I met Philippa Pearce just once, sadly very near to the end of her life, at
a symposium conference focusing on her writing and that of Jan Mark. Everyone
had bustled off at the end of a panel discussion and I plucked up the
courage to go up to her to say hello. (It was odd, I remember, because it
just seemed to be me and her left in the room, though that surely
cannot be!) We enjoyed a very brief little chat and she seemed delighted
that I had brought two books specially for her to sign. One of them was a
hardback of "The Shadow Cage" that I had gleefully found in an old
second-hand shop just very recently.
"Ah! Do you like ghost stories, Ben?" A twinkle appeared her eye and she lowered her voice, just a fraction, and leaned in. "Because I do."
Of
course, as I begin this month of #PearceInApril (a Twitter hashtag
discussion-group set up by Jon Appleton) with a personal challenge to
read all of PP's short fiction, I look back on that treasured meeting
with fondness. I only spoke to her for what must have been five minutes,
but she did that incredible thing of making one feel 'included' in her
world, there was even a little conspiracy in our mutual love of the
supernatural! I have known her work since I was a boy, and was read
Lion at School in one of my primary school story-times. So now
it is about time that I re-entered that special world of hers,
hopefully to reconnect and discover more.
On each day
in April I will read one or two of the short stories, in alphabetical
order by title (just in the same way as when during #JanMarkuary I read
all of Jan Mark's stories in the collection 'The one that got away'. I'll be adding to this blog day-by-day with a short comment on one aspect that struck me most about each tale.
Abbreviations used throughout refer to the collections in which the stories appear.
LAS - Lion at School, and other stories
TSC - The Shadow Cage, and other tales of the supernatural
TR - The Rope, and other stories
WA - Who's Afraid? and other strange stories
WTND - What the Neighbours Did, and other stories
***
April 1st 2020:
At the River-Gates (TSC)
The setting of an old mill immediately brings to mind PP's own childhood. The mechanics of the mill workings is especially detailed which makes the final pages even more ghostly: whatever it is, the shadow that appears to open the gates is far less substantial or 'real' than the everyday workings of a mill.
April 2nd 2020:
Auntie (WA)
A very lovely but sad tale of the supernatural. When Auntie's super-sharp eye-sight becomes foresight, an ominous feeling hangs very strongly about the narrative. The general avoidance of using the character's proper names adds a strange sense of detachment too which throws Auntie's caring, loving nature even more strongly to the fore.
Beckoned (TSC)
The success of this ghost story is once again found in the relationship between the old and the new. That strange tension, so often a key part of all the most successful strange stories, is perfectly realised here. The atmospheric description of the oppressive house put me in mind of Aickman.
April 3rd 2020:
Black Eyes (WA)
Although the supernatural is implied, there is nothing out of the realm of reality: for Jane the 'unreal' is more properly the 'unfamiliar', which more implies a sense of weirdness and unease. Lucinda's world is private and deeply, disturbingly unhappy, quite far from Jane's experiences. I found this tale to be uncomfortable reading, but immaculately written - an outstanding gem.
April 4th 2020:
Bluebag (originally The Nest) (TR)
A different 'auntie' is the main character in this story. It is said that she knows just how to use suspense as part of her storytelling: but surely this could equally be said of Pearce herself! Here, seemingly throwaway word choices (Spot likes Auntie 'usually', for example) lend a real feeling of 'uh, oh! what's going to happen...?' just as the sense of portent is achieved in some of the ghost stories. But Pearce in this tale, also achieves that wonderful surprise effect, like a class-act magician ending a trick. A hugely satisfying and masterly piece of storytelling lasting but a few pages.
Brainbox (LAS)
A change in style for this story, the first I've read from Pearce's collection for her youngest readers. The tone is rather like that of a folktale and after the cumulative 'defining' of what makes a horse, the coda is simply delightful.
April 5th 2020:
A Christmas Pudding Improves with Keeping (WA)
Hidden, papered-over doors and windows are always creepy - why were they covered up in the first place? To hide something? To keep something from escaping? In this story, it seems to be both. The door has concealed a nasty secret but has also restrained something dark, ultimately bursting out in the last pages to carry out its original,horrible intention.
April 6th 2020:
The Crooked Little Finger (LAS)
A wicked little story, almost reading as though the author one day challenged herself to make something out of turning the adjective 'crooked' into a verb - by the end, Annie certainly learns not 'to crook' when she wants something in the future! As often with Pearce, the surface simplicity belies a deep underlying truth: here, that although others may warn, personal experience is often the greatest teacher.
April 7th 2020:
The Dear Little Man with His Hands in his Pockets (TSC)
Although the story could be explained rationally, the sinister 'little man' seems more like a supernatural golem. The way in which small details are mentioned casually, but carry heavy emphasis returns here: the decorative chicken feathers and the 'missing' goat's horns strongly hint towards black magic.
April 8th 2020:
The Dog Got Them (TSC)
A variation, to my mind, of the Japanese fairy tale The Boy who Drew Cats. Dreadful rodents provide the 'evil' in Aunt Enid's spare room while the cat of the original tale is transposed into Teaser. Most notably, whatever happens in the room between Teaser and the rats happens 'offstage' to the narration, a suspenseful technique apparent in both stories.
The Executioner (LAS)
Although this is a very simple story of a boy who tries to save a mouse from his father's deadly traps, there is more to it than that. Whose house is it anyway? The family are only renting the property as a holiday home, after all; the mouse is the full-time resident. Human arrogance is very clear here, in a story that the very youngest readers would deeply appreciate.
April 9th 2020:
The two stories I read today come from the same collection, The Rope. They both deal with the child at one remove from what is going on: in Early Translucent Nicky doesn't - can't - understand what the refugee girl has been through and does his absolute best to do what he thinks is right for her, after his initial, unthinking reaction. Charlie (from The Fir-Cone) lives in his own child-world, contrasted strongly with the adults and near-adults around him: his 'childish' ways of speaking, his memories of a trip that he made once with his parents when they were all still together, his holding on to old toys, all paint a quite devastating picture of childhood fears and confusion
In both stories, the grown-ups have their own tensions too, but which we can only glimpse in part: the kindly Mrs Chapman in Early Translucent, more understanding than her husband, and mum and dad in The Fir Cone, who both try to guide their young son through the challenges of having separated parents, but who, at the end, are shown in need of listening much more to their child.
The Fir-Cone is hands-down the best short story of PP's that I have read so far.
April 10th 2020:
Fresh (WTND)
There is a distinct line of connection between this and 'The Executioner', but here the tone is more pensive. The way Chance is explored in the story is interesting too, with Dan's stepping onto the branch: if the mussel falls out of the bucket, so be it; if it stays in, so be it. It is but a moment, but it holds the sudden realisation that the world has its own rules and there is little we can do about that: a fleeting rite of passage into the 'grown-up' world.
April 11th 2020:
The Great Sharp Scissors (LAS)
A funny story for young readers (who I can imagine gasping in horror and delight at the cutting in half of a goldfish bowl!), but also one that has Max of Where the Wild Things Are not far in the background. The oddly disjunct ending of everyone sitting down to a tea of bread and raspberry jam echoes Sendak's soup-tray: a return to the real world, family love restored.
The Great Blackberry Pick (WTND)
What a sad story. There is so much that Pearce presents in her writing, but does not comment or explain: she leaves the meaning and feeling to be communicated to the reader with such subtlety. Here, the longing for the treacle tart the 'hot, dry baking', and the 'cream cheese and warm woolies' of the baby-smell are aching details, ones that will communicate the internal world of Val's struggles to young readers remarkably directly.
April 12th 2020:
Guess (TSC)
Whilst an elliptic narrative might heighten the eerie atmosphere of this weird tale, there is perhaps a little too much that is implied for the story to work completely successfully. That said, the description of being inside the tree/Jess' mind looking out into her own living room is at once deeply unsettling and startlingly original.
April 13th 2020:
Hello, Polly (LAS)
Another story which describes a rite-of-passage moment, though in the most unassuming way. Vicky is the only one who can talk to the parrot in its cramped cage; all those repeated 'Hellos', a heavily restricted 'conversation' - I wonder how long it will last that Vicky 'loves going' to the summer Children's Zoo...
Her Father's Attic (TSC)
The vulnerabilities of childhood that shadow one's later life are captured perfectly here. The darkness in the cupboard may be frightening, but it's the image of the girl staring into that darkness that chills the most, and the echo of that moment later on as she stares at her father, bullied and broken, realising something quite awful that goes far beyond words.
April 14th 2020:
The Hirn (WA)
A satisfying ghost story, with more than a nod to the M.R. Jamesian tradition. Two elements stick in the mind: the villagers' faces looking up towards the Hirn, an anxious and ominous moment, and Edwards' inability to leave the Hirn once he has had it destroyed - Laski's short story 'The Tower' does something similar.
April 15th 2020:
His Loving Sister (WA)
When I read 'The Little Gentleman', Pearce's final novel, I was struck by how brutal and sinister it was (despite the soft, rather 'cute' illustration on the cover); again, I'm surprised by the darkness that haunts today's short story. For a children's story, it deals with some pretty harrowing material - the death of a school-friend and his family, grief, confusion and unspoken guilt. It is very well written, the pacing excellent, but uncomfortably intense.
In the Middle of the Night (WTND)
In complete contrast to the previous story described, this one sings with warmth and family comedy. The way in which the three conspirator siblings act is all the more funny for the seriousness in which they carry out their midnight shenanigans. I'm amazed by the way in which Pearce reveals character in just a few sentences here: we know this family so well at the end of the story, but not very much has actually been said about any of them. This could have been turned into a novel or at least a series of short stories. Wonderful!
April 16th 2020:
Inside her head (TR)
There are echoes of Jan Mark's 'William's Version' here, both in the way that children need stories and in how they challenge them too. William wants to own granny's story; Sim wants to disprove it (another kind of owning, or control). At the end of the stories, both boys are changed: they have grown a little.
April 17th 2020:
Lion at School (LAS)
This was probably the first Philippa Pearce that I ever heard, on a tape, sometime in the eighties, and ever since then I've loved it but my view of it has shifted and does so every time I read it. Today, it is the lion's general gruffness that strikes me; even with Lucy at the end he decides to leave. Also, on this reading I am almost convinced - definitely more so than I have been before - that the lion is actually real...
Lucky Boy (WTND)
There is a lot that is hidden from view in this quiet, unassuming tale. The past, when Pat took pleasure in looking after Lucy, has indeed passed and he is now looking forward to a growing independence. But the fleeting glimpses of his almost-brotherly love for the younger girl are unmistakeable: the anxious glance back at her clambering across the fallen tree, the double dread invoked by the wasp on the figwort, the wrapping of his sweater about her wet legs - all of these build up a portrait of the unsaid. His frustrated tears at the end are heartbreaking.
April 18th 2020:
The Manatee (LAS)
Rather like 'Lion at School', this story gives physical form to a child's emotions and helps its young reader begin to understand how to come to terms with them. The choice of a manatee for the subject of a story certainly intrigued me, but a similar bit of word-playfulness is in evidence here as it was in 'The Crooked Little Finger': to a young child, the obscure word 'manatee' is, of course, going to sound like 'man-eater'...
Then Pearce goes the whole hog to create an apparition fully redolent of Jamesian repulsion, just for good measure.
April 19th 2020:
Miss Mountain (TSC)
An interesting juxtaposition has inadvertently been made, reading this outstanding story immediately after 'The Manatee': both stories deal sensitively with childhood terrors. In 'Miss Mountain', a supernatural tale for older readers, the intense emotional world is more clearly and intensely drawn, though both make no bones about the absolute confusion and loneliness of being a child. Interestingly too, both employ the fear of sleeping alone in a room to connect the emotional world of the stories so immediately to their readers.
Along with 'The Fir Cone', today's story has made the deepest impression on me.
April 20th 2020:
Mr Hurrel's Tallboy (WA)
Although many of Pearce's stories are called 'weird' or 'strange' tales, they rarely exhibit a ghost per se; the 'supernatural' is more 'psycho-natural', an outpouring of feeling, emotions that have been trapped up and now spilling over into the present. Today, a man's pride in his craft is lent physical form in the shape of the eponymous furniture. There are no ghosts here, but there is hurt and memory.
April 21st 2020:
Mrs Chamberlain's Reunion (TR)
The build-up of this story is brilliant: a family comedy of manners, an unsettled atmosphere, and some sharp character development all combine to lay the foundations for a very surprising ending! The wicked glint of Joan Aiken's eye is occasionally discernable in some turns of phrase but also in how in every normal situation a touch of the macabre can always exist.
The Nest-Egg (TR)
A character sketch beautifully drawn. William's story is a fairy tale, replete with the ordinary: the absent widowed father, the wicked step-mother transformed into a bullying Aunt, even a chicken that lays a 'golden egg'. No fantasy this, however, with its dark references to abuse and grief; Pearce rather shows her reader that even in the most unhappy of times people can live happily ever after, as finally William's determinedly hopeful words to his father ring in our ears: 'We will manage. You said so.'
April 22nd 2020:
Nutmeg (TR)
'Nutmeg', almost bleak in places, is certainly the darkest tale I have read so far from Pearce; the climax of this story is quite a shock. Pearce manages to combine overwhelming adult grief with a child's intense love for a pet and the effect is stunning. It explores a harrowing and confusing theme, not simply either, but with incredible complexity. I have been trying to think of how children might take this story; certainly it would prove that no matter how old the child is, talk and discussion about their reading is not only beneficial but necessary.
A Prince in Another Place (TR)
There's a distinct whiff of sulphur about this story; more than a whiff actually! The narrator's blithe voice is interesting - an adult who doesn't really see or believe what's going on - although the denouement is rather overblown and overall the tone of the piece uneven: while the description of a maths lesson employing a hand-of-glory presents a (slightly awkward) comic moment, the recounting of the children being willingly drawn into the infernal goings-on, and their ultimate wake-up call, is genuinely sinister.
April 23rd 2020:
Return to Air (WTND)
A tiny masterpiece this, which touches on some quintessential Pearce themes. There is the idyllic pastoral quality of the water - I love the description of the 'thick greeny brown lemonade' of pond-water - and also the idea of time and memory: the tin may be unassuming, nothing important, and yet by finding it, 'Sausage' understands that everyone who lives through time, even their smallest possession, has a significance to play - their memory, that 'return to air', is important.
The Road it Went By (WTND)
Strange stories about supernatural vegetation are not legion but this one is deliciously unsettling - what on Earth is 'it' that is found in Mrs Hamilton's garden? The weeds spreading wide over the grave at the end has a disturbing quality too - something alien finding its feet, the beginnings of a larger terror...
April 24th 2020:
The Rope (TR)
This is a telescope of a tale and one which explores the inner world of a child, a theme to which Pearce returns time and again, always with deep respect and sensitivity. Here it is fear that she addresses. For the most part of the story we live the fear that one boy experiences from the inside, the huge, overwhelming, crippling horror of swinging across a river for the first time in front of other children - a childhood rite of passage. Then - right at the end of the story - we see a different boy's fear from the outside, his equally terrifying fear of the sight of blood. But this time, the fear is small, ephemeral, easily cast aside. Pearce says everything about coming to terms with yourself, but with the lightest of touches. Quietly virtuosic.
April 24th 2020:
The Runaway (LAS)
An alternative title for this sly tale might almost be 'How the Mighty are Fallen'. Seemingly, the little boy in this tale is too old for his pre-school minder, now that he is all 'grown up'. But when he runs away, it gets too much for him and he is finally wheeled home in a pushchair loaned by a stranger on the market. The irony is sharp but drawn with the slightly knowing warmth of a kindly parent.
April 25th 2020:
The Running Companion (TSC)
The narration style and structure of this feels more like a modern folk-tale than a ghost story per se. Where in a tale of the supernatural there would traditionally be an feeling of uncertainty throughout, here from the very start we have a good idea of how it will turn out so the tension does not run particularly high.
Samantha and the Ghost (WA)
Although I am not a huge fan of humorous ghost stories, there is charm here particularly in the last line. The 'ghosting' of the ancient building and its occupant superimposed on the branches of the modern apple tree is a wonderful visual effect, too.
April 26th 2020:
Secrets (LAS)
This wonderful little story from 'Lion and School' sums up the feeling behind all of the tales in that collection. The finding of the secret kittens and the description of the trusting between the mother cat and the little girl is a passage of true joy; but peering through the keyhole to spy on the older siblings and her parents is a further triumph for the young.
This was the last story I had left to read from 'Lion at School' and the whole collection has left a very great impression on me: Pearce shows not only incredible skill here but tells very real stories full of importance and relevance to infant readers.
The Shadow Cage (TSC)
This has to be Pearce's crowning glory of her ghost stories. A children's ghost story must be horribly difficult to write: not only have you got to make sure that the horror counts but that it's kept to an appropriate level; and then there's the ubiquitous problem of short story writing too, getting to the nub of a moment or thought or happening in the most precise way possible.
'The Shadow Cage', despite a rather finicky start, allows its terror poke out its head bit by bit. Even the frankly terrifying 'cage of shadows' itself is not enough - the revelation of the story behind the glass bottle and the skin-crawling 'whistlers' echo long after the final words are read. It's a story that owes equal parts to M.R. James' 'A View from a Hill' and 'The Ash Tree' but re-works their ideas into something original and really quite horrible.
I'm sure Pearce, when she saw me hand over the copy of 'The Shadow Cage' for her to sign, must have been pleased to see this volume turn up in a new reader's hands. Well, Philippa, I may not be able to tell you now, face-to-face, but I loved this particular ghost story of yours. A chilling and very pleasing terror indeed.
April 27th 2020:
Still Jim and Silent Jim (WTND)
An absolute masterpiece. I simply can't do justice in my own words to this wonderful tale, only mention the highlights: the perfection of the relationship between a shy boy and his loving grandfather, the joy of youth and of age, the subtle layers of time in the graveyard scene. Utterly heartfelt, moving, funny and revelatory.
The Strange Illness of Mr Arthur Cook (WA)
Tales of the supernatural benefit from rules: when credulity is stretched, one needs some sort of unspoken law. Maybe the individual reader who makes these laws, maybe it's an intrinsic sense gained from centuries of storytelling, built into the human grain.
Ghosts are creepy; they are death (semi-)incarnate...but the spirit in this story has returned to ensure their garden is well-looked-after. Hmm. A 'guardian' entity is a common feature of some great spook stories, though, isn't it? No, that's not really the ghost's purpose here either; rather the apparition is annoying and (literally) painful, unfairly so in my view. It doesn't play by the rules.
April 28th 2020:
The Tree in the Meadow (WTND)
Fleeting scenes of breathtaking impact come thick and fast in this tale - the collapse of the crown of branches, the boys' rude, pagan, ritualistic dancing around the fallen tree, the 'invisible' space once the elm has been removed: these moments are virtuosic in their intensity. When I reached the final sentence, I realised - not for the first time with Pearce's stories - that what had been told was not the whole story: the essence was something else, something far greater and more mysterious than the everyday world.
What the Neighbours Did (WTND)
Pearce is always on the side of the children, but here she shifts her sympathetic on a grown-up. Those who aren't fully understood, whose lives find comfort in the things that most adults dismiss, find a welcome place in her fiction. The ending of this may be sad, but the child-narrator has learned something vital about life, his parents specifically, and people generally.
April 29th 2020:
Who's Afraid? (WA)
This story echoes 'Lion at School' but with no recourse to fantasy. Having said that, the weird keening is distinctly eerie and there is something otherworldly about the old woman.
April 30th 2020:
The Yellow Ball (WA)
What Pearce does best is her exceptional way of making her readers feel the mystery of time and how inexpressible it is. This may be a story with a ghost, but it's not a ghost story; rather, its an exploration of time, its effect on us all, and the way in which past and present are juxtaposed here is simply achingly beautiful. Grief is there too - not only the living children's deep sadness but the implied grief of 'Millie's' previous owner, who has hidden away the ball in a tree. Conrad cannot comprehend the nature of grief and demands why his sister didn't just hide the ball again. It's only Lizzie who understands; only her who appreciates that although there may be pain, time will heal the wounds.
***
It has been an absolute joy to read all of Philippa Pearce's short fiction like this during #PearceInApril. Her quiet, unassuming voice echoes through every story, her warm, encouraging spirit speaking softly, calmly to every child.
The overall impression I have had of Pearce throughout this month is one of nurturing and supporting her young readers in their complex lives: there is no softening of real messages, no dressing-up or dumbing-down. And I recall even more strongly now the feeling I had when after that seminar I went up to this wonderful author, when it felt like it was just me and her in the room: the feeling of being welcomed into her world and that she had been waiting there...for me.
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