intention to cause you pain. I am well aware—who is not?—of the high position you enjoy in the ranks of literature. The amendments I suggested you make to the novel when it appears in paperback—in many hundreds of thousand copies, no doubt—were meant in a spirit of assistance, not criticism, simply so that a good book might be made better.
Yours sincerely,
Sycophantic. But what could be more mollifying than flattery? Ribbon endured half an hour’s agony and self-doubt, self-recrimination, and self justification too, before writing a third and final letter.
Dear Mr. Marle,
With reference to my letter to your good self, dated June 4th, in which I presumed to criticize your recent novel, I fear I may inadvertently have been wanting in respect. I hope you will believe me when I say it was not my intention to offend you. You enjoy a high and well-deserved position in the ranks of literature. It was gauche and clumsy of me to write to you as I did.
With best wishes,
Yours sincerely,
To grovel in this way made Ribbon feel actually sick. And it was all lies too. Of course it had been his intention to offend the man, to cause him pain, and to make him angry. He would have given a great deal to recall that earlier letter but this—he quoted silently to himself those hackneyed but apt words about the moving finger that writes and having writ moves on—neither he nor anyone else could do. What did it matter if he suffered half an hour’s humiliation when by sending this apology he would end his sufferings? Thank heaven only that Mummy wasn’t here to see it.
Those letters had taken him hours, and it had grown quite dark. Unexpectedly dark, he thought, for nine in the evening in the middle of June, with the longest day not much more than a week away. But still he sat there, in the dusk, looking at the backs of houses, yellow brick punctured by the bright rectangles of windows, at the big shaggy trees, his own garden, the square of grass dotted with dark shrubs, big and small. He had never previously noticed how unpleasant ordinary privets and cypresses can look in deep twilight when they are not clustered together in a shrubbery or copse, when they stand individually on an otherwise open space, strange shapes, tall and slender or round and squat, or with a branch here and there protruding like a limb, and casting elongated shadows.
He got up abruptly and put the light on. The garden and its gathering of bushes disappeared. The window became dark, shiny, opaque. He switched off the light almost immediately and went downstairs. Seeing
Demogorgon
on the coffee table made him jump. What was it doing there? How did it get there? He had put it in the drawer. And there was the drawer standing open to prove it.
It couldn’t have got out of the drawer and returned to the table on its own. Could it?
Of course not.
Ribbon put on every light in the room. He left the curtains open so that he could see the streetlights as well. He must have left the book on the table himself. He must have intended to put it into the drawer and for some reason not done so. Possibly he had been interrupted. But nothing ever interrupted what he was doing, did it? He couldn’t remember. A cold teapot and a cup of cold tea stood on the tray on the coffee table beside the book. He couldn’t remember making tea.
After he had taken the tray and the cold teapot away and poured the cold tea down the sink, he sat down in an armchair with
Chambers
Dictionary.
He realized that he had never found out what the word
Demogorgon
meant. Here was the definition: “A mysterious infernal deity first mentioned about A.D. 450 (Appar Gr
daimon
deity, and
gorgo
Gorgon, from
gorgos
terrible).” He shuddered, closed the dictionary, and opened the second Channon Scott Smith paperback he had bought. This novel had been published four years before, but Ribbon had never read it, nor indeed any of the works of Mr. Scott Smith before the recently published one, but he
Yours sincerely,
Sycophantic. But what could be more mollifying than flattery? Ribbon endured half an hour’s agony and self-doubt, self-recrimination, and self justification too, before writing a third and final letter.
Dear Mr. Marle,
With reference to my letter to your good self, dated June 4th, in which I presumed to criticize your recent novel, I fear I may inadvertently have been wanting in respect. I hope you will believe me when I say it was not my intention to offend you. You enjoy a high and well-deserved position in the ranks of literature. It was gauche and clumsy of me to write to you as I did.
With best wishes,
Yours sincerely,
To grovel in this way made Ribbon feel actually sick. And it was all lies too. Of course it had been his intention to offend the man, to cause him pain, and to make him angry. He would have given a great deal to recall that earlier letter but this—he quoted silently to himself those hackneyed but apt words about the moving finger that writes and having writ moves on—neither he nor anyone else could do. What did it matter if he suffered half an hour’s humiliation when by sending this apology he would end his sufferings? Thank heaven only that Mummy wasn’t here to see it.
Those letters had taken him hours, and it had grown quite dark. Unexpectedly dark, he thought, for nine in the evening in the middle of June, with the longest day not much more than a week away. But still he sat there, in the dusk, looking at the backs of houses, yellow brick punctured by the bright rectangles of windows, at the big shaggy trees, his own garden, the square of grass dotted with dark shrubs, big and small. He had never previously noticed how unpleasant ordinary privets and cypresses can look in deep twilight when they are not clustered together in a shrubbery or copse, when they stand individually on an otherwise open space, strange shapes, tall and slender or round and squat, or with a branch here and there protruding like a limb, and casting elongated shadows.
He got up abruptly and put the light on. The garden and its gathering of bushes disappeared. The window became dark, shiny, opaque. He switched off the light almost immediately and went downstairs. Seeing
Demogorgon
on the coffee table made him jump. What was it doing there? How did it get there? He had put it in the drawer. And there was the drawer standing open to prove it.
It couldn’t have got out of the drawer and returned to the table on its own. Could it?
Of course not.
Ribbon put on every light in the room. He left the curtains open so that he could see the streetlights as well. He must have left the book on the table himself. He must have intended to put it into the drawer and for some reason not done so. Possibly he had been interrupted. But nothing ever interrupted what he was doing, did it? He couldn’t remember. A cold teapot and a cup of cold tea stood on the tray on the coffee table beside the book. He couldn’t remember making tea.
After he had taken the tray and the cold teapot away and poured the cold tea down the sink, he sat down in an armchair with
Chambers
Dictionary.
He realized that he had never found out what the word
Demogorgon
meant. Here was the definition: “A mysterious infernal deity first mentioned about A.D. 450 (Appar Gr
daimon
deity, and
gorgo
Gorgon, from
gorgos
terrible).” He shuddered, closed the dictionary, and opened the second Channon Scott Smith paperback he had bought. This novel had been published four years before, but Ribbon had never read it, nor indeed any of the works of Mr. Scott Smith before the recently published one, but he
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