The true shiver of unease
Harriet Waugh
UNDESIRABLE GUESTS AND OTHER STORIES by William Charlton Tartarus Press, Coverley House, Carlton-inCoverdale, Leybum, N. Yorks DL 84 AY, email: tartarus@pavilion.co.uk, £27.50, pp. 239, ISBN 1872621694 'Undesirable Guests and Other Stories is the philosopher William Charlton's first work of fiction and very unnerving it is too, With a couple of exceptions these sto
ries are not ghost stories, but perhaps in style some of them are reminiscent of that supremely frightening writer M. R. James, although the unsettling title story, 'Undesirable Guests', is more Saki-esque than Jamesian.
An unexceptional middle-class couple, Matthew and Julia Brook, who, conventionally enough, spend their free time moving with their three children between their London house and their country one, receive a letter from an old friend Seraphim Durness, long unseen as he lives in Lima, asking if he and his unknown wife can come and stay with them in Derbyshire on their way to visit his aunt in Arven. Unfortunately they receive the letter, which was sent from Lima, on the very day that Seraphim has asked to stay, They see no way of putting him and his wife off. However, they are due to go out to dinner that night and feel unable to change their plans, as they have twice refused previous invitations. They decide that Seraphim and his wife shall baby-sit. When the couple arrives Seraphim is so unwell that he appears to be carrying his coffin. Despite this Matthew and Julia stick to their decision to go to their dinner party. They set off merrily across the moors in a snowstorm saying, 'You can never get completely stuck if you've got a shovel.' Well, they do ... with very disagreeable consequences for the children, This is not the only story that combines humour with apprehension in an unholy mix.
In the first story, 'The Television Set', Sebastian Brickley, a little boy who is much left alone by his parents, spends his time watching television on a particularly splendid set which has a screen a yard long. The television has been inherited along with much else from a fat old lady cousin of Mr Brickley. Sebastian's parents are out most evenings doing all sorts of odd things, but they become increasingly uneasy as their son regales them with a soap which he hardly understands but much enjoys following, the goings-on of a couple called Gary and Linda which seem, in an odd way, to reflect their own dubious activities. If the ending is a little too extraordinary, the thrust of the story is a happy amalgam of humour and the bizarre.
Although there are few ghosts, most of the stories hinge on a paranormal component. In 'A Prohibited Area' an English schoolmaster goes missing in the bogs of Ireland while on holiday. Against advice his curiosity takes him into a fenced area where the gorse grows 15 feet high and the landscape changes around him. His cousin, a formidable woman, comes looking for him. She assumes from his letters about his explorations that he has gone mad. She learns differently.
The atmosphere of the stories is laced with unease while the dialogue is blackly humorous. I could not have enjoyed them more.
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