We were startled by three sharp raps on the Scriptorium door. Da’s foot found his shoe.
From under the table, I watched as Da opened the door to a small man with a large blond moustache and hardly any hair on his head. ‘Crane,’ I heard the man say as Da ushered him in. ‘I’m expected.’ His clothes were too big for him, and I wondered if he was hoping to grow into them. It was the new assistant.
Some assistants only came for a few months, but sometimes they stayed forever, like Mr Sweatman. He’d come the year before and, of all the men who sat around the sorting table, he was the only one without a beard. It meant I could see his smile, and he happened to smile a lot. When Da introduced Mr Crane to the men around the sorting table, Mr Crane didn’t smile once.
‘And this little scapegrace is Esme,’ said Da, helping me up.
I held out my hand, but Mr Crane didn’t take it.
‘What was she doing under there?’ he asked.
‘Whatever children do under tables, I suppose,’ said Mr Sweatman, and his smile met mine.
Da leaned towards me. ‘Let Dr Murray know that the new assistant has arrived, Esme.’
I ran across the garden to the kitchen, and Mrs Ballard walked with me to the dining room.
Dr Murray sat at one end of the large table, Mrs Murray at the other. There was room for all eleven of their children in between, but three had flown the coop, Lizzie said. The rest were spread along each side of the table, the biggest at Dr Murray’s end, the littlest in high chairs near their mother. I stood dumb as they finished saying grace, then Elsie and Rosfrith waved and I waved back, my message suddenly less important.
‘Our new assistant?’ Dr Murray said over his spectacles when he saw me lurking.
I nodded, and he rose. The rest of the Murrays began to eat.
In the Scriptorium, Da was explaining something to Mr Crane, who turned when he heard us come in.
‘Dr Murray, sir. An honour to join your team,’ he said, holding out his hand and bowing slightly.
Dr Murray cleared his throat. It sounded a bit like a grunt. He shook Mr Crane’s hand. ‘It’s not for everyone,’ he said. ‘Takes a certain … diligence. Are you diligent, Mr Crane?’
‘Of course, sir,’ he said.
Dr Murray nodded then returned to the house to finish lunch.
Da continued with his tour. Whenever he told Mr Crane something about the way the slips were sorted, Mr Crane would nod and say, ‘Quite straightforward.’
‘The slips are sent in by volunteers all over the world,’ I said, when Da was showing him how the pigeon-holes were ordered.
Mr Crane looked down at me, frowned a little but made no response. I stepped back a fraction.
Mr Sweatman put a hand on my shoulder. ‘I came across a slip from Australia once,’ he said. ‘That’s about as far away from England as you can get.’
When Dr Murray returned from lunch to give Mr Crane his instructions, I didn’t sit and listen.
‘Will he be here for a little while or forever?’ I whispered to Da.
‘For the duration,’ he said. ‘So, probably forever.’
I crawled beneath the sorting table, and a few minutes later an unfamiliar pair of shoes joined those I knew so well.
Mr Crane’s shoes were old, like Da’s, but they hadn’t been polished in a while. I watched as they tried to settle. He crossed his right leg over his left, then his left over his right. Eventually, he wrapped his ankles around the front legs of his chair, and it looked as though his shoes were trying to hide from me.
Just before Lizzie was to take me back to school, a whole pile of slips fell beside Mr Crane’s chair. I heard Da say that some of the C bundles had become ‘unwieldy with the weight of possibility’. He made that little noise he made when he thought he was being funny.
Mr Crane didn’t laugh. ‘They were poorly tied,’ he said, bending to sweep up as many slips as he could in a single movement. His fingers closed into a fist around them, and I saw the slips crushed. I let out a little gasp, and it made him bump his head on the underside of the table.
‘Alright there, Mr Crane?’ asked Mr Maling.
‘Surely the girl is too big to be under there.’
‘It’s just until she returns to school,’ said Mr Sweatman.
When my breathing settled, and the Scriptorium returned to its regular shuffle and hum, I searched the shadows under the sorting table. Two slips still rested beside Mr Worrall’s tidy shoes, as if they knew they would be safe from some careless tread. I picked them up and had a sudden memory of the trunk beneath Lizzie’s bed. I couldn’t bring myself to return them to Mr Crane.
When I saw Lizzie hovering at the door, I emerged beside Da’s chair.
‘That time already?’ he said, but I had a feeling he’d been watching the clock.
I put the exercise book in my satchel and joined Lizzie in the garden.
‘Can I put something in the
