Tina Rath - Talking to Strangers and Other Warnings

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Tina Rath - Talking to Strangers and Other Warnings (Alchemy Press, 2020)

Peter Coleburn

Gail-Nina Anderson - Introduction

Talking to Strangers in Finsbury Park
This is How It Happened...
Blastins Manor
Barefoot Withouten Shoon
Ilona
Beautiful Boy
The Man Who Loved His Luscious Ladies
Christmas With the Family
Scruffy the Vampire Slayer
Sitting Tenant
The Chest
A Straightforward Procedure
Night Out
Diversion
A Trick of the Dark
Casualties of the System
"It's White and It Follows Me"
Tea Dance
Extended Family
The Fetch
The Bus
The Co-Walker
End of Season
Fifth Sense
The Banks of Roses
The Godmother
The Lady Who Rode the Central Line
Chosen Girl
Mr Manpferdit

Story Notes by Tina Rath
Acknowledgements
From The Alchemy Press

Blurb:
Tina Rath’s twenty-plus tales exhibit an innate sense of structure that allows for a satisfying conclusion – and often a sting in the tail. These are unashamedly entertaining stories, dark fantasy with a touch of humour, that display a deftness of touch inviting us to enjoy the words on the page. They don’t outstay their welcome or labour their points because they don’t need to – Tina Rath knows how a story works. And they work well. Very well indeed.

Talking to Strangers in Finsbury Park: (Debbie Bennett [ed.], Dark Horizons, Autumn-Winter 2002). A flying saucer crash-lands in the Smith family's back garden. Appearances to the contrary, the Vreels prove amiable types. Written in response to the late Patrick Moore's claim that it would be absolutely impossible to communicate with aliens from outer space as there's no common ground.

This is How It Happened ...: Original to collection. While mum takes the cute, petite Barbie twins to audition before agents at a Leyton church hall, "fat ugly giant lady" Cinderella receives a visit from her fairy Goth-mother who fixes it for her to go to the ball.

A Visit to Blastings Manor: (Walthamstow Yellow Advertiser, Dec. 1985: Barbara & Christopher Roden, All Hallows #1, 1989). A guided tour of the exuberantly haunted house and grounds. Loved this on first encounter in the Ghost Story Society Journal where it opened the first issue.

Barefoot Withouten Shoon: (Mark Beech [ed.], A Midwinter Entertainment, 2016). Bayard the horse repays the love and kindness of Gwen the aged, horribly abused milkmaid.

Ilona: (David Longhorn [ed.], Supernatural Tales #23, Spring 2013). An East European refugee accepts a sub-minimum wage to clean at the hospital, ever fearful that her vile supervisor will report her to the home office. One night Ilona walks in on a nurse doing something she ought not with a terminal patient ....

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Beautiful Boy: (David J. Howe [ed.], Full Fathom Forty, 2011). A benign undead brings comfort to the patients and staff of an old people's home. A Tina Rath vampire is as likely to enrich a life as end one.

The Man Who Loved His Luscious Ladies: (Shawna L. Bernard [ed.], Cellar Door: Words of Beauty, Tales of Terror, 2013). Pleasantly plump gals like Doreen and her best friend, Krystal, bring out the wolf in Arnold. Alludes to sex play with jam doughnuts.

Christmas With the Family: (António Monteiro [ed.], Silent Companion #11, 2015: as Family Christmas). Every year Myrtle swears to forgo the dreaded Christmas get-together with her hateful family, only to crack at the last. A lifetime is punishment enough. She's damned if she'll spend eternity with the miserable bigots.

Scruffy the Vampire Slayer: (Julia Kruk & Tracy Lee [eds,], His Red Eyes Again, 2013). Spewed forth from the Hellmouth beneath the St. Walburga school library, the legion of tentacled monstrosities prove no match for teenage hooligans.

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Sitting Tenant: Original to collection. Upwardly mobile Piers connives to have an elderly recluse committed into care, so he can purchase his house for a song. The old man, since deceased, was a compulsive hoarder who reputedly survived on a diet of fried rodent. Our charmless yuppie and wife have since cleared the place top to bottom, but still much of the former tenant remains ...

The Chest: (Catherine Lenderi [ed.], Hearts & Other Dead Things, 2016). When Dave leaves her for a "bossy little cow," Kelly rashly invites him to help himself to whatever of their stuff he fancies, never dreaming he'll take her at her word. The bastard's even swiped the first valentine present he bought her, the ever-sticky red ochre chest with the terrifying Medusa carving on the front panel ...

A Straightforward Procedure: (Jacob Haddon [ed.], Dark Bits, 2013). A miracle cure for ageing. The Doctor and glam nurse will soon restore youth and vitality.

Night Out: (Woman’s Realm, Oct. 1985). Who would begrudge indefatigable Mrs. Padgett her annual four nights out with the girls?

Been enjoying these a lot. I particularly like Sitting Tenant, Christmas With the Family, The Chest, The Man Who Loved His Luscious Ladies, and A Visit to Blastings Manor.

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Diversion: Original to collection. A W12 bus journey toward Walthamstow Market detours through Epping Forest for the passengers to enjoy an impromptu Bacchic romp. The narrator and a little girl engage with the frolicking deities.

A Trick of the Dark: (Stephen Jones [ed], Mammoth Book of Vampire Stories: New edition, 2004). Maddie, nineteen, terminally ill and bedridden, nightly spies on a beautiful skull-headed man who stands under a lamp-post beneath her window ...
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Casualties of the System: ([with Tony Rath]: Charles Black [ed], Eighth Black Book of Horror, 2011). Probation officers use witchcraft to transport the most vicious young offenders back down the centuries. Let the muggers and arsonists take their chances in less tolerant times.

"It's White and It Follows Me": (Rosalie Parker [ed.], Strange Tales Volume III, 2009). Set during the reign of Queen Anne. Lady Mary betrays her Jacobite spy lover to marry money. His ghost attends the wedding.

Tea Dance: (Clive Ward [ed.], Silent Companion #2, Spring 2007). Octogenarian invalid Bessie Freeman falls for 'Roman,' the new Entertainments' manager at the old folks' care home.

"It's White and It Follows Me" added to personal picks, as is Gail-Nina Anderson's fond and informative introduction.

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Extended Family: (David Olson [ed.], Exotic Gothic 3: Strange Visitations, 2009). James, hospitalized with suspected Weils disease, insists it was Galaya, his adopted Thai sister, pushed him into the canal. But how can that be when she was stood six feet away at the time? A brilliant variation on a certain William Sansom story .....

The Fetch: (R. Chetwynd-Hayes [ed,], 19th Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories, 1983). Fetch, as in ghost of a living person not long for this world. Emily Edwards, fabulously wealthy, unhappy and married to an unfaithful sadist, claims to have seen her double, dressed in Victorian attire, stood under a tree at bottom of the garden. How interesting, thinks her treacherous best pal, Felicity, who has designs on Emily's home, wealth, and, as a means to an end, fist-happy Ambrose. Seizing the opportunity, she persuades the Edwards to host a combined House-warming — Halloween party, for which she will provide costumes ....

The Bus: Original to collection. Paradise is a reunion with our beloved dead aboard a charabanc.

The Co-Walker: (L. H. Maynard & M. P. N. Sims [eds.], Hideous Dreams, 2001). Tabloid reporter Martin Patterson rashly infiltrates a black magic circle chasing a sleaze story. Fatally for him, the leader is no charlatan. Martin is driven to mental breakdown and despair by a second him.

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End of Season: (MF&SF, March 1984). In defiance of the travel agent's advice, Richard books his Mediterranean holiday for summer's end, when the resorts are shutting down. In terms of getting away from everyone and everything, his vacation proves an unqualified success.

Fifth Sense: (Mary Danby [ed], 17th Fontana Book of Great Horror Stories, 1984). Jos, his two kids and second wife, Lucy, have not long moved into their dream country cottage when there's a terrible murder on the clifftop path. Too early to tell whether its a wild beast or sex maniac, but whatever it is did for poor Jenny, the village idiot, tore off her head and partially ate the body. Daughter Sarah reckons it's a werewolf, but then she's a very imaginative child.

The Banks of Roses: (Rebecca Parfitt [ed.], The Ghastling #7, 2019). She bunks school to spend the afternoon with lover Johnny on a rock by the haunted pond at Rosebank Quarry.

The Godmother: (Rosemary Pardoe [ed.], Ghosts and Scholars #8, 1986: Karl E. Wagner [ed.], Years Best Horror XV, 1987). On the recommendation of her godmother, Mrs Paget, the housekeeper, twelve-year-old Sukey, is taken on as a scullery maid at Satterthwaite. The master is so taken with his new employee that he invites her down by the lake after dark to visit his special temple. There's no need to worry; Mrs Paget will be there too, wearing the most spectacular nightdress ....

Loved all four of these. Fifth Sense was the first TR story I read, and it has stayed with since. The Banks of Roses, inspired by a murder ballad, is maybe my favourite of an outstanding collection.

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The Lady Who Rode the Central Line: (George H. Scithers [ed.], Amazing Science Fiction, January 1985). Following a brush with a Lenin-a-like on the Circle Line, Mrs. Paggledon realises the London Underground is a halfway house between this world and the next, and the majority of its passengers revenants, one of whom is kind enough to inform her she will die at 8 o'clock on Wed. 14.

Chosen Girl: (Eloise Coquio [ed.], Visionary Tongue, Spring, 1998). A skewed version of 'Little Red Riding Hood' with something of The Lottery about it (or so it felt to me).

Mr Manpferdit: (Rosalie Parker [ed.], Strange Tales, 2003). Johnson and Boswell visit Seven Dials to meet a lonesome "centaur," Mr Manpferdit, travelled afar from his Macedonian mountain home in search of a mate. On leaving, the gents are accosted by a second, yet deadlier creature from ancient mythology.

Extremely glad to have read this one.