Backlisted - Cold Hand in Mine by Robert Aickman

Episode Date: October 26, 2016

In a special Halloween edition, John Mitchinson and Andy Miller are joined by Andrew Male to discuss Cold Hand In Mine, a book of 'strange stories' by British writer Robert AickmanTimings: (may differ due to adverts)5'34 - Autumn by Ali Smith11'00 - British Popular Customs by Rev T.F. Thiselton Dyer16'46 - Cold Hand in Mine by Robert Aickman* To purchase any of the books mentioned in this episode please visit our bookshop at uk.bookshop.org/shop/backlisted where all profits help to sustain this podcast and UK independent bookshops.* For information about everything mentioned in this episode visit www.backlisted.fm*If you'd like to support the show, listen without adverts, receive the show early and with extra bonus fortnightly episodes, become a Patreon at www.patreon.com/backlisted Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Make your nights unforgettable with American Express. Unmissable show coming up? Good news. We've got access to pre-sale tickets so you don't miss it. Meeting with friends before the show? We can book your reservation. And when you get to the main event, skip to the good bit using the card member entrance.

Let's go seize the night. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by car and other conditions apply. Discover more value than ever at Loblaws. Like Fresh Promise. Produce is carefully selected and checked for freshness. And if it's not fresh, it's free.

Yes, you heard that right. From the crispest lettuce to the juiciest apples, Loblaws is committed to fresh, so you get the best fruits and veggies. Look for new value programs when you shop at Loblaws, in-store and online. Conditions may apply. See in-store for details. Yn ystod y tro cyntaf, roedd John a fi yn gweld un ar y Dorwm. The last time John and I saw one was up in Durham. It was great, Durham Literary Festival, Durham Book Festival. I was reading in residence there. I did a panel on Sunday morning with the writer Kit Duvall, who is going to be a guest here on Backlisted in a few weeks' time,

and with Cathy Rensenbrink, the books journalist and terrific author, Kathy Rensenbrink. And she mentioned something on this panel that we did about what makes a classic, which has really stuck in my mind, and I want to raise it with you now, right? She said, oh, she said,

there's a thing I see people doing on Twitter where someone will say, for the sake of argument, let's say John Updike. Someone will say, has anyone read any John Updike? Should I give it a go? And people will reply and say, oh, I read like 10 pages of Rabbit Run and didn't get on with it. Not for me. And then the first person will reply and say, oh, thanks for that. You've saved me the bother.

I think that's terrible. Imagine the great years and years that people take to write books. And because someone had a bit of an off day and didn't really get it or couldn't be bothered, someone else just goes, oh, yeah, thanks for saving me the bother. But isn't that just the same as someone saying I didn't like the first track in an LP and then not listening to the rest of it?

Yeah, it's wrong. Or the first 30 seconds of the LP. That's terrible. I think that's all right, isn't it? Poor old Brian Wilson went mad making pet sounds, but you don't like the first 30 seconds of the first track. That's not Brian Wilson's problem, mate. I don't know, but I haven't listened the first 30 seconds of the first track. It's not Brian Wilson's problem, mate. I don't know, but I haven't listened to an album in its entirety

for years. Andy and I have discussed before the theory that you can have an opinion on a book if you've not read it because that opinion is called from its cultural cachet and how people respond to it. You're allowed to have an opinion on a book if you

haven't read it, and you're allowed to have an opinion on a book if you haven't read it. And you're allowed to have an opinion on a book if you have read it. If you've finished it. But you've only read 10 pages or 100 pages. You're not allowed to have an opinion on it. Go and be gone. Stop muddying the pool. This is the no man's water

of literature. Yes. An opinion based on 10 pages is not an opinion worth having. of literature. Yes. It's interesting. An opinion based on 10 pages, is there not an opinion worth having? I've always felt that, I've always hated samplers for that reason. And I know we have to put excerpts for our crowdfunding projects on the site,

but that seems to me to be, what are you going to do? You're asking people to back an idea, essentially, which I think is valid. But to have a fully formed opinion about a book based on an excerpt seems to me a little just lazy. What's wrong with something that's half thought through? What about a half thought through opinion?

I quite like them. It says a lot about you, but not about the book. That's true. It says that you're a lightweight. But also, your insistence on reading a book until it finishes says a lot about you. Where does that come from? Where in your childhood does that come from?

Did you always do it? Have you always done it? No, no, no. I'm a reformed character. I'm a new Puritan. I hate not finishing things. I can't bear it. It really, really upsets me.

Even if I'm not enjoying it, that's some sort of weird puritanical thing, I suppose. I'm the opposite of that. I quite happily put a book down if I'm not enjoying it and not pick it up again. I'll happily judge an album on its first song. Backlisted is now over. Backlisted is over.

Backlisted is over. And a book on something I've only read ten pages. I think you're allowed to do that. Just don't then go round offering your opinion on it. Here we go. You're a lot. OK. Hello and welcome to a special Halloween edition of Backlisted Podcast.

Today we're gathered once more around the kitchen table of our sponsors Unbound, the publishers who bring authors and readers together at the dead of night to create good things to read. I'm John Mitchinson, the publisher at Unbound. Oh, and I'm Andy Chiller, and I'm the author of The Year of Bleeding Dangerously. We're joined, as usual, by the writer and spiritualist Matthew Clayton. Hello, Matthew.

Or is it just ectoplasm that I see next to me? It's a ghost, a ghostly figure. And joining us on this edition again is writer, critic and senior associate editor at Mojo, Andrew Mayle. Andrew previously graced us with his presence when he appeared to talk about Raymond Chandler's The High Window six whole months ago. He did talk about it, he didn't just appear to talk about it.

He appeared and then talked. Andrew chose one of the most famous crime writers and then came on this show and said he wasn't a crime writer. Today, you've chosen one of the most notorious writers of ghost stories who you're going to tell us isn't a writer of ghost stories. He is not a writer of ghost stories. And who would that be? Robert Aikman.

The great Robert Aikman. I mean, the And who would that be? Robert Aikman. The great Robert Aikman. I mean, the truly great, I think, Robert Aikman. But first, the foul rag and bone shop of the heart, Andy. We're all at a start, and certainly where this podcast usually starts. Yes, yes. What have you been reading this week? So I've been reading the new novel by Ali Smith, and that novel is called Autumn.

How appropriate? Seasonally appropriate? I shall read you a tiny portion of it in a minute, which is a seasonally appropriate bit. I really like Ali Smith, anyway, and I really wanted to read this particular novel as quickly as possible, because she only finished writing it, it seems, about six weeks ago.

And it's just... It was really unusual to read a novel so contemporary that it has particular names and events relating to the referendum in the summer, which just pull you up short or give you goosebumps because you can't quite believe you're seeing them in a finished, printed book. Why have they done it so quickly? Have Hamish Hamilton explained why they've published it so quickly?

Is that something that she wanted? I think she wanted that. Just a desperate attempt to get some revenue before Christmas. I think it's not what to ride the Gove bandwagon. I don't believe so. Not even the Gove bandwagon I don't believe so not even Michael Gove wants to do that now if you can see the bandwagon you've already missed it so she's writing

I believe she's writing four seasonal novels of which this is the first so it's very contemporary. It's about autumn, the best season, as we know. It features quite... It's true, it's obviously the best season. Go on, then. Put your favourite seasons in order.

Oh, it's simple. Autumn, winter, spring, and trailing way behind, dreaded, dreaded summer. The worst of all the seasons. That every all right thinking people know. No, Matthew, do not come back a minute. You know, my list is exactly the opposite. Of course, of course it is.

This novel also covers the brilliant pop art painter Pauline Boty in some depth. Fantastically interesting and I read it in a day or so it's wonderfully written it clearly owes a debt to Tuve Janssen's The Summer Book there is a relationship in Ali Smith's novel between an elderly man

and a young woman mostly conveyed in dialogue it's very very like very like the summer book, a book which Ali Smith, Ali Smith's written at length about Duvet Janssen. And John and I were talking about, this is such a beautiful, I don't actually have a copy of the book with me because I didn't want to damage it by bringing it to London with me today. It's so beautifully designed and printed and bound.

Is it a Hockney print on the front? It is, yeah. And they've done this wonderful thing with the endpapers. All the binding and the cover and the endpapers are the colours of autumn. They're different autumnal shades. And the inside front cover is green and the inside back cover is a painting by Pauline Boty.

So when you finish the book, you turn the page and suddenly there's this incredible explosion of pop art out of what's been a very muted experience up to that point, which is one of the points of the novel, is saying that art is here, even in these awful times, to explode into colour when we need it. these awful times to explode into colour when we need it. So just actual reading for pleasure.

Imagine that. You know, picking up a book that you love that's about things you're interested in, which is a beautiful object to hold. It's just wonderful. And what I'd also say to people is, if you are thinking of reading this book, which you probably might be because it's Ali Smith, read it now.

The sooner you read it, the more resonance it will have. Because it's designed to be read right now. Is that because of the topical... Yes. And you think it's carrying a kind of a message for now. Yes, and also it's a unique... I can't think of another experience of picking up a novel which deals with things which are still happening,

which are still in the news and still going on now. But I just want to read this tiny bit. Can you do a Scottish accent? I can, but it would lose us our Scottish listener. At least another referendum. Contentious at this time. This is about October, the month in which this is both being recorded and will be broadcast.

October's a blink of the eye. The apples weighing down the tree a minute ago are gone and the tree's leaves are yellow and thinning. A frost has snapped millions of trees all across the country into brightness. The ones that aren't evergreen are a combination of beautiful and tawdry, red, orange, gold, the leaves, then brown and down. The days are unexpectedly mild. It doesn't feel that far from gold, the leaves, then brown and down. The days are unexpectedly mild. It doesn't feel that far from summer, not really,

if it weren't for the underbite of the day, the lacy creep of the dark and the damp at its edges, the plants calm in the folding themselves away, the beads of condensation on the web strings hung between things. On the warm days, it feels wrong, so many leaves falling, but the nights are cool to cold. Wow, that's great. That's really good.

She's great, isn't she? The book is funny as well when it wants to be funny and it's clever when it wants to be clever. I really love this book. Wonderful. John, what have you been reading? Well, I couldn't be further. But keeping on the topical theme, I went back to an old favourite.

In fact, if I was going to be thinking of the themes that we're going to go on to later, if you could pour yourself into a book or you could, as it were, have a book that holds your soul, I'd say there's more of my soul in this book than any other that I own, which is quite a big thing. Wow.

Like a Harry Potter horcrux. It's the Londonator said. Yeah, that's interesting. I got hold of it when I was at a particular time in my life when I was living not in the UK and wanted to get under the skin of UK pop. It's called British Popular Customs, Present and Past, illustrating the social and domestic manners of the people,

arranged according to the calendar of the year by the Reverend T.F. Thistleton Dyer, M.A. of Pembroke College, Oxon. And it's a brilliant gazetteer. For every day of the year, the strange, bizarre... It's just a completely... I mean, there are lots of gazetteers and there are lots of modern ones, but this was written in the 1860s. So what's interesting is a lot of the customs that we now associate with things

hadn't really kicked in, and a lot of the things that we think, for example, Halloween and trick-or-treating, that we think is an extremely modern, new-fangled American invention, you discover, in fact, souling, as it was called in those days, kids going from door to door and asking for soul cakes in return for money or the threat of often scarcely concealed threat of violence, if they didn't. But it's just a joy.

There were a couple of things I thought I would read out. There was one I particularly liked, the fact that the night was called variously Cake Night, Nutcrack Night, Pookie Night, Punky Night, which is quite nice, or Spunky Night. In Somerset, it was known as It's Spunky Night, It's Spunky Night, Gee's a candle, gee's a as, it's Spunky Night, it's Spunky Night.

Gie's a candle, gie's a light. If he don't, he'll have a fright. Sample that. It's very, very, very... It's obviously very basic folk poetry. I like the... This is to give you the style. He's not a great stylist, let's be honest.

One of the most common customs is that for diving for apples or of catching at them with the mouth only, the hands being tied behind and the apple suspended on one end of a long transverse beam at the other extremity of which is fixed a lighted candle. The fruit and nuts form the most prominent part of the evening feast and from this circumstance, the night has been termed Nutcrack Night. Oh, those crazy olden times.

So there's a lot of stuff about fire and a lot of stuff about apples and the turning of the year. There's a good one, I think Lancashire, my favourite recipe. He says, this is very Thistleton diet, this is in the Isle of Man, and why not? For some peculiar reason, potatoes, parsnips and fish are pounded together and mixed with butter.

This forms the evening meal. Oh, lovely. Lovely pounded parsnip. On spunky night. It's odd that both your descriptions reminded me of the novelist that we are about to read I'm going to read you just a very short

and this is right up at Aikman Street, in Lancashire says Hampson, this is the thing is the book is full of other people who you've never heard of so it's a lot of old dead scholarship which is one of the reasons I like it in Lancashire's at hampton it was formally believed everything is formally believed basically most of the christmas things

are all formally these christians have died out in recent years it was formally believed that witches assembled on the night to do their deeds without a name at their general rendezvous which is great the general rendezvous not the specific one in the forest of pendle a ruined and desolate farmhouse denominated the malkin tower from the awful purposes to which it was devoted this superstition led to a ceremony called lating or perhaps leeting the witches it was believed that if a lighted candle were carried about the fells or hills from 11 till 12 o'clock at night and burned all that time steadily it had so far triumphed over the evil power of the witches who as they passed to the malkin tower would

employ their utmost efforts to extinguish the light and the person whom it represented might safely defy their malice during the season but if by accident the light went out it was an omen of evil to the act to the luckless white for whom the experiment was made. So this is kind of people with a candle outside in the middle of October. I'd say they have absolutely no chance. Oh, no, another one's down. Anyway, the whole idea of finding yourself on a hill in Lancashire with a candle.

Slightly not knowing where you were going. On a hillside desolate. On a hill in Lancashire with a candle. Slightly not knowing where you were going. On a hillside desolate. On a hillside desolate. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's kind of quite a good set-up for... And I think that would be... We've got so much to set in. The only thing I wanted you was my favourite quote on Halloween

from Jean Baudrillard. What other podcast would offer that phrase? There is nothing funny about Halloween. What other podcast would offer that phrase? There is nothing funny about Halloween. This sarcastic festival reflects rather an infernal demand for revenge by children and the adult world. Trick or treat, Jean. Yeah, exactly. I don't know what it is. Trick or treat in French.

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Let's go to Aikman. So we are talking about the writer of Strange Stories, Robert Aikman, today. of Strange Stories Robert Aikman today and before I hand over to our guest Andrew Mayall I just want to explain that in a slight break from Backlisted Tradition, although we

are concentrating on a volume of Robert Aikman's stories called Cold Hand in Mine we will also be talking about other stories by Robert Aikman on the grounds that once you've read two or three of these stories you'll want to read many more of them. All of them.

And this is a good moment because there are four volumes currently in print from Faber and Faber so they're quite easy to come by. And respect to Faber and Faber for having reissued them. Andrew, I want to ask you two questions to start with. First of all, can you remember the to start with first of all can you remember the first robert aikman story that you read second of all for our listeners define a robert aikman story for me oh um the first robert aikman story i would have read i probably wouldn't

have known it was a robert aikman story because as a kid I devoured Fontana books of ghost stories and but I didn't always know I just read them as stories I didn't kind of then go oh that was by Walter Delamere or that was by Robert Aikman so the first time I kind of became aware of Robert Aikman was when I was at college in Stafford and I found a book withdrawn from Middlesbrough Libraries and Information called The Unsettled Dust but for ages I couldn't get into the story

I have it here you can describe it as sort of a gentleman in a sort of nice 80s double breasted suit staring into a cop's where there is some blood on the end of a rosebush. I think finding suitable images for the covers of Robert Aikman books is a perennial problem, although there's one there. You were holding up the first edition of Cold Hand in mine

to show John and Matthew that. Do you know who drew that no it's beautiful Edward Gorey he did two covers he did Cold Hand in Mine and he also did a book club compilation called Painted Devils and they were both sort of Edward Gorey covers and they

really well suited who's Edward Gorey Edward Gorey the guy you read like two pages of and couldn't get over it. Thanks for saving me the bother. That would be Robert Aikman.

Edward Gory. Who's going to explain Edward Gory? He's an upstate New York poet and illustrator operating in the 1950s and 60s, sort of heavily indebted to people like Ambrose Bierce, but also sort of Edward Lear.

Edward Lear, for sure. And a beautiful, delicate penmanship, but incredibly macabre stories. Very famous story called The Uninvited Guest. Yes. That's the most famous. Hey, I've got an album of, as I'm sure Andrew has, of Robert Wyatt singing Edward Gorey stories. Oh, really've got an album of, as I'm sure Andrew has, of Robert Wyatt

singing Edward Gorey's which I'm very happy to pass on to you. Is it called The Uninvited Guest? It might be called The Uninvited Guest. I think it is. The one that you see a lot, the kids' book, The Gashacoon Tynies, which is

a very kind of macabre series. A is for Albert who fell down the stairs. So it's basically, it's an A to Z of children and how they die. So Andrew and Matthew bought you valuable thinking time there to define an Aikman story. You've done gory for us. I have a definition here. Can I just go back to that?

Ah, okay, yeah, go for it. We should just say about that, although it is an Edward Gorey cover, you have to say it is Ron Seal isn't it to the point of madness cold hand in mine I've drawn a hand on another hand is that ok? It might have the hospice

in the distance one of Aitman's stories so it might be related to one of the stories within there and it might be a wood that he's going into another Aitman's story into the wood Not in that book though You're into the wood. Not in that book, though. Oh, no, not in that book. You're saying there are no woods in that book?

Oh, I'm sure, of course there are. So how to define an Aikman story? Kind of parochial, kind of unremarkable Englishman, often sort of public servant or travelling salesman, moving through kind of the edges of a sort of tawdry sad modern world something goes wrong, they take a wrong step

or they kind of perform some sort of act that they later sort of pay for and they enter into this world beyond where the normal rules by which they kind of judge everything no longer exist as to quote a famous line in one of the Aikman story kind of judge everything no longer exist. To quote a famous line in one of the Aikman story,

kind of, the map is wrong. Yeah, yeah, that's right, Andrew. You were saying earlier that the map is wrong. And in a great Aikman story, what happens is you turn around to think about where you were 20 pages earlier and you can't understand how you got to the horrible place that you've reached. It's brilliantly done. It's that remarkable thing, isn't it?

They're so brilliantly constructed because usually nothing that is odd happens for about three quarters of the story. But small little details, just kind of lines, little kind of he is the master of

what gets called the unheimlich. Just that little, ooh, that's a strange detail, and you move on. But then every single one of the stories ends up with... It's a bit like... I mean, I know it's in everybody's minds, you know, Stranger Things, the upside down.

Suddenly, although nothing's changed, the character hasn't essentially changed or hasn't learned anything or hasn't had a major revelation, what's around them has suddenly kind of conspired to kind of punish them or undermine everything that they thought. I mean, they're deep. What I love about them is philosophical. Philosophical, and also he likes a...

Not a loose end, that's not right, but he likes to take you somewhere, I think, and then leave you there. Yes, absolutely. Without saying, that's not right but he likes to take you somewhere I think and then leave you there without saying there's the path back, right, I think that's really important and one of the things that's particular about Aidan, I just want to say John I

yesterday I said on Twitter that I was trying to, for my notes for the stories in cold hand in mind I was trying to write one sentence synopses of each story so I could remember which story was which. Like Trump book reports, right? Yeah, yeah. Sad. And I said, as soon as I started trying to do it, bigly, as soon as I started trying to do it, I realised that it's really hard to do it without spoiling both the plot and the style in which it's done. Totally. But also not doing the stories justice as well. Yeah, yeah. Cage is from a young girl's journal.

Yeah. And you can't, there is a fact. No spoilers. There is a fact in that. Yes. Which becomes gradually apparent. Yes. But it's so brilliantly kind of played.

I mean, even though it's three quarters of the way through, you pretty much know what's going on. You read to the end because you can't quite, he's brilliant at just keeping you hanging just enough. But with that story... Sorry, Andrew. I must just say, when I said that I was trying to boil these synopses down,

I had several people reply to me with various comments. The great M. John Harrison replied saying, I can't imagine anything more difficult. Good luck. And the very nice and talented editor, Simon Spanton, suggested a synopsis of an Aikman story would be, something happens which may or may not. Brilliant.

And Lucy from the Sheen Bookshop said, something ordinary horrifies someone and also the reader. Yeah, that's good. They're good, aren't they? You've got one as well, Andrew. But the reviewer for the Irish Times, who reviewed my paperback edition of Dark Entries from 1964, saved us all the trouble. Very ordinary, unimaginative people are presented

who suddenly find themselves caught in a horrible nightmare. I think that's pretty good. So, Andrew, you were talking about the Fontana book of great ghost stories, which I'm sure we remember these from our news. The first eight were all edited by Robert Aikman. So the first eight are edited by Aikman, and in the introduction here to the first one, I'm just going to read this out,

because Aikman tells you what he was trying to do with the ghost story which I think is very interesting and this volume, the first one, the Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories, this has stories by people like L.P. Hartley Sheridan Le Fanu

D.H. Lawrence Mrs. Gaskell and Robert Aikman. So it's an anthology, they weren't created for that, but they're stuff he's drawn from existing work. And he says, this is the introduction

to Volume 1, and I bear in mind that there were eight that he edited. This is his hostage to fortune opening line. There are only about 30 or 40 first-class ghost stories in the whole of Western literature. But he then goes on. The ghost story must be distinguished

from the scientific extravaganza on its left and from the horror story on its right. The writing of science fiction demands primarily the scientific aptitude for imagining the unrealised implications of a known phenomenon. Its composition is akin to the making of an actual scientific discovery, and it is well known that many of the scientific developments first promulgated as fiction all too soon become fact. The horror story is purely sadistic. It depends entirely upon power to shock. Today,

of course, Dessard has defenders in high places such as Madame Simone de Beauvoir and existentialism contends that life itself is properly to be seen as a sequence of minute-to-minute shocks including quote nausea and quote vertigo. The ghost story however seems to derive its power from what is most deep and most permanent. It is allied to poetry. The ghost story, like Dr Freud, makes contact with the submerged nine-tenths. I love that. Again, it reminded me, there's a great line

trying to sum up Eichmann's kind of technique or his sort of deep, rather dark philosophy like this in Niemann's Wasser, which is a brilliant, brilliant story about which you can't really give anything away. Do you want my synopsis?

Oh, go on then. The Third World War I, Prince Elmo sorties alone onto a lake with unhappy consequences. Do they a lake with unhappy consequences. Do they all end with unhappiness? Pretty much. This is very Aikman. All things must go ill one

day, Your Highness, or what seems to be ill. That is the message of the memento mori. And usually, it is one day soon. That's fantastic. He had another name for the subconscious didn't he referred to it as which is brilliantly sort of egg mask he called it the magnetic undermined yes yeah that's so good and also you know the idea that obviously

undermines you upside down is that yeah yeah and another one of his favorite words another german word was um i think it's earthworkucht, which is reverence for what one cannot understand. I found when I was just reading that introduction from the Pantana Book of Great Ghost Stories, Andrew, I'm going to pass over to you to quote-unquote take the Aikman challenge, which is can you read us a little bit

from one of the stories and maybe talk a bit about it. You were going to read something from the hospice. I had the end of the hospice to read if that's okay. That would be great. Just give us a set up. My terrible... Give me your one line and I'll fill in

from your one line synopsis. Like faulty towels without the love. Travelling salesman stays overnight at bizarre hotel called The Hospice. Finds it hard to check out. That's good. This joins him after his terrible evening. And we should say the evening is spent effectively being force-fed, right? Force-fed, unpleasant, heavy British food.

When he refuses to eat it, the waitress throws the plate down on the floor. But the first kind of unheimlich moment is when he notices that there are fetters. Yes. They're chained. That one of the guests is chained to the table. It's that brilliant mixture of something that's sort of silly, bizarre, horrible, really sort of visceral.

There's all sorts of stuff around. The texture of food and lichen and fungus and all these things so yes and then he sort of stays the night, there are no single rooms, he has to share a room with this rather peculiar gentleman and there may

or may not have been a murder in the night but there's certainly a body that has to be disposed of in the morning and a there's certainly a body that has to be disposed of in the morning. And a horrible blood curdling screen. And it's never explained brilliantly why the hotel is called itself the hospice. Well, there's two definitions for a hospice, isn't there?

There's a place of care for terminally ill people, but it's also a religious place of rest. So sometimes it's a hotel run by a religious order ah very good i didn't know that right take it away down in the lounge there they all were with falconer presiding indefinably but genially one though authentic sunlight trickled in from the outer world. But Mabry observed that the front door was still bolted and chained. It was the first thing he looked for.

Universal expectation was detectable. Of breakfast, Mabry assumed. Bannard, at all times shrimpish, was simply lost in the throng. Cecile he could not see, but he made a point of not looking very hard. In any case, several of the people looked new, or at least different. Possibly it was a further example of the phenomenon Mabry had encountered with Bannard. Faulkner crossed him at once, the recalcitrant but still privileged outsider. I can promise you a good breakfast, Mr Mabry, cider. I can promise you a good breakfast, Mr. Mabry, he said confidentially. Lentils, fresh fish, rump steak, apple pie made by ourselves with lots and lots of cream. I mustn't stay for it,

said Mabry. I simply mustn't. I have my living to earn. I must go at once. He was quite prepared to walk a couple of miles. Indeed, all set for it. The automobile organisation which had given him the route from which he should never have diverged could recover his car. They'd done it before for him, several times. A faint shadow passed over Faulkner's face, but he merely said in a low voice, If you really insist, Mr Mabry... I'm afraid I have to, said Mabry.

Then I'll... I'll have a word with you in a moment. None of the others seemed to concern themselves. Soon they all filed away, talking quietly among themselves, or in many cases, saying nothing. Mr. Mabry, said Faulkner, you can respect a confidence? Yes, said Mabry steadily. There was an incident here last night, a death. We do not talk about such things. Our guests do not expect it. I am sorry, said Mabry. Such things still upset me, said Faulkner. Nonetheless, I must not think about that. My immediate task is to dispose of the body while the guests are preoccupied, to spare them all knowledge, all pain. How is that to be done? Inquired Mabry. In the usual manner, Mr. Mabry. The hearse is drawing up outside the door even as we speak. Where you are concerned, the point is this. If you wish for what in other circumstances I could call a lift, I could arrange for you to join the vehicle.

It's travelling quite a distance. We find that best. Faulkner was progressively unfastening the front door. It seems the best solution, don't you think, Mr Mabry? At least it is the best I can offer, though you will not be able to thank Mr Bannard, of course. A coffin was already coming down the stairs, borne on the shoulders of four men in black, with Vincent in his white jacket coming first in order to leave no doubt of the way and to prevent any loss of time. I agree, said Mabry, I accept. Perhaps you would let me know my bill for dinner? I shall waive that too, Mr. Mabry, replied Faulkner, in the present circumstances. We have a duty to hasten. We have others to think of. I shall simply say how glad

we have all been to have you with us. He held out his hand. Goodbye, Mr. Mabry. Mabry was compelled to travel with the coffin itself because there simply was not room for him on the front seat where a director of the firm, a corpulent man, had to be accommodated with the driver. The nearness of death compelled a respectful silence among the company in the rear compartment, especially when a living stranger was in the midst, and Mabry alighted unobtrusively when a bus stop was reached one of the undertaker's men said that he should not have to wait long

that's so brilliant that's really well read as well fantastic entry but nothing is explained it's glorious there's a quote here I've got a quote from Neil Gaiman which is germane to this

Gaiman is talking about Aikman he says I think that Aikman is one of those authors that you respond to on a very primal level if you're a writer it's a bit like being a stage magician a stage magician produces coin takes coin demonstrates coin vanished that tends to be what you do as a fiction writer

reading fiction you'll go oh look he's setting that up reading robert aikman is like watching a magician work and very often i'm not even sure what the trick was all i know is that he did it beautifully yes the key vanished but i don't know if he was holding a key in the hand to begin with i find myself admiring everything he does from an authorial standpoint, and I love it as a reader. He will bring on atmosphere. He will construct these perfect, dark, doomed little stories,

what he called strange stories. And actually, that is a distinction that he would... I think that he deserves credit for several things, but one of the things is actually, it would be easy for a writer of ghost stories to say, my ghost stories are better than run-of-the-mill ghost stories. They are strange stories, but actually that does really mean something with Aikman, I think. They are not like reading anybody else.

No, I think that's... I was thinking that the recent piece of Robert McFarlane about the eerie, that seems to be a word that's strange for Aikman. It's the strange. It's definitely some kind of atmosphere that he's wherever he starts his character and I do love that they are

these kind of pooterish. They're always sort of Reggie Perrins. They're often men but not always. Some of his women characters are the brilliant story The Trains with the two yeah the two women well the men and the women seem to exist in the world differently the the women seem to be

whatever this sort of world beyond is the women seem to be much more in contact with it either they inhabit it or they kind of represent it or they pass over much more easily into it and they also kind of sort of embody the romantic and I think with Aikman that often means like a move towards sort of you know death and decay as well but yeah the men

are kind of quite sort of they inhabit the sort of sad and tawdry sort of modern world. Shuffling, a lot of shuffling Mr Miller Oh absolutely Mr Miller inhabit the sort of sad and tawdry modern world. Shuffling, a lot of shuffling. Yeah, and you know... Mr. Miller. Yeah, absolutely. Mr. Miller. Mr. Miller. Can I just I want to give us the biograph, some of the biographs or stuff about Aikman if I may.

So Robert Fordyce Aikman born in London 1914, dies 1981. Father an architect and Aikman duly trained as an architect himself. He was the grandson of the prolific Victorian novelist Richard Marsh, author of a thriller called The Beetle, a book that was a bestseller.

As popular as Dracula, they say. And Robert Aikman was chairman of the London Opera Society and a member of the Society for Psychical Research and investigated Borley Rectory, for instance. Those are the twin poles of his character, the uncanny and high culture. Aikman investigated Borley Rectory with Harry Price, presumably.

And so also from 1941 to 1957, Robert Aikman was married to Edith Rae Gregerson. And magnificently, given that Backlisted was christened by Andrew the last time he was here, those poor agents, Robert Aikman was a literary agent with his wife. And here's the first tenuous link of the day. Which well-known children's author did Robert Aikman do the first deals for? Gosh, Andy, I'm... Can we give them a clue? Yeah, go on.

The book that he got the deal for was A Possible Influence on the Trains. A short story by Aikman. And it's set on an isolated island with strange creatures that roam around it. Okay, so it's going to be Thomas the Tank Engine. It is Thomas the Tank Engine. Robert Aikman was the agent for the Reverend W. Audrey. No way. Yep, absolutely.

And now furthermore, here comes another of these Aikmans. The more you find out about Aikman, the less knowable he is, right? And in 1946, he and his wife set up the inland waterways association to save and safeguard the canals of britain and they set this up with tom and angela roll with whom aikman subsequently had a cataclysmic falling out yeah that's a recurring theme yeah ltc roll to narrowboat fame but ltc rolls who also wrote ghost stories set in industrial landscapes. No rivalry there. In 1951, Aikman co-authored a collection of ghost stories with the novelist Elizabeth Jane Howard,

with whom he was having an affair. And she was his client. He was her agent. And that collection is called We Are for the Dark. It contains both the trains, two further stories by Aikman, and then three stories by Elizabeth Jane Howard, including a magnificent story, which I'd never read before, called Three Miles Up, which we could talk about in its own right.

Which is possibly one of the best Aikman-esque stories. If you're looking for a definition of what an Aikman-esque story is, three miles up from Elizabeth Jane House. But she left Aikman for... Kings of the Apes. And Aikman wrote seven volumes of strange tales, two novels, only one of which was published in his lifetime, correct? And two volumes of autobiography,

which we're going to come on to in a minute. Famously, everyone who seems to have known Aitman mentions that in the mid-70s he was one of the first people to have lived in a flat in the Barbican. Is it Cold Hand in Mine that has the afterword by... Who's it by?

It's one of his... Leslie Gardner. And talks about him being in the Barbican. But he didn't like the Barbican. He didn't like the Barbican. He didn't like the Barbican. You know why he didn't like the Barbican? Because it's related to other stories. The story Your Tiny Hand is Frozen.

He moved to the Barbican because he was hoping the Royal Shakespeare Company would take up residence there. That's why he moved. But he was constantly troubled by a noise from the telephone exchange. Oh. Yeah. Which is a theme in the story Your Tiny Hand is Frozen.

So he would ask to write in the flat of his neighbour, Jean Richardson, but I think he did this with a lot of women. He told them there was a bothersome noise in his flat, and could he write around their house. And Jean Richardson apparently said he wrote on a very special kind of dirty paper with a black biro. She also left lunch out for him as well.

Yes, cold cuts. I just need to say, this is a final biographical note, so he laboured in relative obscurity for quite some years, but then in the 70s, towards the end of his life, he started to be feted by

other horror writers and by the burgeoning science fiction and horror community and in 1975 he won the World Fantasy Award for the story John was talking about, pages from a young girl's journal in Cold Hand in Mind, he died in 1981

there's also a brilliant, there's a very I must be fair here, there is a wonderful short essay in one of these volumes I think it's in, is it in The Unsettled Dust? No. It's in Dark Entries by

Ramsey Campbell, the horror writer Ramsey Campbell. Ramsey Campbell is at pains to say two specific things about Aikman. That he was a wonderful person to know. That he was one of the most unique people he ever met. That he was a brilliant writer. But that he was also, quote, a pale

chubby fellow with the worst teeth I have ever seen in a living mouth. That's great. I like that idea. He used to invite women round for dinner and it was very formal but he'd kind of try and pass off the fact that it was food that he'd kind of cooked but it was

obviously catered he couldn't cook for himself when Ray left him, they sort of divorced in 1957 she entered a convent but before she did she enlisted a friend called Barbara Balke to be Aikman's personal secretary because he had never cooked a meal for himself in his life.

And after Ray went into the convent, Aikman held Jesus personally responsible and was rude to clergymen ever after. So, Andrew, I just mentioned there that there were two volumes of autobiography. The first is called The Attempted Rescue. Now, I would love to have read this book before we did this episode because it looks completely extraordinary. It's not cheaply available,

although the very nice people at Tartarus Press have it in print at the moment, but it is quite expensive. You have a copy, do you not? I have an original copy signed by Mr Robert Aikman. Oh, my God. Could you just say a bit about this book and maybe read us a little bit from this book?

Because it's extraordinary, but in a different way from the extraordinary stories we've just been talking about. It's an incredible book, and I kind of wish more people could read it. And the other thing to say is, like, to read about his father is to understand the stories even more. So I'd quite like to read a little bit about his father,

if that's OK. You don't say. My father, as I knew him, was impossible to live with, to be married to, to be dependent upon. This is a vast subject the framework and coloring of my universe as I approach it so nearly I warm and chill at the same time in the first place there was his unpunctuality at the beginning of my life he would rise from bed at 10 or 11 and even then like me today with much emotional agony he would protest nonetheless every night that he would be down for breakfast and be 10 or 11, and even then, like me today, with much emotional agony. He would protest, nonetheless,

every night that he would be down for breakfast and be indignant if this were doubted. Risen, he would potter for several hours with the problems and difficulties of his toilet, and then, in the early afternoon, he would struggle away to his office. Daily, he would say that he would be back for dinner, not by seven, he had to admit but absolutely positively by eight or perhaps nine nightly he would return at 10 or 10 30 to find dinner spoiled and my mother in sulks quite often he would even miss the last train and appear in the small hours having walked the four miles from wheelstone as i grew older even these times began to slip On most days he would not depart for work until the evening and the last train back became his regular one. My father's unpunctuality dominated not only our day but our weeks and months and especially our pleasures. We went much to the theatre but it was

always spoiled for mother and me by uncertainty as to whether we should see the first curtain rise. We usually did, though by no means always, but the stress was fearful. My father always rationalised the situation by saying that late arrival gave one the extra enjoyment of trying to work out what had happened on the stage in one's absence. And it was amusing to work out the location and chronology of scenes for oneself. When we went out for the day,

all would be planned for a morning start but we would actually catch a train in the late afternoon the best hours of the day like the best years of life having been spent in useless turmoil when we went on a holiday father often missed not merely the train but the day so we should also mention I just want to mention that the members of the League of Gentlemen are famous advocates for Robert Aikman

and if you want to listen to those stories being read almost as well as by Andrew Rhys Shearsmith has recorded quite a lot of them right because the thing that we were saying earlier about they are, they seem

like they're okay to navigate but you notice once you do try and, because the reason I chose that end, the end of the hospice is because it's quite easy to navigate and sometimes you just, you trip, you stumble you fall. The fascinating thing about reading Aikman is

you have the same experience reading the stories as his characters do within the story. That's so true. You lose yourself. You forget important details. You misstep. or in the run-up to Halloween, Mark Gatiss and Jeremy Dyson did an adaptation of a brilliant story called Ringing the Changes, which is on BBC4 Extra on Halloween. I totally recommend you listen to that.

It's wonderful. Interesting, the point that you were saying about the Aikman biography. And Ringing the Changes is about a recently married couple. And one of the things that doesn't sit right with the wife is the fact that her husband is uh significantly older than her and again that's drawn from uh eightman's biography at the time of their marriage um his mother didn't know how old eightman's father was she was 23 she thought he was possibly a couple of years older. When they signed the marriage register, she discovered that he was 53.

Oh! Oh! Oh my goodness. It's too good. For all the brilliance of the kind of... The psychology in the stories is really... These are not just... I mean, I know we've...

I think we've said enough to say they're not just run-of-the-mill ghost stories. I mean, Into the Wood, which is the last story in not the book that we're talking about, but The Wine Dark Sea, it's, I think, admissible to talk about it. There's a brilliant piece. Without giving you the whole set-up, Margaret, the main character in the story becomes is staying in a hotel that turns out to be another kind of hospice it's a sort of

sanatorium for people with insomnia and you go wandering around in outside at night and particularly in the woods and she becomes fascinated by the fact that the woods seem she's well sweden's full of woods what's the difference between these woods and the rest of the woods seem... Sweden's full of woods. What's the difference between these woods and the rest of the woods? So she goes out for a little wander and has a kind of an epiphany, which I'll read a very small bit of here. Her husband, Henry, is an engineer who builds roads, so obviously has a pretty straightforward worldview.

She starts to feel deeply rebellious when she's wandering around these apparently aimless paths at night. Margaret took a small pull on herself. Henry must be broadly right and she broadly wrong or life would not simply not continue as it did and more and more the same everywhere. The common rejoinder to these feelings of rebellion was as she well, that she needed a little more scope for living her own life, even, as a few Mancunians might dare to say, for self-expression. But that popular anodyne never, according to Margaret's observation of other couples, appeared in practice to work. Nor could she wonder. It reduced the self in one to the status and limits of a hobby. It offered one lampshade making or so many hours a week helping the cripples and old folk

when what one truly needed was a revelation, was simultaneous self-expression and self-loss. And at the same time, it corrupted marriage and cheapened the family. The rustling, sunny forest, empty but labyrinthine, hinted at some other answer. An answer beyond logic, beyond words, above all beyond connection with what Margaret and her Cheshire neighbours had

come to regard as normal life. It was an answer different in kind. It was the very antithesis of a hobby, but not necessarily the antithesis of what marriage should be, though never was. I just think that is such a brilliant estimate. The thing about that story as well,

that story, as John said, is called Into the Wood. You know, that thing Aikman was saying about the nine-tenths or the undermined, and what Neil Gaiman was saying about what Aikman does as a writer, both those things apply in that story. I think you would be... I've read that story twice because the second time I thought,

OK, I'm going to see if I can work out how he did that. He does what he does. Where does the gear change happen? And on the second reading, I can't see it. I can't tell you how he does it. You know, there's one detail about him that I picked up that I liked, is that nobody'd ever seen him carry a notebook. And I just have a feeling that he's one of those writers that he starts...

I don't think he's a planner. I think he's one of those writers that actually, the stories... He puts his character into a situation, and he imagines, he feels his way through to the end of the narrative. He said that the best stories that he wrote were the ones that just came to him that came to him unbidden, you know that kind of just seemed to arrive

fully formed and also with the result that they occasionally go wrong, that's the really interesting thing there's a story in that volume in the Y.C. called Growing Boys which is a car crash. It is a car crash.

But you can see how that happened because he's feeling his way, John. You're absolutely right. That's maybe to say why if you're going to start Cold Hand and Mine, I don't think there's a bad story in that direction. Now, Matthew,

I'm tapping the table in the Halloween manner to raise you. I've got a tenuous link for you, Matthew. Okay, excellent. Which former subject of Backlisted was Robert Aikman's number one fan in the 1980s and 90s and indirectly responsible for Faber republishing his work. Oh, gosh, that's quite tough. And a writer we have featured on that list. A writer we've featured that has some connection to Faber. Yeah.

It's not Last Day to Brooklyn or... Riddle of the Sands. Riddle of the Sands or Amos of the Sands. Or Amos. It's a good one. Come on. I'm fishing. I'm just fishing. Come on, put your money down.

Give me a clue. Give me a clue. Go on. Book traders. Yeah. British book traders. Yeah. Secondhand book.

Is it our man JL Carr? It is not. It is David Seabrook. Seabrook. Of Is it our man J.L. Clarke? It is not. It is David Seabrook. Seabrook. Of course it is. Yes. Is it really? No way.

All the devils are here. Seabrook again. When Neil Belton, his editor at Granter, first met Seabrook, what Seabrook wanted to talk about was, you're an editor, you must like Robert Aikman. Yeah. No way. He collected Aikman stories and was a an aikman obsessive and neil belton said to me it was the first time he'd ever heard the name robert aikman was really wow and we should also mention richard t kelly who was the editor at faber-fine who is responsible for bringing all these wonderful stories we've got time for one other backlisted connection yeah Yeah, go on. When you were, there was an episode

where you were talking about mass observation. Yeah. And I was listening to that episode, and I was thinking, my God, the way people wrote for mass observation is exactly how narrators describe events in Robert Aikman's stories, where they're unaware of what,

they're writing down every detail, and they're unaware, kind of, of what are the needed or important details and what are not. Oh, yes. It's interesting. And also that fact is they put everything in because they think everything might be important.

But it's only kind of when you're reading it back that you kind of pick up on the strange details. And you were reading something from some mass observation book and I thought, that is Aikman's voice. It is the voice of mass observation. Fasc's interesting i see book there that's brilliant yeah now listen we have to wind up um i want to leave us on a suitably chilling note by just i want to read one paragraph from my favorite aikman story which is called this is

i told you this cold-handed my so hard to do this it's from it's got a story called ravissant and it is from a volume called the unsettled dust and it is set in I think I'm right and say in the 1920s a young artist visits an elderly woman and with unpleasant consequences. Come back over here, monsieur, cried Madame A, pointing with her right forefinger to my hot armchair and then slapping her knee with the palm of her hand as if she were summoning a small, unruly dog. It was exactly like that, I thought. I have often seen it, though I have never owned a dog myself. I forbore from

comment and returned reluctantly to the hot fire. Madam A, as I have said, was commanding as well as coy. And then an extraordinary thing happened. A real dog was there in the room. At least I suppose. I am now not sure how real it was. Let me just say, a dog. It was like a small black poodle, clipped, glossy and spry. It appeared from the shadowy corner to the right of the door as one entered. It pattered perkily up to the fire, then round several times in a circle in front of Madam A, and to my right as I sat, then off into the shadow to my left and where I had just been standing. It seemed to me, as I looked at it, to have very big eyes and very long legs, perhaps more like a spider than a poodle, but no doubt this was merely an effect of the firelight.

Nice poodle, I said to Madame A, because I had to break the silence, and because Englishmen are supposed to be fond of dogs, though I am comparatively an exception. Comment, monsieur? I can see and hear her still, exactly as she looked and spoke. Nicely kept poodle, I said, firmly sticking to English. She turned and stared at me, but came no nearer, as at such moments she usually did. So you have seen a poodle? Yes, I said, and still not thinking there was anything really wrong. This moment, if it's not yours, it must have got in from the darkness outside. The darkness was still on my mind because of the pictures, but immediately I spoke, I felt a chill despite the blazing fire. I wanted to get up and look for the

dog, which after all must still have been in the room, but at the same time I feared to do any such thing. I feared to move at all. Animals often appear in here, said Madame A huskily. Dogs, cats, toads, monkeys, and occasionally less commonplace species. I expect it will have gone by now. Isn't that fantastic? Reminds me of playing Pokemon Go with my son

right so like a nightmare you know really like a nightmare silly wrong but also the thing of you saying

what is the key what makes it strange the point where he thinks of the dog and then he says dog and then extraordinary thing perfect

perfect moment Aikman moments well that just about wraps up Backlisted for another episode Thanks to Andrew Mayle, to Matthew Clayton Producer Matt Hall and of course thanks again to our sponsors Unbound, you can get in touch with us on Twitter at BacklistedPod, on Facebook on the BacklistedPod page and on the

Unbound site at unbound.com forward slash backlisted Thanks for listening, just for those of you who are about to go out trick or treating here's a word of warning from the British Pagan Federation Halloween should be welcomed welcomed as a time to help

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