Christine Bernard (ed.) - The Fontana Book Of Great Horror Stories (Fontana, Feb. 1966)
Bram Stoker - The Squaw
Robert Aickman - No Stronger Than A Flower
Hugh Walpole - Tarnhelm
Agatha Christie - The Gypsy
Algernon Blackwood - A Case Of Eavesdropping
Nigel Kneale - The Pond
Roald Dahl - William And Mary
L. P. Hartley - The Two Vaynes
Ray Bradbury - The Next In Line
Frank Baker - In The Steam Room
Saki - The Interlopers
Elizabeth Bowen - The Cat Jumps
Ambrose Bierce - The Boarded Window
Joan Aiken - Marmalade Wineincludes:
Bram Stoker - The Squaw: The narrator and wife Amelia are honeymooning in Nuremberg where they befriend loud Nebraskan Hutcheson, a well-meaning but somewhat clumsy adventurer with a neat line in grim reminiscences. When Hutcheson gormlessly kills a kitten, its mother trails him everywhere, finally getting its opportunity for revenge in the Torture Tower where he will insist on climbing inside the Iron Virgin to try it for size.
L. P. Hartley - The Two Vaynes: Vayne populates his garden with statues of gods, goddesses, nymphs, satyrs, dryads, oreads and a huge sculpture of himself dressed in trademark tweeds which he uses to surprise his guests. Snickering behind a hedgerow, he gages the man on his reaction to the startling anomaly - he really is an odious old creep.
Vayne talks Hartley into acting as his accomplice in duping Fairclough, a first time visitor to the estate. Though Hartley is reluctant, he agrees to the ruse as Fairclough is perhaps a little too full of himself, so it’s decided that in the evening, these three shall play a game in the grounds.
Prior to the event, Hartley and Fairclough discuss their host. We learn that three years earlier Vayne had been forced to resign his chairmanship of the company under threat of exposure by Postgate. Vayne didn’t seem unduly bothered, and, to show there were no hard feelings on his part, even invited Postgate and the rest of his former colleagues to a “reconciliation party” . Postgate hasn’t been seen since. It’s clear from their conversation that neither man thinks Vayne is entirely innocent in the matter of Postgate's disappearance and perhaps he has a grudge against everybody connected with the firm. And isn’t it rumoured that he has rigged a bath so that it descends into his workshop?
What follows is one of the most suspenseful games of hide and seek either men are likely to see in their lives …
Nigel Kneale - The Pond: An old man whose hobby is trapping and killing the frogs in his garden pond, which he then stuffs and fits out in elaborate costumes to display on his table. Finally, the frogs have had enough of it. Kneale in ghoulish EC comic mood - you can almost hear the Old Witch cackling her appreciation.
Joan Aiken - Marmalade Wine: Journalist and would-be legendary poet Roger Hacker is walking through a beautiful woodland glade when he meets the reclusive Sir Francis Deeking, a master surgeon recently in the news for reasons Hacker can’t recall. Deeking invites him to sample his home made wine and, feeling inferior in the shadow of the great man’s achievements, Hacker boasts that he has his own special gift - he can predict the future. When he correctly guesses the winner of the afternoon’s race meeting at Manchester, Deeking sees pound signs flashing before his eyes. Hacker, who won’t be walking home any time soon, awakens from his drug-induced slumber having finally remembered why his host had made the headlines ….
Algernon Blackwood - A Case Of Eavesdropping: The hapless Jim Shorthouse is an Englishman on hard times in an unspecified US city. He takes a job on the local newspaper to finance his dingy room in a multi-occupied house. The fearsome landlady says the only other tenant on his floor is an elderly German, but the walls are paper thin and Jim soon hears the man in heated conversation with his son, Otto. One night the argument gets out of hand and a trail of blood streams under the partition and across the floor of Shorthouse’s hovel. He barges down the door and enters upon … an empty room. The landlady explains that several previous tenants have experienced the same adventure - it even killed the last one. The haunting is a reenactment of a murder committed twenty years ago when Steinhardt, a senior partner in a collapsing Wall Street company, murdered his son to cover up a theft.
Frank Baker - In The Steam Room: The masseur murders an old foe in the steam rooms of the Turkish baths, then turns his attentions to the narrator who has witnessed the event.
Ambrose Bierce - The Boarded Window: Happily married couples are a rarity on planet Bierce and maybe its just as well on the evidence of this black-hearted four pager. Murlock’s wife falls ill with fever and within days, to all appearances, she’s dead though it would have been better for both of them if there had been a doctor on hand to make sure. Her husband builds her a coffin and leaves her lying in state in their log cabin until the following morning when he’ll bury her. Perhaps he’ll be able to cry then because he feels guilty that he’s not been able to do so just yet. During the night he’s awoken by something pushing heavily against him in the dark ….
Roald Dahl - William And Mary: William Pearl is dying of cancer when colleague Dr. Lanby approaches him with a macabre proposition. On his death, Lanby will swiftly remove his brain and one eye which, he believes, he can keep alive for at least a hundred years by means of an artificial heart and sundry tubes. William will even be able to communicate his thoughts via a variation on the seismograph. Initially horrified, William agrees and the soggy mass is soon sitting snug in a tray off blood.
Mary, having been suffocated all these years in a joyless marriage, finds the stripped down version of her husband far more attractive, especially as he no longer has the power to prevent her from doing all the things he forbade when he still had a body …
Elizabeth Bowen - The Cat Jumps: The Harold Wrights purchase Rose Hill, a lavish Thames Valley mansion, which has stood vacant for several years due to the dreadful Bentley murder: a husband hacked up his wife in virtually every room of the house. At the Wright’s weekend house-warming party, the guests include the imaginative young Muriel whose morbid obsession with the case soon disturb the others, especially when she begins voicing her suspicions about one of their number, Edward Cartaret ….
Saki - The Interlopers: Carpathian Mountains. Ulrich von Gradwitz and Georg Znaeym are sworn enemies, continuing a family feud over ownership of the forest that has lasted generations. One stormy night they face each other in the wood, but before either can strike a fatal blow a huge tree falls pinioning both men to the ground. As they await rescue they make their peace and each man prays that his own people reach them first that he can insist they free the other before him. At last they can discern figures in the mist loping toward them ….
Agatha Christie - The Gypsy: From his infancy Dickie Carpenter has had a morbid fear of Gypsy women on account of their premonitions always coming true where he’s concerned. And then he’s warned by one of their number - a nurse - against having an operation on his gammy leg. He goes against her advice and - R.I.P. Dickie.
Hugh Walpole - Tarnhelm: Faildyke Hall on the outskirts of Gosforth village, Cumberland. The narrator reflects on his days at boarding school when, during the holidays he was shunted from one relative to another until the winter of 1890 when aged eleven he was packed off to stay with his elderly uncles Robert and Constance. Uncle Robert is approaching seventy, a touchy-feely yellow-toothed horror who the boy fears on sight. Constance is five years younger, something of a dandy and likeable but for his continuous cowering to Robert who he is at pains not to accept. The boy is befriended by Robert’s barrel-chested valet Bob Armstrong who takes it upon himself to protect him and warns him never to go up into the tower where the old boy spends most of his time. Of course, when Uncle Robert invites him to his quarters, he ignores Bob’s warning. The old man shows him his tarnhelm, a skull-cap by which the wearer can transform himself into their wild animal of choice - his being a vile yellow dog. Although it’s not quite clear exactly what intentions the fiend has toward the boy (you can imagine it as creepily as you want) they’re obviously disturbing enough for Constance to finally conquer his cowardice.
Robert Aickman - No Stronger Than A Flower: As Curtis and Nesta prepare for their marriage, he begins pressurising her to do something about her appearance, not for him you understand but for Nesta who has a habit of drifting into the background at social engagements. Shortly after they wed, she answers an advertisement in
Flame magazine and arranges an appointment with Mrs. de Milo. What transpires at their meeting we're never told but from that day forth Nesta is a changed woman. First its her hair, then she becomes preoccupied with her fingernails (prompting a rage of disgust from her husband when she paints them: "It makes me sick ... it's hideous. Besides, it's vulgar"), then she takes to dressing ostentatiously, wearing veiled hats at all times until all he can see of her is her lips. Funny how he never realised how sensual they were before. When he attempts to kiss her (they've always kept separate rooms) she rakes his face with the nails she's been so religiously filing not out of vanity but
to keep them down. She unveils and walks out on him forever.
OK, Vault members who've been to university or college or something; what was all
that about? Is Nesta a ghost? A manifestation of Curtis's unfulfilled sexual desire? Death?
weirdmongerI'll read that one next in my current systematic re-read of RA ... and let you know what I think. But I tend to soak in Aickman as in a bath without really understanding the bath, but the bath is enjoyable nevertheless as normally I have a shower.
des
paisleycravat'No Stronger Than a Flower' is my favourite story that I've ever read in an anthology. Of course I don't understand what's going on it - you're not SUPPOSED to understand. But the atmosphere of the whole thing is just so chilling, it completely creeped me out and I became obsessed with it.
Austin John ChambersThe nice thing about Aickman is that the more answers we think we find, the more questions they in turn give rise to. These came to me:
The result of Nesta's change of hairstyle reminds me of a series of photographs that appeared in the Daily Mirror, long ago. The photos were all of the same woman, all showing her with different hairstyles. The photos had the subtitle “Only a man would think these were photos of different women.”
When Nesta appears with a change of hairstyle, Curtis doesn’t recognise her.
As she continues to make small changes, he becomes angry, presumably because he realises that he’s no longer controlling the changes. He is disgusted and alarmed by her nails.
The story is prefaced by a line of Shakespeare, which also supplies the title. Is Nesta becoming like a flower, with nails growing like thorns?
Her wearing of a veil is interesting. In the Tarot, the veil is worn by the Priestess which represents the ‘horned goddess’ and the moon. She is the source of all feminine power. The veil is also that which guards the secrets of the temple.
Beauty could be said to be a woman's power.
At one point she says: “You know I had no idea... how deep it goes. Most people know nothing. Nothing. It goes to the very bottom of life.”
At the end, she begins to unwind her veil. But Curtis is unable to look at her. She gives him a photograph of herself, but he tears it up.
Is there a suggestion that she needs the photograph to remind herself what she looks like? Or looked like?
weirdmongerI have now re-read 'No Stronger Than A Flower' (I can't remember reading it before but I must have done!) - and I haven't read any other posts above, before getting this off my chest...
Nesta reminds me of Pete Burns in Celebrity Big Brother...
A visit to an imputed 'back-street abortionist' to be 'reborn' as a nothing or a ghost gradually - coupled with an SF morality tale about the coming Plastic Surgery generation that was presumably in Aickman's real future when he wrote the story.
I think it interesting that Pete Burns' famous group in the eighties was 'Dead or Alive'.
