Stories commissioned by the BBC, etc.
In "The Lesson" a prison governer's bored wife is taught angling by a prisoner.
In "Cookery" a gay man uses his cooking skills for various ends - seduction and murder.
"Fourth of July, 1862" recounts moments in the life of the girl who was the model for Alice in Wonderland.
In "Saving space" a widower's waiting in for a concert to start - "Throughout their marriage, his wife had always talked to strangers for him, filling the air with words enough for two. Since her death he had developed tactics for evading conversation." A young woman in old-fashioned clothes briefly talks to him then disappears. Next day an older lady in less old-fashioned clothes appears. Next day an old lady does. He learns that an old lady, a spinster, died the week before.
"Petals on a pool" has rather more to it. The main character, Edith Chalmers, wrote "quietly devastating studies of a quiet sort of English character". Then Edith P. Chalmers wrote a romantic novel that sold so well that she subsequently called herself Edith Chalmers. Our Edith was invited to the Bali Book Festival to talk about romantic fiction - all expenses paid. She agreed, knowing that it was a mistake. The organisers probably realised too late. At Bali airport she shared a taxi with "a formidable journalist from Hong Kong, Lucinda Yeung". At the hotel Edith was looked after by Ayu, her personal assistant. Edith had a suite and a private pool. At breakfast she met a young American male poet, Peter John. His event's been left off the programme. He made his own badge - "Peter John: Neglected Poet!". Even the hotel staff seem to have forgotten he's there. His pen "was ivory with a little skull carved on its cap." He talked to her during the festival when she was alone. "he made regular use of the open mike sessions during the lunch hour, ... until jostled off the stage by someone else who acted as though he wasn't there". She liked his "dry and witty and desperately sad" verses. Taxi drivers ignored him. Both Lucinda and Peter attended her two events. In the evening he showed her around the town. She's grateful to him. In the morning Edith saw petals on her pool, and Peter beneath them. She returned to her room and phoned for help. Ayu came, checked the pool, and told her that nobody's there. Only now do we learn that Edith's 69. She saw an old peasant woman leave an offering on an altar in the grounds. The woman also left an offering by the pool. Edith added flowers. As she left the hotel, she gave Ayu a copy of her latest novel to pass onto Peter John. She met Lucinda, who's going to invite her to the Hong Kong festival and get Edith onto her cable show. She accepted the invitation - it's a festival she'd always wanted to attend. The ending is "With every dusty mile placed between her and the ambiguous paradise she was leaving, she framed fresh excuses and grew in certainty that exotic travel did not suit ". It's possible that Peter, rather than an imaginary friend or ghost, was a scrounger well known to the locals, his death hushed up by the luxury hotel. But why does Edith think of turning the final invitation down? Lucinda's not imaginary - she's seen talking with people.
"Obedience" - a man (a broccoli farmer) had always wanted a deerhound but his father then his forthright wife stopped him - the latter because her priority was children. The children never came (he had "a technical problem"), so he got an expensive puppy telling his wife it was a mongrel. He takes it to lessons run by a good-looking lesbian. Police interview the dog-owners because a murder victim was last seen alive at the previous class. She was a single, ruthless boss of a vegetable haulage firm. Clues suggest that a cauliflower farmer killed her. He has no alibi. His wife is excited by the thought that he might be a murderer.
"In the camp" is set in a Naturist camp. Lara, 11, has academic parents. Wolf, 12, arrives with athletic parents. Wolf tells tales about the Johnson couple, who are asked to go. Then it's discovered that Wolf's parents have been taking photos and films. Not much of a story.
"The Dark Cutter" has lots about how to move cattle from one field to another and into lorries (the author lives on a farm). The lorry driver dies after a stampede.
In "Making Hay" a gran living in an old people's home tells her grandchildren (who live on a farm) a tale about how their grandfather used fresh blood (including that of evacuees) as fertiliser, their father dug up as a new-born out of the soil. At the start we're led to believe she's going senile, but at the end she shows she knows what she's doing.
In "Brahms and Moonshine" a New Age couple leave a little concert at night to find their van stuck in mud. An organiser goes to get help. The man gets a lift home leaving the woman to look at the night sky. She thinks she might as well leave her partner now. A tow arrives.
In "The Excursion" Eileen is going to a demo with a couple who have convinced her to leave her church because the reverend is gay. They go to pelt eggs at a man leaving the courts - a gay murderer. Then they show her a tape of how gays are punished in some distant lands. Eileen returns to her church, meeting the rev. She saw "how it was possible to feel at once judged and forgiven by a smile".
In "Hushed Casket" a gay couple on their honeymoon find a casket in a remote church. When opened it's an aphrodisiac. Before long, one of the couple gives it away.
In "Dream lover" a women who, when a child, told her mother about her dreams over breakfast is upset that her lover says he doesn't dream at all. She gets him to start recalling dreams. He starts talking a lot about his dreams. They're boring and she barely features in them. She looks for other men who don't look like dreamers.
In "Sleep Tight" Hamish, a gay man, is looking after the 7 year-old son of a friend for the night. The boy's scared about "Moth Lady". When he disappears in the night, moths swarm his bedroom window. Hamish knows it's going to look bad.
In "Freedom" a mother suddenly buys an old caravan (her sister-in-law has a smart one. So?). The family holiday in it, then it's stored in her mother's field. Her mother uses it as a refuge. Years later, the mother's gay son comes see the field he's inherited. His partner finds him in the old caravan, absorbed.
And finally, "Gentleman's Relish" features a father who loved his 3 boys when they were young, but his long work hours and their adolescence meant that he only saw them at weekends if that - "they would speak instead in the traditional coded idiom of fathers and sons wherein safe questions of sport and work stood in for more risky ones of happiness and affection". He gets a call from his 14 year-old's headmaster saying that the boy sent a love letter to a male French teacher. The father tries to have a word with his son, then recalls that he went through a phase that was dealt with by his father organising some religious and manly events. He phones the headmaster to take up his offer of organising such things for his son.
Even before I read the acknowledgements and bio I had the feeling that the author was trying to make his experiences into stories - the details are convincing, even if the stories aren't. An old-fashioned verbosity sometimes appears; e.g. "The colleague smiled in a way that was not entirely friendly and shook her head with the worldly, self-satisfied air of one who has experienced everything and for whom life holds no more nasty suprises" (p.220). The colleague, who's just appeared in the story, disappears as quickly. This trait of giving background/detail to people/things that don't feature in the plot happens eespecially near the start of stories.
