The Liar's Dictionary

What is there to say of the party, when he found it? The decoration of course should take prominence. He had heard of the Secretum and its contents, its Bacchic marbles, tableaux, statues, pieces of masonry, cups, jewellery – all obscene and all on show for the chosen few. These were artefacts that were deemed too contentious or deemed corruptingly erotic for public display, and yet here they all were in their cases and on plinths and on candle-lit vitrines. Winceworth saw a thrusting, bristling, orgy of treasures.

Dr Johnson once remarked ‘I hope I have not daubed my fingers’ when congratulated on the omission of certain improper words in his Dictionary. It’s a prevailing notion, Winceworth thought as he passed a glazed fritware vase, expertly rendered to be some monumental ceramic ode to priapism. The idea that vulgarity should not necessarily enter dictionaries unless it can be appreciated on some rarefied, philological level was pretty standard. Some of the objects on display were clearly from antiquity, carefully dusted and polished so that every nook and crevice was shown to greatest effect. Marble figures’ textures had been made to look plashy and dewy by masters of their craft, and the curator tasked with writing exhibition catalogues would be hard-pressed to find synonyms for buxom, straining, lewd, rude and crude.

The artefacts were not limited to sculpture. As Winceworth edged about the room, he glimpsed scenes depicted in frescoes and on terracotta tiles that would make ivory blush. Here was a sketch of two witches delighting in the lack of laundry bills; there a zoetrope of a man finding a delightful new hobby with the assistance of a shoehorn and a pat of butter. It was a raucous, riotous, preposterous collection of anything and everything that could titillate, shock and arouse.

Winceworth looked upon it all with a remote curiosity. Rather than the things that were thronging and dripping and rearing so abundantly in these rooms, it was the people that compelled him to stand and stare. The space was packed, waiters navigating their trays at dangerous and devious angles in order to cross the space. Clearly the 1,500 Mile Society had been just a taster for potential funders of Swansby House – this was another order entirely. It might have been Winceworth’s imagination, but everyone had a predatory gleam in their eye, sly, wild, seeking pleasure and appreciation. The air was heavy with loud laughs and the richest perfumes, and it seemed as if every shoulder he passed was dressed in expensive furs or some filigree or other denoting fashion. Here, under lock and key, the mood was tinged by the spirit of the artefacts and objects in the room.

As Winceworth turned on his axis, vying to take everything in, he saw the partygoers as if in a series of friezes. Here was his colleague Appleton mid-sniff, disporting over a glass of Vin Mariani; here Bielefeld miming something grimly lascivious by a Roman bust in order to impress a ring of young women. He could have been mistaken, so pressed together were their bodies and so doggedly did he have to fight to see over so many jostling shoulders and outstretched arms, but Winceworth thought he even caught sight of Dr Rochfort-Smith across the room. If indeed it was he, the elocutionist’s finger was at another member of the faction’s lips, cooing and guffawing above the sound of the – what, the lute? Mandolin? Oud? Winceworth looked to see the source of the music and recognised the band from the 1,500 Mile Society, their sombre black suits swapped for rich silks and satins.

Everyone’s faces were flushed and their mouths were wet and open. Their heat was set in stark contrast to the cool of the marble and silver artefacts around.

An arm snaked through his.

‘Not quite your scene, perhaps?’ said Sophia, close to his ear.

Winceworth glanced at her. He noted her finery, that she had never looked better and more awful, then looked back at the crowd.

‘You think me prudish.’

‘No,’ she said. She looked a little bored. ‘But I do wonder if you have any words for it all. Not too debauched? Just a hint of bauch? I was speaking to Glossop earlier, about one of your great rivals. He told me that the Encyclopædia Britannica defines “nudities” in painting and sculpture as “denoting those parts of a human figure which are not covered by any drapery, or those parts where the carnation appears”.’

‘I did not think to bring flowers,’ Winceworth said. ‘And you shouldn’t believe everything you read in encyclopaedias.’