Philippa looked over his shoulder. “There’s no such word, you arrogant man,” she said firmly. “You made it up to annoy me.” She placed in front of him a very hard boiled egg.
“Of course there is, you silly woman; look whymwham up in the dictionary.”
Philippa checked in the Oxford Shorter among the cookery books in the kitchen, and trumpeted her delight that it was nowhere to be found.
“My dear Dame Philippa,” said William, as if he were addressing a particularly stupid pupil, “you surely cannot imagine because you are old and your hair has become very white that you are a sage. You must understand that the Shorter Oxford Dictionary was cobbled together for simpletons whose command of the English language stretches to no more than one hundred thousand words. When I go to college this morning I shall confirm the existence of the word in the O.E.D. on my desk. Need I remind you that the O.E.D. is a serious work which, with over five hundred thousand words, was designed for scholars like myself?”
“Rubbish,” said Philippa. “When I am proved right, you will repeat this story word for word, including your offensive non-word, at Somerville’s Gaudy Feast.”
“And you, my dear, will read the Collected Works of John Skelton and eat humble pie as your first course.”
“We’ll ask old Onions along to adjudicate.”
“Agreed.”
“Agreed.”
With that, Sir William picked up his paper, kissed his wife on the cheek and said with an exaggerated sigh, “It’s at times like this that I wish I’d lost the Charles Oldham.”
“You did, my dear. It was in the days when it wasn’t fashionable to admit a woman had won anything.”
“You won me.”
“Yes, you arrogant man, but I was led to believe you were one of those prizes one could return at the end of the year. And now I find I shall have to keep you, even in retirement.”
“Let us leave it to the Oxford English Dictionary, my dear, to decide the issue the Charles Oldham examiners were unable to determine.” And with that he departed for his college.
“There’s no such word,” Philippa muttered as he closed the front door.
Heart attacks are known to be rarer among women than among men. When Dame Philippa suffered hers in the kitchen that morning she collapsed on the floor calling hoarsely for William, but he was already out of earshot. It was the cleaning woman who found Dame Philippa on the kitchen floor and ran to fetch someone in authority. The Bursar’s first reaction was that she was probably pretending that Sir William had hit her with a frying pan, but nevertheless she hurried over to the Hatchards’ house in Little Jericho just in case. The Bursar checked Dame Philippa’s pulse and called for the college doctor and then the Principal. Both arrived within minutes.
The Principal and the Bursar stood waiting by the side of their illustrious academic colleague, but they already knew what the doctor was going to say.
“She’s dead,” he confirmed. “It must have been very sudden and with the minimum of pain.” He checked his watch; the time was nine forty-seven. He covered his patient with a blanket and called for an ambulance. He had taken care of Dame Philippa for more than thirty years and he had told her so often to slow down that he might as well have made a gramophone record of it for all the notice she took.
“Who will tell Sir William?” asked the Principal. The three of them looked at each other.
“I will,” said the doctor.
It’s a short walk from Little Jericho to Radcliffe Square. It was a long walk from Little Jericho to Radcliffe Square for the doctor that day. He never relished telling anyone of the death of a spouse, but this one was going to be the unhappiest of his career.
When he knocked on the professor’s door, Sir William bade him enter. The great man was sitting at his desk poring over the Oxford Dictionary, humming to himself.
“I told her, but she wouldn’t listen, the silly woman,” he was saying to himself, and then he turned and saw the doctor standing silently in the doorway. “Doctor, you must be my guest at Somerville’s Gaudy next Thursday week where Dame Philippa will be eating humble pie. It will be nothing less than game, set, match and championship for me. A vindication of thirty years’ scholarship.”
The doctor did not smile, nor did he stir. Sir William walked over to him and gazed at his old friend intently. No words were necessary. The doctor said only, “I’m more sorry than I am able to express,” and he left Sir William to his private grief.
Sir William’s colleagues all knew within the hour. College lunch that day was spent in a silence broken only by the Senior Tutor inquiring of the Master if some food should be taken up to the Merton professor.
“I think not,” said the Master. Nothing more was said.
Professors, Fellows and students alike crossed the front quadrangle in silence and when they gathered for dinner that evening still no one felt like conversation. At the end of the meal the Senior Tutor suggested once again that something should be taken up to Sir William. This time the Master nodded his agreement and a light meal was prepared by the college chef. The Master and the Senior Tutor climbed the worn stone steps to Sir William’s room and while one held the tray the other gently knocked on the door. There was no reply, so the Master, used to William’s ways, pushed the door ajar and looked in.
The old man lay motionless on the wooden floor in a pool of blood, a small pistol by his side. The two men walked in and stared down. In his right hand, William was holding the Collected Works of John Skelton. The book was opened at The Tunnyng of Elynour Rummyng, and the word “whym-wham” was underlined.
a 1529, Skelton, E. Rummyng 75
Sir William, in his neat hand, had written a note in the margin: “Forgive me, but I had to let her know.”
“Know what, I wonder?” said the Master softly to himself as he attempted to remove the book from Sir William’s hand, but the fingers were already stiff and cold around it.
Legend has it that they were never apart for more than a few hours.