‘And what is this shawl all about?’ Frasham continued, regarding her at arm’s length in mock horror. ‘Darling, it is quite, quite awful! I have become engaged to a ruffian.’
‘Mr Winceworth and I have been saving the wildfowl of London,’ she said.
‘I’m sure, I’m sure,’ Frasham said. He dropped his hand, and Sophia’s chin lifted slightly. Winceworth pretended to busy himself with a napkin, but he imagined Frasham’s fingers resting gently on Sophia’s knee.
‘I ought to be leaving,’ Winceworth said again, slightly more loudly.
‘Yes,’ said Frasham. ‘Yes, old Gerolf has been looking for you back at the Scrivenery.’
‘For me?’ No one ever looked for Winceworth. There must be some error.
‘You must stay, you must!’ Sophia protested. ‘I need someone to explain and corroborate the day’s events.’
Winceworth began yammering. ‘I was just – quite a coincidence, I ran into Miss – Miss—’ He ignored the fact that the lisp caused Sophia to look at him at a new angle. ‘I’m – I’m so sorry,’ he said. ‘Forgive me, only now do I realise that I do not know your—’
‘Slivkovna,’ said Frasham.
‘Just so,’ said Sophia.
‘Soon to be Frasham,’ said Frasham.
‘Slivkovna,’ Sophia said again. She laid a hand on Winceworth’s sleeve.
‘Sophia is teasing you, I’m afraid,’ said her fiancée. ‘What a word for a lisper to deal with!’ Winceworth imagined grinding an eclair prow-first into Frasham’s ear. ‘Mind as fast as anything. I’ve promised her a visit to the British Museum this afternoon, and dinner near my club after theatre just to tire her out: too much energy by half.’
‘And your first name, Mr Winceworth?’ Sophia Slivkovna asked. ‘I remember a P …’
She does not even know your name. To name a thing is to know a thing.
‘Wince as in flinch,’ laughed Frasham. He dug Sophia’s fork into some of Winceworth’s cake.
‘I prefer wince as in startle,’ Winceworth said.
‘And worth as in “worse for wear”,’ Frasham lisped. He tugged at his moustache again, upwards with his whole palm so that his smile seemed to slide onto his face beneath his hand, a conjuring trick. He brought the same hand down companionably on Winceworth’s arm. Frasham became a conduit between the fabric of Winceworth’s elbow and the fabric of Sophia’s skirt.
‘Your fiancé can see I am not, perhaps, running at full steam,’ Winceworth said.
‘Startle dignity,’ Sophia quoted, quietly, looking out of the window again.
Frasham kept his hand on Winceworth’s shoulder. ‘And what was it – sorry, I interrupted – tell me, what was it that you two were doing today? Earlier? Away from the Scrivenery?’
‘Is that what you call it?’ Sophia turned to Frasham. ‘The place where you all trap poets’ words like spiders underneath a glass? Scrivenery.’
Conversation was about parrying now and concerned with feints. Love (n.), in the sport of tennis, the name given when any player has a score of no games or points. Etymology disputed, with submitted but speculative derivations including a French expression l’œuf, with an egg resembling the number zero on a scoring board.
Winceworth tried to catch Sophia’s eye.
Winceworth failed to catch Sophia’s eye.
‘Where is your umbrella?’ Frasham asked. ‘That funny yellow thing.’
‘I must have – I must have left it in the park. It’s such a story – there was a bird, and I hit your friend here, and then we—’ Frasham interrupted her with a large guffaw, making his laughter the main event of their conversation. He suited laughing, it made him seem younger. He had the relaxed posture of someone who laughed, youngly, often.
Winceworth asked Sophia, ‘Does it hurt awfully? Your eye?’
She felt the side of her head. ‘Not even a little. I had quite forgotten it.’
‘Miss Slivkovna is made of sterner stuff than I,’ Winceworth said, and he knew that it was a line Frasham would deliver with the dashing candour of a proffered cigarette, while in Winceworth’s mouth it sounded like a criticism or as if he was appraising livestock. He reddened again to the roots of his hair. The ceiling of Café l’Amphigouri seemed a foot closer to his scalp and the walls were bending in. He concentrated on the metal scrollwork on his teaspoon.
‘I was just thinking,’ Frasham said to him, ‘that you are remarkably alert, considering.’
‘Terence—’ Sophia said.
‘The party yesterday,’ Frasham continued, folding his hands in his lap and leaning back. He explored Winceworth’s face and spoke as if this was a good shared joke but his eyes were hard. ‘You really were in quite the state, weren’t you? Slurp, quaff, guzzle – it appears I had forgotten quite how much a day of looking up words in one book and writing them down in another can create such a thirst amongst my colleagues.’
And Winceworth was back in the club room at the party, back in amongst the potted ferns and braying colleagues, speaking far too close to Sophia’s face. What had he said? He regarded his hands and noticed they had balled up, without him meaning them to at all.
‘Perhaps now would be a good time to apologise for my behaviour,’ Winceworth said to the teaspoon. His reflection peered across the table at him, upside-down and swollen. Pelican-necked. He flipped the spoon over but the reflection on its reverse was one grown large, chinful and bug-eyed, even more ghastly. Sophia and Frasham regarded him. A lifetime of no one looking, and now this. He pushed the spoon away – it hit his cup at a strange slant and made what was left of his tea slop across the tablecloth. Winceworth scraped his chair back, and the stark ringing of china and metal made other unangelic diners stop and look round at the noise.
‘No need, no need to apologise,’ Sophia said. ‘It was a pleasure to see so many of Terence’s friends enjoying his birthday.’ As she laid her napkin over the spreading dash of tea, her engagement ring gave Winceworth a pointed glint. ‘If anything, I really think Terence should be apologising to you. I thought this at the party and now is as good a time as ever for me to say it: I think it was entirely wrong of you to make fun of Winceworth’s lisp in the way that you did.’ Sophia turned to Winceworth: ‘In fact, I really have not noticed you speaking with one at all this whole time.’
Frasham put his head to one side.
‘Is Mr Winceworth joining us tomorrow, Terence?’ Sophia asked.
‘Tomorrow?’
Frasham yawned. ‘Oh, that. Perhaps you’ve heard that we are having another little soirée to raise money for the Swansby House coffers tomorrow evening. A more – ah! – a more intimate affair, shall we say.’
Sophia leaned forward. ‘Terence has used his influence to get us a private party in the Secretum! Can you imagine: the most licentious place in the whole of London! Europe!’
Frasham smiled, so it seemed to Winceworth, directly at him. ‘You do not know my dear Sophia’s interest in the more esoteric side of art. She’s quite the collector.’
‘You are mocking me,’ Winceworth said.
‘I would not dare! No, poor unshockable Winceworth, do you know she has a chess set that was once owned by Catherine the Great? She hopes to exhibit it at the Secretum – it’s absolutely repellent and quite wonderful.’
‘Have you heard of the Pushkin Palace?’ Sophia said. She genteelly tooled her dessert with the side of her fork. ‘Golden doorknob shaped like a phallus, tablelegs positively burgeoning—’