Bielefeld and Appleton swivelled in their seats at the voice of the Cottingham, craning their necks. Half an inch closer and this action would have had Appleton’s eye out, Winceworth thought. He daydreamed a little. He imagined the eye plucked out and flicked directly into post boy Edmund’s wicker basket as he snaked between their desks.
“Does she even speak English?” Bielefeld pressed, and the Cottingham twin with the white hair came over to their desks, shrugging.
“Who can say?”
“Who can get a word in edgeways with Frasham?” Appleton supplied, and all but Winceworth laughed a light, frank and tender laugh.
“Hah hah hah,” said Winceworth, very slowly and deliberately half a second after their titters had finished. Another Anglo-Saxon cloud scurried between their desks and Bielefeld pretended to be busy with some small chits on his freasquiscent desk. He put them in a pile, disordered them, then put them in a line again, miming an approximation of work.
“I heard that she is related to the Tsar somehow,” the Miss Cottingham continued.
Winceworth turned in his seat as Bielefeld and Appleton both said, “No!” and “No?”
“Not a daughter or a niece or anything,” said the Condiment. “But perched somewhere in that family tree.”
“You are pulling my leg,” Appleton said.
“If the tree’s big enough, I’m probably related to the Tsar too,” scoffed Bielefeld.
“And the Préfet of Timbuctoo,” agreed Miss Cottingham, and they all laughed again.
“But, you know, I really wouldn’t be surprised,” said Bielefeld. “Frasham seems to move in all types of circles. A tsarina in our midst, imagine.”
“I think Frasham mentioned she was from Irkutsk?” the gossiping Appleton went on.
“Yes, I’ve just been updating our entry for Irkutsk,” Bielefeld said. “I thought it might come in handy if I was permitted to talk with her.” Winceworth waited for the inevitable one-upmanship of trivia that Swansby researchers could never bear to not perform. “Did you know its coat of arms shows a beaver-like animal holding a sable-fox skin? Due to a mis-translation of the word babr, which in the local dialect meant a Siberian tiger! Babr became bobr, meaning beaver. Quite extraordinary.”
Stifling a yawn, Winceworth thought about his morning and tigerish imaginary Mr. Grumps while Bielefeld and Appleton twirled back to their desks with eyebrows raised in appreciative silence. Winceworth picked up the topmost envelope in front of him and shook its letter free. He scanned the page. Its lettering was in a looping, brown ink with lots of underlining.
...enclosed, as directed, evidence of a number of words beginning with the letter S...One particularly arresting example from a recipe given to me by the Very Reverend...Although quite why the sultanas would be complemented by two-day-old rind in such a way remains entirely...
“You know Frasham’s father was friends with Coleridge?” came a hiss from the other Miss Cottingham behind them. Winceworth, Bielefeld and Appleton whirled in their seats once more, orbiting with the intractable tug of gossip.
“You are pulling my other leg,” said Appleton.
“Well, there’s a thing!”
Looking Appleton directly in the face, Winceworth said, “You look just like a cafetière; I’ve often thought so.” Again this went completely unnoticed.
“Or was it Wordsworth?” said Pepper-Cottingham. “One of the two. No, I’m sure it was Coleridge.”
“I’ve just been writing up one of his—where is it—?” Bielefeld flapped his papers along his desk, scrabbling and adding a frantic new pace of rustle to the Scrivenery’s hall. “Yes! Here! One of Coleridge’s first coinages—” Bielefeld held up one of his blue index cards, face flushed with triumph. “Soul-mate, noun!” His cry caused a flush of Shhh!s to ripple across the room. Correspondingly, the group’s voices sank. “ ‘You must have a Soul-mate as well as a House- or a Yoke-mate,’ ” he quoted. “You see: there! First used in Coleridge’s letters.” Bielefeld had the smile of a Master of the Hunt, Winceworth observed.
“I caught an early use of supersensuous in one of his articles just yesterday,” said Salt-Cottingham. A competitive edge crept into her voice.
“How wonderful.” Appleton paused, then added with the flourish of an Ace across baize, “Of course, it was in Coleridge’s papers that I netted—now, what was it—ah, yes, astrognosy and mysticism some months ago. And I was rather pleased to catch his deployment of romanticise over the summer.”
“Don’t forget narcissism,” Winceworth said. “Noun.”
Three faces turned to him.
“I’m sorry, Winceworth,” Miss Cottingham said, “did you say something?”
“Only—” Appleton looked at his pewter cup of pencils, then at the ceiling, then at Miss Cottingham and Bielefeld for camaraderie before settling back on Winceworth. “Well, you know, the old lisp, ah! It’s sometimes difficult to—”
“I’ve often said,” Bielefeld spoke up, “that if Coleridge’s maxim holds true, and poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world, lexicographers are doubly so, hidden in plain sight.”
“Oh, very good!” Appleton said, and Miss Cottingham gave an abrupt clap of her hands.
“That was—that was Shelley, I think—” Winceworth said, but at that point one of the innumerable Scrivenery cats jumped up onto his desk.
“Oops!” said Appleton.
“To what do we owe the pleasure!” said Bielefeld.
“Steady there!” said Miss Cottingham.
The cat looked at Winceworth, right into the heart of him. He extended a hand. Without breaking eye contact, the cat reversed a couple of steps, paused and then, protractedly and calmly, coughed something hairy and pelleted and faintly damp over Winceworth’s paperwork and into his lap.
Appleton and Bielefeld’s chairs squealed against the floor in their haste to push away and Shhhhh!s filled the air of the Scrivenery once more.
E is for esquivalience (n.)
I had not received any training regarding specific bomb threats. I had not received any particular training at all, so I stared at the phone receiver for a good minute. I picked up my mobile and texted Pip in the café where she worked, I’m sorry this might be it, I love you, goodbye, x. I switched off my computer without saving, I watched the ivy outside my window bounce and waggle in a light breeze, then I smashed my fist into the red Break Glass to Activate fire alarm just by my desk. I did this with all the zeal of an employee who has fantasised about doing so since their first day on the job.