The idiom weasel words apparently comes from the folklore that weasels are able to slurp the contents of an egg while leaving the shell intact. Teaching your weasel how to suck eggs. Weasel words are empty, hollow, meaningless claims. My reference and CV for this internship contained some weasel words concerning focus and attention to detail, as well as a misspelling of passionate.
It was my job to answer phone calls that came every day. They were all from one person, and all threatened to blow the building up.
I suspected the calls were the reason for my internship: it was not as though Swansby’s had any money to spare to lavish on ‘experience-hungry’ (citation needed) twenty-somethings. My last job had paid £1.50 less per hour and involved standing by a conveyor belt and turning un-iced gingerbread men by 30 degrees. I did not mention this fact in my interview with David nor on my CV – at least being at Swansby’s meant no more dreams of faceless, brittle bodies.
To stop me going mad, I passed the time between calls by reading the dictionary, skipping through an open volume on my worktop. Diplome (n.), I read, ‘a document issued by some greater esteemed authority’; diplopia (n.), ‘an affection of vision whereupon objects are seen in double’; diplopia (n.), ‘an affection of vision whereupon objects are seen in double’; diplostemonous (adj., Botany), ‘having the stamens in two series, or twice as many stamens as petals’.
Use those three words in a sentence now, I thought. And then the phone would ring again.
‘Good morning, Swansby House, how may I help you?’
‘I hope you burn in hell.’
The nature of my duties had not been mentioned in my interview. I can appreciate why. On my first day in the office, answering the phone with no idea what was to come, I cleared my throat and said brightly, too brightly, ‘Good morning, Swansby House, Mallory speaking, how may I help you?’
I remember that the voice newly lodged on my shoulder sighed. In discussion later, David and I decided that its speech was disguised by some mechanical device or app so it sounded like a cartoon robot. I did not know that at the time. It was a tinny noise, like something unhinging.
‘Sorry?’ I said. Looking back, I don’t know whether it was instinct or first-day nerves. ‘I didn’t catch that, could I ask you to repeat—’
‘I want you all dead,’ said the voice. Then they hung up.
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.