The Liar's Dictionary

Before undressing for bed Winceworth threw his Swansby House attaché case across his bedroom. He withered onto his bed so that his shoes came away from his feet. The very essence of him became simple and synonymous with drooping, flagging – he sagged on the counterpane and as his clothes slid to the floor puffs of masonry and grit leapt into the air. Between the birthday-cake-icing-sugared pockets of the morning, the cat vomit, tiny pieces of dandelion clock, the pelican blood mixed with ink and Barking’s brick dust, his clothes were ruined with documentation of the day. He compared his own pale forgettable body, already goosepimpling in the cold of his bedroom, with Frasham’s easy half-nakedness in the dark beneath the Scrivenery. He dwelled on this for some moments – too many moments – before pulling his bedsheet over his face. Bedsheets, he thought, negate the need for time. He burrowed deeper and he tried some of the breathing exercises Dr Rochfort-Smith recommended to him. He exhaled and inhaled, inspired and aspired according to his pulse, and within seconds he fell asleep in his socks. There should be a word for how horrible this will make him feel upon waking.

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.