The Liar's Dictionary

Winceworth wondered how they all stereotyped him. A piece of the furniture. A lisping feature of decorum.

Edmund the barrow boy was approaching now, and sure enough—

‘There’s your lot!’ came the call as papers and letters smacked onto Winceworth’s desk. He jumped again, despite himself, at the impact.

‘Ah! Let’s see—’ The words sprang automatically to his lips. His eyes moved to the back of the departing cloud. ‘See what—’ he continued, and his voice had a distinct waver to it, still faintly whiskied from the night before.

The boy was already moving on to the next desk and reaching into the basket for Appleton’s papers.

‘There’s your lot!’ said the boy to Appleton.

‘Thank you ever so much,’ Winceworth mouthed to no one in particular.

‘Thank you ever so much!’ said the lexicographer, taking up the papers.

The system for the day was simple: Winceworth received various words, and sources for their definitions, from the public each day, which he would sift and assess and annotate. When he was ready to draft a final definition for a word, he would write it with his regulation Swansby pen on one of the powder-blue index cards stacked in front of him. These cards would be collected by Edmund at the end of every day and he would slot them in the alphabeticised pigeonholes lining the Scrivenery. There, the words were ready to be added to the Dictionary proofs.

Appleton caught his eye. ‘Did you make it home last night, Winceworth? You look a little grey about the gills.’

‘Yes. Yes, wasn’t it?’ Winceworth said. As expected, Appleton completely ignored him.

‘Must say, my head was quite the belfry first thing. Who knew selling rhubarb jam would keep Frasham’s family in quite such a fine line of cognacs?’

‘Wasn’t it,’ said Winceworth again. And then, once more, grist for the mill, ‘Yes?’

‘Still,’ said Appleton. He dug his paper knife into the envelopes strewn across his desk. ‘Good to meet the happy couple at last.’

Winceworth blinked. A memory of the previous evening surfaced.

Bielefeld chipped in, ‘Frasham mentioned her in his letters back, had he not?’

Appleton’s head angled towards Frasham’s empty desk, the only one on the Scrivenery floor apparently free from paper and index cards. Instead it was feathered along the fringes with pinned photographs and mementoes sent back from his travels.

‘No, he didn’t,’ Winceworth said. ‘Not once.’

‘And so good to have Terence back in the country, too, where we can keep an eye on him,’ said Appleton.

‘Entirely awful,’ Winceworth said.

‘Been too long, far too long; wondering about him and his silent Glossop shadow trudging across God knows where doing God knows what.’

‘Aubergine,’ Winceworth contributed.

Appleton’s expression didn’t flicker. ‘But yesterday was far too busy to get a proper word with him; I shall have to grab him by the sleeve the next time he dares show his face around the door. Did you see him with the balalaika: what a thing! Wonderful man. But!’ Appleton stretched and wiggled his shoulders. ‘To the task in hand!’ He met Winceworth’s gaze again. Winceworth smiled blankly. ‘Did you say anything, just then?’

‘No?’

‘Just so,’ said Appleton. He had the courtesy to frown.

Khuhhkunk-ffppp. The sound of a book removed from a nearby shelf.

‘Quite the looker, wasn’t she?’ came Bielefeld’s voice from Winceworth’s other side.

‘What’s that?’ said Appleton, and he bent forward so that he could see across Winceworth’s desk. In this posture Winceworth could not help but notice that Appleton’s eye was very close to a number of pencils arranged in a pewter cup in front of him.

‘The fiancée: what’s-her-name,’ Bielefeld urged. ‘Did you manage to speak to her?’

‘I did not,’ said Appleton.

‘I did not,’ grieved Bielefeld.

‘I did,’ said Winceworth, but nobody paid him any mind. He was still staring at the pencils and their proximity to Appleton’s eye. One pencil in particular was just a matter of millimetres away.

‘I did not have the pleasure of speaking with her either. Very haughty, I thought.’ A rare female voice came from a desk behind them – one of the twin Cottingham sisters who worked at the dictionary. Winceworth knew that one of the sisters was an expert on Norse philology, the other an authority on the Goidelic branch of the Celtic languages, and they were identical but for the fact that one had entirely black hair and the other’s hair was entirely white. This was not a natural quirk, but one achieved through various dyes and oils, applied in order that some sense of individuality might be established. Indeed, the darker Miss Cottingham had once, unbidden, explained at length that she was convinced a commixture of rum and castor oil should be rubbed into the roots of one’s hair at night to promote growth and a healthy gloss. Perhaps because of this regime, the collar of her chemise was often stained as if with rust.