The Owl Service Quotes

″‘How is the bellyache, then?’ Gwyn stuck his head round the door. Alison sat in the iron bed with brass knobs. Porcelain columns showed the Infant Bacchus and there was a lump of slate under one leg because the floor dipped.”

“Bring one down, and we’ll wash it.′ Alison say Gwyn lift a plate from the top of the nearest pile, and then he lurched, and nearly put his foot through the ceiling between the joists.”

“In the darkest corner of the loft a plank lay over the jots, and on it was a whole dinner service: squat towers of plates, a mound of dishes, and all covered with grime, straw, droppings and blackened pieces of birds’ nests.”

“Roger splashed through the shallows to the bank. A slab of rock stood out of the ground close by him, and he sprawled backward into the foam of meadowsweet that grew thickly round its base.”

“It all begins with the scratching in the ceiling. From the moment Alison discovers the dinner service in the attic, with its curious pattern of floral owls, a chain of events is set in progress that is to effect everybody’s lives.”

Relentlessly, Alison, her step-brother Roger and Welsh boy Gwyn are drawn into the replay of a tragic Welsh legend – a modern drama played out against a background of ancient jealousies.

“He leant against the rock. The mountain hung over him, ready to fill the valley. ‘Brrr-’ He rubbed his arms and legs with his fists. The skin was rough with gooseflesh. He looked up and down the river, at the water sliding like oil under the trees and breaking on the stones.”

“Well, when I picked up the top plate, I came over all queer. A sort of tingling in my hands, and everything went muzzy -you know how at the pictures goes out of focus on the screen and then comes back? It was like that: only when I could see straight again, it was different somehow. Something had changed.”

Alison, her stepbrother Roger, her mother and stepfather are holidaying in a gorgeous, isolated valley in Wales, a few hours away from Aberystwyth, staying in an old house Alison inherited from her late father.

“Alison and Roger were playing with three flimsy cut out paper models of birds. One was on the candlestick and the other two were side by side on a chair back. The play Gwyn had brought from the loft was next to Alison’s pillow and covered with scraps of paper.”