A Work in Progress

Endless Night by Agatha Christie

Endless Night is one of Agatha Christie's later works, written in 1967.  It is my one lone read for the RIP Challenge that I managed to finish (still working away on Wilkie Collins!).  It's not a traditional murder mystery, rather it is one of Christie's few (maybe only?) forays into the gothic genre.  Apparently it was one of Christie's personal favorites and it received a warm reception by critics when it was published.  A nice gothic romance seemed perfect for the challenge as well as a good read for this time of year.  It's a story of psychological suspense filled with elements of the gothic genre but with a more modern twist.  The ending is nicely surprising à la classic Agatha Christie.

The story begins when a young working class man sees a sale bill announcing the auction of a piece of property that has an old house called "The Towers" situated on it.  The house is well past its prime but the tract of land is spacious with good views.  Appealing as it may be it's well outside Michael Rogers' price range.  Michael has big dreams but isn't particularly industrious as he tends to move from job to job.  He works to get by with no real ambition, but his tastes run to the nicer things in life.  Most recently his work has been as a chauffeur, which allows him to travel and meet people who move in more exclusive circles.

It's a chance meeting, however, with an American heiress that's going to change his life and open new doors onto the world he's only dreamed about.  Ellie Guteman has just come into her inheritance and is also drawn to Gipsy's Acre, as the tract of land is known.  The two meet at the public auction and quickly fall for each other, though each seems to be guarding secrets from the other.  For Ellie it's her wealth and for Michael it's his poverty, but the two click and begin a whirlwind romance, which ends in a clandestine marriage and honeymoon in Europe.  Despite Ellie's fortune, she's a bit of an orphan.  The money comes from her deceased father, but the rest of the family aren't blood relatives, rather they are hangers-on and none will be too pleased with her choice of husband.  Michael tends to keep secrets from his mother.  She knows his shortcomings, so he doesn't share his news with her until after the fact and won't allow Ellie to meet her.

While Michael can only watch and dream (at least in his bachelor days), Ellie can spend to her heart's content--including Gipsy's Acre, which she buys unbeknownst to him at the auction.  Not a bad investment according to her lawyers.  The problem with Gipsy's Acre is that it comes with a curse.  The land had over time been occupied by traveling gypsies, who still consider it theirs.  An elderly gypsy makes her home on the land and tries to warn them off, though her warnings go unheeded.  When she reads Ellie's palm she sees only death and tragedy.  Still, "The Towers" is pulled down and a modern home is built on the land by a famous architect Michael met during his days as a chauffeur.  Santonix is ill, but he agrees to take this one last job, which turns out to be his best work.  So Michael ends up with everything he ever wanted--a beautiful wife, a beautiful modern home and enough money to fill it with whatever treasures they wish.  Almost immediately, however, things begin to sour.  Rocks are hurled through windows and ill fortunes turn true.  Instead of happiness, Gipsy's Acre brings only tragedy.

Endless Night is story that moves slowly but builds to a final shocking denouement.  To be honest I was sort of expecting it, though had I not, the surprise would have been very satisfying.  Still, I enjoyed the story and have read it was made into a film, which I would love to see. I wonder how I missed out on reading Agatha Christie when I was younger, but I am happy to keep exploring her work now.  Onwards to the next Miss Marple, I think!

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

Washington Irving's "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" is one of my favorite short stories.  It's only one story of a larger collection found in The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Other Stories or, The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.  According to the introduction, "Washington Irving is believed by many to have created the genre of short story in America, mixing superstition and history, the European tradition of fairy tales and folktales, and local Indian legends.  The often humorous and ironic tone in these stories, which is the familiar form of legend, is woven into a tapestry with the very real corporeal world."   Irving's story is wonderfully descriptive and atmospheric.  The perfect story to read when there is a chill in the air, fallen leaves beneath your feet and Halloween just around the corner.  I'm glad that I saved it for last in my short story reads for Carl's RIP Challenge, as today is just the perfect day--overcast, cool, and leaves swirling about.   I'm only too happy to be snuggled up under a blanket reading about poor Ichabod Crane and his misadventures.

Although I don't recollect ever having read the story when I was young (have since read it as an adult however several years ago), it is one of those fables that seems to be told to every school child at some point in their education.  The story is set in a Dutch settlement in New York state called Sleepy Hollow. Surely everyone has heard of the Headless Horseman who lost his head to a cannonball in the Revolutionary War and haunts Sleepy Hollow?  Priggish school master, Ichabod Crane, teaches the school children in this tiny glen, where ghost stories and tall tales are ubiquitous. 

"Another of his sources of fearful pleasure was, to pass long winter evenings with the old Dutch wives, as they sat spinning by the fire, with a row of apples roasting and spluttering along the hearth, and listen to their marvellous tales of ghosts and goblins, and haunted fields, and haunted brooks, and haunted bridges, and haunted houses, and particularly of the headless horseman, or galloping Hessian of the Hollow, as they sometimes called him."

He falls for the lovely Katrina Van Tassel, a wealthy farmer's daughter.  I wasn't sure which attracted him more--Katrina's beauty, or the bounteous farm she would inherit (his stomach seemed to know no depths).  His rival for her affections, Brom Bones, is "the hero of the country round, which rang with his feats of strength and hardihood".  When Ichabod disappears near the bridge to the Old Dutch Church after a dance at Van Tassel's farm, where the Headless Horseman is known to make his nightly run, it's uncertain just who he met.  The morning after only Ichabod's horse, Gunpowder, is found without its bridle and the remains of a smashed pumpkin on the road at the entrance to the bridge.

I found the descriptions of Ichabod highly amusing.  For those who have read Don Quixote you might see a few things in common between Ichabod and the famous knight.  Here he is contemplating how to woo the fair Katrina. 

"From the moment Ichabod laid his eyes upon these regions of delight, the peace of his mind was at an end, and his only study was how to gain the affections of the peerless daughter of Van Tassel. In this enterprise, however, he had more real difficulties than generally fell to the lot of a knight-errant of yore, who seldom had anything but giants, enchanters, fiery dragons, and such like easily conquered adversaries, to contend with and had to make his way merely through gates of iron and brass, and walls of adamant to the castle keep, where the lady of his heart was confined; all which he achieved as easily as a man would carve his way to the centre of a Christmas pie; and then the lady gave him her hand as a matter of course. Ichabod, on the contrary, had to win his way to the heart of a country coquette, beset with a labyrinth of whims and caprices, which were forever presenting new difficulties and impediments; and he had to encounter a host of fearful adversaries of real flesh and blood, the numerous rustic admirers, who beset every portal to her heart, keeping a watchful and angry eye upon each other, but ready to fly out in the common cause against any new competitor."

This is an absolutely wonderful short story.  It sounds as though it is an imaginative creation based on a few local occurrences, and I read that "it is among the earliest American fiction still read today".  You can read the story online here.   And click on over to Book Snob as Rachel recently visited Sleepy Hollow and has shared photos of the sleepy little town.  You can just imagine the peace being broken on a crisp, dark night as a galloping black horse rockets down the road--head in hand.

Other stories read for the RIP Challenge: Miriam by Truman Capote, Sophy Mason Comes Back by E.M. Delafield, Sloane Square by Pamela Hansford Johnson, Voices in the Coal Bin by Mary Higgins Clark and Computer Séance by Ruth Rendell, Reality or Delusion by Mrs. Henry Wood, and The Lady's Maid's Bell by Edith Wharton, Doctor Hood by Stephen Gallagher, and The Tower by Marghanita Laski.  I also read Agatha Christie's Endless Night but will write about it sometime later this week.  Many thanks to Carl for once again arranging the RIP Challenge.

October 29: Reading Notes

I had planned to post about Agatha Christie's Endless Night today, but as I only finished it last night I'll wait and write about it properly next week.  I will only say: tricky, tricky Agatha.  I read it for Carl's RIP Challenge.  I had hoped to also finish Wilkie Collins's No Name as well, but I ran into a few snags.  Happily I am back on track and trying to read a bit daily but obviously won't manage to finish by Halloween this Sunday.  Still, all in all I think I did pretty well for the challenge--one novel read and a short story every Sunday.  I plan on wrapping things up this weekend with Washington Irving's "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow", a story I read several years ago and have wanted to read again. 

I had hit a lull in No Name, which made it easy to set it aside for something else, but the story is getting juicy once again.  I think I've mentioned it is a story about illegitimacy.  When Magdalen and Norah lose their parents within weeks of each other, their fortune is willed away due to an oversight.  Already a few mysteries have been revealed in the story in Wilkie Collins's inimitable way.  Independent-minded Magdalen is determined to set wrongs right and has left the protection of her older sister and governess.  There's this wonderfully maddening character called Captain Wragge, who I am somewhat confused by.  He is in some way related to the Vanstones, but mostly he is a rogue and swindler.  He is helping Magdalen insomuch as he is helping himself.  If she once again comes into her money, than so does he.  He'll bribe, lie and manipulate to reach his goal and he'll happily betray Magdalen along the way.  But if you've read Wilkie Collins, you'll know his heroines are made of tougher stuff and I have faith in Magdalen that she'll look after herself just fine!

This weekend discussion begins on May Sarton's The Small Room, a book I enjoyed immensely.  The novel has an academic setting and relates the story of a teacher's first year at an all-women's college when she is confronted with a brilliant student who is caught plagiarizing a paper.  You'd think it would be fairly cut and dry, but Sarton gives you much to think about and a variety of perspectives.  I'll also be writing about that (and hope I can do it justice), but my post will be a little tardy as I try to squeeze everything in this weekend.  I have several books to write about and I am very slow when it comes to writing about just one (instead of the nice and breezy way I do in posts like this). 

On the top of  my reading pile right now is Carolyn Hougan's The Romeo Flag, as it is an ILL book that needs to be returned in about a week.  It's longish but easy reading.  I'm venturing into the espionage genre, something I've wanted to do for a long time now.   This is probably as good a place to start as any, though I have a growing pile of books to choose from.  The Romeo Flag was published in the 1980s, but has since been reissued by Felony and Mayhem Press (they are also reissuing Margery Allingham's Albert Campion mysteries that I am slowly collecting and reading).  It feels very much a product of its time--the protagonist goes to aerobics classes and has a daughter suffering from anorexia and bulimia.  The politics of the day is all Carter and Reagan, Iran and Iraq and arms dealing.  Now I know all these topics are just as pertinent (well, except talk of current political administrations), but it just feels very 80s.  Someone is going to pull on a pair of leg warmers at any moment.  The story moves quickly from one perspective to the next and the cast of characters seems to be growing.  What happens is a trunk belonging to the protagonist's parents was sent from Shanghai to America via Britain and is only arriving some forty years later.  Inside the trunk are diaries from the war period, a priceless Fabergé egg and family photographs.  Nicola ward is going to get caught up in the CIA's investigation of Russian spies--there are moles and double agents and dead bodies popping up and at the heart of things are the contents of her trunk which may just prove deadly.  All great fun and adventure.

I've been wanting to read some diaries and this week decided I would start reading Anaïs Nin's diaries from start to finish, which is from roughly 1914-1977!  I had thought I should read Virginia Woolf (and I will at some point), who is a well known diarist, but she is such a formidable woman, somehow Anaïs Nin just seems more approachable to me at the moment.  My library has most of the set, which runs into about eleven volumes between the early diaries and her more adult diaries.  I know that she edited and rewrote her diaries and portrayed a particular persona to the world, and that's okay, I still want to read them.  Her early diaries, from what I've read, were printed more or less as is, with no tinkering to them.  She's only about twelve when they start.  The thing is I always want to read before I go to bed, but almost always I am too tired to read a full chapter of a book.  Diaries are the perfect format.  A few short entries before bed--perfect reading.  This will be a long term sort of read, so we'll see how I get on with them.  I've always been fascinated by her, and now I'll get to learn more.

One last note.  Last weekend I watched a movie that scared me silly.  This week I have on the agenda a Doris Day movie!  You can't get much more frothy than that.  Her movies are pure comfort, and I need something a little less visual (well, in a spooky way) and more fun and light!

Have a great Halloween weekend everyone.

The Tower by Marghanita Laski

Before I talk about the short story I read this weekend (actually another reread), I have to share with you a movie that I watched last night.  It fits in well with the RIP Challenge and an earlier discussion about scary stories (hard to achieve) vs. scary movies.   I've yet to come across any stories that have been really frightening, though I think I am contented with atmosphere and a good twist at the end.  Now movies are another thing entirely, and The Broken directed by Sean Ellis, literally scared the socks off me.  I am probably every horror film director's dream as I have a vivid imagination and any movie that provides just enough story and leaves it up to the viewer to fill in the rest, well I'm happy to provide the rest.  I came across this movie purely by chance.  If you're familiar with Netflix, when you add a movie to your queue a box pops up that gives more movie suggestions, and this was one of those suggestions.  I was messing about with my queue and this ended up at the top, but I had no real idea what it was about--other than a story of suspense.     

I won't give away the ending of the movie, but in order to talk about it, I will have to give away a little of the plot, so you might want to skip this paragraph and go to the next if you think you might watch it.  The Broken is a movie that doesn't give a concrete explanation of the events that occur and the ending is pretty ambivalent.  (Possible Spoilers).  This is a story of doppelgangers, which I find really fascinating, but I wouldn't want to meet a doppelganger like the ones in this movie.  On a busy London street a woman spots someone driving a car who is her absolute twin.  She follows this woman back to the woman's apartment and discovers a photo there of her and her father, but she has no recollection of it ever being taken and doesn't understand why it is in the woman's apartment.  Later when she is driving home she has a head on collision with another car and loses her memory.  She becomes confused and disoriented believing that the people around her aren't their real selves.  They look the same but don't act the same.  I should mention a scene at the beginning where Gina, the woman who spots her twin, is celebrating her father's retirement.  During the party a large mirror falls from the wall and shatters, and the guests joke about seven years bad luck.  The sort of luck they're going to have is worse than bad.  Shattered mirrors are a motif in this story and they are a precursor of bad things to come.  (End of spoilers).

The London in this movie is not one that I am familiar with in my normal movie watching.  It's dark and dank, almost monochromatic, and devoid of crowds.  Every office and room, even hospitals seem to be only partially lit.  From the first scene, and certainly when you see Gina watching her twin drive by you feel nothing but menace.  Nearly the whole movie is shadowy and Gina is alone in this surreal place trying to understand the world around her.  Maybe what a ghost story needs is a scary soundtrack.  Music helps set the tone and mood, escalating when the action does.  For as frightening as I found this, there was not an excessive use of violence and only a very few very disturbing scenes to give away just what was happening when a mirror breaks.  I'm not even sure how much of the movie I actually saw as I had to turn my face away as the atmosphere would get so intense and creepy I couldn't bear to see what was happening.  I should have watched this in the middle of the afternoon rather than late at night when everyone else was in bed and asleep.  It was very nightmarish and I had to watch some documentary on Gothic cathedrals on PBS after in order to clear my mind of the images.  I don't watch many movies of this sort, so I can't say just how good it was, but if the goal was to give a good scare, well, they succeeded in freaking me out.  You can see the trailer here, but be prepared to be spooked.

As for stories, I decided to read one that I recall sent shivers down my spine the first time around.  A few years ago I read Marghanita Laski's The Victorian Chaise Longue.  It was creepy verging on the macabre in a "what if" sort of way, much like her ghost story, " The Tower".  This is another story set in Italy--this time in Florence.  The story begins:

"The road begins to rise in a series of gentle curves, passing through pleasing groves of olives and vines.  5 km. on the left is the fork for Florence.  To the right may be seen the Tower of Sacrifice (470 steps) built in 1535 by Niccolo di Ferramano; superstitious fear left the tower intact when, in 1549, the surrounding village was completely destroyed."

This is the description in Caroline's guide book.  She's recently moved to Italy to be with her husband, Neville, who works for the British Council.  Caroline had hoped to appease her husband by dutifully making the museum rounds so later she could concentrate on the shops, but he has a particular fascination with Italian art.  His position gives him entree into private art collections in Florence.  It is in one of these that Caroline sees a portrait of a lovely young woman who died very young, Giovanna di Ferramano.  Next to this portrait is an unnamed work of a sinister looking young man--it's assumed he is Giovanna's husband, Niccolo, about whom it's been whispered about whom it's been whispered that he dabbled in the dark arts.

While Caroline's husband is off to his meetings, Caroline visits places in her guide book.  It's her intention to not be an ordinary tourist.  She hopes to discover a unique Italian landmark that her husband has not yet found.  Di Ferramano's Tower seems just the ticket.  The Tower is barren, however.  She decides to undertake the long climb up all 470 steps to the top, but it is a harrowing experience.  I'm not going to share the twist but will only say the journey down those 470 steps seems endless to Caroline.  I really liked this story and recommend it.  While it is not overtly frightening, what is chilling is what you fill in with your mind.  There are just enough details given to give you a visual image, and it is creepier the more you think about it.

Doctor Hood by Stephen Gallagher

And now for something a little different.  A ghost story that's scary?  That's the claim that Ellen Datlow makes in her introduction to The Dark: New Ghost Stories, which was published in 2003.  Most of the authors in the collection are unknown to me, with the exception of a few like Joyce Carol Oates and Kelly Link (an author I've only heard of but not yet read).  Ghost stories, she writes, have been popular since Homer's time and have never been restricted to those writing solely about the supernatural.  Authors from a variety of literary traditions have tried their hand at writing them and it was only in the 1980s that ghost stories more or less fell out of fashion.  Writers began dealing in tales of horror and more realistic tales of terror with serial killers and dysfunctional families frightening contemporary readers.  Some writers still choose to write stories dealing in the supernatural despite the popularity of the horror genre, so with this anthology Datlow wanted to share scary stories, nothing heartwarming here.

I already know what Joyce Carol Oates is capable of, and she is a superlative author when it comes to writing stories that cause unease and have the ability to unnerve a reader (at least that's been my experience with her), so I wanted to try someone new.  Stephen Gallagher is a British writer who has lived in the US and has had a number of stories published in various magazines and anthologies as well as a number of novels, screenplays and teleplays.  Reading first sentences, his caught  my eye and I decided I needed to continue reading "Doctor Hood".

"At the top of the narrow garden, Miranda climbed the steps to the front door of her childhood home and rang the bell.  Then she waited."

"No lights were showing in any of the windows.  The lane in which the big house stood was a pocket of old-fashioned stillness in the city, tucked-away behind the cathedral and especially quiet at this hour of the night.  You turned through a gated opening half-hidden from the main road and seemed to enter an older, gentler, and more tranquil world.  The lane was narrow and tree-lined.  It wasn't maintained by the city but by the residents, who mostly left it alone."

The title gives nothing away, but I was already curious about Miranda.  Returning to a childhood home makes you wonder what, if anything, happened there and did she leave for reasons other than the natural ones of growing up and moving on?  And what will she find when she goes back?

Doctor Hood, it turns out, is Miranda's father, a well known and respected physicist who studies dark matter.  Unfortunately she wonders if he's lost his mind as when she returns home the house is filled with complicated looking equipment in all the rooms, and her father is looking worse for wear--wild hair, crumpled clothes and red rimmed eyes betraying a lack of sleep.  It seems he believes that his deceased wife has been returning home from the great beyond.  There's not so much a ghostly presence as a feeling that he has from time to time, but he's obsessed with finding proof.  He spends time with spiritualists who may or may not be the real thing and talking with others who are experiencing unusual supernatural activity, and uses machines to try and track unusual happenings.  MIranda is, unsurprisingly, doubtful, and is more concerned with her father's academic reputation and the students he's meant to be supervising.  Things take an unusual turn when Doctor Hood and his students finally encounter a strange and unexplainable phenomenon.

So?  Scary?  Well, I still think it is really hard to write a convincing and frightening ghost story.  Gallagher writes well and tells a good story with a nice twist at the end, but as for any chills and feelings of dread, the story never quite achieved that level for me.  I think part of my problem was having in mind the movie Poltergeist, and while there are no poltergeists in this story, I kept seeing furniture swirling around in a bedroom and Carol Anne being sucked through red ectoplasm when her mother retrieves her from the 'other side'.  All pretty campy really.  Still, I don't mind not being scared as long as the story provides something unexpected and atmospheric, and some writers really can shock or creep you out.  Daphne du Maurier comes to mind off hand.  Not an unpleasant way to spend an hour or so reading, but unfortunately it didn't quite live up to expectations.  Still there might be a surprise or two in the collection, so I will have to see what else is on offer and try and keep expectations low. 

Only two more weeks of scary stories (I've done well on short story reading for Carl's RIP Challenge, but not so well with my novel reading).  I'm up for something really good next week.  Any suggestions?  Or maybe it's time to revisit some tried and true past (scary) reading experiences.

More stories read for the RIP Challenge: Miriam by Truman Capote, Sophy Mason Comes Back by E.M. Delafield, Sloane Square by Pamela Hansford Johnson, Voices in the Coal Bin by Mary Higgins Clark and Computer Séance by Ruth Rendell, Reality or Delusion by Mrs. Henry Wood, and The Lady's Maid's Bell by Edith Wharton.

The Lady's Maid's Bell - Again!

I know I should probably move on to a different ghost story by Edith Wharton (as she wrote enough of them to be collected in one book), and perhaps I will before the weekend's finished, but I had to see if a second read of "The Lady's Maid's Bell" was equally perplexing the second time around as the first!  It has been widely anthologized I believe, but I have a copy of The Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton out from the library at the moment, so I'll see if the preface sheds any light on things as well.

First let me set the scene.  The story takes place in the dull month of October and is told in first person by a lady's maid called Hartley who is recovering from typhoid fever.  She manages to find a new situation through a friend of her old employer.  The friend, Mrs. Railton, has a niece who lives in the country as she is in frail health having lost her two children and being much alone.  Her husband is often away on business, and when he is there, Hartley is instructed to simply stay out of his way.   The niece is nervous and vaporish and no doubt influenced by the quiet and living in a big, gloomy house.

Mrs. Brympton's former maid died several months earlier after having served her mistress for over twenty years, though we never discover the circumstances surrounding her death.  Hartley barely steps foot in the house before she sees "a thin woman with a white face, and a dark gown and apron" who gives her the once over, but no one else seems to notice the woman.  Across from Hartley's room is an empty room that is meant to be kept locked at all times, but sits open as Hartley makes her way to her new quarters for the first time.  The room was Emma Saxon's, Mrs. Brympton's former maid.

A number of things strike Hartley as peculiar when she begins to see how the household works despite getting on well with the other servants and finding her mistress to be a pleasant woman.  Mrs. Brympton never uses a bell to call Hartley, rather she calls the housemaid who then sends her to her mistress.  There is no nursemaid, which Hartley finds odd.  She thought the pale woman in the passage was the nurse.  And no one will tell her where the lady's maid's room is.  Hartley happens to be occupying the sewing room and not the actual bedroom.  And stranger, everyone is mum about why the household is managed in such an unorthodox way.

Mr. Brympton seems very bully-ish.  He prefers city life with its excitement to the solitude of the country.  Hartley describes him as "a big fair bull-necked man, with a red face and little bad-tempered blue eyes: the kind of man a young simpleton might have thought handsome, and would have been like to pay dear for thinking it". 

"After Mrs. Brympton left the table he would sit half the night over the old Brympton port and medeira, and once, as I was leaving my mistress' room rather later than usual, I met him on the stairs in such a state that I turned sick to think of what some ladies have to endure and hold their tongues about."

It's obvious those below-stairs don't like him and when he comes to stay the tone and atmosphere becomes highly charged with fear and unease.  It's a little curious how the couple ever ended up together, but perhaps their marriage was arranged and not to Mrs. Brympton's benefit.  She seems much better suited for a man of intellectual sensibilities, much like their neighbor Mr. Ranford who's a friend of both Mrs. and Mr. Brympton.

As if there weren't enough oddities about the Brympton household, things become frightening for Hartley.  The lady's maid's bell begins ringing deep into the night and Hartley hears bumps and the door opening and closing in the room across the way.  When she goes to her mistress, Mr. Brympton asks, "How many of you are there, in God's name?" and she's told she's not needed.  Mrs. Brympton lies weak and seems to be in a trance like state and tells her she's been dreaming.  I think Emma Saxon is trying to tell Hartley something.

I won't give the ending away, but like my first reading of the story I do think the ending is somewhat opaque.  Wharton leaves it up to the reader to decide and sort things out.  This time around (and Possible Spoilers here) I think I have an idea of what's going on, though it is my own interpretation of the story so might be well off the mark.  I think the ghost Emma Saxon is real and that she is indeed trying to warn Hartley that something terrible is going to happen to her mistress.  The connection between them was strong when Emma was alive, and now it continues even in death.  Perhaps Mrs. Brympton is being unfaithful with her neighbor Mr. Ranford, a man much more sympathetic than her husband and probably someone easier to love and find comfort in considering Mrs. Brympton's situation.  Emma tries to warn them that her husband is aware that something is going on and is trying to catch them out.  Now why everyone was acting so strange when Hartley first arrived and why the lady's maid's bell is no longer used (had it been ringing before? had the other servants seen Emma's ghost, but been too afraid understand why she was there?) is something I've not yet figured out.  But knowing Edith Wharton I bet the story has something to do with relationships and infidelity! (End of Spoilers).

Rachel read this story earlier this year and had the same initial reaction I did, but I see from the comments on the post, that  perhaps my ideas this time around are not too wrong.  Has anyone else read this?  Any thoughts?  As ghost stories go, it isn't one that will have you cowering (or too afraid to pop down to your basement to pull the clean laundry out of the dryer), but Wharton's work is always good, so it's one I highly recommend whether you're a fan of ghost stories or not! 

Reality or Delusion?

So far all my ghost story choices for RIP V have been by modern 20th century authors.  It feels like they've been more twisty, a little edgier and more spine tingling than the Victorian story I read today.  Mrs. Henry Wood's "Reality or Delusion?" is a much more traditional haunting.  It's the sort of story that is simple and straightforward that someone might share with you on a dark and stormy night--do you believe it or not?   I've not read many Victorian ghost stories, so I'm not sure if this is the norm.  Somehow I think what a Victorian story might lack in real chills it makes up for in atmosphere.

"For almost the whole  of the Victorian period the ghost story is of a piece: traditional in its forms and intentions, but that parallels the more general Victorian fascination with the trappings of death--the dark, extravagant splendour of the funeral, the baroque richness of the cemetery, the guilt-laden luxury of mourning.  And then, at its most basic, the function of most Victorian ghost stories, like all similar fictions, was simply to produce what Michael Sadleir called 'the pleasurable shudder'--'a horror which we know does not--but none the less conceivably might--threaten ourselves'."

The late Michael Cox, who himself wrote two novels set in Victorian England, edited this collection of stories, The Oxford Book of Victorian Ghost Stories.  Cox points out the Victorian craze for spiritualism and mesmerism in the 1840s and the fiction of the period played into its popularity.   The ghost story was something the Victorians excelled at, it was part of their cultural and literary fabric.

"The successful ghost story, like the successful detective story, depends on using conventions creatively.  The ghost story's basic dynamics are settled in the reader's expectations at the outset. We know that we are to be shown a climactic interaction between the living and the dead, and usually expect to be unsettled by the experience.  The skill comes when an author is able to work closely within the limited conventions of the form whilst at the same time reassembling familiar components into something that can still engage and surprise.  To some extent this requires a certain complicity between author and reader, whereby the latter becomes a willing accomplice in the whole design.  But it also calls for fluent invention, well-developed dramatic instincts, and story-telling capability of a high order on the part of the author."

Mrs. Henry Wood is perhaps best known for her successful novel East Lynne, but she also owned and edited the magazine The Argosy from 1865 to 1887.  Cox notes that the reason women took so well to the ghost story was likely due to the fact they needed to provide for their families, and that is certainly the case for Mrs. Wood.  "Reality of Delusion?" is a very conventional ghost story, which is left up to th reader to decide just what young Maria Lease saw.  The story begins:

"This is a ghost story.  Every word of it is true,  And I don't mind confessing that for ages afterwards some of us did not care to pass the spot alone at night.  Some people do not care to pass it yet."

(Spoilers this paragraph).  The story is essentially this--Daniel, a young man and son of the late bailiff, with rather superior ways of a gentleman but no money to back them up becomes involved in a love triangle.  That's perhaps calling it something more than it might have been.  Engaged to Maria, a plain looking girl but with proper manners, Daniel begins stepping out on the sly with a pretty young woman from France called Harriet (really Henriette, but a name too difficult for the villagers to remember).   Maria decides to call him on it, determined to have it out with him, so she follows him one night.  She catches him coming out of the barn of a neighbor, who also happens to be narrator of the story, with a sack of grain in hand.  The door had been unused as it was not only a back door, but also the key to it had long been lost (only to be found in Daniel's pocket).  The scene was not only witnessed by Maria, but also the narrator.  Maria lets loose as only a woman scorned might.  Twice disgraced--Daniel not only was walking out with Harriet and also gave her a gold chain bought with the proceeds of the stolen grain, but he was a thief.   The next day Daniel goes missing, and Maria, now repentant for her promise to turn him in to the authorities, sees him walking in the wooded area near the barn, but he doesn't see her.  It turns out she sees him well after he hung himself in those same woods. (End of spoilers).

So, I suppose this is the sort of story that does well around a fire, deep in the blackness of night.  The reader (or listener) is prepared to be scared and the teller vouches for the authenticity of the story.  "This is a ghost story.  Every word of it is true."  Believe it or not. 

More stories read for the RIP Challenge: Miriam by Truman Capote, Sophy Mason Comes Back by E.M. Delafield, Sloane Square by Pamela Hansford Johnson, Voices in the Coal Bin by Mary Higgins Clark and Computer Séance by Ruth Rendell.

Two Ghost Stories by Contemporary Authors

It's been years since I've read anything by Mary Higgins Clark, so when Caroline read a short story by her that is in the same collection we both happen to be reading from, my curiosity was piqued, and I had to read it, too.  The story is in The Mammoth Book of 20th Century Ghost Stories edited by Peter Haining, which I am finding a handy collection to have on hand.  I am amazed by how many authors who I consider novelists also have written short stories.  Mary Higgins Clark is not one I would have pegged as a short story writer, though I think she is one of the authors who introduced me to the mystery/thriller genre.

I sometimes think I have too vivid of an imagination.  This can be a good thing, but it can also mean I worry needlessly over things that probably will never happen, but that race through my mind at the wrong moment.  For example, I live in an older house that has an unfinished basement with a few nooks and crannies and dark corners and all brick walls.  Normally it doesn't bother me if I need to go to the basement at night, but if I happen to be alone or have been watching too many unsettling movies, I might calmly go down and get what I need, but I might also race back up the stairs to the bright lights of the kitchen.  Now, don't ask what (or who) I think might be hiding beneath the stairs, because I know there is nothing there.  Silly.  I know, but what can I say.

So, when Mary Higgins Clark's story involved a coal bin in a cellar, it automatically made me think of my dank, dark cellar, which I already find creepy.  You'll be happy to know, I have no coal bin!  Technically there is no ghost, except what we carry with us in our imaginations (ahem) in this story, but it does have an unnerving ending.  Mike and Laurie, a young couple from New York, travel to Wisconsin in order to give Laurie some much needed rest.  Laurie is a singer, but she is becoming unhinged from recurring nightmares.  Mike spent summers with his grandmother in the cottage, but when they arrive he finds the house faded and shabby, not happy and warm as he remembers it from his youth.  Rather than finding rest, Laurie's nightmares are as real as ever.  Her psychiatrist believes the nightmares are due to frightening childhood experiences.  Laurie's grandmother had the tendency to tell her old wives' tales, and in Laurie's dreams they seem to be coming true.  When Laurie disappears, one of the first places Mike looks for her is the coal bin.  I won't tell you what he finds there.  Oh, by the way, the story is called "Voices in the Coal Bin."

Ruth Rendell is one of my all-time favorite authors.  She is a master of psychological thrillers and writes under her own name as well as the pseudonym of Babara Vine.  I think I've read nearly every Barbara Vine book  she's written and a number of them under her own name, though I have yet to read any of her Inspector Wexford mysteries.  Her story, "Compter Séance", is collected in The Mammoth Book of Haunted House Stories also edited by Peter Haining (yes, there is a whole series of these books).  To set the tone, her story begins:

"Sophia de Vasco (Sheila Vosper on her birth certificate) was waiting at the bus stop when she saw her brother coming out of a side turning.  Her brother looked a lot younger than he had before he died seven years before, but any doubts she might have had as to his identity were dispelled when he came up to her and asked her for money."

Encounters with dead relatives are not at all unusual for Sophia, but as she's a spiritualist that's not surprising.  What is, is that her computer is an indispensible tool for her trade.  Clad in fake fur and high-heeled boots with two carrier bags and a leather case in hand, she shakes off her feckless brother as she has a séance to perform, and a performance is what it is.  Sophia's a charlatan--her gig is to have a keyboard hidden where she can type the answers to her client's questions.  The joke is going to be on Sophia however, as after her "séance" she encounters her ghostly brother once more, only perhaps he's not so ghostly after all--this is a story with a twist on psychic phenomena.  

As much as I love Ruth Rendell, I think I prefer her story "The Haunting of Shawley Rectory", which I read a few years ago, over this one.  It had an interesting twist, but was a little weak in the execution, whereas her other story I thought quite clever.  Some ghost stories are definitely more effective than others.  Have you read a ghost story that has quite literally scared you?  For me, a successful story is one that gives me a surprise at the end I wasn't expecting.  I like a good twist, but I think it's hard in this day and age to give a really good scare.  But maybe I'm wrong?     

More stories read for the RIP Challenge: Miriam by Truman Capote, Sophy Mason Comes Back by E.M. Delafield, and Sloane Square by Pamela Hansford Johnson.  Next week, I think I'm ready for a good Victorian ghost story.

Sloane Square by Pamela Hansford Johnson

I first came across British novelist Pamela Hansford Johnson when one of her books appeared in the mail as part of my postal reading group.  I read The Honours Board last year, which has an academic setting.  The story revolves around the staff and students at a boy's school in the 1970s.  Unfortunately I didn't write about it (I think I only mentioned a couple of books in passing but now wish I had kept notes for myself), but I recall enjoying it very much.  So now I see she has a short story in one of the collections I am reading from, The Mammoth Book of 20th Century Ghost Stories edited by Peter Haining.

Pamela Hansford Johnson began writing as a result of a challenge and her first novel was published in 1934.  According to the biographical material in the introduction she had quite a good reputation for her novels set in post-WWII London.  She married Sir Charles Percy Snow who was a "formidable novelist and physicist" and was one of the central figures in literary London.  She wrote novels, short stories, biographies, plays and other critical works.  She sounds very formidable in her own right.   Her story, "Sloane Square" was written in 1947.

"It owes its inspiration to post-war London.  The tale makes ingenious use of a modern locale--in this instance, the Underground--and heralded a whole new era of ghost stories.  It describes a visionary experience on the subway system in which dream and reality are blended during a train journey that few of us would wish to undertake..."

"Sloane Square" has a dreamlike quality, but better to say nightmarish.  A man gets on a series of trains.  He's trying to get home as he's tired and ready to drop.

"When he told me this, the distress of it was still with him, though he recognizes now its many absurdities.  I must emphasize that at the time it happened he was on the edge of a breakdown.  He had had four years' fighting in Africa and the Far East, he had spent a solid month struggling to learn German with a view to some job that fell through at the last moment, and he had just ended a long, exhausting and utterly wretched love affair."

He had been attending a dance and was planning on staying with friends in an area of London he wasn't familiar with.  When he left, he went to King's Road to catch a bus to Sloane Square.  At Sloane Square he finds he gets on the wrong train, gets off, changes platforms to board a train back, but every time the doors open, they open onto strange and unreal vistas.  There are three other people on the train--a clergyman beating a drum, an old woman carrying an enormous bunch of immortelles the color of dried blood, and a girl who holds her face in hands from either sadness or drunkenness.  He's a soldier, and there are things weighing on his mind--a failed relationship and a failure to learn to speak German or perhaps do his duty as expected. 

An unknown narrator tells us this story of Philip and his terrifying journey, which he doesn't understand.  When he at last arrives at a station that seems once again real and is ready to embark on his final journey he sees a clergyman sitting in the compartment, turns around and leaves. Perhaps luckily for him he collapses, or it might really have been his last journey.  Later he wonders about that third train--was it part of a dream or a trap.  He could return to the station and ask whether anyone remembers him.  A girl porter was there, and surely she could recall, but he knows he will never bring himself to do that.

This is not your typical ghost story, the chills come from the idea of being thrust into an unknown and strange world that is surely found in the inner workings of the mind that are not so clearly understood.  Honestly, I'm not sure what any of it means, are the people and their actions symbols, or are they just those strange things that swirl about the mind from everyday life events and come to the fore when in sleep we have no control over them?  In any case, I think the story's success comes from the uncertainty and the unnerving feeling of being not in control and the horror of not being able to tell the real from the unreal.

More stories read for the RIP Challenge: Miriam by Truman Capote, Sophy Mason Comes Back by E.M. Delafield.

The Girl with the Silver-White Hair

Part of the pleasure of finding short stories you like, is being able to reread them.  Truman Capote published "Miriam" in Mademoiselle in June 1945.  It was his first published short story.  I believe this story can be found in The Complete Stories of Truman Capote, but I happened across it in First Fiction: An Anthology of the First Published Stories by Famous Writers edited by Kathy Kiernan.  The book is in my library's collection but I made a photocopy of it to read again later.   "Miriam" is a wonderfully creepy story.  What is it about children in stories, particularly those alone and of questionable motives that causes the reader (and Mrs. Miller) such anxiety?  Here's what I wrote when I first read "Miriam":

Mrs. H.T. Miller is a widow.  She leads a carefully ordered life.  A place for everything and everything in its place.  "Her interests were narrow".  And "her activities were seldom spontaneous".  Until she met Miriam, that is.  Strangely, or perhaps not so strangely, Mrs. Miller's name is Miriam, too.  One wintry evening Mrs. Miller decides to take in a movie.  Galoshes on, purse in hand she sets off and gets in line for her ticket when she is approached by an unusual little girl. 

"Her hair was the longest and strangest  Mrs. Miller had ever seen: absolutely silver-white, like an albino's.  It flowed waistlength in smooth, loose lines.  She was thin and fragilely constructed.  There was a simple elegance in the way she stood with her thumbs in the pockets of a tailored plum-velvet coat."

When the girl and Mrs. Miller make eye contact, Mrs. Miller feels strangely elated.  Miriam is too young to buy a movie ticket and allowed in the theater alone, so when she asks Mrs. Miller to do her the favor of buying her ticket, Mrs. Miller agrees.  She gaily responds that it makes her feel like a criminal but hopes she hasn't done anything wrong.  When the movie begins they each go their separate ways, but that's not the last of Miriam Mrs. Miller will see.  Several days later Miriam will show up on Mrs. Miller's doorstep long after bedtime in the wintry cold and wearing a white silk dress, asking to be let in.  Mrs. Miller is aghast that her mother has allowed her out so late at night.  "Your mother must be insane to let a child like you wander around at all hours of the night--and in such ridiculous clothes.  She must be out of her mind." 

For such a young girl, perhaps ten or eleven, Miriam is very precocious.  She has a large vocabulary and shows no fear.  It's the fear she provokes in Mrs. Miller that's so unnerving.  Although Mrs. Miller gets Miriam to leave (three slices of bread and jam later, and minus her favorite brooch), like a bad penny she keeps turning up.  The thing is, Miriam makes Mrs. Miller realize just how alone in the world she really is.  "It came to Mrs. Miller there was no one to whom she might turn: She was alone; a fact that had not been among her thoughts for a long time.  Its sheer emphasis was stunning."  Who's going to believe Mrs. Miller?  And how is she going to make Miriam go away?

I'll leave the denouement to you to discover.  This was a great story, one I recommend.  It's a case of not being quite sure what's real and what's in Mrs. Miller's imagination.  I suppose it could be read either way, and I'm not sure which is more disturbing.