Powers of Darkness by Robert Aickman

(Published 1966)

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Your Tiny Hand is Frozen

Edmund St Jude is living in a flat rented from Teddie, a child portrait painter presently abroad on a TB rest cure. St Jude is disturbed by a series of phone calls, at first apparently hoax calls or freaks caused by blown down lines. At last someone begins to speak to him on the phone, a woman's voice; she is knowledgeable on the subject of obscure poets, and a friendship springs up. But she tells St Jude that she will never allow them to meet until he can't live without her. Slightly reminiscent of Oliver Onions classicThe Beckoning Fair One (which can't be bad).

My Poor Friend

Grover-Stacey is bored with his job, and happy enough to take a cut in salary to become Administrative Secretary with a body campaining for local electricity. At a party he meets the MP Walter Enright, who smokes strange cigarettes, and Grover offers to take up the society's cause. On a visit to Enright's flat, Grover-Stacey finds the MP unnaturally forthright upon the subject of his wife and children. Here the prosaic plotline begins to blur and distort. Just what is wrong with his children, and why are references to his wife made variously in the past and present tense. It becomes clear that she is or was an attractive woman and has used her charms on many of Enright's fellow MPs. The palace of Westminster has probably never been better employed as the setting for a story, a 'mastodon' place of bustling halls, deserted corridors, and rooms lain empty for years where almost any secret can be hidden.

The Visiting Star

It's essential that apparently ageless Julia Rokeby play a part in a revival of a play, originally written for her. This one sticks in the memory, for its wintry atmosphere more than its plot. At Vault of Evil, DF Lewis challenged my rather rash statement that The Visiting Star was fairly straightforward; he wrote: "I don't think 'The Visiting Star' is straightforward. What happens in the dark mine vis a vis the Proustian separate selves concept of the theatre star being someone else?

"I think a straightforward Aickman story is not an Aickman story. "

So I've added that Aickman seems to see Isabella Rokeby the actress as divided into two selves, the self as perceived by others, created partly or entirely in the other person�s mind, and Rokeby as she really is. Rokeby doesn�t age because people see her as they want her, like the anima. But I have difficulty with this because Myrrha (Mirror) is Rokeby�s personality, and surely the personality is the fa�ade, the mask. Rokeby comments at one point that she has many masks.

Mr Superbus is her helper, he smooths her path, �rids me of people who want to hurt me.� I suppose he�s a sort of Cerberus/Anubis figure, guarding the way. Rokeby, Myrrah and Superbus are all Rokeby � the different parts of the fragmented mind composing her true Self. The audience and other actors of course could also be said to be part of her, observing her and therefore infinitely recreating her.

I suppose the journey into the mine could be a seen as journey into the subconscious.

I�m afraid I haven�t read Proust. But Des was right of course. Aickman didn't really do 'straightforward'!

Larger Than Oneself

First read in Dark Descent 1: The Colour of Evil. At a symposium to forge a meeting of religious minds, all that Mr Coner can decide upon is that he is looking for something 'larger than oneself'. The strange dreamlike party, which it seems is gradually producing its own visitation, is distinctly eerie. Only Aickman could get away with a manifestation of angels (or devils?) at a party.

A Roman Question

Between parties, Wakefeld and his wife Margueritte, and a young woman named Deirdre find themselves stranded at the Peevers' place. The Peevers' are a rather grey couple, lost in memories of their son, reported missing during the war, and his friend Jim Tate, who was idolised by all of them. There are the usual faintly surreal Aickman moments: a dead horse in the middle of the street, Peevers' curious insistence that they mustn't park here. Then Deirdre suggests a way to call home the Peevers' missing son, who after all has not been confirmed dead, an old game she used to play with fellow nurses at the hospital, played with sugar cubes and a 'special light' in a window. Marvellously understated.

The Wine-Dark Sea

On holiday in the Helenes, Grigg is intrigued by a beautiful boat that sets out from an island in the bay, but none of the locals will take him to the island. They say that it's old, and that's bad. Grigg steals a boat and discovers the island to be a rocky paradise of clear sea and a rambling fortress, home to three self-professed sorceresses, who invite him to live with them and feed him upon fruit and wine, seducing him one by one. If only there were not the nightmares. And was the body in the sea dead before the women began to stone it? Beautifully evocative, but naturally with that disturbing undercurrent.

Probably the weakest story in this collection is My Poor Friend, though it's difficult to forget the oddly disturbing image of Enright standing at a doorway in a deserted corrider of the Palace, a small saw in his hand. A Roman Question, Your Tiny Hand is Frozen and the hauntingly beautiful A Visiting Star are the closest we get to 'straight' supernatural chillers. Larger than Oneself remains powerfully enigmatic, while The Wine-Dark Sea is bound to remain a favourite, if simply for the finely drawn background and sense of loss. Aickman was always brilliant, if sometimes a little infuriating, too.

(1966)

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