The Dictionary of Lost Words : A Novel (2020)

by Williams, Pip

  Then Angus had his arms around both of us, and I felt him slow us down. Bertie’s groaning became a hum, and I whispered my chant. The rocking stopped altogether, and Bertie collapsed onto my breast and wept.

  Sister Morley sat me down at the nurses’ desk and brought me a cup of tea. ‘There are a lot of boys like Bertie,’ she said. ‘Not his particular war neurosis – I think that’s unique – but a lot that don’t speak when the doctors say they are perfectly able.’

  ‘What happens to them?’ I asked.

  ‘A lot end up at the Netley Hospital in Southampton,’ she said. ‘They’re open to trying all sorts of treatments. Doctor Ostler thinks there might be some merit to your Esperanto therapy and he’s written about it to a colleague there. He’s aware of your work with the Dictionary and thinks your particular expertise might contribute to their linguistic therapy program. He’s hoping you might make a visit and talk to the staff about what you’ve been doing with Bertie.’

  ‘But Bertie hasn’t said a word,’ I said. ‘And there’s no indication that anything I’ve done has gotten through.’

  ‘This is the first time he’s been calmed by words instead of chloroform, Mrs Owen. It’s a start.’

  I dreamed I was in France. Gareth wore a turban, and Bertie could speak. Angus was rocking me, saying, ‘Sekura, sekura.’ I looked down and my feet were bloody stumps.

  When I arrived the next morning Lizzie was already in the Scriptorium, wiping the pigeon-holes with a damp cloth. I could smell the vinegar.

  ‘Sleep in?’ she said.

  ‘A bad night.’

  She nodded. ‘They’ll be taking the pigeon-holes this morning. If you box up whatever’s in your desk, they can take that too.’

  My desk. Not a thing had been packed away. There were even some slips and a page of copy on top. It was like a room in one of those museum houses. I assembled my box and began filling it.

  My copy of Samuel Johnson’s dictionary went in first, then Da’s books – what he called his ‘Scrippy library’. I picked up a worn volume of The Thousand and One Nights and turned to the story of Ala-ed-Din. The past came towards me, and I closed the book. I put it in the box with the others.

  I cleared the top of my desk and opened the lid. There was a novel I never finished reading. A slip fell from its pages – a dull word, a duplicate, probably. I put it back in the book and put the book in the box. Pencils and a pen. Notepaper. Hart’s Rules with Mr Dankworth’s notes still attached. They all went in.

  Then the shoebox full of slips. My slips. The slips Gareth had procured from Lizzie or sneaked into the Scriptorium to borrow. I put them in the box too. Then I folded the flaps down, securing one beneath the other.

  ‘I think we might be done, Lizzie,’ I said.

  ‘Almost.’ She dipped her cloth in the bucket and squeezed out the excess water. Then she got on her knees to wipe the last row of pigeon-holes. ‘Now we’re done,’ she said, sitting back on her haunches. I helped her to stand.

  An older man and a boy arrived while Lizzie emptied her bucket of water under the ash.

  ‘They’re all ready to go,’ I said.

  The older man pointed to the pigeon-holes closest to the door, and the boy bent to lift one end. They had the same stocky build, the same blond hair. I hoped the war would end before the boy came of age. They took the shelves to a small lorry parked in the driveway.

  Lizzie came back with a dustpan and brush.

  ‘Just when you think there’s nothing more to do.’ She brushed up decades of accumulated dust and dirt that had built up behind the pigeon-holes.

  Shelf by shelf, the man and his boy removed all evidence the slips had ever been there.

  ‘Last one,’ the man said. ‘You want me to come back for that box? It’s for the Old Ash, I take it?’

  Is that where I’ll go after this? I thought. It hadn’t been a question, and now it was.

  ‘Leave it for the moment,’ I said.

  The boy walked forward, the man backward, turning his head to the side now and then to check he wasn’t going to bump into anything. I followed them out of the Scriptorium and watched as they loaded the last of the pigeon-holes into the lorry. They closed the doors, got into the cab and drove out of the gates onto the Banbury Road.

  ‘That’s it, then,’ I said to Lizzie as I came back in.

  ‘Not quite.’ Still kneeling, Lizzie held the dustpan in one hand and a small pile of slips in the other. ‘They’re filthy, mind,’ she said, handing them to me.

  The slips were held together with a rusty pin and cobwebs. I took them outside and blew them clean, then returned to the sorting table. I spread the slips out. There were seven, each written in a different hand, with a quotation from a different book, a different time in history.

  ‘Read them out,’ Lizzie called from where she kneeled. ‘Let’s see if I’ve heard of them.’

  ‘You’ve heard of them,’ I said.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Bonde mayde.’ Lizzie’s sweeping stopped. ‘Bound maiden, bondmaiden, bond servant, bond service, bond-maide, bondmaid.’

  Their quotations were almost benign, but on three slips Da had written a possible definition: Slave girl, bonded servant, bound to serve till death.

  Slave girl had been circled.

  I remembered the top-slip finding me beneath the sorting table.

  Lizzie sat beside me. ‘What’s upset you?’

  ‘It’s these words.’

  Lizzie moved the slips around, as if completing a jigsaw puzzle. ‘Will you be keeping them or giving them to Mr Bradley?’

  Bondmaid had come to me – twice now– and I was reluctant to restore it to the Dictionary. It’s a vulgar word, I thought. More offensive to me than cunt. Would that give me the right to leave it out if I was editor?

  ‘It means slave girl, Lizzie. Has that never bothered you?’

  She thought for a while. ‘I’m no slave, Essymay, but in my head, I can’t help thinking of myself as a bondmaid.’

  Her hand went to her crucifix, and I knew she was thinking about the right way to say something.

  When she finally let the crucifix rest, she was smiling. ‘You’ve always said that a word can change its meaning depending on who uses it. So maybe bondmaid can mean something more than what those slips say. I’ve been a bondmaid to you since you were small, Essymay, and I’ve been glad for every day of it.’

  I closed the door of the Scriptorium, and Lizzie walked with me through the twilight, back to Observatory Street. We ate bread and butter at my kitchen table, and when my eyes began to droop, I asked if she would stay.

  ‘You’d probably be more comfortable in my old room,’ I said, ‘but do you mind sharing?’

  Upstairs, Lizzie climbed beneath the blankets and folded herself around me. I told her about Bertie. About his fear, and mine.

  ‘I think now I can imagine a little of what it’s like for them,’ I whispered into the dark. I didn’t say Gareth’s name. We didn’t talk about his letter. The battle of Loos was hearsay and rumour all over Oxford.

  I woke alone but to the clatter of Lizzie in our kitchen. She had porridge on the range, and when she saw me she spooned some into a bowl then added cream, honey and a pinch of cinnamon. I realised she must have been to the market already.

  We ate in easy silence. When our bowls were empty, Lizzie made toast and brewed tea. She was comfortable moving around the kitchen in a way that I was not. I was reminded of our time in Shropshire.

  ‘Good to see you smile,’ she said.

  ‘It’s good to have you here.’

  The garden gate sang on its hinges.

  ‘Morning post,’ I said. ‘He’s early.’ I waited for the sound of letters being pushed through the slot in the front door. When it didn’t come, Lizzie went down the hall to check if there was someone outside. I followed.

  ‘What’s he doing?’ I asked.

  ‘He’s holding …’ Lizzie clamped her hand over her mouth and her head shoo
k back and forth, ever so slightly. There was a knock, almost too quiet to be heard. She took a step towards it.

  ‘Stop.’ It came out as a whisper. ‘It will be for me.’ But I was unable to move.

  He knocked again. Tears rolled silently over Lizzie’s rough cheeks as she looked back at me. She offered me her arm and I took it.

  The man was old, too old for the war, and so he was charged with delivering its sorrow. I held the telegram and watched him walk back along the length of Observatory Street. His shoulders hunched under the weight of his satchel.

  Lizzie stayed with me. She fed me and bathed me, and held my arm to walk to the end of the street, then around the block, then to St Barnabas. She prayed; I couldn’t.

  After two weeks, I insisted on returning to the Radcliffe Infirmary. Angus had been sent to a rehabilitation hospital near his hometown. Bertie had been moved to the Netley Hospital in Southampton. There were still three other boys there who had been silenced by their experience. I sat with them until the sister sent me home.

  A month after the telegram, a parcel arrived. Lizzie brought it into the sitting room.

  ‘There’s a note,’ she said, taking it from under the string that held the brown-paper parcel together.

  Dear Mrs Owen,

  Please accept these two copies of ‘Women’s Words and Their Meanings’, with my compliments. I apologise I could not print more, and that the binding is not to the standard of the original. Paper is in short supply, as you know. I have taken the liberty of retaining a third copy for the Oxford University Press library. If you ever need to access it, you will find it shelved alongside the Dictionary fascicles.

  Yours, in sympathy,

  Horace Hart

  Lizzie stoked the coals then sat beside me. I released the bow and the paper fell away.

  ‘It’s a good thing,’ said Lizzie.

  ‘What is?’

  ‘Having copies.’ She took one and turned the pages, counting them under her breath. She stopped on page fifteen and found her own name.

  ‘Lizzie Lester,’ she said.

  ‘Do you remember the word?’

  ‘Knackered.’ She ran her finger under the word, then, looking at me recited by heart: ‘I get up before dawn to make sure everyone in the big house will be warm and fed when they wake, and I don’t go to sleep till they is snoring. I feel knackered half the time, like a worn-out horse. No good for nothing.’

  ‘Word perfect, Lizzie. How do you remember it so well?’

  ‘I had Gareth read it to me three times till I got it. But it’s not word perfect. I should have said “till they are snoring”. Why didn’t you correct it?’

  ‘It wasn’t my place to judge what you said or how you said it. I just wanted to record, and maybe understand.’

  She nodded. ‘Gareth showed me every word with my name against it. I memorised where they were and what they said.’

  ‘Why is it a good thing to have copies?’ I asked.

  ‘’Cos now they’ll get an airing,’ she said. ‘You can give one to Mr Bradley and one to the Bodleian. Anything important that’s been written down, they keep. You said that. Every book, every manuscript, every letter written from Lord Whatsit to Professor Who-knows-what.’

  ‘And you think this is important?’ I was smiling for the first time in weeks.

  ‘I do.’

  Lizzie rose and returned her copy of Women’s Words to the opened parcel in my lap. She patted it, put her hand to my cheek, then went to the kitchen.

  Lizzie came with me to the Bodleian.

  Since allowing me to become a reader, Mr Nicholson had softened to the presence of women in his library, but I was not so sure about his successor. Mr Madan looked at the title page. ‘I don’t think so, Mrs Owen.’ He took off his spectacles and wiped them with a handkerchief, as if to remove the image of my name.

  ‘But why?’

  He returned his spectacles to the bridge of his nose and turned a few pages. ‘It’s an interesting project, but it’s of no scholarly importance.’

  ‘And what would make it of scholarly importance?’

  ‘If it had been compiled by a scholar, for a start. Beyond that, it would have to be a topic of significance.’

  It was ten in the morning. Scholars billowed by in their gowns, long and short – though there were fewer men and more women than the first time I stood at that desk. I turned to where Lizzie sat. It was the same bench I’d occupied years before while Dr Murray argued my case to become a reader. She looked as out of place as I had felt. I rose to my full height and turned back to Mr Madan.

  ‘It is a topic of significance, sir. It fills a gap in knowledge, and surely that is the purpose of scholarship.’

  He had to tilt his head up a little to look me in the eye. I felt Lizzie shift behind me, saw his gaze flick towards her, then back to me.

  I would stay there until Women’s Words was accepted, I thought. If I had a chain, I would have gladly locked myself to the grille in front of the desk.

  Mr Madan stopped turning pages. His cheeks flushed and he covered his discomfort with a cough. He had scanned page six. C words.

  ‘An old word, Mr Madan. With a long history in English. Chaucer was quite fond of using it, and yet it does not appear in our Dictionary. A gap, surely.’

  He wiped his forehead with his handkerchief and looked around, searching for an ally. I looked around also.

  Our conversation was being observed by three old men, and Eleanor Bradley – there to check quotations no doubt. She smiled when I caught her eye, nodding her encouragement. I faced Mr Madan again.

  ‘You are not the arbiter of knowledge, sir. You are its librarian.’ I pushed Women’s Words across his desk. ‘It is not for you to judge the importance of these words, simply to allow others to do so.’

  Lizzie and I walked arm in arm along the Banbury Road to Sunnyside. We came through the gates as Elsie and Rosfrith were coming out. They embraced me in turn.

  ‘Will we be seeing you at the Old Ashmolean today, Esme?’ Elsie asked, her hand gentle on my sleeve. ‘The pigeon-holes are all in place, and the only thing missing now is you. It’s a bit tight at the moment, but Mr Sweatman has made some room for you at his desk.’

  I looked from one Murray sister to the other, and then to Lizzie. We were children together, once. Would we grow old together?

  ‘Could you wait a moment, Elsie, Rosfrith? I’ll be right back.’

  I walked through the garden. The ash was losing its leaves, and autumn winds had already blown them toward the Scriptorium. I had to clear them from the doorway before going in.

  It was cold, almost empty, except for the sorting table. The bondmaid slips were exactly where Lizzie and I had left them. I sat where Lizzie had sat moving the words around. She couldn’t read them, but she had understood them better than I had. I felt my pockets for the stub of a pencil and a blank slip.

  BONDMAID

  Bonded for life by love, devotion or obligation.

  ‘I’ve been a bondmaid to you since you were small, Essymay, and I’ve been glad for every day of it.’

  Lizzie Lester, 1915

  I pulled the door of the Scriptorium shut and heard the sound of it echo into the almost-empty space inside. Just a shed, I thought, and walked back to where the three women were waiting.

  ‘These are for Mr Bradley,’ I said, handing Elsie the bundle of slips. ‘Lizzie found them as we were cleaning up. They’re the missing bondmaid slips.’

  For a moment, Elsie wasn’t sure what I was talking about, then the crease between her brows gave way to wide eyes. ‘Goodness,’ she said, peering closely at the slips, not quite believing.

  Rosfrith leaned in to look. ‘What a mystery that was,’ she said.

  ‘The top-slip doesn’t seem to be with them, unfortunately,’ I gave Lizzie the quickest glance. ‘But there are some suggestions about how it might be defined. We thought Mr Bradley would be glad to have them, after all this time.’

  ‘I
have no doubt that he will,’ said Elsie. ‘But surely you can give them to him yourself?’

  ‘I won’t be coming to the Old Ashmolean, Elsie. I’ve been offered a position at the Netley Hospital in Southampton. I think I’m going to take it.’

  The trunk sat on the kitchen table. Lizzie and I sat either side of it, each holding a cup of tea.

  ‘I think it should stay here,’ I said. ‘My accommodation is temporary, and I don’t know when I’ll get something permanent.’

  ‘Surely you’ll collect more words.’

  I took a sip of tea and smiled. ‘Maybe not. I’ll be working with men who don’t speak.’

  ‘But it’s your Dictionary of Lost Words!’

  I thought about what was in the trunk. ‘It defines me, Lizzie. I wouldn’t know who I was without it. But as Da would have said, I have followed all avenues of enquiry and am satisfied I have enough for an accurate entry.’

  ‘You’re not a word, Essymay.’

  ‘Not to you. But to Her, that is all I am. And I may not even be that. When the time is right, I want Her to have it.’ I reached over and took Lizzie’s hand from where it rested against her chest. ‘I want Her to know who I am. What She meant. It’s all there.’

  We looked at the trunk, worn from handling, like a well-read book.

  ‘You’ve always been its custodian, Lizzie, from the very first word. Please look after it until I’m settled.’

  My own bags were packed when Gareth’s kit arrived.

  I emptied it carefully onto the kitchen table. There was mud still on the socks I’d knitted; dirt and blood on his spare tunic and trousers. His or another man’s, I didn’t know. My letters were all there, and Rupert Brooke’s poems. I fanned through the pages and found my slip – love, eternal.

  I unzipped his shaving kit, emptied his stationery box; I turned every pocket inside out and rubbed lint and dried mud between my fingers. I wanted everything he’d left to touch my skin. I opened my letters to him. The oldest were so worn along the folds, my words were hard to read. When I opened the last, his pages were tucked between mine. The writing was shaky, rushed, but it was Gareth’s hand.