window. His smile widened. The gate sang. I felt the tingle of perspiration under my arms and was glad when Da rose to answer the knock. He and Gareth stood talking in the hall for a few minutes. I stood up and checked my face in the mirror above the fireplace. I pinched my cheeks.

  I hadn’t been inside Old Tom since Tilda was last in Oxford. As Gareth and I approached, I was ambushed by memories of Bill. Then memories of Her.

  ‘Is everything alright, Esme?’

  I looked up at the sign hanging above the door of the small pub; a drawing of the Christ Church belltower.

  ‘Quite alright,’ I said. Gareth opened the door for me to step in.

  Old Tom was as crowded as it had always been, and at first I thought Tilda may not have come. Then I saw her, at a table with three other women right at the back. She must have caused the usual fuss when she walked in, but she wasn’t encouraging it the way she had seven years before: we had to push ourselves past small groups of men to reach her, but none appeared to be throwing flattery her way. It didn’t feel as welcoming as it once had.

  Tilda rose and embraced me. ‘Ladies, this is Esme. We became fast friends the last time I was in Oxford.’

  ‘You live here?’ one of the women asked.

  ‘She does,’ said Tilda, her arm pulling me close. ‘Though she hides herself away in a shed.’

  The woman frowned. Tilda turned to me.

  ‘How is your dictionary progressing, Esme?’

  ‘We’re up to S.’

  ‘Good God, really? How can you stand going so slow?’ She let me go and sat back down.

  The other women were all looking up at me for a response. There were no spare chairs.

  ‘We collect words for a few letters at the same time; it’s not as tedious as it sounds.’ No one said anything for a moment. I felt Gareth shift a little closer and was glad he had come.

  ‘And this is …’ Tilda hesitated and made a show of searching her memory. ‘Gareth, isn’t it?’

  ‘Good to see you again, Miss Taylor,’ he said.

  ‘Tilda, please. And these lovely ladies are Shona, Betty and Gert.’

  Shona was the youngest of the three, no more than twenty. The other two were a good ten years older than I was.

  ‘I recognise you now,’ said Gert. ‘You were Tilda’s helper that night at the Eagle and Child.’ She looked at Tilda. ‘Do you remember, Tilds? That was my first real outing.’

  ‘The first of many,’ Tilda said.

  ‘And there will be many to come, the rate we’re going.’ Gert looked at me. ‘We’re no closer to the vote than we were a decade ago.’ A few heads turned in our direction. Tilda stared them down.

  ‘And what do you think of it all, Gareth?’ Tilda said.

  ‘Women’s suffrage?’

  ‘No, the price of pork. Of course, women’s suffrage.’

  ‘It affects us all,’ he said.

  ‘A supporter, then,’ said Betty. Her voice gave away her northern origins, and I wondered if she’d come down from Manchester with Tilda.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘But how far would you go?’ Betty asked.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, it’s easy to say the right things –’ she glanced towards me ‘– but words are meaningless without action.’

  ‘And sometimes action can make a lie of good words,’ Gareth said.

  ‘And what would you know of our struggle, Gareth?’ Tilda leaned back in her chair and sipped her whiskey.

  My head turned from one to the other.

  ‘My mother had to raise me alone while working at the Press,’ Gareth said. ‘I know quite a lot.’

  Gert scoffed. Tilda threw her a silencing glance. Gert raised a glass of sherry to her lips, and I noticed a gold band and a large diamond ring. She was a class or two above Betty. Shona had remained silent throughout the conversation, her head bowed deferentially, and I suddenly had the thought that she might be Gert’s maid. My heart started to pound.

  ‘And what do you know of our struggle, Gert?’ I asked. Shona did her best to conceal a smile.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Well, it seems to me that we are not all struggling in the same way. Isn’t it true that Mrs Pankhurst was willing to negotiate for women with property and education to get the vote, but not women like Gareth’s mother, for instance?’

  Tilda sat open-mouthed, a smile in her eyes. Gert and Betty were appalled, but speechless. Shona looked up for a moment, then back at her lap. The men immediately beside us had gone completely quiet.

  ‘Excellent, Esme,’ Tilda said, raising her now empty glass. ‘I was wondering when you would join in.’

  The January night was cold, and Gareth offered me his coat for the walk back through the Oxford streets to Jericho.

  ‘I’m quite alright,’ I said. ‘And you’ll freeze if you take it off.’

  He didn’t insist. ‘What did Tilda mean about you joining in?’ he asked.

  ‘She’s always thought I didn’t know my own mind when it came to women’s suffrage.’

  ‘Your ideas sounded pretty clear to me.’

  ‘Well, that might be the most I’ve ever said on the subject, but that Gert woman was so awful I couldn’t bear to be agreeable.’

  ‘I didn’t like what they were hinting at,’ Gareth said.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Deeds not words.’ He was thoughtful for a minute. ‘Essy, do you know why Tilda is in Oxford?’

  Essy. Gareth had never called me anything except Miss Nicoll, or Esme. A shiver went through me.

  ‘You are cold,’ he said, and he took off his coat and placed it over my shoulders. His hand brushed my neck as he straightened out the collar. I tried to remember what he’d asked me a moment before.

  ‘She’s here for the procession,’ I said, pulling his coat around me. The warmth of him was still in it. ‘And me. We were quite good friends for a while.’

  We slowed on Walton Street, passed the back of Somerville College and stopped when we came to the Press. It was completely dark except for the orange glow from an office above the archway.

  ‘Hart,’ Gareth said.

  ‘Does he never go home?’

  ‘The Press is his home. He lives on the grounds with his wife.’

  ‘And where do you live?’

  ‘Near the canal. Same workers’ cottage I grew up in with Ma. When she died, they let me stay. It’s too small and too damp for a family.’

  ‘Do you like working at the Press?’ I asked.

  Gareth leaned against the iron railing. ‘It’s all I know. It’s not really a matter
of liking.’

  ‘Do you ever imagine a different life?’

  He looked at me, cocked his head a little. ‘You don’t ask the usual questions, do you?’

  I didn’t know what to say.

  ‘The usual questions are usually very uninteresting,’ he continued. ‘I sometimes imagine travelling, to France or Germany. I’ve learned to read both languages.’

  ‘Only read?’

  ‘That’s all that’s required for my job. I’ve been learning since I was an apprentice. It’s Hart’s doing. He set up the Clarendon Institute to educate his ignorant workforce. And to give the band a place to practise.’

  ‘There’s a band?’

  ‘Of course. And a choir.’

  When we started walking again there was less distance between us, but we fell silent as we turned onto Observatory Street. I was wondering if Gareth would ask me to walk out with him again. I was hoping he was thinking of it and wondering if I’d say yes. As we came to the house, I noticed Da in the sitting room. He was facing the window as he had earlier in the evening. He opened the door before I had a chance to knock. Gareth and I could only say goodnight.

  Tilda stayed in Oxford.

  ‘I’m bunking in with a friend,’ she told me. ‘She has a narrowboat on the Castle Mill Stream. I can see the belltower of St Barnabas through the window beside my bed.’

  ‘Is it comfortable?’

  ‘Comfortable enough. And warm. She lives there with her sister, so it can be a bit tight. We have to take it in turns to dress.’ She smiled wide.

  I wrote my address on a slip and gave it to her. ‘Just in case,’ I said.

  Winter passed and spring moved toward summer. When I asked why Tilda was still in Oxford, she said she was gathering members for the WSPU. When I pressed her, she changed the subject.

  ‘I thought I’d see more of you while I was here,’ she said one afternoon as we walked along the towpath of the Castle Mill Stream, ‘but you seem to spend all your free time with Gareth.’

  ‘That’s not true. We only have lunch together in Jericho now and then. And he’s taken me to the theatre a few times.’