On waking, Winceworth forgot every aspect of his dreams, but for the record they all featured a mad kind of aviary and a desperate urgent need to escape – tiny orange birds in cages and pelicans on stilts, the air around his dreamhead filled with nonsense songs and the clattering of wings. It was the first night for years that he did not dream about a dictionary. His immediate thought was of Prof. Gerolf. He pictured the professor turning over the day’s filed powder-blue index cards, and thought of each of his false words lying there in amongst the real entries, each one nodded at, appreciated as if valid and sound, and then filed away in the hush of the professor’s study above the Scrivenery at the top of Swansby House.
Winceworth did not know whether he had expected to feel relief or guilt or anticipation upon waking – one of these emotions, at least, and possibly a combination of all three. Should it feel like he had pulled a prank? Should it feel like revenge? Devilment? Instead, all Winceworth felt was a new kind of numbness. The world had not changed and dawn was living up to most accepted definitions. He gave himself a moment longer beneath the covers before rising. Lying hidden, there, his eyelashes brushed the underside of a blanket. He concentrated on that small inconsequential pressure. He tried again to access how he felt. He was less exhausted, but it was not a kind of restfulness. He did not feel anything like at peace.
He fetched his book of matches from his jacket on the floor and attended to the lamp and enjoyed the rasp of the match strike and the sudden heat. A daydream came briefly and unbidden, of the Scrivenery on fire. He imagined flames passing from desk to desk. He imagined the stink of ink peeling across pages as a fire made its way up the folders and pigeonholes, crawling brightly across to create a fretted, heavy ceiling. Winceworth moved away from his grate and there was no tune in his head nor any stray word ricocheting in his mind as he set about the practicalities of a working day. Ties still needed to be straightened and bluing chins still required fresh shaving.
He remembered it was the day of the Swansby House staff photograph. His grey face loomed in the mirror above the washstand, and he saw for the first time that the wire bridge of his spectacles had collected silt from yesterday’s explosion: a tiny stripe of warpaint across his nose. There was a corresponding mark stamped against his pillow. He rubbed the stain, absently, then sluiced his face and underarms with water. Every action felt deliberate and slow as he worked the small nub of pink soap between his hands until it was thick and fat-bubbled. He rubbed away, closing his eyes against the shock of water, until the world smelled of suds and fresh skin. He shaved and, as was his habit, he nicked his jaw. Always in the same place. Not concentrating, he chided himself. Prone to error.
It had rained in the night and the window had a slight frost on the outside and inside of the pane. He felt the chill of it in his hair and against his face.
The morning at Swansby House was spent in the usual way, with all the clerks and lexicographers quietly chasing their various entries and wrangling definitions. Bielefeld went on humming under his breath and Appleton kept up his campaign of sniffing while Winceworth picked over the bones of S-words and kept his head low at his desk. Some members of Swansby House’s staff had heard about the events at Barking and visited his desk to express sympathy, curiosity or intrigue. He was not a good raconteur and these conversations were brief. He told everyone who disturbed his work that, honestly, he could remember very little of what had taken place out in Barking. They expressed surprise, regret and boredom and then moved on and let him be. Winceworth shot occasional looks at Frasham and the white-haired Miss Cottingham whenever he spotted them across the hall or their work took them anywhere near his desk. When the boy with the post-barrow came to take the index cards from his desk, Winceworth did not show a flicker of emotion.
Prof. Gerolf emerged from his study at exactly one o’clock and addressed them from the gallery above the Scrivenery hall. He stood directly above the clock, beard cascading over the balcony as he announced in a headmasterly tone that the photographer was ready in the courtyard. No need for the gentlemen to wear hats, he declared, let the brains cool off. The Cottingham sisters exchanged glances and kept their headgear secured in their white and black hair. Pons pons pons. There followed a stutter of chairs scraping back across the floorboards and the dull tinkle of many inkpot lids being replaced: everyone began shooting their cuffs and smoothing their hair and emptied the Scrivenery in an orderly fashion, column by column.
In an effort to keep warm, the Swansby staff jogged up and down on their toes in the courtyard. Winceworth noticed that Appleton had bought a new watch chain for the occasion and Bielefeld had shined his shoes and parted his hair in a different way. Everybody was absorbed in neatening their moustaches and putting their shoulders back, standing slimmer and taller than they ever did in the Scrivenery. The lexicographers’ shoulders were used to stooping over desks. They arranged into height order and positioned themselves in front of the camera against the Swansby House wall. Winceworth noticed that despite Gerolf’s instructions, Frasham kept creeping into the centre of the photograph with the assurance of one compelled to do so by some ineluctable force – Frasham’s expression did not waver and he did not say a word but his colleagues parted to let him through. Less seamless a negotiation of elbows belonged to Glossop beetling in Frasham’s wake so that they might stand together.
‘Excuse me!’ The photographer was having none of it. ‘Little man! Yes, you, green handkerchief! Back to the front, if you please!’
The photographer had a stentorious, magisterial tone Glossop could not help but obey. Winceworth was jealous that one could possess such a voice. The photographer busied himself behind the camera with fabric and tripods. He looked at the amassed lexicographers with clear disdain. Martinet-lunged and growing red in the face, he explained that he had come from another appointment earlier that day with a particularly boisterous football team from Kennington and he was simply not in the mood for any blithering or messing about. All the Swansby staff looked at their feet and tugged at their collars.
Prof. Swansby, a sensitive man, tried to clear the air by enquiring about the names for the different parts and processes required by the camera (‘Potassium chlorate, my goodness!’). This had a conciliatory effect and the tension between photographer and subjects lifted. The Swansby staff shuffled and the photographer lowered his head beneath his dark cloth. Behind the camera tripod, he was transformed into a new, slouch-shouldered creature, a glassy Cyclops with a concertina snout.