An hour later, Pip was flipping through a volume of Swansby’s in tsking fury.
‘I’ve just spent about five minutes staring at the word pat without taking anything in.’
I knew exactly what she meant. My eyes and my brain had severed any meaningful connection and it was tricky to concentrate enough to recognise even the most regular of words. The array of handwriting on the index cards appeared to pulse if I maintained eye contact for too long.
‘I think we can safely discount pat,’ I said.
‘Pat, begone.’ She flicked the index card across my desk to join a growing pile. We had decided to put the ‘found’ fictitious words in an envelope.
‘Words: What Are They Like?’
‘Thanks for helping,’ I said. ‘I have no idea how David expects me to know I’ve found every false word that could possibly have snuck in. But two heads are better than one.’
‘Are you kidding? My pleasure,’ she said.
‘Sure.’
‘Can’t have you doing all this spelling-bee research on your own: what if we ever play Scrabble and you’ve got all this advantage?’
She did not need to say it, and I recognised the deflection. Since I had told her about the threatening phone calls coming in at work, she had told me how worried she was, how helpless she felt. At the time I laughed it off and said it was nothing, but knowing she was nearby somehow made the sight of the office phone immediately less terrifying.
‘I don’t think we’ve ever played Scrabble,’ I said. A vision of a future Pip – same unpiplike figure bent only a little with age, a tartan blanket over her knees and sitting across from me, squinting at board game tiles. The same smile and the same haircut, a little greyer. What words might we have for each other then, with all the possibilities of where that then and that might be?
‘A girl can dream, can’t she,’ Pip said. She picked up another sheaf of index notes and a groan escaped her lips. ‘Dear God in heaven, I’ve found a whole flock of pelicans. No language needs so many different meanings for the word pelican. Listen to this—’ Pip read from the cards, slapping them down on the desk as she went through them. ‘We’ve got pelican (n.) as you’d expect – although this is a bloody detailed entry about them, not sure we need to know they have human-like pupils. And which is not great editing by the way: I assume they mean human-eye-like.’
‘Swansby’s isn’t famous for being the best at that type of thing,’ I reminded her.
‘Fine, right, but anyway, then, then!, we have pelican as a verb too, to be like a pelican.’ Pip pelicanned to underline her point. ‘And I’ll accept that, I suppose I kind of see the need, but, BAM, we’ve got pelican (n.), second meaning, “an alembic with curved tubes on opposing sides of the vessel, used in distillation.”’
She glared at me. ‘It’s not my fault!’ I said.
‘What the hell is an alembic for starters? I guess a beaker?’ She groaned again, more intensely than before. ‘Is that a pun. Don’t answer that – and! once you’ve processed that, woah pelican as a third noun: “a pronged instrument used for extracting teeth.”’
‘The English language’s rich tapestry,’ I said. ‘You’d hope that the context would help you work out which one you needed at any given time.’
‘Surely one of those is made up,’ she protested.
I waggled my phone at her apologetically. ‘I’ve cross-checked while you’ve been talking,’ I said, ‘and they look legit.’ I showed her images of historical prongs and flasks.
Pip leaned over and faux-angrily gave me a high-five. It was the most alived (adj.) thing that had ever sounded in this office in my whole three-year internship. ‘So that’s at least one down, the rest of language to go.’
Pip pelicanned again, gulping down words and annoyance. ‘Nothing like knowledge to make you feel thick. Up next: pelike.’
‘Pelike checks out.’
‘Once you start knowing there are made-up things in here,’ Pip said, launching the index card across the room, ‘this whole dictionary is just a – I don’t know what to call it.’
‘I know,’ I said.
‘An index of paranoia.’
I had texted Pip about the concept of mountweazels after my meeting with David. More to complain than anything else. She had compared it to customers who came into the coffee shop and asked for some outrageously confident mangling of coffee terms and expected to be taken seriously. A grandêe wet latte-frap all-foam half-soy with soft-hedge, to leave, please. Pip added that the word for the cardboard sleeves that go around the takeaway coffee cups is zarf. I sent her a shocked emoji.
I brought this up now we were together in person. ‘There’s a word I would have been sure didn’t exist.’
‘That’s their official name,’ Pip said.
‘It doesn’t feel official if no one knows it.’
‘Well, you know it and you’ll never forget it. Like my official name is Philippa.’ She made a face.
‘A wonderful name.’
‘It means lover of horses. Can you imagine.’
‘I refuse to. And Pip suits you better,’ I said. She leant over the desk and kissed me on the cheek with a small tough squeak.
Another half-hour of flipping through the index cards, and she sat back. ‘I’ve looked up all the swear words I can think of and I’ve learned loads about things beginning with J.’
I rubbed my eyes. ‘There might be a way of being a bit more systematic.’
‘What words would you put in?’ Pip asked. I’m not sure she was listening. I’m not sure that I blamed her. ‘Are there things you’ve always wished there might be a word for? Put better grammar into that sentence,’ she added. ‘My head’s fried.’
‘I was happy when precariat gained some traction,’ I said. ‘That filled a niche.’
‘Tell me about it,’ Pip said, ‘But combining words feels like cheating. Portmanteauing. Portman-toe. God, there should be a word for when words make no sense.’
‘Nonsense,’ I said.
Pip aimed an index card at my head.
‘Is a picture of the guy emerging?’ Pip asked. ‘I mean, from the kind of stuff he’s been inserting: do you get a sense he had any special interests? I just read a really long entry all about chess and I suspect whoever wrote it took that hobby very seriously.’
‘Learn anything new?’ I said absently. I held two index cards up to the window, staring at the handwriting in hope of a clue.
Pip rolled her shoulders as she read aloud. ‘“In the fourteenth century, a variation of the game was developed, characterised by the fact each pawn was delegated a particular purpose.”’
‘Sounds lovely,’ I said, tapping away at my phone.
‘It goes on. If I am reading the handwriting correctly “Ivan the Terrible died while playing chess, as depicted in a painting by Konstantin Makovsky.” Why on earth would anyone think that was a relevant detail to put in an article about chess?’
‘The internet seems to think that’s entirely true.’
Pip drummed her hands. ‘Whoever wrote this must have been bored. I bet there are words all about elaborate boredom in there that he’s cooked up just to pass the time.’ I waved at the Swansby volumes in front of me as if to indicate that she should be my guest. ‘What about – what were the ones that David found? One about walking through cobwebs, and something about a donkey burning?’