Frasham’s photographs were accompanied by letters, often elaborate with metaphor and regularly ill-spelt. The progress of Frasham’s etymological investigations was never really emphasised.
At their desks in Swansby House, Bielefeld once noticed Winceworth glancing with particular dolefulness at the walrus photograph and said in passing, cheerfully, ‘The valour of the field versus the elbow grease of the desk!’
Winceworth smiled in answer and gripped his Swansby House pen too hard. He looked down to find his notes on solecism (n.) spattered with ink.
G is for
ghost
(v.)
Once the police let us back into the building, guaranteeing that the call was just a hoax or prank, David and I returned to our second floor. David twiddled with something in a box of electrics under the stairs, assuring me that the fire alarm would work in the future. I left him to it. After about an hour David rang the internal phone line – making me jump circa 400 feet in the air – and requested that I come into his office.
I knew it couldn’t be because he had met Pip. That was a mad idea. Wrong wrong wrong, and yet there the idea lay, flat and flattening, at the base of my throat.
David rose from his seat as I knocked and entered, starting a little as if shocked. Unfortunately, David’s sudden movement set off a chain of reactions that caused a flurry to intensify into a chaos. While some seventy-year-olds grow stooped with every passing year, David Swansby had unfurled: he was the tallest man I had ever met. This quick unwinding of his body from sitting to standing knocked a cup of coffee skidding and rolling across his desk. This startled the office cat, who ran headlong into the printer which spontaneously powered up and began shrieking something like the word ‘Paroxysm!’ over and over and over and over and over again. The spilt coffee scribbled a fresh, hot, organic ‘WELL, WHOOPS!’ flourish across the length of the editorial desk; I could tell the coffee was fresh because it steamed even as it spread across the paperwork and filing.
A few minutes later, when calm was restored, the cat Sphinxed on the armrest of a chair with its eyes closed. I gave its spine a nudge with my knuckles. Its body rumbled something about solidarity against my hand.
‘Sit sit sit,’ David said.
‘Thank you.’ I noticed the game of online chess open on David’s computer screen.
‘Tits Tits Tits,’ said David Swansby.
I had first met Tits during the interview for my current role. He was a rangy, yellow-eyed duffer-moggy with a coat the colour of old toast. His presence as co-interviewer (‘Ignore the cat at your feet! Please, do sit down!’) was not unwelcome: this explained the shallow ceramic bowl on the desk in front of me, placed next to the Swansby’s New Encyclopaedic Dictionary-branded mug and the block of Post-It notes. At first I had thought that the bowl might be an ashtray, and if not an ashtray then a horrible version of a hotel reception’s Mint Imperials, half-filled with little dusty brown pellets. Not quite powder, nowhere near meat: kibble is the name, isn’t it, for that kind of catfood. I’ve only ever heard that word thanks to American sitcoms. Satisfyingly apt combination of sounds and letters, and carries the overtones of kitten + nibble + rubble, as well as the vague sense of onomatopoeia as it is shaken out of the bag.
Halfway through the interview for the internship I noticed this shallow ceramic bowl had TITS written on it. David – then just Mr Swansby for the interview’s sake – followed my line of sight.
‘Short for Titivillus,’ he said. He came around the desk and began talking to the cat. ‘Isn’t it, Tits? Tits Tits Tits.’ He reached for Tits’s ears and gave them a scratch. My job-hungry brain kicked in and I recognised the cat had been transformed into a conduit for diplomacy so I put my hand onto a tuft above its cat-shoulder. As Mr Swansby worked his thumb around to Tits’s jaw, finding the sweet spots there that make cats smile, I focused on its withers. If that’s the right word. Maybe this was all unconnected, but Tits purred at our teamwork and I got the job.
As David mopped up the coffee with what appeared to be a spare pair of socks, I felt I needed to say something mild, to dissipate the mood. God knows why I always feel driven to do this.
‘You know, you never fully explained the cat’s name,’ I said.
‘Strictly speaking,’ David said, not looking up, ‘all the cats at Swansby’s have been called that, ever since the very first mouser kept down in the printing press. Rats make nests out of the discarded galley papers, you know. Dynasty stuff. Eighteen Tits. Would you like some tea? Coffee? Water?’
‘No, thank you.’ I rubbed a thumb down Tits’s nose.
‘I thought Titivillus was a bit too long for collars so I shortened it to the inevitable,’ David said. ‘That was funny for the first year but then – well, I always forget how it must look. Bowls all around the building with TITS written on them, me shouting “Tits!” out of windows. I’m so used to the name by now that I hardly notice.’ David busied himself with a kettle and a small cafetière.
‘Titivillus,’ I said again, to check the pronunciation. ‘Is that an emperor? Empress?’
‘A demon – I think Milton mentions him, possibly not.’ David waved at the lower half of his wall-to-ceiling bookshelves, presumably indicating an M section. I was not prepared for the editor of an encyclopaedic dictionary to admit ignorance so candidly while also asserting how well-read he was. ‘Certainly crops up in mystery plays: used to be blamed for introducing errors into written works. Slip-ups, typos, that kind of thing. There’s also something in The Pickwick Papers about “tits” being a word for calling cats. “Puss, puss, puss – tit, tit, tit.” Along those lines.’
Tits’s purring intensified against my hand. David hit the cafetière plunger with the stance of someone detonating a mountainside.
‘He’s a boy, by the way,’ David said.
‘Got it,’ I said. ‘Hello,’ I added, to the cat.
‘But all that’s something completely by the by,’ said David. ‘I want to ask you about whether you are any good at keeping secrets.’
I blinked.
‘This will all be rather quick and informal. In fact,’ David said, checking his tone, ‘I’d rather that what I’m about to say doesn’t go beyond these walls.’
It occurred to me that I might be fired. From a cannon, in a kiln, from a job, fretted, fretting, flaming. I began to make calculations about rent and overdrafts as David cleared his throat. I realised I had been making these calculations in the back of my mind every day since I started this job. There should be a specific word for that: the sluice of adrenaline that comes when you are able to pinpoint the reason for exhaustion. Precarity and teetering and grocery lists with question marks and budgeting apps and crying in the shower and adding water to pasta sauce and—
‘First of all, I want to emphasise that I am deeply aggrieved by today’s events,’ David said. ‘Thank you for taking time out of your day, and I am so incredibly sorry for any upset caused.’
I waited.
‘I need to talk to you about mountweazels.’
‘Mountweazels,’ I repeated.
‘There are mistakes. In the dictionary,’ David said. There seemed to be a sob edging the softness of his voice. I stared at him. He assumed a defensive tone. ‘Well. Not mistakes. Not-quite mistakes. They’re words that are meant to be there but not meant to be there.’