As we count down to Christmas, those of us in the Northern Hemisphere like to curl up with a good ghost story. Here’s one recommended by Randy:
The story was told to me by my old tutor, Theo Parmitter, as we sat beside the fire in his college rooms one bitterly cold January night. There were still real fires in those days, the coals brought up by the servant in huge brass scuttles. I had travelled down from London to see my old friend, who was by then well into his eighties, hale and hearty and with a mind as sharp as ever, but crippled by severe arthritis so that he had difficulty leaving his rooms. The college looked after him well. He was one of a dying breed, the old Cambridge bachelor for whom his college was his family.
— from The Man in the Picture
With that opening paragraph Susan Hill taps into the tradition of the tale told by the fire, perhaps hoping we, the readers, will settle back, relax along with the story’s internal auditor, and let the narrative carry us away. This is also a traditional entry into the English ghost story, it’s very leisureliness meant to give the tale an aura of plausibility as the supposedly rational narrator’s tale becomes progressively creepier – one hopes. The English ghost story is a literary form Hill has proven adept at emulating with previous works like The Mist in the Mirror and most famously The Woman in Black.
Theo Parmitter is disturbed by memories of past experiences and desires a chance to exorcise his concerns by explaining them to his friend and former pupil, Oliver. Theo has been a collector and re-seller of art since his youth. Among the items he has acquired is one he has not sold, seemingly cannot sell, in spite of an offer substantially greater than what he paid. The painting, a recreation of carnival along the docks and piers of Venice, hangs in shadow in the room and Theo calls it to Oliver’s attention. A dark picture, somehow ominous, it mesmerizes Oliver until Theo calls him away, not least because there are figures in the picture who seem to look out hopelessly, as though staring from the painting into the world. And another figure hovers in the painting, not really discernable until too late.
Theo tells his story over two evenings and when Oliver breaks away after Theo tires the first night, the campus seems threatening and he feels watched. As Theo has been infected by the painting from studying it, so too has Oliver, the infection all the stronger perhaps because Theo’s story captivates him even though he doesn’t know what to make of it torn between respect for his friend and mentor and doubt about the impossible story.
The Man in the Picture is on a par with The Mist in the Mirror, both entertaining ghost stories, but neither quite as powerful as Hill’s The Woman in Black – if you have not read that, I’d advise starting there. Still, The Man in the Picture joins distinguished company like The Stress of Her Regard by Tim Powers, “Don’t Look Now” by Daphne du Maurier, and “Podolo” and “Three, or Four, for Dinner” by L. P. Hartley in being all or in part located in Venice. Perhaps it’s the canals or maybe the architecture or possibly both, but Venice inspires some dark writing and like Hartley and du Maurier, Hill provides a solid, absorbing ghost story, good reading for the holiday season.
The Man in the Picture by Susan Hill (The Overlook Press, 2007)
ISBN: 978-1590200919
145 pages
Review by Randy Money.
