Stories of the Strange and Sinister (Valancourt 20th Century Classics) (12 page)

‘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 became 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.

All that summer and autumn the two young people were seen about together and on Quintin’s twenty-first birthday, which was to be celebrated regally at Hassocks, everybody in the village of Anton and the surrounding country, hoped that an announcement would be made.

It was a party that lightened the gloom of an unusually cold November. All the estate tenants were invited to dinner; to them and the other guests Quintin made an exquisitely simple speech, polished to a wit only perceivable by the more intelligent. After the feast the several hundred guests put on coats and wraps and moved out to the terrace to watch the fireworks. There were long tables lit by crimson electric bulbs concealed amidst moss and ivy in the scooped-out boles of two oak trees; and on the tables, claret punch coffee, barrels of beer, cider, a puncheon of rum, cherry-brandy and many other warming drinks. Quintin, feeling suddenly a little embarrassed by this extravagant honouring of his manhood, slipped away to the orangery, hoping to be able to get a line right in his new ballade. To his extreme annoyance he found Ianthe in there. She was sad. To-night, she felt, it was time for Quintin to make her an offer; but he had showed no signs of doing so. He had, in fact, completely forgotten her existence.

She turned round, her face glowing in the light of the Chinese lanterns, and saw him coming in. For a moment he hesitated, wondering if he could get away. Then, realizing he might as well propose now as any other time, he made an opening, vague and yet in key.

‘How exquisite this mimosa is.’

‘Yes, it is jolly,’ she said.

‘How it makes one,’ he continued slowly, ‘long for the south – the south that ripens the vine and warms the blood.’

‘Yes, the south is awfully nice.’

‘There is something sad – ’ he complained, ‘ – about these pyrotechnical arabesques.’

He drooped with a certain athletic grace into a basket chair, drawing his fingers across his forehead and smiling at Ianthe. It was a smile that always attracted people; a smile of singular humility, unexpected in one whose bearing was usually so arrogant. Actually, it was synthetic. He had worked hard to learn how to produce it at the right moment.

‘Fireworks are like words,’ he continued, (He was thinking, at what precise point shall I make my voice ‘vibrate with passion?’ Upon what word?) ‘ – like words, spoken – and too soon forgotten. But there are some words, Ianthe, which should be like a – ’

‘Oh look, Quintin!’ she cried suddenly. ‘Look at that heavenly rocket!’

His smile vanished. Without raising his head he looked at her malevolently under his heavy sensuous eyelids. What a noodle the girl was! Beautiful, no doubt; but it was mere pig-beauty. In a few years she would have lost all her charm. Still, a wife was useful; she kept other women away. Yes, he must propose; the tedious task must be accomplished as gracefully as possible.

Rising, he went near to her, preparing the right words, rolling them round and round silently on his tongue. Knowing that the moment had come, Ianthe waited, trembling a little, and closing her eyes. She felt his hand on her shoulder, very light; she heard him give a little cough. The next thing she heard was spoken with terrifying contempt – the single word,

‘Noodle.’

She opened her eyes. ‘W – what – did you say, Quintin?’

He bit his lip; he flushed.

‘You called me a noodle!’ she cried. ‘I suppose I am not clever enough for you. How beastly of you, Quintin! After all these weeks when we have been so friendly. How cruel of you!’

‘Wait – wait – ’ he cried. And in a moment he was stammeringly excusing himself, as he had ten years ago in the schoolroom. ‘I didn’t mean it. I – I don’t know what made me say it. I wasn’t thinking of you, Ianthe darling. I swear I wasn’t – ’

He broke off. She had run out into the garden. He could see her, lit by the flaring light of a set-piece, disappearing towards the house, her handkerchief to her eyes. He started to pursue her; then stopped. What was the use of pretending he cared? He did not. He knew that he had, for the second time, reached a crisis in his life. Only one thing now had power to interest him. And that was –

He saw it in the distance, above the set piece. People were crying and clapping their hands and calling for him; his father ran towards him, dragging him along the terrace to see his birthday message burnt in words of fire against the sky. ‘Many happy returns of the day.’ He watched it and hardly saw it; watched the sizzling fiery words, man high, splutter away and shiver over like a falling house until there was nothing left but a few spitting embers and, high above, in monstrously large letters, spelt out in pure ice the deadly word ‘NOODLE.’

He was, of course, enthralled – for a moment far too thrilled by this second demonstration of his power to think of the cold meal that lay before him. As before, nobody could see it but himself. Complaining of the sudden coldness people were moving back to the house; the tenants were struggling in to find their caps and coats. Quintin realized he was almost alone, except for one old man who, seeing that everybody had gone, was drinking the dregs from all the glasses remaining on the tables.

He ran suddenly, over to the place where the set piece had been burning. Glittering upon the black sky, so beautiful that his head reeled, was his new creation, NOODLE. Was it not, he thought, worth losing a thousand Ianthes to gaze upon such a thing?

Too high for him to reach, he stood there, gazing up at it, spellbound, hardly aware how cold he was until his name, called from the house, brought him to his senses.

Late that night when all had retired, he came down from his bedroom to a cupboard in the lobby where tools were kept. He returned with a small hammer. He had been unable to break the letters with his hands, the ice was so thick, the letters far too large to put whole into his mouth. Turning on the electric stove he contemplated his fate with a groan. It was intolerable that he should have to destroy this peerless work; intolerable, too, that he should have to digest so cold a meal – if it could be called a meal. And yet it was impossible to sleep with this chain of frozen letters which had re-appeared across the room. He knew, with a sickening certainty, that he would never get rid of them unless he ate them; and much as he admired the whole effect (particularly beautiful when the light was turned out) he knew that the constant presence of this word above him wherever he went, would have an undermining effect upon him. Better, obviously to eat it here, in the secrecy of his own room, than perhaps to betray himself in public as he had innocently done on the last and only other occasion. Tomorrow he had promised to address the local literary guild on the Sonnet. What if, in the middle of his discourse, so carefully written and rehearsed, this should appear – as very well it might?

Switching off the light, he left only the red glow of the stove so that he might at least have the aesthetic pleasure of seeing his work for the last time to the best advantage. Climbing up on a chair he seized one of the letters, the N, and was about to haul it down, when another idea came to him. He would be very cold. A plentiful supply of hot coffee would help a great deal. He had the night before him. Why not?