Night Music (47 page)

I have seen some writers behave desperately poorly toward their readers, and spent time with others who simply don't know how to behave at all. At a French literary festival I once sat between two American writers of mystery novels with Western settings, neither of whom had the good manners or common sense to remove his cowboy hat in the lovely converted church in which the session was taking place. I watched as a future winner of the Man Booker Prize turned to his fellow panelists and said, “Don't you just hate all . . .
this
?” while gesturing disdainfully at a small, damp audience, of which I was a part, that had come out on a miserable night to listen to them speak. In a children's bookstore, I sat with two authors who had collaborated on a series of cynically created but moderately successful books for young adults and listened while they whispered scornfully to each other about their readers.

But no matter: that's not the point of this tale, and writers will, in turn, have stories of drunken members of the public interrupting readings, or rubbishing their efforts, or taking the opportunity offered by audience questions to shill their own self-published work. I have, at various times, been followed through the dark streets of Birmingham by an overenthusiastic reader who later wrote to tell me that she'd never stalked anyone before and was happy that I was her first; been mistaken for the writers Ian Rankin, Michael Connelly, Joe Connelly, and James Patterson, all of whom, I would venture to suggest, are slightly older gentlemen than I, bear no physical resemblance to me whatsoever, and are not even Irish; had water poured over my head and wine spilled on my nice new trousers; and been kicked in the face by a bookseller in Glasgow who was very anxious that I should take a look at her new shoes. In the end, it's enough to accept that authors now have to publicize their books in a way that their predecessors in a gentler age did not, and one might as well approach the task with a degree of good humor and goodwill, and remember that there are far worse ways to earn a living.

So it was that, some years ago, my publicity tour took me to a city in northeast England. Quite often, I'll drive myself around on such jaunts, as the journeys between signings offer a little welcome alone time. On this occasion, my publisher's northern sales rep was driving me, which was fine as I have huge affection for him, and he's good company on a long trip. The event was to take place in a city center library and was scheduled to start long after most of the shops had closed for business, so the streets were quiet as we made our way to the venue.

The event itself was largely unremarkable, as these things go. There were no fights. Nobody died. I read a little, and talked more, and those in attendance appeared to have a good time—or were polite enough to keep it to themselves if they didn't—and bought some books afterward. When I visit bookstores and libraries to talk, I'm acutely aware that people have other things they could be doing instead, and I try to make the evening pass as entertainingly as possible. If nothing else, I'd like people to leave with a feeling of pleasant surprise at how painless the whole business was, and have them consider attending another at some point in the future, rather than have them vow to cut their own feet off before they ever again darken the doors of a literary event.

Finally, when I thought that the members of the public had all departed, an older lady, who had been waiting quietly in a corner, approached the table at which I was seated. A younger woman, clearly in attendance to offer some form of moral or even physical support, hovered uncertainly behind her.

“Mr. Connolly?” said the older lady. “I have a question to ask.”

It was late, and I was signing books for the local bookshop, but I can multitask to some degree. I told her that I'd be happy to answer any questions she might have, if I could. She seemed nervous, frightened even. I rarely have that effect on people. I try not to, to be honest. It's bad for sales.

“I've read your books,” she said, her voice shaking, “and I've enjoyed them a great deal. I have a difficulty, and I was hoping that you might be able to help me with it.”

She was very serious. She did not smile. I set aside the book that I was signing.

“Go on,” I said.

“There is a house here in town,” she said. “Something bad lives inside it. It's dangerous. It hates everything, but it hates children most of all. I live near this house. I watch it, and I do my best to keep children away from it, but I'm getting old, and I'm going to die soon. Somebody has to watch that house when I'm gone. What I was wondering is: do you have any knowledge of such things, or would you be aware of anyone who has?”

She waited for a reply. I looked at the sales rep standing beside me. He looked at me. We both then looked at the old woman.

Here's the thing: on occasions such as this, one tends to assume that people may be slightly mad. It's terrible, I know, but it's true. Perhaps
mad
is the wrong word.
Eccentric
might be more appropriate.

Except that this woman didn't look mad. I know that it's not easy to judge, and I'm no expert. Quite frankly, if we could spot madness just by looking in someone's eyes then a great many tragedies might be averted. But the woman appeared to be in full possession of her wits, as far as I could tell. She was also definitely very, very scared.

“Are you talking about an exorcist?” I asked.

“No,” she said. “We've had the house blessed, but it did no good. I don't think that this presence is ever going to leave. I suppose I was hoping that you'd know if there were ‘watchers'—you know, people who guard old, dangerous places.”

But I didn't, of course, because I'm not really that kind of person.

I'm this kind of person.

•  •  •

I am frequently asked if I believe in the supernatural, but my direct experience of any realms beyond this one is minimal to the point of nonexistence. I consider myself to be a healthy skeptic: it may be that ghosts exist, but I've never seen one. On the evening that my father's body was taken to the church to await its funeral Mass and burial the next morning, the inhabitants of our house—which included my mother and brother, along with a visiting aunt and uncle—were woken in the dead of night by the sound of loud snoring. My father was a terrible snorer, and this was snoring on a quite epic scale. My mother, brother, aunt, and uncle gathered on our landing to listen to it. I was the only person who was not there, as I was fast asleep. I later suggested that it might have been me that they heard, although my mother assured me this was not the case. I was quite relieved, as I didn't want to be labeled the kind of snorer who could wake an entire house, even if it meant entertaining as an alternative explanation the possibility of some intervention from the afterlife. Anyway, what I'm saying is that even when my childhood home may or may not have experienced some form of paranormal visitation, I remained completely unaware of it. It may be that any number of ex-girlfriends are right, and I am just unusually insensitive.

My interest in matters ghostly is largely literary in origin. I have been fascinated by stories of the supernatural ever since childhood. Initially, I hunted down anthologies aimed at younger readers, including works that claimed to be nonfiction but strained the credulity of even my preteen self, but I quickly progressed to more adult fare.

During the writing of this little essay, I returned to the bedroom of my childhood home in Rialto to look for evidence of my juvenile fascination with the uncanny.
²
On the shelf by my bed, I found the following:

All editors of volumes of horror stories should have surnames like “van Thal.” Herbert van Thal was born Bertie Maurice van Thal, but Bertie—or Maurice—van Thal doesn't have quite the same ring about it, and, if nothing else, Herbert (or Bertie) had a fairly sure knowledge of the trappings of the uncanny. The Pan collections run to thirty volumes, although van Thal edited only the first twenty-five before death put an end to his anthologizing. The first is still probably the best, featuring stories by Bram Stoker (“The Squaw”) and Muriel Spark (“The Portobello Road”) among others. As the covers became more lurid—which is saying something, as they were never exactly understated to begin with—the quality of the tales inside grew steadily worse. They also, if I remember correctly, became a bit seedy, but I may just have been easily shocked. Still, this book was certainly among my first introductions to supernatural fiction, and I therefore owe van Thal a debt of gratitude. Incidentally, my friend Professor Darryl Jones, himself a fine anthologist of supernatural fiction, assures me that van Thal was also known as the ugliest man in London, which, if true, seems strangely appropriate.

During my childhood and early adolescence, horror films were a staple of BBC2's Saturday night television programming. This invariably took the form of a double bill, the first of which was typically an earlier Hammer horror with, therefore, little or no nudity, while the second tended toward the more adult. I was, unfortunately, cursed with parents who didn't really go out much on weekends, and their interest in watching horror films on a Saturday night was less than zero. In fact, my first exposure to the Hammer oeuvre came through my best friend at the time, whose family had a holiday home in Rush, Co. Dublin.

I never quite understood why a family would bother buying a holiday home that was only about half an hour away from where they lived. It seemed to defeat the whole notion of holidays as being a break from the norm. Then again, my father disliked holidaying in any location a) to which he could not drive; and b) which might cost him money, so most of my summers were spent in my grandmother's cottage near Ballylongford, Co. Kerry, where my father could holiday for free while keeping a close eye on his car.

Anyway, Dan's parents (let's call him Dan, because that was his name) were considerably more liberal than my own mum and dad, especially when it came to the viewing habits of their three children, so they were quite happy to let us all sit up and watch 1966's
Dracula, Prince of Darkness
on their small black-and-white portable television.

The film, as you may already have guessed, was a revelation to me. I had never seen anything like it before, and it is still one of my clearest movie-watching recollections, even after almost forty years. I still believe that
Dracula, Prince of Darkness
is the best of Christopher Lee's outings as the Count, helped by the fact that Lee had not yet begun to tire of his association with the role, although the absence of Peter Cushing, who graced
Dracula
(1958) as Van Helsing, is regrettable. It should be noted that the film also made a strong impression on Dan, although not entirely a favorable one: he endured a spectacular nightmare as a consequence of watching it, during which he wet the bed, although it would have been more distressing for me if I'd been on the lower bunk. I like to think of it as a lucky escape.

All of this occurred in the days before home video recorders. These were also the days before color television, at least for anyone I knew. Oh, and my parents never owned a video recorder, so the first time I ever had movies on demand was when I left home and bought my own TV and VCR. Therefore the only way to relive a movie-watching experience during my childhood was to hunt down the novelization of a beloved film and reread it at will. Thus it was that
The Second Hammer Horror Film Omnibus
was a godsend, featuring, as it did, not only
Dracula, Prince of Darkness
in prose form, but also three other Hammer films that I had not yet seen—and wouldn't get to see for many years to come.

Among these was
The Reptile
, which, like
Dracula, Prince of Darkness
, was released in 1966. (This was a pretty good year for Hammer, as it also saw the appearance of
Rasputin: The Mad Monk
, featuring Christopher Lee in the title role, and the possibly not-entirely-historically-accurate
One Million Years B.C.
, starring Raquel Welch in a fur bikini.) Many years later, I would write a story entitled “Miss Froom, Vampire,” which was produced for BBC Radio 4 by my friend Lawrence Jackson.
³
Lawrence persuaded Jacqueline Pearce, who had starred as the unfortunate Anna in
The Reptile
, to read the story. By that point Pearce was better known for playing the evil Servalan in the BBC science fiction series
Blake's 7,
and for appearing in a state of quite spectacular nakedness in Michael Radford's 1987 film
White Mischief
.

I was fortunate enough to attend the recording of the story in London, and to be able to confess in person the extent of the crush I'd had on Jacqueline for the best part of twenty-five years. Even in her seventh decade, and recovering from cancer, she was splendidly glamorous, and marvelous company. I don't think I'd ever met an actress of the old school before, all “Darling!” and theatrical anecdotes, and I was distinctly overwhelmed. I took her to dinner at Hakkasan off Tottenham Court Road, and it remains one of my most cherished memories. She now lives on an animal sanctuary in South Africa. In fact, I've just dropped her an e-mail between writing that last sentence and starting this one. She's a link to my earliest affection for the supernatural, and if nothing else comes of this odd little essay, it has at least led me to get in touch with her once again. (Her reply has just come through, and begins “Darling Heart!” God, she's a star.)

Since we're on the subject of
Dracula
, it would be churlish to continue without making some reference to its creator, Bram Stoker. I've only recently noticed that on No. 30 Kildare Street—across from the stop where I occasionally catch a bus home
⁴
—is a plaque celebrating the fact that Stoker once lived there, which I hadn't realized, as most of the focus on Stoker in Dublin tends to revolve around his birthplace in Clontarf. The plaque on No. 30 was, as I subsequently learned, erected by the Bram Stoker Society, which was formed in 1980 around the corner in Trinity College, Dublin, which was Stoker's alma mater—he graduated in 1870 with honors in science—and, indeed, my own.