I’d been forbidden to touch them, and now I was given the role of protector. I wanted to tell someone. If anyone had been in the garden just then, I would have found a way to show them the slips, to say that Dr Murray had entrusted them to me. I collected the bicycle from behind the Scriptorium and rode through the gates of Sunnyside and along the Banbury Road. As I turned into St Margaret’s Road, tears began to course down my cheeks. They were warm and welcome.
The building on Walton Street greeted me differently, its wide entrance no longer an intimidation but instead a welcoming gesture – I was on important Dictionary business.
When I was in the building, I took one bundle of slips from my satchel and released the bow that held them. Each sense of the word grade was defined on a top-slip and followed by the quotations that illustrated it. I scanned the various meanings and found one wanting. I thought to tell Da, or perhaps Dr Murray, and my arrogance made me laugh. Then someone bumped me, or I bumped them, and my funny fingers lost their hold. Slips fell to the ground like litter. When I looked to see where they had landed all I saw were hurrying feet. I felt the blood rush from my face.
‘No harm done,’ a man said, bending to pick up what had fallen. ‘They’re numbered for a reason.’
He handed me the slips. My hand shook as I reached for them.
‘Goodness, are you alright?’ He took my elbow. ‘You need to sit down before you faint.’ He opened the nearest door and sat me on a chair just inside it. ‘I hope the noise doesn’t bother you, miss. Take a minute and I’ll be right back with a glass of water.’
It was the printing room, and it was, indeed, noisy. But there were rhythms on top of rhythms, and trying to separate them settled my panic. I checked the slips: one, two, three … I counted to thirty. None were missing. I secured their string and put them back in the satchel. When the man returned, I had my face in my hands, all the emotion of the past hour risen to the surface and hard to contain.
‘Here, have this,’ he said, crouching and offering the glass of water.
‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘I’m not sure what came over me.’
He gave me his hand and helped me up from the chair. His gaze lingered on my funny fingers, and I withdrew them.
‘Do you work in here?’ I asked, looking beyond him into the printing room.
‘Only if a machine needs some tinkering,’ he said. ‘Mostly I set the type. I’m a compositor.’
‘You make the words real,’ I said, finally looking at him. His eyes were almost violet. It was the young compositor who’d been standing with Mr Hart and Mr Bradley on my first visit.
He tilted his head, and I thought he might not understand what I meant. But then he smiled. ‘I prefer to say that I give them substance – a real word is one that is said out loud and means something to someone. Not all of them will find their way to a page. There are words I’ve heard all my life that I’ve never set in type.’
What words? I wanted to ask. What do they mean? Who says them? But my tongue had become tied.
‘I should go,’ I finally managed. ‘I have to deliver these slips to Mr Hart.’
‘Well, it was nice to bump into you, Esme,’ he said, smiling. ‘It is Esme, isn’t it? We were never actually introduced.’
I remembered his eyes but not his name. I stood stupid and mute.
‘Gareth,’ he said, holding out his hand, again. ‘Very pleased to meet you.’
I hesitated, then returned my hand to his. He had long tapered fingers and a strangely bulbous thumb. My gaze lingered.
‘Pleased to meet you too,’ I said.
He opened the door and saw me into the hallway.
‘You know the way?’
‘Yes.’
‘Right then. Go carefully.’
I turned and headed to the Controller’s office. It was a relief to hand over the bundles of slips.
A new century started, and although there was a feeling that anything might happen, I never thought I’d see Dr Murray come to the kitchen door. When Mrs Ballard saw him striding across the lawn, she brushed down her apron and fixed the hair that had come loose from her cap. She unlatched the top door, and Dr Murray leaned in, his long beard wafting on the warm breath coming from the hearth.
‘And where is Lizzie?’ he asked, glancing at where I stood by the bench, stirring the batter of a cake.
‘I sent her to fetch a few things, Dr Murray, sir,’ said Mrs Ballard. ‘She’ll be back in no time, and then Esme will help her with hanging laundry in the drying cupboard. She’s a great help to us, is Esme.’
‘Well, that may be so, but I’d like Esme to come with me to the Scriptorium.’
Instinctively, I checked my pockets. Mrs Ballard looked at me. I shook my head as if to say, I’ve done nothing, I promise.
‘Off you go now, Esme. Follow Dr Murray to the Scrippy.’ I took off my apron and walked, as if through treacle, to the kitchen door.
When I came into the Scriptorium, Da was there, smiling. He had many kinds of smiles, but his ‘caged smile’ was my favourite. It struggled to be released from behind pursed lips and twitching eyebrows. My fingers unfurled from the fists they’d been making.
Da took my hand, and the three of us walked to the back of the Scriptorium.
‘This, Essy, is for you,’ Da said, freeing his smile.
Behind a shelf of old dictionaries was a wooden desk. It was the kind I’d sat at in a cold room at Cauldshiels. My fingers twitched remembering the
