Robert Westall - Break Of Dark

[dem]

Robert Westall - Break Of Dark (Penguin, 1988; originally Chatto & Windass, 1982)

Alun Hood.

Hitch-Hiker
Blackham's Wimpey
Fred, Alice and Aunty Lou
St. Austin Friars
Sergeant Nice.

inside cover blurb

Is there a barrier that divides the dark unknown from the everyday world around us? And is it broken sometimes – by the dead returning perhaps, or by alien creatures, some seen, some only felt?

Why else should three successive crews flying a World War II bomber be driven to madness, even to death, though the plane returns from each mission without a scratch? What else could account for the chance meeting :between a young student and a hitch-hiker who turns out to be so much stranger than she seems?

Chillling, but frequently humorous too, Robert Westall's five long stories creep up on you and take you splendidly by surprise.

As with John Gordon and Chris Priestly (to name but two) it seems a travesty to pigeon hole Westall's work as 'for children', but that's the way he's marketed. The stories may by short on industrial language (though Blackham's Wimpy has it's moments) and gratuitous bad sex, but his themes are often dark as anything you'll find in, say, a Best New Horror selection, and he's arguably more fun. A case in point:

St. Austin Friars: "Somebody has booked a funeral a month in advance."

Young Father Martin Williams succeeds the late Canon Maitland, 94, as parish priest of St. Catherine's in Muncaster. Try as he might, Martin finds it impossible to lure the local villagers to the church (for reasons known only to themselves, they refer to it as St. Austin Friars). His record congregation is three and even that consisted of his wife Sheila and the two churchwarden, Mr. Phillips and the mysterious Mr. Rubens, a man of reputed dubious financial activities. Martin's parishioners are not slow to lavish money on him in the street, they just refuse to set foot in their place of worship. He has more success with the city crowd - the pimp, prostitute, junkie and alkie contingent, that is - but the no show of his own people eats away at Father Williams . It's then he notices the propensity of folk with peculiar ancient surnames buried in the churchyard. The crypt is predominantly full of Drogo's. And then Martin has a call from Beryl the Undertaker's booking a funeral for Mr. William Henry Drogo, date of death ... a month from today. Is this some kind of warped joke?

Father Williams investigations take him - via the demolished Beryl the Undertakers - to the home of William Drogo and his stunningly beautiful grand-daughter Celicia daughter ("At his next confession he was going to have to confess the sin of lechery. It was not a sin he had had to confess before."). Yes, confirms the old man. He has chosen the day on which he is going to die, but no matter, he'll be up and about again soon enough ...

[The Lurker In The Shadows]

I've just ordered a couple of Robert Westall collections - "The Best of Westall - Demons and Shadows" and "The Best of Westall - Shades of Darkness" - plus an anthology of other folks' Ghost Stories he edited. I recall enjoying his 'adult' collection "Antique Dust", and these seem right up my street as well.

[dem]

Robert Westall - The Call and Other Strange Stories (OUP, 2003: originally Viking, 1989)

Mark Preston

Woman And Home
Uncle Otto At Denswick Park
Warren, Sharon, and Darren
The Badger
The Call
The Red House Clock

Blurb:
The mysterious boy with unusual powers, the strange telephone calls from the past, the terrifying creature come to haunt its tormentor, and the spooky house with its watchful eyes - this collection of eerie stories are brought to you by a master storyteller.
Robert Westall's writing is of the highest quality and has earned him awards such as the Carnegie Medal (twice), the Smarties Prize, and the Guardian Children's Fiction Award.

Oxford Children's Modern Classics bring together the best-loved children's novels of the twentieth century, by some of the most distinguished authors, for a new generation of readers to enjoy.

Curses, could have sworn there was more commentary on Break Of Dark. Blackham's Wimpey was one of my 'best reads of 2011' for crying out loud! Another rematch to schedule. In the meantime, picked up another pair of Westall's at the market Sunday gone. The two novella Christmas Spirit (The Christmas Cat, The Christmas Ghost, both fetchingly illustrated by John Lawrence) is, it seems, one for the under 11's, but The Call & Other Strange Stories has that 'children of all ages' appeal so popular with certain of our regulars.

Woman And Home: October 3rd, 1988. Higginson, recently moved from a country grammar school to a city comprehensive, is mercilessly picked upon by his peers as a 'London pouf' on account of his posh accent. When he finally turns on his chief tormentor, Brewster, the head of the year, and gives him a bloody nose, the official school bully gallantly runs snivelling to the head. Higginson is warned that a repeat of such behaviour will not be tolerated. The campaign of intimidation escalates until, unable to take any more, Higginson plays truant. The area being new to him, he doesn't know where to hide out until he comes upon a much vandalised derelict house with an overgrown garden, which he attempts to tidy by trimming the wisteria and clearing half bricks from the lawn. From the mountain of unopened mail on the doormat, he learns this decrepit property was once home to a Miss Nadine Marriner, and, despite the ruination outside, it's a treasure trove of antique furniture within. His father trades in grandfather clocks and Higginson prices Miss Marriners at somewhere in the region of £1, 000, maybe more! The front door slams shut behind him. It won't budge!

Higginson explores the house for another means of escape. The place is getting on his nerves, it just doesn't feel right at all. Miss Marriner, whoever she was, had a flair for taxidermy. She kept what looks like a terrified scarecrow in the summerhouse, and there's a stuffed dog on the bedroom floor. But far the most unnerving discovery, is the foul smelling tramp 'asleep' under the kitchen table ....

A quibble at Mr. Westall's insistence on breaking away from the suspense to introduce a moral to his story, which, for me at least, seems like an awful cop out, but otherwise an engrossing and supremely atmospheric start to the collection. This next is none too shabby either.

The Call: Since the early nineteen 'sixties, veteran Samaritan Harry Lancaster has insisted on working the Christmas Eve night-shift alone, but, now in his mid-seventies, Harry's health isn't what it was and he's confined to bed on doctor's orders. Newly-weds Meg and Geoff Charlesworth volunteer to cover his slot. It's a quiet night at the office, just the one caller, but Agnes Todd is persistent. She claims that her husband, a lock-keeper on the River Ousam, has arranged for an 'accident' to befall her in the early hours. Geoff suspects a cruel hoax - whatever Mrs. Todd claims to the contrary, the weather is neither foggy or particularly cold for December, and the boat she mentions was long withdrawn from service.. But a worried Meg insists Geoff drive over to Yaxton Bridge investigate while she remain behind to man the switchboard. Unfortunately for Meg, she has sent her husband to the wrong location. Misery loves company and Agnes Todd lures her out to the popular local suicide spot.

[ripper]

Westall's stories often contain themes that are not usually found in children's fiction and he deserves to be more widely appreciated outside of his usual association with stories for young people.

[dem]

Oct 3, 2013 9:16:22 GMT ripper said:

Westall's stories often contain themes that are not usually found in children's fiction and he deserves to be more widely appreciated outside of his usual association with stories for young people.

No arguments with that. Really there are some marvellous novels, anthologies, single author collections in this section.

Uncle Otto At Denswick Park: "I couldn't see her eyes, there was a black mask over them, like one of those masks highwaymen wore, in the stupid old movies. There were black spots on her rounded cheeks. And her golden dress was low-cut almost to the waist, and her heaving boobs were nearly dropping out. And her little teeth showed in a wicked, suggestive grin ...."

As a proactive conversationalist, Cambridge Professor Otto Altdorfer is distraught when the old Georgian Mansion is demolished to make way for the Denswick Park Estate. Uncle Otto swears vengeance on the "assassins," and his rage is such that it creates a time slip. Soon the ghosts of two centuries past are tormenting the neighbourhood with all night revels. Nobody can sleep for Vivaldi and Bach at 100 decibels, to say nothing of the alfresco orgies, and the clothes - "what kind of crazy new punkish fashion was this?" When the party people take to using the new estate as a public latrine, and erecting huge Gothic follies and shocking statues among the flowerbeds, it really is too much, even for Professor Altdorfer, who grudgingly concedes that maybe the 'Age of Reason' wasn't quite that reasonable after all.
Three very different stories to date, and the next is shaping up like a punk rock version of Romeo And Juliet.

[dem]

From Break of Dark, the exceptional opener.

Hitch-Hiker: Abandoned by his mates and desperate for a lift across the border, a penniless Geordie student inadvertently teams up with a strikingly beautiful mystery girl. The hitch-hiker meets 'Joan Smith' - at least, that's the name she goes by - when she near treads on him while roaming naked on a caravan site. She claims her clothes have been stolen. In exchange for the filthy laundry from his rucksack, Joan promises to make him a millionaire - and does. She has an uncanny knack for locating dropped coins coupled with an infallible gift for backing the right horse at the betting shop (soon every bookie in Glasgow is wary of her). There's more to it than "luck." Set upon by three would-be mugger-rapists, she kills each in turn with the faintest of touches. The couple head South.

Three months into their uneasy alliance, Joan informs the student she is pregnant with his child. The Geordie is terrified, knowing that, whatever she gives birth to, it won't be human ...