The Liar's Dictionary

‘A certain pragmatism to custard slice,’ Sophia said. ‘Is that the term for it? When a word just sits there, entirely fitting but somehow flat?’ She glanced out of the window at the passing Whitehall traffic. Winceworth recognised the way she flicked her eyes from passer-by to passer-by at random. He did that too when he was trying to find the right word for something, to coax the word forward from a forgotten part of his mind. When she spoke again she did so slowly, carefully. ‘When a word has pragmatism mixed with stolidity mixed with bathos mixed with clunk: what is that called?’

Me, Winceworth felt moved to say. He felt drunk. Was she drunk? This was awful. This was lovely. What was she talking about, and had he started this? Was this what conversation should be, or could have been, all along? Conversation as meaningless and wonderful, and terrible.

‘So, tell me all about your work,’ Sophia said. ‘Have you always loved language?’

‘Do you mind if I do not?’ Winceworth said. ‘You will excuse me: I am not good at talking about myself.’

Sophia raised her eyebrows. ‘I appreciate that in a person.’

‘I’d much rather talk about you,’ he said.

‘Nothing I can tell you,’ came the reply, which made no sense at all but Winceworth concentrated very hard on his cake and tried to look pleased with this answer. She looked pleased to have given it. Winceworth hoped he hadn’t somehow allowed an impasse.

‘And secretly, between you and me, I am glad to not have to hear much more about Swansby’s. Do you know how many names I had to memorise for the party last night? I ended up having arranged them in my head alphabetically: A is for anxious Appleton, B for bloviating Bielefeld, C

is for the curious Cottingham twins.’ Sophia counted down on her fingers. ‘I believe I have a space left for E, but then there’s Frasham of course, followed everywhere by that strange little gurgle of a man Glossop—’

‘This is quite scandalous,’ Winceworth said, enthralled.

‘I should not defame the good dictionary. All power to its eventual publication. Do you play chess?’ Sophia asked, helping herself to a canelé.

‘No, but I would like to try.’ Conversation as meaningful and entirely wonderful precisely because it means nothing except to the two people involved. Terrible because of the pressure to fill the silence with a special type of nothing-ing – a kind of everything-nothing – and make it seem artless all the while?

Sophia smiled at him. ‘I would like to teach you! Do you know, I had a dream about you in your little longed-for Cornish cottage.’ Winceworth’s fork twanged weirdly off his plate. ‘I was visiting you and we were playing chess.’

‘That sounds – that would be—’ he began, but she cut across him.

‘You would love the vocabulary of chess too, I think,’ she said. ‘Have you heard of zugzwang?’

‘Zugzwang,’ Winceworth repeated, unlispingly. If she liked it, it would be his new favourite word.

‘Wonderful, isn’t it? It is the situation where a player is obliged to make a move to one’s own disadvantage. Great word, horrible feeling, like being caught in a lie.’

love (v.), to fill a void with icing sugar and healing weeds, or with glib little shared lies

‘I profess to know little of chess,’ he said.

‘There are many excellent phrases to be had there.’

‘Much more than check or stalemate and I would be out of my depth.’

‘I have much to teach you,’ she said. ‘It all changes with the fashions, of course. For a time, did you know players would announce gardez

when the queen was under attack? Or en prise. But the warning is no longer customary. That’s chivalry for you.’

Winceworth wanted to tell Sophia that the fear of seeming like an idiot had cured his headache. He just wanted to say that in this moment he aspired to be a fearful idiot for the rest of his life, and that he wished his life to be such meaningless moments, over and over, for ever.

The window next to them was hit with an awful bang. Winceworth, his fight-and flight-and freeze-responses engaged all at once, gripped the table and all the silverware clattered.

Terence Clovis Frasham waved from the street outside, his cane raised as he rapped on the windowpane once more. He was smiling with all of his teeth.

Sophia gave a start and then a smile settled across her face.

‘What an extraordinary coincidence,’ she said.

Frasham entered the café with great strides all abluster, making the tiny bell spring on its gantry above the door. He waved the owner away and placed his hat on their table, barely missing Winceworth’s plate.