‘How very impractical,’ Winceworth said.
‘But we are making him uncomfortable,’ Frasham said delightedly. ‘Best not describe what the bishop, rook and knight in the chess set resemble!’
‘A single pawn from the collection would sell for seven hundred pounds,’ Sophia said.
‘That would free you from the confines of the desk, eh, old thing,’ Frasham said.
‘I do wish you – I wish you wouldn’t call me that.’
‘Old thing old thing old thing,’ said Frasham. ‘What better soubriquet when we talk of solid-gold antiques. Honestly, Winceworth, you philistine!’
‘Seven hundred pounds is not to be sniffed at,’ Sophia said, watching Winceworth’s expression. He felt like there was no air in the room, and all the lights were too bright.
‘I – I really must be taking my leave,’ Winceworth said, ‘and I hope that you enjoy the rest of your stay in London.’
Frasham stood too and his arm was again on Winceworth’s shoulder. ‘Yes! I keep letting it slide – you’ve just reminded me! I stepped into the office on my way here, and old Swansby was there pacing and squawking and looking for you. You’re supposed to be somewhere on dictionary business right now, old man! Something about a train?’
Sophia also rose from her seat.
Winceworth stared into Frasham’s face. He knew the man was lying, but was trying to work out what the game might be.
‘They just know Winceworth is usually a good bet when it comes to having nothing better to do,’ Frasham continued. ‘I’m joking, old man. But seriously, I can’t believe I forgot! Can’t believe you forgot, Peter, more’s the point – lucky I caught you here, all told: you’d better hightail it back on the double!’
‘What – what train?’
‘To Barking.’ Frasham did not waver.
‘Barking,’ Winceworth repeated.
‘Barking?’ Sophia asked, looking between the two of them.
‘Yes, yes, Barking. Tell you what – I’ll save you the trouble of going back to the Scrivenery for the tickets—’ Frasham suddenly had some coins and was folding Winceworth’s hands around them, pushing him slightly as he did so towards the door of the café. Winceworth’s diet today had consisted exclusively of cake and he was beginning to feel the effects both on his pulse and vision. He vibrated gently, unsure if it was the sugar or the offence that Frasham thought he could be ushered away with such obvious a lie.
‘Barking?’ Winceworth asked again, staring at the money.
‘Barking!’ Frasham’s tone was one of enthusiasm and mild jealousy, as if he couldn’t quite believe Winceworth’s luck. ‘Gerolf wants you to clear up a little confusion about the place name. Or the, what, the adjective. You know: with all that jabbering, Winceworth must be absolutely barking. Gerolf seems to think it’s worth you popping along and investigating any connections between the place and the word, however spurious.’
‘However spurious,’ Winceworth repeated. With his lisp, the word furred over like rotting fruit.
Frasham kept nodding. ‘A meeting has been set up for you, apparently, with – oh, what was his name? Some local historian. Folklorist. Something along those lines.’ Winceworth stared at him, clearly becoming florid in the act of improvising. ‘That should be enough to get you your ticket: Fenchurch Street train should take you straight there.’ He grinned again. ‘Best not be late! Sounds like a marvellous research trip.’
Winceworth had never undertaken a trip for Swansby House before, let alone been sent on such a last-minute and vague expedition. That was the role of field lexicographers and linguists like Frasham and Glossop, not the desk-botherers of the Scrivenery. It was utterly absurd.
‘I am working on the Ss,’ Winceworth said, weakly, and Frasham spread his hands and shrugged.
‘It was specified that it should be you that goes. You have clearly made an impression.’
‘Barking.’ Winceworth wanted to seize Frasham by the collar, garbgrab and scream at him. ‘This is a fiction!’ he wanted to shout. A fool’s errand, a wild goose chase!
Frasham smiled. ‘No need to thank me. But, time might be of the essence?’
And Winceworth was backing out of the door and into the street, apologising and nodding and holding his new bottle of ink. For just a moment he turned to look back through the café window – the pair had turned to their own private conversation and were taking their seats. Frasham moved into his vacated chair and was laughing at something Sophia had said. They looked happy, they looked as though they matched.
Winceworth kept watching as the third, unnecessary chair at their table was moved away by a waiter.
O is for
ostensible
(adj.)
Perhaps a sense of narrative is one of the first things to degrade when you spend a long time looking though dictionary entries. Certainly (‘certainly’!) chronology no longer matters as much as it used to, and links between pages seem either entirely contrived or simply impossible. Patterns emerge but they are often not to be trusted.
For this reason and although they are tasked with bringing about order and a degree of regimentation, I can’t help but think many lexicographers must go through something of a breakdown from time to time. As I flicked through the blue index cards, I wondered if my nineteenth-century mountweazelling interlocutor knew the word breakdown (n.). I wish I could have extended my hand through time and offered it to him. He might have found it useful.
Surprising everybody, Pip’s policy of looking for any word remotely related to cats paid some dividends. She busied herself making a small stack of the cards we could identify as mountweazels by the door frame and into an envelope.
‘You little prat,’ she hissed. ‘Listen to this, Mallory: “peltee (n.), a hairball, or matter disjected from the mouths of sleaking beasts (SEE ALSO: cat).” Honestly, he’s trying a bit too hard there, I think.’
‘Honestly.’
‘Honestly. Ah, but here’s a nice one: “widge-wodge (v.). Informal – the alternating kneading of a cat’s paws upon wool, blankets, laps &c.” A sappy so-and-so, then.’
I did not like thinking of our obscure mountweazeler in that way. I preferred him as bent on chaos, disruption, as somebody thrilled and motivated by sneaking around and having the last laugh. If I let a more tender portrait of him emerge, I ran the risk of liking him. Him, her, it. Him. Let’s say him. Odds are.
I did not want to feel protective of him. I didn’t want to invest in that fact that many of the words showed small sweet observations, inconsequentialisms. As I flipped over the index cards I found myself hoping that nothing ever entirely terrible or perilous was being termed. I didn’t want that to be his remit, the world he was casting to define. It was fine if that meant his world was small. He didn’t have to make grand claims. I’m much more comfortable with people who just about manage the bare minimum.
We continued to pore and paw and pour over the index cards, seeking out the distinctive pen nib and any other clue. We swapped between who got to sit on the chair and who balanced on the window ledge every half-hour and compared how many mountweazels we each could find. I had slightly more than Pip because I was faster at spotting the distinctive penmanship, but she was quicker at checking online to see whether the words appeared anywhere else documented in the English language. Pip gnawed her lip as she read. Her dentist had told her that she ground her teeth as she slept – bruxism, she had repeated to me through gritted jaws that same evening with a flourish of distasteful new vocabulary. The dentist told her that if she kept grinding her teeth they would be eroded down to half their size. This had shocked an unconscious self-preservation response in her body: ever since then, she made sure to tuck her lips between her teeth and grind them together instead. Mouth as mangle and buffer.