The Liar's Dictionary

Of course, I was also called in to have my say and put things into my own words and explain what my experiences at Swansby’s had been. Did I ever suspect David was behind the bomb threats? Do you think this was his plan all along, or was it a hoax that backfired? How could he hide in plain sight? And Pip was asked similar questions too, where the tone was accusatory rather than exploratory – she wasn’t supposed to be in the building, had no authority there: what was her story? But the second that David Swansby confessed, these interviews melted away from our lives.

Pip and I read the reports with incredulity, intrigue. People who barely knew us took the time to remind themselves of our numbers. Whereas before the fire, mention of Swansby’s Dictionary might elicit conversations about unfinished grand projects and the Lost Generation, now they all began with a nod and a wink about insurance. I did my best to dispel this whenever journalists got in contact or I overheard conversations in Pip’s café, but it was a new, tasty, excellent fact. It was stated as such in the dictionary’s Wikipedia page on the evening of the fire, and that part of the article became the largest section with the most citations. The rest of the dictionary’s history has been eclipsed.

To my knowledge, no papers ever made any mention of mountweazels, nor Swansby’s Dictionary as something contaminated by false words. I hope David thinks of that as a triumph or at least some small consolation.

For years later, every time I read about it – what should it be called: the case? Episode? What word fits the bill? – I felt myself become a tangle of question marks. I could not help but scour each and every article to see whether I was mentioned. Not once. No one cares about a hired anonymous amanuensis when such a blundering cartoon villain is at the centre of a story. I could have been a nice footnote, I suppose, or cast sympathetically as the naïve patsy in a devious, dog’s dinner of a plan. My fielding of these ‘threats’ on the phone was all part of the scheme, of course. My existence meant that David could provide ample evidence to any insurance brokers that there had been foul play.

‘You’d make a wonderful patsy,’ Pip said when I voiced this thought. ‘My favourite stooge.’

We learned to laugh about it, for each other’s sakes.

The truth of it is: I liked David Swansby. He was a sweet man who loved words and played chess with ghosts.

The truth of it is: I hate that this story became about David, a man who dedicated his life to neatly tying things up in a way that he could control, condensing and codifying and arranging. The truth of that corridor and that room filled with fire? The truth there was the indefinable leap in my blood and the lurch in my heart when I saw Pip wreathed in smoke. I had put her in danger, for a definition – I had smuggled her into danger, and I was at fault. Fault. There’s a word for you, and what good is language when your faltering mind is racing faster than your hands, when all you are is guilt and scorching sadness and confusion all at once? Every time I remember that day, it’s not about the events so much as the twang of the bomb threat’s voice decoder in my ears, the thud of blood in my temples, the taste of acrid smoke and fear. Every time I remember what happened, I’m not recalling reasons or explanations so much as a keening hurting truth that I’d risk everything for a person half-obscured.

I don’t know that I have ever felt clarity like this: the anger at what a waste of my time all this was. My job at Swansby’s had been meaningless. Or, rather, I did not know its meaning. I was a small part of a small part of something over which I had no control, and I was angry that abruptness and confusion had almost brought the end-frame FIN about my ears. I hate that high up in an obscure dictionary house I was suffused in and bamboozled and trampled over by language, and then in a second was forced to realise I was finite, and indefinite, disposable. I hate that David Swansby arbitrarily chose the guise of a madman or evangelist hell-bent on wishing I was dead, and that this cruelty was not done with any understanding that it was cruel.

If I think back now about the bomb threats, there was a horror in not knowing who wanted to kill me. That was a definable horror – someone did not know me, but thought they knew that I stood for everything that was wrong. The horror now is different. I’m not sure which is worse: that someone anonymous is out there and wants to hurt you in particular, or that your hurt is something by-the-by, easily folded into some grander, spurious project.