R. Chetwynd-Hayes - Tales Of Fear And Fantasy

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R. Chetwynd-Hayes – Tales Of Fear & Fantasy (Fontana, 1977)

Manderville
The Day Of The Underdog
The Headless Footman Of Hadleigh
The Cost Of Dying
The Resurrectionist
The Sale Of The Century
The Changeling

Blurb:
THE DARK BLANKET OF FEAR ...
A village of flesh-eating ghouls ... The youth who fell in love with a corpse ... A bleeding ghost in search of its head ... The salesman who dealt in souls...

From the black night of the soul, tales of blood and gnawing horror by a master storyteller.

This was the last of the RCH paperbacks before he switched over to William Kimber.

I don't only not have this collection, I don't think I've ever read anything from it either, so thanks to John L. Probert for providing the following synopsis:

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One of the first RCH books I ever read. I am not the proud owner of a mint condition copy of this. It's a while since I read it but the highlights are:

Manderville: Paul Wheatley goes into the woods to kill himself and instead slips through one of RCH's 'portals in reality' & ends up in Manderville, where villagers say 'B-Men' and whacking your neighbour over the head is considered doing him a good turn. Village life consists mainly of worshipping the blood-drinking 'Galloper' and avoiding those nasty ghouls from Loughville down the road (see The Monster Club). the story has a cracking last couple of lines, as well as the memorable:

"The needle went into Paul's arm like a blunt knife being forced through teak"

Day of the Underdog: Oppressed office worker helps witch and ends up with her spellbook that allows him to take revenge on wife & employer. Jaunty fun with a downbeat ending

Headless Footman: A Francis St Clare detective story and a goodie. Something nasty is living in the cellar of Hadleigh that needs a big axe and a shopping bag to despatch it.

The Resurrectionist: Reprinted in Kimber's 'Tales from the Shadows' as 'The Painted Door' - at fine tale of unrequited love with a nightmarish ending.

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Manderville: Intent on ending his wretched lot, Peter Wheatley wanders into the lonely woods and downs a bottle of pills. Just his luck that the drugs don't work, and he's revived by the residents of a strange community, who nurse him back to health, ply him with delicious foods and wines, and generally treat him like royalty. Still the failed suicide is uneasy. The Manderville folk are devout Satan-worshipers who automatically assume he's of the same persuasion. When Peter says thanks very much but he really must be on his way, his amiable hosts, Martha and Jem, reveal their hand. They are fattening him for sacrifice to the Great Galloper .....

The references to the infamous village-next-door are fun, but still the story didn't quite do it for me. Should also warn the innocent that this story contains several instances of the author's godawful "comic" verse. It's an OK story, but I so much prefer RCH in downer mode. Thank goodness this next ticks all the right boxes!

The Resurrectionist: "Degenerates," Mr. Howlett stated. "Black magic, devil worshipers and such like. Though what they want from a skeleton is beyond me."

Young Brian Howlett falls in love with a woman in a photograph. Sadly for him, Pauline Allen died aged twenty in 1923, though he refuses to believe it, and when the local churchyard is demolished to enable a new motorway, Brian liberates his beloved's coffin and hides it in the attic. Pauline's corpse has somehow survived the ravages of decay and she's more even beautiful than her snapshot implied. Better still, she's alive!

News of the grave-robbery reaches her surviving brother, a crotchety religious zealot who despised his late sister as "the Whore of Babylon, " though Salome mark II is demonstrably nearer the mark. Brian, putty in her lovely cold hands, makes fatal mistake of swearing to do anything for her. Pauline is a very demanding corpse.

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Day Of The Underdog: Arthur Collins, another of RCH's middle-aged, downtrodden office clerks, plays Good Samaritan to Tabitha Holbrook, dying witch, who wills him a copy of Ye Grate Treasure Book Of Spelles and sundry magical potions and knick-knacks in return. Arthur at last has opportunity to get even with his three chief tormentors. Shrewish wife, Ethel (who still thinks of herself as a big catch: "I should have married Harry Potter"), and the odious Rowe in Sales are easily dealt with, but Arthur fatally underestimates the resilience of the Managing Director, Carrington-Jones. A camp demon ("we meet again, Ducky"), yet more crap 'ancient' doggerel, glum twist, etc. Richard Dalby thought highly enough of the story to revive it for his Tales Of Witchcraft.

The Cost Of Dying: "That's where you're wrong, Cocky. damn yer liver and lights, stuck up, go-to-church-on-Sunday, bath-every-day, and clean-underclothes-every-Friday, and kiss-me-arse-bowler-'at-wearer - that's where you're bloody wrong. 'Ere, I'll show yer."

A variation on his earlier, much reprinted The Gatecrasher, with an unnamed strangler filling in for Jack the Ripper. Hugh Carrington, forty-eight, frightfully middle class, first becomes aware of the ghost with a hideous face in a railway compartment, and from that day onward, he can't shake him off. The spectre is that of an executed serial murderer, itching to get back to work after a fifty year hiatus. To do so, he requires a flesh and blood accomplice to perform the dark deed. The financial rewards are attractive.

Wife-watch. The polar opposite of Mrs. Ethel Collins, Hugh's other half, Elizabeth -"she was a regular reader of the News Of The World and therefore was not entirely devoid of education." - is devoted, doting and uncomplaining about his selfish ways, but all wives are a horror to RCH ...

Business as usual. It's not unlikely that I've moaned about every Chetwynd-Hayes story I ever read, but on some unfathomable level I still enjoy his work enough to regard him among my all time personal favourites.

[Johnlprobert]

I remember this book with great fondness, especially the Headless Footman story with that weird root thing bobbing around and speaking through a child's severed head (I think). He's one of my all-time faves too, even though I'd be hard-pressed nowadays to recommend any of his collections in their entirety to the uninitiated. He seems to have dated much worse than Robert Bloch. If RCH was ever truly in fashion.

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Jun 29, 2015 19:06:07 GMT Johnlprobert said:

I remember this book with great fondness, especially the Headless Footman story with that weird root thing bobbing around and speaking through a child's severed head (I think).

Can't recall if it's a child's head (and I only just read it!), but otherwise spot on.

The Headless Footman Of Hadleigh: Having endured The Psychic Detective through to the bitter end, could never see me facing another Francis St Clare & Fredrica Masters adventure again. This one, while nowhere near as rank, brought back painful reminders of the novel and, in all truth, I was glad when it was over. Lord Camtree's Essex mansion is haunted by a fearsome apparition, a situation made worse by his dopey offspring, Penny and Giles, who've taken to dabbling in the dark occult. Francis and assistant are hired to cleanse the property of evil which, eventually, they get around to after the usual ten page exchange of pleasantries. The ghouls are OK - along with the decapitated footman there's a ghost-girl and a huge, phallic elemental (Lord P.'s "weird root thing") which is almost certainly looking for something to suck: "Sit on it," St. Clare demands of a reluctant 'Fred' - but ultimately it's all too "zany" for me. Also references earlier adventures 'The Case Of The Limping Pirate', 'The Strangling Dancer Of Brentford,' and 'The Gibbering Ghoul Of Gamershal.'

The Resurrectionist remains by far my favourite of the collection.

Jun 29, 2015 19:06:07 GMT Johnlprobert said:

He's one of my all-time faves too, even though I'd be hard-pressed nowadays to recommend any of his collections in their entirety to the uninitiated. He seems to have dated much worse than Robert Bloch. If RCH was ever truly in fashion.

He seems to be the original acquired taste that even his own fans never quite acquire.

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The Sale Of The Century: Henry George Dixon is a traveller in ladies' underwear until the day he picks up a leaflet from the street suggesting that, should the finder be ambitious and wish to make big money fast, they contact a Mr. Cornelius. Mr. Dixon, desperate to leave his current job at Matthews & Lock, does just that, and proves his mettle by selling vast quantities of bizarre household items - the Bronson Miracle Heater, the Mansfield Decorative Casket, and the Hadley Home Companion (an embalmed corpse fitted with a tape recorder) - to a bizarre assortment of affluent clients, including a Priest, and a hippie couple who reside at 69 Climax Mansions ("Groovy ..... You've got your marbles, dad," etc.). So impressed is the mysterious Mr. Cornelius that he's prepared to entrust Henry with the big one.

Perhaps RCH had taken up watching TV game-shows at the time as Henry's wife, Nora, nags him that "The Generation Game is on the telly at half past nine," and "this is the third time you've missed Opportunity Knocks."

Finally, the shortest, and grimmest, in the book.

The Changeling: Mrs. Tolbrook, a career foster mother to the nuisance babies of unwed mothers, is a were-bear presiding over a coven of fellow shape-shifters. Peter Danfield, seven, whose natural mother is a prostitute, has lived with Mrs Tolbrook and her evil daughter, Agnes, since birth, and knows the horrific consequences of breaking the sacred house rule, never to disclose information to outsiders about what goes on in the creepy cottage. All is well until his mother pays a rare visit and, in his excitement, Peter allows his tongue to run away with him.

[Johnlprobert]

Well this thread has had at least one good outcome - I've revisited the PSYCHIC DETECTIVE thread tonight in need of a chuckle and goodness me it delivers!

I don't really know what to say about RCH any more. I own every book he ever wrote but these days I don't feel tempted to revisit any of them. Maybe when I'm retired / nearly dead and have re-read everything else. Although I usually give THE MONSTER CLUB a read every few years. His 1990s stuff needs a sober, happier now-married-to-Lady-Probert read but every time I summon the energy a new old antho turns up for me to read instead - this week it's Rosemary Timperly's NINTH GHOST BOOK with an opening story by Gilbert THE HOOK Phelps!

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I spotted a copy of this at Brighton Open Market's second hand book stall the other day and, intrigued by references to Chetwynd-Hayes on this very board, decided to take a punt on it despite the price. This is my first brush with his work, but I enjoyed the first story well enough. Further thoughts to follow...

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Jul 11, 2015 22:15:54 GMT Johnlprobert said:

I own every book he ever wrote but these days I don't feel tempted to revisit any of them.

Now this is the ultimate gloating! I wonder whether this "don't really want to read them, but don't want to get rid of them either" sentiment contributes to the extreme rarity of RCH's story collections? This love-him-hate-him thing is really intriguing. Hopefully the forthcoming Best of RCH will supplement the Valancourt volumes and glut we peons' appetite for RCH!