Daphne du Maurier’s 1971 collection contains five longish short stories, the best-known of which, ‘Don’t Look Now’ (1970), was made into a film by Nicolas Roeg and released in 1973. They feature various aspects of loss, discomfort, misery, disappointment, self-deception and betrayal, all subtly drawn with a dispassionate, and sometimes cynical, eye.
‘Don’t Look Now’
Don’t Look Now has an English couple, Laura and John, make a fateful visit to Venice. Their five-year old daughter Christine had died not long before, and their son is at boarding school in England. By chance they come across two weird sisters, one of whom is blind but claims their daughter is with them in spirit. Laura wants to believe it is true, but John is sceptical, annoyed the women are opening wounds when the purpose of the trip was to help Laura forget, and is suspicious of their motives. While he is grieving too, he imposes rigid control on himself, though it is debatable whose approach is the healthier, and thoughts of death slip into his thoughts unbidden as he contemplates the sinking city, which had famously flooded in 1966.
There are differences in the film version to extend the story, actually improving it. In the short story, Christine dies of meningitis whereas drowning in the film ties her into the theme of water. Also John and Laura are tourists on a brief visit to Venice as part of a longer holiday, so there is no element of jeopardy from working on church restoration, and the action takes place in summer rather than winter, changing the character of the city. However, du Maurier certainly spotted the potential of the quiet Venetian canals at night as an inherently spooky setting.
The story poignantly captures the difficulties of a couple who have lost a child when they are out of step with each other in the way they handle their grief. As in the film, the misunderstanding caused by John’s precognition is key to his death. We cannot be sure if the blind sister is truly psychic, but in both versions the weight of evidence points to the reality of her ability; her Scottishness hints that second sight is real and is operating here. Unfortunately she could sense the danger John was in, but not specifics which might have saved his life.
‘Not After Midnight’
Nothing to do with feeding gremlins, rather a hint of M R Jamesian cursed artefacts transferring their baleful influence from one possessor to another. Timothy Grey, a self-satisfied (though he denies it to himself) bachelor prep school teacher, visits Crete on a painting holiday. Unhappy with his poolside chalet, he arrogantly insists on a seafront view, despite the extra cost and the fact the previous tenant had drowned a fortnight before. He becomes entangled with a boorish American, Stoll, and his deaf wife who have a chalet in the same row. Stoll drinks heavily and is offensive to Grey, but invites him to pay a call, though not after midnight; an invitation Grey is happy to decline. He discovers the couple are plundering a wreck for ancient artefacts.
When the Stolls leave the holiday complex they deposit outside his room an ancient vase with a hideous design. It features Silenos, drunken tutor to Dionysus, ‘unable to distinguish truth from falsehood’, a figure which reminds Grey of Stoll. Grey falls under its influence: unless, that is, it acts merely as a catalyst to unlock a side he always had but repressed. The story is told in flashback, with the opening showing him resigning from school for certain undescribed impulses – presumably alcoholism, and perhaps even worse. It is implied the American had left the vase to pass on its influence, but if so it came too late for him, and an unhappy fate may await Mr Grey also.
‘A Border-Line Case’
Aspiring actress 19-year old Shelagh is with her father when he dies, but in his final moments he looks at her in horror as she strikes a pose from Twelfth Night, in which she is about to appear. She decides to look up his old naval chum, Nick, best man at her parents’ wedding and at one time a good family friend, but from whom her father had become estranged. He is now living in Northern Ireland where he has recreated service life on a small island in a lough. Using her stage name she visits unannounced and discovers more than she bargained for when she finds herself in a nest of Irish republicans and is effectively, though benignly, abducted.
Despite the age gap she falls for charismatic Nick, who, in a night-time ride in a bread van to set off some explosions on the border, declares his intention to ‘scalp’ her. Belatedly she discovers the reason for her father’s death-bed horror, hinging on Nick having appeared in Twelfth Night at Dartford Naval College as a cadet, and looking the spit of Shelagh. The payoff is telegraphed early, but the suggestion of incest, albeit unintentional, is still shocking, as is the terrible thought of discovering your daughter is not yours moments before you die.
‘The Way of the Cross’
This story is toe-curlingly funny in a sour way. A group of English tourists from the same parish, though not sharing a great deal of piety between them, visit Jerusalem from their cruise ship but find they receive the opposite of blessings, whether deserved or not, as they discover a little about themselves and what others think of them during their brief stay. Precocious nine-year old Robin coasts through the chaos besetting his elders; he is the only one keen to get to grips with the Biblical accounts and how they reconcile with the city’s topography, while the adults suffer stress of various degrees as they try to navigate the packed city during a religious festival, and navigate their personal relationships.
The experiences can be harsh; poor Rev Babcock, reluctantly filling in for the regular high church vicar who remained on the ship with ‘flu, and who would rather be back in his northern boys’ club than leading the tour – lacking the light touch required – is humiliated by a catastrophic stomach upset in a church full of pilgrims. Nice newly-wed Bob surely doesn’t deserve to be cuckolded on his honeymoon simply because he is suffering a certain dysfunction and his bride is seduced by a middle-aged chancer in the party. An elderly spinster devoted to the parish vicar (whom she calls Father) is devastated to learn he considers her a nuisance, then she falls in a drain. For others there is less sympathy, taking their pretentions into account. Perhaps we are seeing God moving in mysterious ways, teaching some humility along the way, or perhaps du Maurier having a small revenge on the sorts of people for whom she did not much care.
‘The Breakthrough’
The final entry is different in tone to the other stories, and set closer to home. An electronics engineer is informally seconded to a government research establishment on the bleak Suffolk coast. He learns his job is to assist with an experiment being conducted ‘off the books’ by the head of a group, recent widower James MacLean, rather than the research on blast they are supposed to be pursuing. When the new recruit arrives he finds MacLean’s small team attempting to capture the life spark, that force which vacates the body upon death, by means of technology, with a terminally ill patient, Ken, as the guinea pig. The effect is enhanced by using the psychic energy, ‘Force Six’, of a young girl with learning difficulties, her own powers enhanced by those acquired from her dead twin.
The plot feels underdeveloped, but it captures the impoverished state of post-war British science well. The careless attitude to ethical considerations is also exemplified; the religious implications are briefly considered (a Catholic engineer had left citing concerns that souls thus contained would not be allowed to proceed to purgatory) but the potentially damaging effect on the child only becomes a concern when she is clearly distressed and apparently in contact with the trapped spirit of the deceased Ken. That puts an end to the experiment, just as the men from the Ministry turn up to do an audit of the blast research, but MacLean is determined to continue, despite evidence the captured essence was in torment.
‘The Breakthrough’ was first published in 1966, and it may have been an influence on the 1972 film The Asphyx, which also features science used in an attempt to trap the life force, with unfortunate consequences. By coincidence (perhaps) Konstantin Raudive’s book on electronic voice phenomena, published in 1971, was titled Breakthrough. The Doors had released their first LP which included ‘Break on Through (To the Other Side)’ in 1967; who knows what du Maurier and Raudive had on their turntables.
The Joy of Mere Words 