‘No, no.’ Her tone was light, vague, a touch vacant despite the warmth in her smile. As Winceworth drew closer there was a faint sting of alcohol in the inches between them. This was unexpected – for a wild second he wondered whether he might be smelling it upon himself.
She turned shining eyes upon him and blinked a little as if waking up. ‘A delight to see you again! How is the new pen?’ She flicked invisible dust from his shoulder, admiring him. He was pleased at the change of her manner and at her attentiveness. ‘My sincere apologies to disturb you from your podium down there,’ she went on. ‘Didn’t you look smart? You are quite the picture when you are not waylaying pelicans.’
‘I take that as a compliment from one who stabs them in the neck.’
‘For surgical purposes.’
‘Just so.’ He cocked a thumb downstairs. ‘And I was glad to get away. Have you been here all morning?’ The idea seemed absurd, like not knowing God or the Devil was keenly watching you oblivious at work.
‘I arrived some ten minutes ago – everyone seemed occupied so I thought I’d sate my curiosity about the place.’ She gestured to the corridor. ‘Terence told me about the cats, but I had not imagined quite so many herds of them.’
‘Clowder. A clowder of cats.’
‘But you do herd them, do you not?’
‘That is not yet my job and I am not the expert. I am sorry if no one was there to meet you at the door—’ But Sophia was not listening, instead making her way down the bookshelves and inattentively touching the books. She trailed her finger along the spines as she went. She did not notice, but as she passed she caught one of the dustjackets at a slight angle and the paper tore.
Winceworth caught up and fell into step with her. He did not know these hallways on the second storey of Swansby House. He presumed they were used by Prof. Swansby for the business side of the dictionary – reference books and source material swapped for ledgers and accounting, the professor’s desks used for drafting appeals for the public to submit words and definitions for the greater good.
Sophia said, ‘I do hope no one will mind that I took myself on a small tour while you were all down there.’
‘May I ask what you made of the place?’
‘That central hall is really very extraordinary. I was quite taken aback! Quite the factory.’
Winceworth felt a fleeting twinge of jealousy that he could not have fresh eyes for the place. He imagined Sophia walking between the desks – by his desk! – in the abandoned hall as if a tourist, required neither to be busy nor to appear to be busy as a worker might with the pressure of a job. He imagined walking through that room and being occupied only by leisure and delight. For him, the hall was now too strongly associated with the work done within it, synonymous with a cricked neck and hardened callouses on his middle finger from years of writing. No pons pons pons headaches from double-checking references seemed to crowd Sophia’s mind as she walked through the heart of Swansby House, and no attendant thoughts of paper cuts, Appleton sniffs. She could walk as she pleased and treat the Scrivenery as if she had entered a cloister or a gallery depending on her mood, a grotto or an ossuary rather than hard-won glossary. He imagined Sophia reaching out a finger to one of the pigeonholed shelves on the Scrivenery wall, touching their pale blue index cards, impressed by their enterprise and prowess.
Even in the daydream this could not work as an image – he imagined her withdrawing her hand as if scalded.
Sophia said, ‘Terence and I took a turn around a museum yesterday after our recuperative tête-à-tête in the café. He felt awful sending you away like that, you know. Terence cares so much about the blessed dictionary, and I do think it makes him a little inhumane. But he also said that he happened upon you back in the Scrivenery in the evening and I do hope he apologised – they have you working all hours of the day here, I must say.’
‘He mentioned meeting me?’
‘He did.’
‘He did.’ Frasham in the dark of the basement yesterday, the sweat on his brow, Miss Cottingham hiding behind the unused presses, their giggles in the dark. Winceworth examined his sleeve.
‘Shall we return to the stairwell?’ Sophia asked. ‘I’m not sure this leads anywhere interesting.’
Winceworth let her take his arm and they doubled back on themselves. ‘Perhaps Frasham mentioned to you how my trip in Barking panned out?’
‘He did not. Anything of interest?’
The strange terrible colour that defied definition.
‘No.’
‘Language never sleeps, I suppose,’ said Sophia, and she laughed. It was a tight, high laugh and one that Winceworth recognised. He could compile a whole dictionary of fake laughs. This one sounded like a feint he used when anxiety greased the mouth and sprained the throat – when he laughed like this it was to mask a voice that might otherwise break with emotion. As they walked, he watched her look up at the ceiling as if to compose herself.
‘Miss Slivkovna—’
‘That is not my name,’ Sophia said, and again her tone was bright. As if this was an inconsequential fact. Winceworth halted. As she continued, however, he was compelled to scurry forward to keep pace at her side.
‘I do beg your pardon,’ he said.
‘The fault is mine.’
Pons pons pons. ‘You do not mean – I am addressing Mrs Terence Clovis Frasham?’
Sophia’s real laugh flourished in the corridor and it was her turn to stop walking. She laughed in his face openly with guileless, true human joy.
‘Not that, no! Strike that from the books!’
Winceworth cluttered.
‘Dear God, you poor man, no!’ Sophia wiped a mirth-borne tear from the side of her face. ‘Ah, you’ll excuse me.’
Winceworth waited.
‘I am not used to giving my real name to anyone –’ She broke off to stroke a Tits-cat sleeping by her feet – ‘I’m afraid you caught me at a moment of improvisation when I introduced myself.’
‘Unless I am mistaken,’ said Winceworth, who was not, ‘it was Frasham who introduced you by that name.’
‘Is that right?’ Sophia’s laugh fluted upwards. ‘A commendable eye for details, of course. I’m sure you’re right. We are a good team, Terence and I – I do well to follow his lead in such things sometimes. Running with the line he has supplied, maybe elaborating on it a little. But I see I have upset you,’ she said, frankly and with an apologetic moue, ‘and I am sorry to have not told you the truth.’ She straightened and smiled, looking easier about the eyes. ‘Names after all, little peshka, should not matter so much.’
‘I would not trust Frasham as far as I could throw him,’ Winceworth said.
‘No,’ Sophia said, and she withdrew her arm from his.
‘And perhaps – you’ll forgive me – perhaps I understand more about him, of him, than you might already know.’
‘I think I know most things. I know most things about many subjects, or many things about most subjects – whichever sounds better.’
Concision and decisiveness were more necessary than breath. ‘I saw him yesterday,’ Winceworth said. ‘Yesterday, last evening—’
‘In particular,’ said Sophia, and they turned a corner at the head of the stairs, ‘I imagine that you saw him in company?’
A cat headbutted Winceworth’s ankle.
‘And,’ Sophia continued, ‘perhaps he was in a state of some unparticular undress? Oh, peshka,’ she said and touched his forearm, ‘you do look worried.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. Then, louder, ‘This does not matter to you?’
‘Very little matters to me.’ She squeezed his arm. She looked concerned only by his concern. ‘Indiscretion, infidelity—’ The thought seemed to leave her even as she spoke it, as if she found the subject entirely boring. She studied his face. Just five minutes before he would have given anything for such proximity to her, scrutiny from her. ‘It doesn’t particularly interest me, I suppose,’ she said. ‘If I may be candid with you, Mr Winceworth.’