The Liar's Dictionary

‘It was purple. I know, who knew David Swansby had it in him. But never mind that, look at this – a proper line-up for you,’ Pip said. ‘A real rogues’ gallery.’ She brought the photograph closer to me and crouched slightly behind it. ‘Take a look! The Usual Suspects 1899: This Time It’s “Personnel”.’

I rolled closer. ‘You think he’s in there somewhere?’

‘“Personnel”,’ Pip said again. She lowered the picture and looked at me expectantly.

‘That’s really good,’ I said.

‘I thought so. Go on then – get a load of these potential culprits, detective ma’am.’

A caption was printed under the picture on a ribbon of yellow paper: Swansby’s New Encyclopaedic Dictionary Staff, S–Z – 1899.

The photograph featured three rows of crossed arms and unrelaxed faces. Two figures at the bottom were lying propped on their elbows in a stiff attempt at a sprawl. It’s an unlikely posture that’s usually relegated to commemorative photos of sports teams or lion-slumped big-game hunters, one that only ever really suits drunk Romans handling grapes in frescoes or walruses sunning themselves on ice floes and tundras. The men’s suits, ties and taper-straight moustaches all implied that striking such choreographed floppage came rather less than entirely naturally.

Presumably for the photograph’s benefit, a number of posh-looking carpets or rugs had been dragged out onto the floor as a stage for the ensemble and they lay there overlapping and runkled on the ground just above the caption. I was actively suspending the moment of looking at the staff members’ faces, taking in every detail of a carpet instead, its tassels and bunched-up wrinkles. I wondered where these carpets had come from, whether they were the photographer’s own and, more particularly, where they had got to by now, or which storage cupboard was affording some moths the best meal of their soft-bodied lives. Nowadays, the Scrivenery was all about scratchy purple, nylon-pile, tiled modern flooring: thick enough to trip over but thin enough to allow an office chair to wheel over with a few extra leg pumps. Too thin to absorb coffee stains particularly well, as I knew to my cost. These carpet tiles ran at waist height along the walls throughout the building too. I imagine that the same carpet lines flimsy cubicle partitions in offices across the capital. I imagine people across the city pinning family photos into the pile of these fake walls, to help keep their work space a weird approximation of home.

‘Are you holding your breath?’ Pip asked from behind the photograph. ‘I can tell from here.’

‘No,’ I said. I exhaled.

Every person captured in the photograph was looking in a slightly different direction and nobody seemed to know or have been told what to do with their hands. Some had gone for a just-bagged-a-brace-of-pheasant dip at the hip but, for the most part, all the members of the Swansby staff had arms pressed firmly across their chests, not wanting to give the photographer anything of themselves. They also all looked quite daunted as if ill at ease with being outdoors, or as if they could sense Pip’s hands, giant and white at the untattooed knuckle around their frame.

The only two women in the photograph stood together in the middle, fussy collars and satellite-dish hats; one had black hair and the other entirely white. The photograph itself was that mottled kind of sepia that is not quite grey and not quite brown, ash and moth-coloured. It is a colour that leads you to believe that if you were ever moved to lick the photograph it would taste of toffee and bourbon and bookshop dust.

The beaming man on the far left-hand side of the picture sported a huge beard: the focus in the picture was sharp, so much so that even the crinkles around the man’s eyes and the links of his pocket chain were distinguishable, but for whatever reason his marvellous beard sat beneath the glass as heavy and matt as a gravestone appended to his chin. I recognised the first Prof. Swansby from the portrait in the lobby downstairs. I could almost see something of Swansby’s current editor David in this man’s posture or in his wide eyes. The beard was quite a distraction. Also, the current editor was about three feet taller; clearly some non-Swansby, more dominant genes had blossomed along the line.

Spurred on by the familiarity of Prof. Swansby’s face, I found myself trying to recognise the features of people that I knew replicated beneath the glass, and to think of period actors who best resembled them and could step into their roles.