The Dictionary of Lost Words, стр. 18
A number of volunteers (all of them women, from what I can tell) sent in the same quotation for ‘literately’. There are six in all, and as none of them is of any use to the Dictionary, I see no reason why Esme cannot have one of them. I look forward to hearing how the two of you employ this lovely word – together we might keep it alive.
Yours,
Edith
It was our last school assembly before Christmas, and I would not be returning to finish the school year. The headmistress of St Barnabas girls’ school, Mrs Todd, wanted to wish me well, so I sat on a chair at the front of the hall, facing the assembled girls. They were children of Jericho. Daughters of the Press and Wolvercote paper mill. Their brothers attended St Barnabas boys, and would grow up to work at the mill or on the presses. Half the girls in my class would be binding books within the year. I’d always felt out of place.
There were the usual announcements. I sat rigid, looking down at my hands and wishing the time would pass more quickly. I barely heard what Mrs Todd said, but when the girls began to clap I looked up. I was to receive the history prize and the prize for English. Mrs Todd nodded for me to approach, and as I did she told the school that I was leaving to attend Cauldshiels School for Young Ladies.
‘All the way up in Scotland,’ she said, turning to me. The girls clapped again, though this time with less enthusiasm. They couldn’t imagine leaving, I thought. As I couldn’t imagine it. But then Ditte said it would prepare me. ‘For what?’ I’d asked. ‘For doing whatever it is you dream of,’ she’d said.
The week after Christmas was wet and dreary. ‘Good preparation for the Scottish Borders,’ Mrs Ballard said one day, and I burst into tears. She stopped her kneading and came to where I sat shelling peas at the kitchen table. ‘Oh, pet,’ she said, holding my face in both hands and dusting flour across my cheeks. When I stopped my snivelling, she put a mixing bowl in front of me and measured out quantities of butter, flour, sugar and raisins. She took the cinnamon jar from the top shelf of the pantry and put it beside me: ‘Just a pinch, remember.’
Mrs Ballard used to say that rock cakes didn’t care if your hands were warm or cold, deft or clumsy. She relied on them to distract me whenever I was unable to accompany Lizzie, or when I was out of sorts. They’d become my specialty. Mrs Ballard went back to her kneading, and I began to break the butter into bits and rub it into the flour. As usual, my right hand felt gloved. I had to watch my funny fingers do their work to really feel the crumbs begin to form.
Mrs Ballard chatted on. ‘Scotland is beautiful.’ She’d been there when she was a young woman. Walking, with a friend. I couldn’t imagine her young. And I couldn’t imagine her anywhere other than in the kitchen at Sunnyside. ‘And it’s not forever,’ she said.
Everyone who was at the Scriptorium that day came out to farewell me. We stood in the garden, shivering in the early morning: Da, Mrs Ballard, Dr Murray and some of the assistants. But not Mr Crane. The youngest Murray children were there, Elsie and Rosfrith either side of their mother. They each held the hand of one of the two smallest and kept their eyes on their shoes.
Lizzie stood in the doorway of the kitchen, even though Da called her to come out. She never liked being among the Dictionary men. ‘I don’t know how to speak to ’em,’ she said, when I teased her about it.
We stood just long enough for Dr Murray to say something about how much I would learn and the health benefits of walking the hills around Cauldshiels Loch. He gave me a sketchbook and a set of drawing pencils and told me he looked forward to receiving letters with my impressions of the countryside around my new school. I put them in the new satchel Da had given me that morning.
Mrs Ballard gave me a box filled with biscuits still warm from the oven. ‘For the journey,’ she said, and she hugged me so tight I thought I would stop breathing.
No one said anything for a while. I’m sure most of the assistants were wondering what all the fuss was about. I could see them moving from foot to foot in an effort to keep warm. They wanted to return to their words, to the relative warmth of the Scriptorium. Part of me wanted to return with them. Part of me wanted the adventure to start.
I looked over to where Lizzie stood. Even from a distance, I could see her swollen eyes and red nose. She tried to smile, but the deceit was too much and she had to look away. Her shoulders quivered.
It would prepare me, Ditte had said. It would turn me into a scholar. ‘And when you leave Cauldshiels,’ Da had added, ‘You can enter Somerville. It’s as close to home as any of the ladies’ halls, and just across the road from the Press.’
Da gave me a gentle nudge. I was meant to respond to Dr Murray, to say thank you for the sketchbook and pencils, but all I knew was the warmth of the biscuits coming through the box into my hands. I thought about the journey. It would take all the daylight hours and half the night. There would be no heat left in the biscuits by the time I arrived.
The garden at