by Frank Baker
Struggling thus to answer, he did indeed open his mouth intending to utter the word ‘copal’ – the best sounding word of the lot. But other words lay back in his mind, words that flavoured his mouth and made him want to curl up with joy. The word ‘vile’ for example. Shivering with the cold, sliding his hands between his stockinged knees, he opened his mouth very wide, certain now that he could answer Miss Bond. Instead of answering her, he gasped out the three dreadful words:
‘Vile old owl!’
An ominous cloud surged into the pale face of the governess. Her wand clattered to the floor, lying like Aaron’s rod on the rug before the fire, ready to writhe and hiss at Quintin in defence of its mistress.
After the first shock Miss Bond behaved with acid courtesy. The offence was grave indeed, but it must be met calmly and with fortitude.
‘What – ’ she spoke very quietly, ‘ – did I hear you say, Quintin?’
The three terrible words were ringing in his head. Could he possibly have spoken them? He looked round as though in search of another culprit. Somebody in that cupboard; somebody behind that screen; one of those Watteau-like vignettes that swung from peachy frills and tassels in the tapestry above the fireplace; the anvil jaw of Napoleon Buonaparte from his frame over the bookshelves. Could any of these have spoken? But no! It was too clear that his own tongue, that irresponsible instrument of his darkest thoughts, had made public what should have been forever private.
Suddenly Miss Bond spoke again, less calmly.
‘What did I hear you say, Master Quintin?’
He burst up from his chair in distress.
‘I didn’t mean it, Miss Bond; really, I didn’t. I was thinking of what you asked me. Copal, that’s what I meant. I didn’t mean it was you who was the vile old – ’
‘Enough!’
Miss Bond’s hand shot up sharply, checking a repetition of the offensive word.
‘I wonder,’ she said (and there was sadness in her voice) for who knew better than herself that she was not beautiful?) ‘that those wicked words don’t freeze in the air as a perpetual reproach to you, Quintin.’
Walking to the window she turned her back upon him, perhaps to hide the unfortunate face that had prompted the outrageous words or perhaps to imprint the insult upon the ice-grey sky.
Again, desperately, Quintin tried to restore himself to her favour.
‘Please, Miss Bond, I really didn’t mean it. I don’t know what made me say it. I wasn’t thinking of you. I didn’t mean it was you who was the vile – ’
Again Miss Bond stopped him.
‘One day,’ she said, ‘you will eat your words, Quintin.’
And with something like a sob, she turned and left the room. Had he called her a liar, a murderer, a thief – these she could have borne because they would have been so manifestly untrue. But to be called an owl – and a vile one, an old one – some ghastly truth lurked there. Hurrying to her bedroom she locked the door and surveyed herself in her mirror.
Alone, Quintin turned gloomily to the fire and warmed himself. Now that the thing had happened he wasn’t really sorry. In the first place, surely it was true, what he had said? Truer than tea from Australia or copal from China. In the second place she had gone and now he could get warm.
But why stay by the fire? This was not the way to get warm on a winter morning.
Going to the door, he crept upstairs, ran to his bedroom, found his skates and came down. In another minute he was outside, running past the walnut tree, over the little bridge, to the park.
Soon, in a hollow in the land, the house was lost. The morning, the ice, his freedom stretched before him.
While he skated he found himself fascinated by the twirling spirals that he was making on the ice; in time, if he practised, he would be able to make figures, signs, words. Even wonders. The morning passed all too quickly. The stable clock chimed the three-quarters-to-one; he would have to return to an angered mother and father.
Unwillingly he took off his skates, slung them over his shoulder and stood moodily looking at the beautiful designs of his exercise. There, clear on the ice, was a great letter ‘O’; so perfect a letter that he could not resist putting on his skates again, going to the ice and soaring up and down in angles, driven by a mad desire to engrave the letter ‘W’ on the pond. He came back to the grass and surveyed what he had made. Not a very good ‘W.’ ‘OW,’ he said. And then stopped. ‘OW?’ But surely? Yes – and so she was A vile old owl. He bit his lip. But she was!
Very slowly he walked up the rising field towards the house. By now the sky was heavy with fresh snow. He stopped for a moment on the bridge. It was very quiet. A few flakes of snow fell. It seemed as though everything had lost its voice so that the patter of the snow upon the ground could be clearly heard. For the last time, aware that he must never utter them aloud again, Quintin, in the silence, spoke clearly and happily the three words that had given him a morning on the ice.
He turned then from the cold rail of the bridge and retraced his steps homewards. A few yards on he stopped. Before him, above his head, a long branch of the walnut tree lay frozen against the hard, livid sky. Twined in and out of it, as though they had been threaded with a stalactite upon the bough, were ten icicles shaped like letters of the alphabet.
The first icicle was shaped like a letter ‘V’; the second, very clearly, a bold letter ‘I’; the third, a perfect right angle, the letter ‘L’; the fourth –
But it will be obvious to the reader. Frozen upon the branch above him, in bold Roman capitals, each one a foot in height, were the deadly letters of that deadly phrase
VILE OLD OWL
At first he only wondered. It was so beautiful. So icily true. He reached up to try to touch the letters, but they were out of reach. Taking a stick he considered breaking one of them; but he could not bring himself to do this any more than a painter could have brought himself to scrape off a little colour from a finished canvas.
Inside the house the luncheon gong sounded, deep and portentous in the aphonic silence of the gathering snow. Quintin did not move. He was enthralled. Had anybody ever done this before? What mattered Australia now? What mattered anything? He prayed for continuation of the cold spell; the thaw, the wasting away to water of his ice words, would be harder to endure than the death of even the most gargantuan snow-man.
After lunch, he told himself, he would bring Miss Bond out to see for herself. He had no desire to be cruel. But she, worshipping at the shrine of veracity, would surely not wish to miss so rare a demonstration of truth? Frozen there against the sky, the insult ceased to be personal. Nobody, not even Miss Bond, could honestly fail to see that.
Anticipating the joy he was going to have, he moved to the house. Then again he stopped, not many yards from the lobby door, looking at an espalier against the mellow bricks. There again, were the frozen words, the same size, the same Roman capitals. Quintin ran closer to the wall. He saw that the icicles were not joined to the espalier. They were simply standing out in the air, about a foot from the wall, supported by not so much as a spider’s web. As before, they were beyond his reach.
He blinked and shook his head. His first pride gave way to uneasiness. The words on the tree had enchanted him; but these – they were too independent. He turned back in bewilderment to the walnut tree. Frozen on the same branch, Miss Bond’s condemnation was still there. He looked again to the wall and sighed with relief. No words hung in the still air; he must have imagined them.
His mother appeared at the lobby door and called crossly.
‘Quintin, come in. What are you standing about like that for?’
He ran up to her.
‘I’m sorry, Mother, I’m awfully sorry. I just had to try my new skates.’
He wanted at once to drag her down to the walnut tree to show her wha
t he had made. But there was no need. For there, forged in the air above him, though he did not at first see them directly, were the three fatal words; he knew they were there because of a sudden coldness over his head. He looked up. Yes, immediately above.
His mother frowned and took his arm.
‘What are you looking at? What’s the matter?’
‘Can’t you see, Mummy? Look!’
‘There’s nothing there, you funny boy.’
Irritated at being kept out in the cold, she dragged him inside and sent him to wash his hands and face.
A few minutes later Quintin came into the dining-room and took his place opposite Miss Bond. His father was away on business and for that he was glad. Nobody spoke. Mrs Claribel – who guessed from the governess’s red eyes that there had been mutiny in the schoolroom – uncomfortably made some reference to the hard weather. When Simmons, the parlourmaid, had taken up the soup and for a moment left the room, Mrs Claribel said in an unhappy voice (for she disliked having to rebuke her only child), ‘Quintin, come to see me in my work-room after luncheon.’
Quintin hardly heard the words. Terror clutched his young heart. For there, festooned above the luncheon table, some of the letters obscured in a bowl of early freesias, were the icy words which by now, he suddenly realized, he had come to dread.
He looked furtively at Miss Bond and his mother, then again at the words. It was obvious nobody could see them but him. The parlourmaid laid a plate before him; he was aware of her moving over to the corner table. But still, as though his very eyes were frozen, he stared at the words. His hands refused to grip the knife and fork. Hungry as he was he felt sick at the thought of the roast mutton on his plate. The clock ticked away; the silence grew unbearable.
‘Eat your food, Quintin.’ His mother, as she spoke, looked at him curiously. What was the matter with the boy, his eyes staring out of his head like that? Instinctively, she too looked in the direction he was following, a little above the freesias. There was nothing unusual about the flowers. What was wrong with the boy?
‘Eat your food, Quintin.’
The words brought the truth forcibly before poor Quintin; he knew only too well what his food was. Miss Bond had told him. She knew. She knew everything.
He rose suddenly from his chair, reached out a trembling hand, snatched in the air and crunched the letter ‘V’ into his mouth. Shivering with the shock of so much ice on his tongue, he fell back again.
His mother cried out in a horrified voice –
‘Quintin, are you ill?’
He did not answer. He still had nine letters to consume, nine bitingly cold letters. Oh, what a hateful thing the alphabet was! The prospect appalled him. But it would have to be done. Again rising, he snatched at the ‘L’ and bit half of it off, swallowing quickly. The warmth of his hand, still holding the other half of the letter, melted it. Drips of water fell upon the table. Mrs Claribel rose, her napkin held to her lips, and cried out –
‘Simmons, come here – there’s a lot of water – something must have gone wrong – ’
Simmons ran up with a cloth. Meanwhile, Quintin had grabbed the ‘L’ and was cramming it whole into his mouth. All three women were standing, watching him in horrified fascination. Quintin was so completely preoccupied with his task, that nobody felt able to speak. A pool of water now lay on the table. With wet cold hands Quintin (now in a state of mystical exaltation) caught all that remained of the letters and dropped the chips of ice in a pile on to his bread plate.
‘All right, Mother,’ he said, ‘don’t worry. Everything’s all right now.’
He felt very proud. He gave Miss Bond a sly smile hoping she would understand what he had been forced to do. But she, like the others, was completely bewildered.
‘There must be – ’ Mrs Claribel sat down slowly, ‘ – a crack in that waterjug. Simmons, take it away.’
She knew perfectly well that there was no crack; indeed the jug was still full of water. But she had forced herself to speak, so afraid was she of the possible truth – that her son had gone mad. Yet now his behaviour seemed normal. Unseen by her he had eaten all the ice on his plate; and now hungrily attacked his meat with the usual vigour of a healthy young boy. The meal passed in a strained silence. Immediately it was over, Quintin rushed outside to the walnut tree. His words were no longer there. He never saw them again. He had spoken; he had eaten; he was for the time being, cleansed.
He remembered that his mother had asked to see him after luncheon. So he went to her work-room ready for any rebuke. But she had nothing to say to him. Taking him in her arms she held him close and looked deep into his eyes. ‘Dear boy,’ she murmured. ‘Dear boy.’ She spoke as though she understood what had happened to him. But in truth, she did not. He was her only child and she was afraid for him.
From that day Quintin Claribel, once a lively child, became mysteriously silent; often even morose. His studies occupied much more of his time and Miss Bond had seldom cause to complain. His mother, who never forgot the extraordinary incident at the luncheon-table, watched him anxiously. The years passed and the cares of adult life, like a thunderstorm in May, seemed to be gathering round his head after too short a spring. And yet there was nothing actually wrong with him. Once or twice his mother asked, ‘Is there anything on your mind, Quintin dear?’ He was fifteen and she knew it was a difficult age. He read too much. There were books in the library which even her husband had never dragged to daylight, some of them – though reputed to be ‘great’ literature – not suitable for a boy of tender years. ‘Is there anything on your mind, dear boy?’ And he said, quite calmly, yes, there was a great deal on his mind. But he would not say more. So his mother, and even his sceptical father, began to imagine a great future for the curious being they had brought into the world.
Boyhood passed into youth and Quintin’s tongue, particularly in winter, never once betrayed him. His elders remarked upon the purity of his language, his aptitude for precision, his search for the right word in a sentence and his extraordinary, though cold-hearted, courtesy. Nobody knew that, over and over again, in his bedroom on stark winter nights he had uttered unrepeatable words – words that could not have shocked his mother since she was ignorant of their meaning – hoping and yet dreading to see them frozen in the cold air. There was a night when he leaned out of the window, his hands and head numbed with coldness, and spoke softly and clearly into the dark icy air a stream of the vilest words a dictionary could offer. Trembling at his audacity, he waited silently. But the words had merely drifted into steam from his mouth. He shut the window and retired to bed, realizing finally that such deliberate and ponderous efforts could never yield a result. The obscene, the false, the unkind, the malicious – spoken dispassionately they meant nothing and were not destined to achieve the permanence of those three words spoken in bitterness so many years ago. The curse of his unique ability was simply this: it could never be consciously employed. He was destined to see, in ice, only those words which were the reflection of his deepest, unacknowledged thoughts. If he had ever again to eat ice, it would be the ice of the subconscious. Hence the fact that he was eternally on his guard, praised by his elders for his truthfulness and his almost pedantic speech – or, sometimes, for his discreet silences.
It was noticed that summer days brought to Quintin something of the common chatter and freeness of schoolboys. But with winter he was a changed being; on snowy days he barely spoke at all. Nobody knew how he suffered then; how much he wanted again to see the arctic fruits of his thoughts (who would not?) and yet how much he dreaded the consumption of them. He knew that ‘Vile Old Owl’ might only be a beginning. Suppose, one day, he were to utter some indiscretion from the sink of an unpurified mind, containing ten times as many words? One can easily imagine his predicament – longing for a repetition of the miracle, yet dreading it.
And so the youth b
ecame a young man, handsome, lithe and enigmatic. As the last months of school-days passed and various intellectual interests filled his mind, the curious incident of his childhood faded away into a half-forgotten dream, as unreal as the rocking horse in the attics. Miss Bond had long ago left Hassocks, the globes and exercise books were stowed away with other childish relics. The time came for Quintin to go to Oxford. There he was never very popular; although he soon earned distinction by reason of his impeccable manners. Whenever he entertained it was with an austere grandeur that impressed his guests. People said he was a ‘deep one’. He came to learn the exclamations of silence, the power of the implied unspoken word, the deadlines of mere gesture. ‘When Claribel shrugs his shoulders,’ said somebody of him, ‘you feel the world is balanced there, in a precarious state.’ His few closer friends (the writer of this history was amongst them) seldom saw beyond the mask of his composure.
As would have been expected, he began to write; sombre, balanced little essays, not sparkling but candle-lit by muted epigrams. He spoke at the Union and a diplomatic career was prophesied for him. But this was not his choice. When he came down he was determined to carve out (his own words) a unique place for himself in English letters. He would write, he said, perfectly. That was all. Perfectly. The value of the right word in the right place should be to him the alpha and the omega of his art. Only a very few people would appreciate him; but that did not matter. He was rich; he could afford to treat letters fastidiously; and it was the fastidious élite who would appreciate him.
His name was, at that time, coupled with that of the Honourable Ianthe Postle. She had a beautiful, if somewhat empty, face and Quintin, realizing that he was expected to make her his wife, felt that he might do worse. After all, she was the daughter of a Viscount. He was not in love, and he did not expect he ever would be. Words were his mistresses; and the studied phrase his bedfellow. Ianthe, apparently passionless as he was, would make a good partner. One aphorist at the breakfast-table was enough; and her misunderstanding of his most searing ironies would be a constant amusement for him.