The horror stories of William Sansom are hidden away in his collections, which makes them all the more surprising when discovered. Any given story might seem, at first, an everyday slice of life, until the facade falls apart and something goes wrong. Even the gentler stories are often told with an intensity of vision that suggests paranoia, a sense that the universe itself is out to destroy someone. A few imply the supernatural, while still more describe physical dangers ferocious enough to seem demonic. (One of these, "The Vertical Ladder," made the palms of my hands too sweaty to hold the book.)
Of the more uncanny tales, my favourite is "A Wedding," from THE PASSIONATE NORTH (The Hogarth Press, London, 1950). It not only conveys a vivid setting and sinister mood, it also reveals how a frame can be used to broaden our perspective on what might seem, at first glance, a small, isolated event, and to allow for a narrator who tells the tale without understanding what the story means.
Sansom loads the weight of his frame onto the final sentence, but not on a twist ending. A twist can be useful in the middle of a story, when space remains to explore the implications of the twist; it can be fatal at the story's end, where it often seems more of a gimmick than a thoughtful resolution. Sansom avoids any twist, but offers, instead, one final, unexpected detail, the meaning of which the narrator has never grasped. Like the one piece of a puzzle that suddenly resolves a patch of blue into definite sky or definite sea, the final statement offers a hint of what kind of story this had been from the start.
In his usual style, Sansom builds up visual impressions to make his writing live. The story has no room for any detailed exploration of character (and none is needed, in this context), but the setting, and the actions within, are vividly conveyed:
"At last the door swung open, two men swathed in greatcoats came out carrying torches high. There followed the others: and last of all came the new husband and his bride.
"She seemed to lean on his arm. Perhaps as though she had almost fainted ? It was difficult in that light, the light of moon and torches, for the janitor to be sure of what he saw. Or perhaps that strange young man held her imprisoned by his own strong arm? So many dark figures moving there in the snow! So much whispering, such stamping, such a muffling of bunched furs! And now they had all moved over to a part of open ground away from the church, a place where tombstones lurched in the snow. There they stood and pointed to the ground -- they seemed to be discussing the place for a grave. Only the bride’s face was averted, she stood a frailer figure than the others, turning herself away from what they were most plainly trying to show her....
"In a few minutes all were gone. The silence of the snows again descended. The bell had ceased tolling, the lights in the church had been extinguished. Nothing stirred. Only the dark blue moonlight fell widely everywhere, sparkling a tinsel from iced birch-branches, bringing a great stillness to the black fir-clumps grouped like figures conferring against the white."
Still and cryptic, the winter landscape is a perfect setting for terrible events. William Sansom was a master of terror; in a "Wedding," he also became a master of the final sentence that lingers in the mind.
======
Because "A Wedding" is long out of print and hard to find (and not even listed on ISFDB), I can offer a PDF to those who want to read it. You can download the file without having to sign in.
No comments:
Post a Comment