A week later, I overheard her commenting that it was hard to access some of the shelves with Mr Dankworth’s desk in such close proximity. That afternoon, Dr Murray had a word with Mr Dankworth, and when I came in the next day Mr Dankworth was sitting at the sorting table opposite Mr Sweatman, a border of stacked books set up between them.
‘Good morning, Mr Sweatman, Mr Dankworth,’ I said.
A smile from one, a nod from the other. Mr Dankworth still couldn’t look me in the eye. Already his desk had been removed, and mine was just visible beyond one of the shelves.
I sat and lifted the lid. The paper that lined the inside was curling at the edges, but the roses were as yellow as they’d always been. As I ran my fingers over the flowers, I counted back the years to the first time I’d sat at the desk. Was it nine years or ten? So much had happened, and yet I hadn’t moved an inch.
‘Well, that looks familiar,’ said Elsie. ‘I remember pasting it on. A long time ago now.’
For a moment we were both silent, as if Elsie too was suddenly aware of time moving past her. I’d never thought much about her life beyond the Scriptorium, or Rosfrith’s. They had grown out of their perfect plaits and become their father’s helpers. I envied them, as I always had, but now I wondered if this was what they had hoped for, or whether it was just what they had accepted.
‘How are your studies going, Elsie?’ I asked.
‘I’ve finished. Sat my exams last June.’ Her face was bright with the pride of it.
‘Oh, congratulations!’ I said. Remembering that She had turned one last June. ‘I didn’t know.’
‘No graduation, of course. No degree. But it’s satisfying to know I would have achieved both if I wore trousers.’
‘But you can have it conferred somewhere else, can’t you?’
‘Oh, yes, but there’s no hurry. I’m not going anywhere.’ She looked down at the proofs in her hand as if trying to remember what they were. Then she held them out. ‘From Father. A quick proofread. He wants them at the Press tomorrow morning.’
I took the proofs. ‘Of course.’ I looked towards the space where Mr Dankworth’s desk had been. ‘And thank you.’
‘A small thing.’
‘That all depends on your perspective.’
She nodded, then made her way past the sorting table to Dr Murray’s desk and the pile of letters awaiting her drafted replies.
The lid of my desk was still open. Everything I needed to do my work was there: notepaper, blank slips, pencils, pens. Hart’s Rules. Beneath Hart’s Rules were things I didn’t require to do my work: a letter from Ditte, postcards from Tilda, blank slips made from pretty paper, and a novel. When I picked it up, three slips fell out. Seeing Mabel’s name made my eyes well up. It was enough to bring on the morbs, I thought. And then I smiled.
Each slip had the same word but a variation on the meaning. I remembered the shock of hearing it, then Mabel’s delight and the racing of my heart when I first wrote it down. Cunt was as old as the hills, Mabel had said, but it wasn’t in the Dictionary. I’d checked.
The slips for C had been boxed up, but words for a supplement were stored in the shelves closest to my desk. Dr Murray had started collecting them as soon as the fascicle for ‘A to Ant’ was published. ‘Dr Murray has already anticipated that the English language will evolve faster than we can define it,’ Da told me. ‘When the Dictionary is finally published, we’ll go back to A and fill in the gaps.’
The pigeon-holes were almost full of slips for supplementary words. They were meticulously ordered, and it didn’t take me long to find the thick pile of slips with quotations from books dating back to 1325. The word was as old as Mabel had said it was. If Dr Murray’s formula had been applied, it would certainly have been included in the thick volume behind his desk.
I looked at the top-slip. Instead of the usual information, there was a note in Dr Murray’s hand saying simply, Exclude. Obscene. Below that, someone had transcribed a series of comments, presumably from correspondence. It looked like Elsie Murray’s handwriting, but I couldn’t be sure:
‘The thing itself is not obscene!’
– James Dixon
‘A thoroughly old word with a very ancient history.’
– Robinson Ellis
‘The mere fact of its being used in a vulgar way does not ban it from the English language.’
– John Hamilton
I looked at the top-slip again; there was no definition. I put the slips back in their place and returned to my desk. On a blank slip, I wrote:
CUNT
1. Slang for vagina.
2. An insult based on the premise that a woman’s vagina is vulgar.
I gathered Mabel’s words into a small pile and pinned my definitions to it. Then I rummaged around for other slips. There was a handful, all meant for the trunk under Lizzie’s bed, but hastily hidden at one time or another, then half-forgotten. I gathered them up and put them between the pages of the novel for safekeeping.
I spent the rest of the afternoon on the proofs Elsie had given me, every now and then looking up to watch her. She moved about the Scriptorium in her diligent way, always ready to do her father’s bidding. Had they argued about the word? Or had she found it missing and then searched for reasons why? Did Dr Murray even know she’d transcribed the arguments for the word’s inclusion on his top-slip, or that she’d included it with supplementary words? No, of course not. She lived between the lines of the Dictionary as much as I did.
‘Ready to go?’ Da said.
I was surprised to realise how late it was. ‘I’d like to finish this proof,’ I said. ‘Then I’ll pop in on Lizzie. You go ahead.’
‘What on earth
