On some days the voice sounded male, other times female, sometimes like a cartoon lamb. You might think that answering these calls would become commonplace after the first couple of weeks, as formulaic as sneezing or opening the morning post, but it was not long before I found this was my routine every morning: the moment the phone began to ring, my body cycled through all the physical shorthands for involuntary terror. Blood drained from my face and curdled thick in whomping knots along my temples and in my ears. My legs became weak and my vision became narrower, more focused. If you were to look at me, the most obvious effect was that every morning as I reached for the phone, gooseflesh and goosepimples and goosebumps stippled all across the length of my arm.
* * *
—
In our close-quarter cupboard that lunchtime, David kept his eyes on some shelving. “The call?” he said. “Did I hear it come through at ten o’clock?”
I nodded.
David unfolded an arm and, awkwardly, hugged me.
I muttered thanks into his shoulder. He stood back and re-realigned the label dispenser on the shelf.
“Come along to my office once you’ve finished with your—” he glanced at the now-empty Tupperware in my hands, apparently noticing it for the first time—“lunchbox.”
And then the editor-in-chief left the intern-on-guard to her cupboard and the apricity and the skylight. I stood there for a full second, then looked up Heimlich manoeuvre on my phone as I ate my remaining hard-boiled egg. It took four attempts to spell manoeuvre correctly, and in the end I let Autocorrect have its way with me.
B is for bluff (v.)
Peter Winceworth experienced an epiphany midway through his fourth elocution lesson: the best chance he had of conquering his headache would be folding both legs under his chin and rolling straight into Dr. Rochfort-Smith’s blazing hearth.
“ ‘A roseate blush with soft suffusion divulged her gentle mind’s confusion.’ ”
The doctor repeated his quotation. He did not notice his patient’s second longing glance towards the fireplace.
If the testimonials in the papers were to be believed (With Just A Little Application, You Too Can Achieve Perfect Diction!), Dr. Rochfort-Smith was in great demand in London. His visitors’ book boasted numerous politicians, members of the clergy and most recently the lead ventriloquist at the Tivoli—the overbiting and the spluttersome, the stuttering and the hoarse, the great and the good of the garbling. Winceworth wondered whether his fellow patients also fumbled when they handed their hats to the doctor’s housekeeper in the hallway. Surely they did not all make such painfully self-conscious small talk in the corridors before their appointments and apologise quite so profusely for letting the cold January air of the Chelsea street seep inside? They probably sat forward in their chairs, excited to finally have fullness coaxed from their lungs and have their lips twitched into nimbleness. Winceworth doubted few of the doctor’s other patients slumped quite so abjectly. They would not try and repeat tongue-twisters while yesterday’s whisky still coated their throats and a headache kicked them squarely in the pons.
Pons was a word Winceworth had learned the previous day. He was not sure that he completely understood what it meant—the person who said the word tapped the back of their neck and then their forehead as they said it, as if to provide some context for its use—but the shape and sound of the word lodged in his mind like a tune one can’t stop humming.
His relationship with the word pons and with words generally had soured since first learning of its existence. A case of passing familiarity quickly breeding contempt. Earlier that morning, Winceworth awoke still dressed in last night’s evening clothes with the word pons ricocheting between his ears. It had been an acquaintance’s birthday and they had turned a thirsty age, and the party had careered from genteel to festive to sodden very quickly. Pons pons pons. Eventually finding his face in his dressing-room mirror, Winceworth conducted a clumsy, horrified and fadingly drunk levée. He removed his bow tie from about his forehead and clawed pillow feathers that were buttery with hair pomade from his chin. It was only once he had pried his feet from his dress shoes that he remembered his scheduled appointment. With fresh socks applied and a search for his umbrella abandoned, Winceworth was out of the door and flapping towards Chelsea.
Dr. Rochfort-Smith studied his client’s face. Winceworth cleared his throat to gain purchase on his thoughts and in order to be heard above the songbird, a small but pernicious feature of the doctor’s rooms. The issue was not just that the bird whistled throughout his weekly hour of treatment. Mere whistling would have been a boon. Whistling might have saved the situation. This bird made a point of catching Winceworth’s eye across the room once he was settled in his chair then with something approaching real malice, visibly breathing in, and doing the ornithological equivalent of letting it rip.
Politicians, members of the clergy and the lead ventriloquist at the Tivoli might share Winceworth’s temptation to toss the birdcage and its occupant out of Dr. Rochfort-Smith’s window.
The doctor repeated his phrase. “ ‘A roseate blush—’ ”
Winceworth was unsure of the type of songbird. He researched potential candidates after his first consultation in an attempt to better know his enemy. Winceworth was employed by an encyclopaedic dictionary and was well placed to know who to ask and which books to trust on the matter. Identifying this bird from memory and through spite became an obsession for a week, conducted to the detriment of any actual work he was meant to be doing. He pored over zoological catalogues and pawed through illustrated guides but for all he was able to glean about various small birds’ feeding habits, migratory patterns, taxonomies, use of ants to clean their feathers, use and misuse in mythology and folklore, prominence on menus and milliners’ manifests, &c., &c., its species remained a mystery. Basically, it was a sparrow with access to theatrical costumiers. No encyclopaedic dictionary will tell you this, but Winceworth would want it to be known that if ever a songbird was designed to glare, Dr. Rochfort-Smith’s specimen was that bird. If ever a bird was designed to spit, this was the species that would relish such an advantage. It always had an air of biding its time.
“ ‘A roseate blush with soft suffusion,’ ” Dr. Rochfort-Smith said, “ ‘divulged her gentle mind’s confusion.’ ”
The songbird was an absurd orange colour. Much of Dr. Rochfort-Smith’s consulting room was orange, to the extent that Winceworth might compile a list:
Dr. Rochfort-Smith’s Consulting Room
(the orange complexities thereof):
amber, apricot, auburn, aurelian, brass, cantaloupe, carrot, cinnabar, citric, coccinate, copper, coral, embered, flammid, fulvous, gilt, ginger, Glenlivet-dear-god, hennaed, hessonite, honeyed, laharacish, marigold, marmaladled, mimolette, ochraceous, orang-utan, oriele, paprikash, pumpkin, rubedinous, ruddy, rufulous, russet, rusty, saffron, sandy, sanguine, spessartite, tangerine, tawny, tigrine, Titian, topazine, vermilion, Votyak, xanthosiderite—