With her eyes closed, I could take her in. She was tall, though not as tall as me, and her figure curved like that of a woman in a Pears’ Soap advertisement. Above a high lace collar, her skin was pale and without blemish. Honey-blonde hair hung in a lose braid down her back, and she wore no hat.
She laid the flowers down between a barnacled bell that was unlikely to ever ring again and the whittled face of an angel.
I picked up the whittling. ‘I haven’t seen this one before, Mabel.’
‘Finished this mornin’. ’
‘Is she someone you know?’ I asked.
‘Me before I lost me teeth.’ Mabel laughed.
The woman made no move to leave, and I wondered if I’d interrupted some private conversation they were waiting to resume. I took my purse from my pocket and searched for the right coins.
‘Thought you’d like ’er,’ Mabel said. At first I thought she was talking about the young woman, but she picked up the whittled angel and accepted my coins.
‘My name’s Tilda,’ the woman said, offering her hand.
I hesitated.
‘She don’t like shakin’ ’ands,’ said Mabel. ‘Scared you might flinch.’
Tilda looked at my fingers then straight in my eyes. ‘Not much makes me flinch,’ she said. Her grip was firm. I was grateful.
‘Esme,’ I said. ‘Are you a friend of Mabel’s?’
‘No, we’ve just met.’
‘Kindred spirits, I reckon,’ said Mabel.
Tilda leaned in. ‘She insists I’m a dollymop.’
I didn’t understand.
‘Look at ’er face. Never ’eard of a dollymop.’ Mabel was not so discrete, and Mrs Stiles made it known she’d taken offence with a scraping of buckets and a mumbled protest. ‘Come on, girl,’ Mabel said to me. ‘Take out yer slips.’
Tilda cocked her head.
‘She collects words,’ said Mabel.
‘What kinds of words?’
‘Women’s words. Dirty ones.’
I stood dumb, caught with no adequate explanation. It was as though Da had asked me to turn out my pockets.
But Tilda was interested, not appalled. ‘Really?’ she said, taking in the loose fit of my jacket and the daisy chain Lizzie had embroidered around the edge of the sleeves. ‘Dirty words?’
‘No. Well, sometimes. Dirty words are Mabel’s speciality.’
I took out my bundle of blank slips and a pencil.
‘Are you a dollymop?’ I asked, not sure how offensive it might be but curious to try the word out.
‘An actress, though to some it’s the same thing.’ She smiled at Mabel. ‘Our friend tells me that treading the boards was how she got into her particular line of work.’
I began to understand and wrote dollymop in the top-left corner of a slip I’d cut from a discarded proof. These slips were becoming favourites, though the pleasure I took in crossing out the legitimate words and recording one of Mabel’s on the other side was never without an echo of shame.
‘Can you put it in a sentence?’ I urged.
Tilda looked at the slip, then at me. ‘You’re quite serious, aren’t you?’ she said.
Heat flushed my cheeks. I imagined the slip through her eyes, the futility of it. How odd I must have seemed.
‘Give ’er a sentence,’ Mabel urged.
Tilda waited for me to look up. ‘On one condition,’ she said, smiling with anticipated satisfaction. ‘We’re putting on a production of A Doll’s House at New Theatre. You must come to the matinee this afternoon and join us after, for tea.’
‘She will, she will. Now give ’er a sentence.’
Tilda took a lungful of air and straightened. Her gaze fell just beyond my shoulder and she delivered her sentence with a working-class accent I’d not detected before. ‘A coin for the dollymop will keep your lap warm.’
‘That’s experience talkin’ if you ask me,’ Mabel said, laughing.
‘No one asked you, Mabel,’ I said. I wrote the sentence in the middle of the slip.
‘Is it the same as prostitute?’ I asked Tilda.
‘I suppose. Though a dollymop is more opportunistic and far less experienced.’
Tilda watched as I fashioned a definition.
‘That sums it up perfectly,’ she said.
‘Your last name?’ My pencil hovered.
‘Taylor.’
Mabel tapped her whittling knife on the crate to get our attention. ‘Read it to me, then.’
I looked around at all the market goers.
Tilda held out her hand for the slip. ‘I promise not to project.’
I gave it to her.
DOLLYMOP
A woman who is paid for sexual favours on an occasional basis.
‘A coin for the dollymop will keep your lap warm.’
Tilda Taylor, 1906
A good word, I thought, as I put the slip back in my pocket. And a good source.
‘I must get on.’ Tilda said. ‘Costume call in an hour.’ She reached into her purse and pulled out a program.
‘I play Nora,’ she said. ‘Curtain goes up at two.’
When Da came home from the Scriptorium, I had lunch ready: pork pies from the market and boiled green beans. A fresh vase of flowers was on the kitchen table.
‘I’ve been invited to the matinee of A Doll’s House at New Theatre,’ I said when we were eating.
Da looked up, surprised but smiling. ‘Oh? And who has invited you?’
‘Someone I met at the Covered Market.’ Da’s smile turned to a frown, and I quickly continued. ‘A woman. An actress. She’s in the play. Would you like to join me?’
‘Today?’
‘I’m happy to go alone.’
He looked relieved. ‘I was quite looking forward to an afternoon with the newspapers.’
After lunch, I walked down Walton Street towards town. At the Press, a crowd of people at the end of their working week spilled through the archway, the long afternoon ahead animating their conversations. Most headed the way I had just come, back to their homes in Jericho, but small groups of men and a few young couples started walking towards the centre of Oxford. I followed and wondered if any would be going to New Theatre.
On George Street, the small caravan of people I’d been walking behind peeled off to pubs and tea shops. None entered the theatre.
I was early, but the emptiness of the theatre was still a surprise. It looked bigger than
