L. P. Hartley's Two for the Road

commentary by rbadac

   

There is something extremely uncomfortable in L.P. Hartley. It is a quality which serves his ghosts well, giving them a lingering awfulness; but when one looks at a few of his non- or quasi-supernatural stories, one realizes that this awfulness was there first. It only periodically holds the door open for a spectre. The rotting corpse rubs elbows with the murderer, & both laugh at the madman's jokes. Amidst the banter & genteel complexities of the rest of Hartley's characters, they practically blend in; but there is little doubt who hosts the party.

Most of Hartley's genre classics are found in The Traveling Grave (1948), but there is worthwhile effort in examining his other collections for the odd horrific gem. Bill Allison has reviewed The White Wand (1954), so I'll do a companion piece on Two for the River (1961), which reveals some particularly disturbing examples.

In "The Corner Cupboard," Philip Holroyd takes a house in the country to escape the London bombing. He hires, unseen, a cook named Mrs Weaver, who comes with some faintly disconcerting references. After discovering that she nursed a late husband (who played with toy soldiers) in his final illness, has an aversion to tortoise-shell, & is inconveniently in love with him, Philip notices that the medicine bottles he keeps in the corner cupboard have been arranged like armies. This becomes more sinister when, upon his perceived friendliness with the day woman, Mrs Featherstone, Philip returns to the cupboard to find a strange tableaux there, constructed of bits & pieces of his first-aid kit, after which Mrs Featherstone is mysteriously taken ill...

"Interference" concerns a landlord, Cyril Hutchinson, who lets rooms to the Trimbles; all goes well at first, until the Trimbles begin to complain of someone "interfering" with their belongings. Having the only passkeys, Cyril is immediately suspected, & his relationship with them deteriorates. The odious subservience of Cyril's gardener, Mr Snow, & a vision or dream of Cyril's, in which a large mustached man wishes to rent the Trimbles' vacated rooms in order to look for something there which belongs to him, send this tale spiralling off into territory made familiar by a certain author of our acquaintance with the middle name Fordyce.

"The Pampas Clump" is bizarre & not a little infuriating. The fragility of some of Hartley's people is usually made much of, but for all that the collapse of Thomas, who is oppressed by the haystack-sized clump alternately blocking his view & acting as a paranormal filter for it, seems unduly overreactive. It helps in retrospect to read more into his neurosis early on; conveyed as usual by Hartley's typically ominous dialogue, who is to say the germ of insanity is not in fact present? though, alternately, who could see it if it were?

"The Pylon," which is psychological horror of a very understated kind, has a similar effect. Laurie (a boy, but with definite feminine characteristics) fears & longs for the pylon which has been demolished, & obstructed the view in much the same fashion as did the Pampas Clump. His father is perplexed by his son's withdrawal into a fear-charged inner world, but his attempt to reach out to him backfires. Nary an irrational occurrence in it, but the story is fraught with irrational dread.

To return to the sunshine of uncompromised horror, we have "Someone In The Lift," as grim a tale of childhood fatalism as could be imagined. Peter Maldon can see an indistinct figure in the hotel lift where he & his parents are staying during the Christmas season. His mother seeks to convince him otherwise, & his father jokes that it is Father Christmas. Whom it proves to be is one of the nastiest shocks in all of Hartley.

And "The Waits" is another Christmas offering; Henry Marriner's family celebration is interrupted by carolers ("waits"), a man & a boy. He sends first his daughter Anne, & later his son Jeremy to offer the carolers a shilling, but both return with the news that "it is not enough." They want what Henry gave them last year. An excellent ghost story.

   

copyright © 2000 by rbadac, all rights reserved

   

Violet Books buys & sells the collections by L. P. Hartley & all similar writers. Your quotes -- single items or entire libraries -- are always welcome. And check out the many ghost story offerings in the
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Read also Bill Allison's L. P. Hartley's The White Wand & other stories

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