‘Can you smell it, Lizzie?’
‘I certainly can,’ she said. ‘I’ve often wondered if something might have crawled in and died.’
‘It doesn’t smell bad, it smells of … well, I don’t really know how to describe it.’ I bent forward again, hoping the smell would identify itself.
‘It smells like something that should’ve got a regular airing has been locked away too long,’ said Lizzie.
Then I realised. My trunk was beginning to smell like the old slips in the Scriptorium.
Lizzie removed her apron. It was splattered with roasting juices, and she was changing it for a clean one just as Mrs Ballard used to do before she took a roast to table. As if evidence of their toil was offensive. Before Lizzie could put on her clean apron, I had her in a hug.
‘You’re exactly right.’
She extracted herself and held me at arm’s length. ‘You’d think after all these years I’d understand you, Essymay, but I got no clue what you’re talking about.’
‘These words,’ I said, reaching into the trunk and pulling out a handful. ‘They weren’t given to me to hide away. They need an airing. They should be read, shared, understood. Rejected, maybe, but given a chance. Just like all the words in the Scriptorium.’
Lizzie laughed and put the clean apron over her head. ‘You thinking of making a dictionary of your own, then?’
‘That’s exactly what I’m thinking, Lizzie. A dictionary of women’s words. Words they use and words that refer to them. Words that won’t make it into Dr Murray’s dictionary. What do you think?’
Her face fell. ‘You can’t. Some of them isn’t fit.’
I couldn’t help smiling. Lizzie would be delighted if cunt disappeared from the English language.
‘You have more in common with Dr Murray than you could ever know.’
‘But what’s the point?’ she said, picking a slip out of the trunk and looking at it. ‘Half the people who say these words will never be able to read them.’
‘Maybe not,’ I said, heaving the trunk onto her bed. ‘But their words are important.’
We looked at the mess of slips inside the trunk. I remembered all the times I’d searched the volumes and the pigeon-holes for just the right word to explain what I was feeling, experiencing. So often, the words chosen by the men of the Dictionary had been inadequate.
‘Dr Murray’s dictionary leaves things out, Lizzie. Sometimes a word, sometimes a meaning. If it isn’t written down, it doesn’t even get considered.’ I placed Mabel’s first slips in a pile on the bed. ‘Wouldn’t it be good if the words these women use were treated the same as any other?’
I started sifting through slips and papers in the trunk, pulling out women’s words and putting them to one side. Some words began to pile up, with different quotations from different women. I had no idea I’d collected so many.
Lizzie reached under her bed and pulled out her sewing basket. ‘You’ll be needing these if you’re going to keep all that in order.’ She put her pincushion in front of me; it was hedgehog-full.
When I’d finished sorting all the words in the trunk it was dark outside. Both of us had sore fingers from pinning slips together.
‘Keep it,’ Lizzie said, when I handed back the pincushion. ‘For new words.’
There was a tiny hole in the wall of the Scriptorium, just above my desk. I’d noticed it when the chill of the previous winter had pricked the back of my hand like a needle. I’d tried to block it with a ball of paper, but the paper kept falling out. Then I realised I had a view: I caught fragments of people as they smoked their cigarettes; of Da and Mr Balk as they packed their pipes and exchanged Dictionary gossip. Gossipiania, I always thought, when titbits found my ear. An entry had been written for the word, but it was struck through in the final proof. I recognised all the assistants from what I could see of their clothes, and I had the uncanny feeling I was under the sorting table again.
The slight shaft of light had been moving across my page like a sundial, so I noticed when it disappeared. There was the clang of a bicycle being propped against the Scriptorium, and I leaned towards the hole. I saw unfamiliar trousers and an unfamiliar shirt, sleeves rolled up to the elbows. Ink-stained fingers unbuckled an ink-stained satchel. The fingers were long, but the thumb spread oddly at the end. The man was checking the contents, as I would check the contents of my own satchel just before going through the gates of the Press. I tilted my gaze upward, a slightly awkward manoeuvre, in an attempt to see his face. It wasn’t possible.
I pulled back from the hole and leaned a little to my right so I would have a view of the Scriptorium door.
He stood on the threshold. Tall and lean. Clean-shaven. Dark hair, curling. He saw me peering around the bookshelf and smiled. I was too far away to see his eyes, but I knew them to be evening blue, almost violet.
I’d forgotten his name, even though I remembered him telling it to me once, the first time I delivered words to the Press. I was barely more than a girl, and he’d been kind.
Since then, I’d only seen him from a distance when I went searching for Mr Hart in the Press. The compositor always stood at a bench at the far end of the composing room, practically obscured by the tray that held all the type. He would sometimes look up when I came through the door. He would always smile, but he’d never waved me over. I’d never known him to come to Sunnyside.
The only other person in the Scriptorium, besides me, was Mr Dankworth. I watched his head jerk up, attentive to who had
