DAVID HOCKNEY

U by Julian Barnes

We were trying to decide the most sinister word in the English language. We started, unsurprisingly, with horror-movie stuff: necromancer, holocaust, rabies, syringe, gout. Soon we realised that this was mere representationalism: bad thing, bad word. So we became adjectival: crepuscular, curdled, inspissated, fetid. Then we tried suggestiveness: ought, ganglion, ukaz. We got skittish: gherkin, someone suggested, and VAT, twinset, virtue; what about sinister itself – isn’t that pretty sinister? We got stuck and went back to bad things again: wen, oven, plague. Finally one of our number said, ‘Unless…’ We all looked at her. ‘Yes?’ ‘No, that’s the answer,’ she replied. ‘Unless…’ It’s the oiled hinge of a sentence, a slick clunk of the points. Remember it from frightening stories in childhood: Unless this isn’t the door we came in by… Imagine it in bankruptcy: Unless I’ve misread the figures. Fear it close to home. Unless, of course, I don’t love you any more. It remains menacing even in clichés: Unless I’m very mistaken. Whereas but is a short-arm jab in the face; unless is a subtle creak from underfoot which tells you that you’re standing on a trap-door. Its often attendant trail of dots (whether written down or not) extends that moment anguishing: Unless… Then the padded thump and your echoing wail as you fall through all you’d believed, known, replied upon. Unless: the most sinister word in the English language.