Shadows of Darkness (1975)

I wonder if there was ever a No. 2?

"Highgate vampire" hysteria was obviously still raging, five years on (or somebody hoped it was). And people were expected to pick up on references to "The Communist Party Manifesto" in a trashy comic...

"The Review Show" - Complaint to the BBC

I would like to complain about the comments about Texan writer Robert E. Howard made by Stewart Lee at the end of "The Review Show" (4/11). Lee describes Howard as "a mad bloke" and then goes on to allege "Because he was insane, he maintained that he didn't write it but these characters stood over his shoulder, and dictated to him."

Both these statements are inaccurate. I assume that the notion that Howard was "mad" or "insane" stems from the biographical fact that he committed suicide at the age of 30. Although he was never diagnosed in his lifetime, it seems likely that this tragic action came about due to untreated clinical depression, probably induced by the stress of maintaining a living as a full-time writer during the Great Depression whilst acting as main carer for his terminally ill mother.

Having read Howard's published correspondence with friends and colleagues, I can confirm that he was intensely concerned with the creation of his stories, which were carefully crafted to suit distinct "pulp" markets. The notion that he believed they were dictated to him by discarnate entities is risible. Presumably it comes from a passage from one of the letters in which he describes figuratively the process behind his creation of "Conan". I find it near incredible that the BBC's premier arts programme should be inviting us to interpret this literally.

Not only is it inaccurate to describe Howard as "a mad bloke" because of his presumed depression, but it is insulting to people suffering from the same condition today. People with mental health problems suffer from discrimination from all directions, and hearing the words "mad bloke" and "insane" coming unexpectedly and inappropriately from a television comedian is likely to fall as another cruel blow to their self-esteem.

I am convinced that underlying this attack on one of the 20th Century's greatest fantasy and horror writers is the BBC's continuing bias against writing that falls outside of the narrow band of "literary fiction". A petition signed by 85 top authors was delivered to the Director General only this April, protesting against the network's "sneering coverage" of genre works. From the evidence of "The Review Show", it would appear that this has been ignored.

Kirsty Wark's sneering introduction to the piece backs up this impression: "Here's comedian Stewart Lee with a selection of his favourite books, most of which appear to be out of print - should that tell us something?" Presumably, to the mainstream mind of Ms. Wark, it should tell us that the books are worthless.

And yet; out of the three works chosen by Lee - two of them "genre" - only one (Machen's "The Green Round") is actually "out of print". "Conan", in particular, is readily available in a bewildering variety of editions, from e-books through cheap movie tie-ins to chunky hardbacks. To imply otherwise, not only demonstrates an appalling lack of research, but does the publishing industry a considerable disservice in these difficult times.

From Pan's People to Pony Play:"Ringstones"

Sarban's Nightmares - Part One

(Warning - spoilers ahead)

John William Wall (1910-1989), who wrote under the name of "Sarban", has had something of a renaissance of late. This is largely due to the stalwart efforts of the Tartarus Press in publishing high-quality hardback and e-book editions of his long-out-of-print and unpublished works, plus a biography by Mark Valentine. Unfortunately, however, I have had to rely on a typo-riddled P.O.D. edition of The Sarban Omnibus. Two of the the three novels contained therein (Ringstones, The Sound of his Horn and The Doll Maker) are also available in free online editions.

Ringstones (1951) is centred on the first-person narrative of Daphne Hazel, a trainee gym teacher who accepts a holiday job at Ringstones Hall from an eccentric academic named Dr Ravelin. At this isolated moorland residence she is tasked with tutoring three mysterious "foreign" children of undisclosed nationality. In response to her questioning, Dr Ravelin is decidedly unforthcoming about the origin of his mysterious charges.

Idyllic to start with, the tale gradually becomes sinister as Miss Hazel discovers more about her mysterious charges and their surroundings. It becomes apparent that she is entrapped by the power of Nuaman, the fifteen year old boy (or is he?) who also dominates his younger female peers, Marvan and Ianthe, and Katia the Polish maid. Eventually, she is vouchsafed a disturbing revelation of where this domination is leading.

These events are punctuated by conversations with the reclusive Dr. Ravelin, who stays cloistered in his study for most of the daytime. An amateur archaeologist, he speculates that the ancient house occupies the site of a Roman arena set out for chariot races and other games. The moorland stone circle from which the Hall takes its name feeds wilder ruminations on history and mythology. Reflecting on the reuse of sacred sites by successive religions, Ravelin concludes "Perhaps these ancient stones hold down something far more ancient, something far stranger than the men who placed them understood. Some queer feet have danced here, I feel."

Ringstones is suffused by the spirit of Pan and "his representatives on (the) moors", who may or may not be the indigenous inhabitants of the land, driven out to desolate places but still recalled by folklore and superstition. The myth is of "the gift of the fairies" which, as Dr Ravelin observes "always has some disastrous condition attached to it. Their gold, in the morning, is a stone, or their invitation to a night's revels holds the unfortunate mortal in a century's slavery."

It will be clear from the above that we are in Arthur Machen territory. As with many of the Welsh master's accounts of the" Little People" Sarban's tale exudes an air of unwholesome sensuality. It starts off with in "Health and Efficiency" style with the well-toned Miss Hazel donning her "skimpy gym trunks" for a day's "romping and tumbling" with her shirtless young charge, whilst wondering at "the perfection of his physical development". Likewise, the clothing of the two little girls is of a type unlikely to be approved by the Mother's Union; "Like Nuaman's, their dress seemed more than is usual with English children to set off their figures rather than to cover them".

Lest anyone get the wrong idea, no explicitly carnal sentiments are expressed in the novel; things remain chaste even when Nuaman "caressingly" strokes Miss Hazel's arm in a "soothing, persuasive way". Sarban's eroticism runs underground and is focussed on male control and dominance. The measures that Nuaman (jokingly nicknamed "the Slave Driver" by his tutor) takes to impose his will on females very slowly become apparent, until the point at which Miss Hazel realises she has misheard the Polish maid Katia's broken English as "he weep" and that what she really meant was "he whips".

Miss Hazel also starts to realise that it is physically impossible for her to leave Ringstones. An attempt to reach a nearby village by crossing the moors results in her becoming lost and going around in circles until she returns to the Hall ("I want to keep you here for ever" observes Nuaman in a later conversation). She also receives a creepy indication that the two girls may be representatives of a larger group on the moors, as she spots some of them playing with Nuaman by the stream. Meanwhile, the Polish maid expresses her fear of lies-schi, which Dr Ravelin explains to the means "demons of the forest".

The conclusion of Miss Hazel's retelling of her adventures finds her arising on a moonlit night and finding herself mysteriously cast back in time to the Roman era, when the Games are being held on the site of Ringstones Hall. Preparations for track events are taking place in the arena and she encounters the Armenian servant Sarkissian with a special chariot. She had previously dreamt of him constructing this device with Nuaman in the stables.

It appears that Miss Hazel is about to be forced into an unconsenting act of what is termed "pony play" by modern devotees of the Aristotelian Perversion. Already leashed, she is to be stripped and manacled to the pole of this vehicle alongside the already-harnessed Katia in order to take part in a race. Then she sees the charioteer; "Nuaman gazed at me, and before I dropped my eyes I saw his expression begin to change… I dared not look at his face, but I saw the lash…" On this climactic note, her memoir comes to an end.

Daphne Hazel's story is framed by the sceptical account of an unnamed male narrator accompanying his friend Piers, who has received her manuscript and is keen to discover more about the extraordinary events described in it. When they arrive at Ringstones Hall, they discover it to be an uninhabited ruin. Tracking down Miss Hazel (placed as a tutor to two Egyptian girls in more normal accommodation), she explains her story to them as "a sort of dream, or a lot of dreams" which came to her after she injured herself at the ruin and was left there alone for several hours whilst medical assistance was sought for her.

One is reminded of the gift of the fairies, but the young woman seems, superficially at least, undamaged by her experiences, imagined or otherwise. Just before the narrator and his friend part company with her, they observe her making a movement which shows this is not the case;

"She held out both her hands … with a curious gesture of surrender as if offering the hands and wrists to someone. I saw a newly-healed long cut on the inside of her left wrist plain against the sun-browned skin. She seemed to offer her wrists a moment and then, yielding to an unknown compulsion, reluctantly turned down her palms, curling her fingers round something invisible to us."

Our narrator concludes "I was shocked to see how far behind Piers I had been in understanding the depth of her distress … I think we were all looking with a slowly rising fear at those two drooping hands, so helplessly waiting there." They respond in a reassuring way, but it seems clear that both believe that Pan's representatives have found a victim.

It could be argued that the extent to which Sarban's fantasy edges over into pornography is a measure of how it fails as literature. It could be that Sarban got away with so much kinkiness because he was writing in a more innocent time. Reaching the end of Ringstones, modern readers may feel that they have stumbled into one of John Norman's notorious Gor novels.

What saves Ringstones from being mere BDSM fare are its mysticism and atmosphere. Whilst it falls short of the bar set by Machen, there is a strangeness about the tale that captures the imagination in a similar way to The Hill of Dreams. It is very slow-moving and replete with detailed descriptions of the countryside and meditations on arcane subjects. The prurient person that James Branch Cabell dubbed "the pornoscopic reader" will have a laborious time finding the juicy bits.

Seen as a trilogy, the component novels of The Sarban Omnibus share the theme of male dominance. Ringstones introduces it as an archetypal principle arising from the mythic depths of the collective unconscious to ensnare a modern, independent young woman. The message is that, despite her superficial recovery, Daphne Hazel will remain permanently marked, physically and mentally, by her mysterious experiences. "Everything has end. Except a circle" she pleads to "Sir No Man" at one point. "Ringstones is a circle", he responds "You can never come to the end of Ringstones"…

(Next: The Sound Of His Horn)

"Coterie" by Elkie Riches

Coterie draws us into a rural scene we think we are familiar with, but then expands its horizons to something quite extraordinary. From a fox’s eye view of the hunt, we are drawn into a surreal multiverse where the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics is harnessed to a traditional aristocratic pursuit.

Along the way, we are led to consider some interesting questions. What is suitable employment for a cerebrally augmented fox? And, most importantly; if ever-branching realities can be bridged, then how do ethics and justice apply to the way we relate to our other selves?

In the multiverse, of course, there are infinite answers to these questions, and the colourful characters of Coterie make the mistake of assuming that Tradition is a constant in which the rules never vary.

Elkie Riches’ short story is a finely crafted comedy of manners and paradox. The “New Wave” of science fiction is an obvious reference point in a tale that blends Chaucer and Hugh Everett III. Coterie would not be at all out of place in a copy of Michael Moorcock’s classic journal New Worlds, and will be very much appreciated by anyone with a taste for this genre.

Coterie is available for Kindle

The Primordial Mother City - "Writer's Block" by Vitasta Raina

“What have they done to the earth?
What have they done to our fair sister?
Ravaged and plundered and ripped her and bit her
Stuck her with knives in the side of the dawn
And tied her with fences and dragged her down”
– Jim Morrison

Cities are the future. Already, more than half the world’s population is urban-based and it is predicted that this figure will rise to almost 5 billion by 2030. Mumbai-base architect Vitasta Raina is well-placed to comment on the phenomenon. Writer’s Block casts a satirical eye on the fictional mega-city Chalet via a series of Joycean epiphanies centred on the alienated inhabitants of its eponymous literary ghetto.

The tale’s dystopianism evokes antecedents such as J.G. Ballard’s High-Rise and M. John Harrison’s In Viriconium. The city is a physical reproduction of the society which creates it; class structures reified and set in stone. Civic planning has become the new totalitarianism as its Orwellian acronyms (helpfully listed at the start from “C-PUE” to “RUMP”) indicate.

Writer’s Block portrays a caste system based on material wealth; “Elegants”,”Indigents” and “Parasites” occupy distinct zones of the city, with the rich literally rising to the sky. Misguided attempts at encouraging social mobility have been frustrated by the mechanics of the property market as homes become multi-owned investments and status symbols.

As “Refined Indigents”, the “educated but not moneyed” inhabitants of the eponymous Writer’s Block play an interstitial role in the hierarchy. This affords them the dubious cachet of outsider status and an intellectually privileged but fundamentally powerless view of the city and her looming apocalypse; “We see the impending nightmare ready to explode. We see fat Chalet ready to erupt.”

Yet the human eruptions, when they arise, are minimal. Forced relocation of the Parasites to a floating ghetto leads to a night of rioting, but resistance is quickly crushed and life returns to normal. Fatalism is restored and polite indifference to injustice maintains the civilised facade. Quiescence is the human condition; as one character remarks of the Parasites “We know we’ll say “go” and ninety nine percent of them will”.

Yet Nemesis cannot be forestalled forever. It eventually takes the unexpected form of mechanical dysfunction, induced by the anthropomorphised entity of Chalet herself. Appalled by the concrete ravishment wrought on her by unrestrained development, the city takes revenge on the upper echelons of her human tormenters. It takes very little to disrupt and invert their fragile spatial hierarchy.

Writer’s Block is, at its heart, a tale of the Fall. A section near the centre gives voice to the megalopolis as she recounts her origins as a cluster of fishing villages, enjoying a symbiotic relationship with the simple inhabitants; “I belonged to them as they did to me”. Imperialism imposed its grandeur and yet harmony was still maintained. Final loss of innocence came with post-war industrialisation; “They built and destroyed and built again and destroyed again, again and again and again till I was made of nothing except cold reinforced concrete.”

By offering a fantastic solution to the problems of the City, Raina seems to be implying that one in real life is not imminent. Her protagonists occupy a sub-section of society where imaginative withdrawal is an option. Rebellion takes the form of a self-parodying artistic movement; “My Avant-Garde Angst”. Disjointed in time and space, their idols are Western counter-cultural heroes of the 1960s; Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Jim Morrison, Robert E Heinlein and Philip K Dick. These are the children of globalisation, indicating perhaps that a simple return to the past is not a viable solution.

At the same time, however, one of the characters questions whether the past is actually over; “Even in the thickest of urban slums you see glimpses of rural villages… look around you and you will see how slowly the city is being taken over by ruralisation.” Could it be that the city is just a passing phase in the history of humanity?

The novella concludes with a magical-realist radio interview in which Chalet herself plays the role of chat-show host. After apocalyptic events, a bizarre form of normality returns. We become conscious of our status as passive consumers of reality. Through the media, the whole life becomes a staged event in which we all can step back and discuss our roles. And what is fiction but a medium?

With the globalised metropolis being the destination of the human race, it is the role of speculative fiction to explore the ramifications of this so we can create a liveable world. Writer’s Block provides no simplistic answers but invites us to explore a future (or could it be the present?) in which creativity is ghettoized and the mechanistic hierarchies of capitalism are reproduced in the physical environment. Showing that such deviations from the organic union of humankind and nature are unsustainable, it suggests that hope lies not in dreams of mass rebellion and resistance, but in the small details of everyday life and in the fabric of reality itself.

Writer’s Block is a short work about a vast subject. I left it feeling that there must be many more stories to be told about Chalet and her inhabitants, and hoping that one day Vitasta Raina might apply her pen to these. As it stands, it is a notable work by a first-time writer and very much recommended.

Ghosts of Christmas – Past and Present.

The BBC’s Ghost Story for Christmas series originally extended from 1971 to 1978. Highly esteemed by supernatural fiction enthusiasts, it is mainly remembered for its adaptations of classic tales by M.R. James, although 1976’s atmospheric version of Dickens’ The Signalman is often considered to be the finest. In recent years, attempts have been made to revive the series, with new productions of James’s A View from a Hill and Number 13 appearing in 2005 and 2006. Whilst these are enjoyable exercises in television nostalgia, there is an air of pastiche about them which means that they fall short of the original series’ level of excellence.

This year it was revealed that the Ghost Story for Christmas was to be a remake of Whistle and I’ll Come to You. Although Jonathan Miller’s 1968 Omnibus production of this pre-dated the series proper, it has joined it in popular memory as the first and most impressive of the BBC’s M.R. James adaptations. It is an extraordinary work that succeeds on many levels, and is a hard act to follow. I was thus mystified as to why the BBC should have chosen Whistle and I’ll Come to You rather than one of the many other tales by M.R. James and his Victorian and Edwardian contemporaries that have not yet been filmed.

Memories of pointless remakes such as The Haunting and The Wicker Man started to rise unbidden, provoking fears that were hardly laid to rest by an announcement that the remake was to be “a contemporary update, influenced by Japanese horror films and The Shining”, penned by Neil Cross. Oh dear. One bit of good news was that the star was to be John Hurt, surely an actor with sufficient gravitas to pull the pull the project through.

The issue of faithfulness to the original story is a complex one. Television and the written word and two separate media, and what works on the page is not necessarily going to be what’s best for the small screen. Jonathan Miller certainly didn’t take the path of slavish adaptation. However, although he was not afraid to make changes to the original, particularly in the area of characterization, he certainly took no liberties. His re-imagining of the story’s protagonist, Professor Parkin, as a bumbling old absent-minded don, played to perfection by Michael Hordern, was a stroke of genius.

Horden’s portrayal is a pleasure to watch in every frame. Here is a man fully at home with his own company and absorbed in his own mental processes to the extent that he has become somewhat disengaged with the rest of the world. As we observe his break at a desolate East Coast seaside resort, we become fully acquainted with the man and his habits. An amusing exchange with another hotel resident in which he applies linguistic logic to dismiss the notion of ghosts shows up Professor Parkin’s one big flaw; he is pleased to the point of smugness with his own arguments and formulations. In particular, he is delighted by his inversion of a famous quote from Hamlet: “There are more things in philosophy than are dreamt of in Heaven or Earth”.

Parkin’s faith in his academic superiority is threatened by the unaccountable events that take place after he discovers and blows and old whistle he discovers in an ancient cliff-top graveyard. Miller remains true to the story’s suggestion that the “ghost”, when it eventually appears, would not have had the power to physically harm its victim. The fear is not of violence or gore, but something far more powerful; the ease with which a logically constructed world-view established over decades of study and argument can be brought crashing down by a single anomalous experience. Jonathan Miller (no believer in the supernatural himself) has turned James’ comic-horrific tale of a conceited young don into a full-blown parable on intellectual hubris.

With this illustrious predecessor in mind, it was with some trepidation that I switched on the TV to view Neil Cross’s “contemporary retelling”. First impressions were not good; we are thrown head first into a scene not bearing the remotest resemblance to anything in the original story. The elderly Parkin (John Hurt) has been saddled by the screenwriter with a senile wife (Gemma Jones) and is shown depositing her into what can only be described as the care home from hell. Parkin (who we learn is a retired astronomer) appears to be a wealthy man, so why he has chosen to place his beloved spouse in this grim establishment, in which the inmates are sat in rows in high-backed chairs wearing identical white gowns, is not explained. To a critical viewer, however, the answer is obvious. This is not one of the quaintly observed social locales we might expect as a background to the chilling goings-on in a Ghost Story for Christmas; this is Generic Horror-Land. And thereby hangs the weakness of this production. James’ finely crafted tale has been hollowed out and used as the vehicle for another, different story entirely; a markedly inferior one. You wonder how this came about; presumably the piece needed the cachet of the original to reach production and attract a talent of John Hurt’s calibre. Surely, however, it can only suffer from comparison with the original?

John Hurt has, it must be said, a most impressive face. Deeply creased and furrowed, it ages him beyond his seventy years. He is made to star in a Samuel Beckett biopic and somebody should really get to work on this immediately. In Whistle and I’ll Come to You, however, the poor man is coasting. He has one direction, which is to look miserable, and he does this exceedingly well. Yet everything about this work is lifeless and depressing, with fifty-two minutes of it stretching out interminably.

Having left the catatonic wife at the Stephen King care home, in the hands of the patronising nurse who is on single-handed duty there, Parkin (in a rare piece of faithfulness-to-the-plot) makes his way to a seaside hotel. This establishment is equally short-staffed and, apart from one family, which packs up and leaves during his stay, Parkin is the sole resident. Jonathan Miller showed us exactly how Professor Parkin spends his solitary days by the seaside, conveying a fine sense of life of the hotel and the nature of his solitary rambling. By contrast, the 2010 version seems fractured and drawn out. The setting has been transferred for some reason from East Anglia to Thanet in Kent, so we are presented with chalk cliffs in place of flat sands and, most importantly, no groynes to act as hurdles in the ghostly pursuit along the beach. Continuity is poor, however, and we never get a clear idea of the landscape and how it stands in relation to the hotel. Cliffs appear first in one direction and then in another. We are never sure how far Parkin has walked or what time of day it is.

The two big scares are stolen from elsewhere. First of all, there is a fearsome, unexplained banging on the bedroom door while Parkin is trying to sleep. This scene is reminiscent of Robert Wise’s The Haunting, but that is rather a classy reference for this production. The pre-screening publicity suggests that this scene was intended to evoke memories of axe-wielding Jack Nicholson from The Shining. Unfortunately as Parkin cowers beneath the postcodes, the response is more likely to be “Why doesn’t he just open the bloody door?”

Scare no.2 (which sinks any pretence at subtlety the production may have had until now) is lifted direct from 1998 Japanese horror smash Ringu. Just like Sadako’s stylised ghost crawling from a TV screen, the wraith of Parkins’ senile wife crawls beneath the three-inch gap conveniently left for her beneath his bedroom door. Crawling up the bed, she screams manically “I’m here, I’m here!” into his startled face – a disruption which causes the poor old codger to expire on the spot. Given the idyllic loving relationship that we have been led to believe existed between the two, this occurrence is somewhat surprising. Is it supposed to be a manifestation of the mood changes medically associated with Alzheimer’s disease? Parkin has earlier expressed to the hotel manager his horror at witnessing his wife’s living body minus her personality. Presumably the idea is that, by appearing in the guise of a Japanese ghost, Mrs. Parkin is merely attempting to alert her husband to her continued existence. But wouldn’t a gentler, more loving reminder have sufficed? There is no law stating that ghost stories have to be about crude horror. This story could have concluded in a heartwarming manner, offering consolation to individuals and families afflicted by dementia.

The final scene contributes more confusion, leading many viewers on online forums to question what happened. The nurse at the rest home (yes, that nurse) glimpses Mrs. Parkin among the white-gowned upright-chair-sitters before glancing back to see she has disappeared, a fact she acknowledges with a wry grin. Obviously she has died and become a ghost, but why she appears in such a peaceful form to the nurse (who seems quite unfazed) after scaring her poor husband literally to death is a mystery, only explained by the reflection that this is just a clichéd conclusion to a generic plot.

The plot of M.R. James’s masterpiece has been mutilated to a ridiculous extent. Most bizarrely, some bright spark has decided not to have a whistle, rendering the title entirely meaningless. The only reference to one when Parkin sings the Burns song into his wife’s ear near the beginning, but the relevance of this is not explained and most viewers will probably have missed this anyway. Removing this key plot element has the sole effect of making the thing even more tedious and uneventful – the director clearly thinking that picture postcard views of the seaside are sufficient to retain our attention.

One of M.R. James’ strengths is the inexplicable nature of his apparitions. All that is known about the ghost (if that’s what it is) in Oh, whistle and I’ll come to you is that it is comes from far away and is connected to the Knights Templars, a mediaeval religious order associated with diabolism and forbidden practices. An air of antiquity and the arcane pervades his tales, infecting the cosy world of his protagonists with the miasma of ancient wrongs. By contrast, the 2010 BBC production adheres to modern Hollywood conventions. In a quote from 1999’s CGI-ridden version of The Haunting (the direst remake of all), “It’s all about family!” In other words, the Supernatural must play second fiddle to a tedious soap opera plot that attempts to put a “psychological” spin on everything that happens to make it “relevant to a modern audience”.

All in all, this was a tragically wasted opportunity. The ingredients for a top-quality production were there in terms of casting and cinematography, but it foundered on the rocks of a dumbed-down screenplay. Considering the rich tradition of British horror, it is difficult to see the relevance of referencing works such as Ringu. Presumably the intention was to be “with it” and fashionable, but the Japanese horror craze was ages ago now, probably when the people who produced this were still at university. This demonstrates the weakness of the whole thing; it was made by people with no sensitivity or feel for their source material, who clearly felt they could improve on the original. Given the story’s warning against hubris, this is ironic to the extreme.

A Portsmouth Ghost Story

Runner-up in "The News" Christmas Ghost Story Competition, December 2010`

Portsmouth in December 1945 was a brave but war-ravaged city. Although Hitler’s bombs had destroyed buildings and blown apart bodies, he had never succeeded in breaking the proud naval port’s spirit. Now its people were getting on with rebuilding their lives.

These thoughts crossed my mind as I left Fratton station. I had not been back to Portsmouth since before the war, but I knew what to expect. Coming down from London, it wasn’t such a shock; we had all learned to live with bombsites. What made me nervous was learning of the human devastation. Portsmouth had suffered heavy casualties and there were bound to be friends I would never see again.

I had two hours to spare before my cousin Reg knocked off from his job at the dockyard. I was grateful to him for inviting me down to spend Christmas with him and his wife. With my parents moved away, he was my sole family connection with the city I had grown up in.

I decided to stop off in the Nell Gwynne for a beer. Halfway through a pint of Brickwood’s, I spotted a familiar face; Vic Voller, an old schoolmate.

Vic and his brother Vince had lived in Orchard Road. They were twins, but not identical and had very different personalities. Vic was down-to-earth, while Vince was a dreamer, full of strange ideas and interests.

One night after the pub he took a bunch of us ghost-hunting in Highland Road Cemetery. The only spirit we found was in the bottle of an old tramp propped up against a grave stone.

After twenty minutes football chat (Vic was never one to talk about himself), I was invited back for a cup of tea. Vic was still living in the same house, which had narrowly been missed early on in the Blitz.

I sat down in the tiny living room while Vic went to put the kettle on. There were no Christmas decorations and everything looked dusty. It seemed like the twins’ old mother had passed away during the war.

“I’ve remembered what I went out for; a bottle of milk!” Vic stuck his head around the door. “I’ll just nip round and get some – won’t be a minute.”

I reflected on how things had changed. Physically, Vic seemed much the same, but there was something different about him. Sadness. Perhaps it was the loss of his mother or something else he had experienced. The war left scars on everyone.

Lost in thought, I was startled to see a figure in the doorframe, standing in the passage. I hadn’t heard the front door open and it came as a jolt to see someone staring. Then I realised it wasn’t Vic, it was his brother Vince.

Vince must have been in the house all along, sleeping upstairs. This would explain why Vic hadn’t disturbed him when we came in. He didn’t look well, quite ashen in fact, but he smiled when he saw that I’d noticed him.

I had always got on well with Vince. He was easy to talk to, always keen to find out what I thought about his latest hare-brained theory.

“Hello Vince”, I said “It’s great to see you! How are things going?” Then, remembering our drunken antics together, I added “How’s the ghost-hunting?”

Despite his poorly appearance, Vince’s eyes lit up. “Oh you wouldn’t believe it, Geoff; I’ve found out incredible things! I was playing around before the war, but I know much more about the subject now.”

This wasn’t the response I had expected, but Vince was obviously keen to expand. “What have you been up to?” I asked.

“I’ve met people in touch with the Other Side”, he said, “Do you know about Helen Duncan?”

I suppressed a grin. Everyone had heard about Helen Duncan. A Spiritualist Medium from Scotland, she had been convicted in 1944 under Britain’s ancient Witchcraft Law.

Many argued that Mrs. Duncan had been unfairly persecuted. It was rumoured that the real reason she had been locked up was wartime security. At a séance in Portsmouth, she had been contacted by the spirit of a dead sailor from HMS Barham. The loss of this Portsmouth-based ship, with nearly 900 lives, had been an official secret at the time.

The authorities, it was claimed, were worried that a German spy might attend one of Mrs. Duncan’s séances and obtain classified information from the Spirit World.

From what I had heard, however, the true story was not so exciting.

“Oh yes”, I answered, “I know about Helen Duncan. One of my journalist friends covered her trial at the Old Bailey. But, you know, he was not impressed. He says she was arrested simply because the police were fed up with her taking money from the bereaved.

“You know, she had already been convicted of fraud in Scotland and exposed as a fake.”

I regretted those words instantly; I could see from his face that Vince was angry. “Well”, he hissed, “You can tell your friend he is wrong. Nell Duncan is a good woman. I was at the séance in Copnor and, trust me, I know she is genuine. Nell Duncan is no witch and she is certainly not a fraud!”

With this he turned around and left the doorway. I felt rotten for upsetting him. It seemed his belief in the after-life was something he was hanging on to. This is what suffering and loss did to people. How could I be so insensitive?

Just then the front door opened and Vic appeared, clutching a bottle of milk. I followed him through to the kitchen.

“I’m really sorry Vic”, I said, “I think I’ve upset your brother.”

A dark look entered Vic’s eyes, and his gaze went down to the kettle.

“Look, Geoff. I haven’t told you about Vince.”

“He’s not well, is he?” I asked gently.

Vic turned and lifted his eyes to meet mine.

“He’s dead, Geoff. He went down on the Barham in 1941”.