'The Fifth Moon'

This is the final part of a running review of Lost Estates by Mark Valentine (Swan River Press 2024)

The final story in this splendidly produced volume is another deep drive into English folklore. A writer, accompanied by a photographer, goes to the region around the Wssh to research a book in a series on myths and legends. The topic he has chosen is the supposed loss of King John's treasure. 

Now, like many people, I was taught that John's baggage train was simply caught by the tide and he lost a lot of precious metal and jewels etc. But as the story unfolds we find that things were not that simple. For a start, there's only one source for the lost treasure story. And a different contemporary account takes a very different line. 

This novella allows the author to plunge into rival theories about not only John and his antics but the way in which the English - both scholar and commoner - have a proprietorial interest in myth and legend. The professional theories corrects the amateur, the writer probes inconsistencies, and people 'in the know' spin a web of misdirection. The fifth moon of the title is a clever reference to Shakespeare's maybe-tragedy about John. 

An obvious comparison is 'A Warning to the Curious', in which an earlier king's treasure is plundered only to bring disaster on its finder. Here the threat, while less clearly defined, is almost as effective. And there is a nice nod to M.R. James in the climactic scene.

So, let me round off my review by saying that Lost Estates is a fine collection of tales that explore the lesser-known byways of the bibliophile world. If you - like me - enjoy rummaging in bookshops you will share the pleasures of many Valentine characters. And if you have every wondered about the boundaries between strange tales and even stranger realities, you will enjoy exploring the author's frequently familiar yet often unsettling world. 

'The End of Alpha Street'

 

This is part of a running review of Lost Estates by Mark Valentine (Swan River Press 2024)

I used to count cats. Not all the time, you understand. Just in the morning when I walked to work. I had chosen to live just a short walk from the office - odd, I know, but then I am a strange chap. The point is that counting cats became a kind of ritual. The more moggies I saw on that walk, the better I felt the day would be. A no cat day would not be a good day. Six or seven, and we're cooking with gas. Or at least, that's how I remember it. 

'The End of Alpha Street' is Mark Valentine's take on this tendency we humans have to invent personal rituals out of whole cloth. Or, in my case, a variable number of whole cats. A cat features in the story, as it happens. The narrator befriends the feline and its owner in the eponymous cul-de-sac. And in a way the story is a cul-de-sac, as an exploration of personal rituals leads the narrator to an old man and a collection of apparently random items, all of which bear information. 

There is a whiff of Dunsany about this one, in terms of playfulness at least. It's almost a story that Jorkens might tell, only it does not pivot on any kind of twist or punchline. Instead it leaves us with questions. 

'Lost Estates'

This is part of a running review of Lost Estates by Mark Valentine (Swan River Press 2024)

The title story of the collection! And it begins in fine form. 'I was playing the trans-dimensional crumhorn when the man from the Treasury called.' As the plot develops, we learn about the unusual musical combo the narrator was once part of and the unusual link to the inventor of a perpetual motion machine. 

The group is reassembled in response to the man from the Treasury. The latter is in search of an 'estate' that is in fact something altogether stranger and more significant. A musical performance turns into a very unusual gig, The theme of disappearance - accidental or deliberate - is central again. Did the perpetual motion machine work, but in an altogether unexpected fashion?

A light story, this, but not a frivolous one. It reflects a not-uncommon ambition, to discover that our quirky little interest might have wider significance - that we are as important as the people we are told are important. 

'The Understanding of the Signs'

This is part of a running review of Lost Estates by Mark Valentine (Swan River Press 2024)

Many years ago I submitted a tale about pub signs to Ro Pardoe of Ghosts & Scholars and was delighted when it was published. The story is due to reappear next year in a G&S anthology. I only wish that, when I created my supernatural conspiracy theory around the symbolism of pub names, I had had a tithe of Mark Valentine's knowledge of the topic.

The central conceit of 'The Understanding of the Signs' is far more effective than mine. What if changing the name of an old tavern somehow unleashes some archetypical entity that dwells in that location? Could the Gray Horse and the Red Lion run amok? The climax of the story grants the protagonist a glimpse of a landscape shot through with mystical significance. He senses a 'baleful power' in the motion of 'shadow beasts', which does not bode well for modern Britain. 

And now so many pubs are closing down. If only one in a dozen is the domain of some ancient entity, what might not be unleashed upon us? 

'Readers of the Sands'

(This is part of a running review of Lost Estates by Mark Valentine (Swan River Press 2024)

There is something about sand. It gets between your toes, certainly, but it also gets into your imagination. It informs Algernon Blackwood's Egyptian novella 'Sand', Ramsey Campbell's Lovecraftian 'The Voice of the Beach', Stephen King's weird sci-fi 'Beachworld', and every other short story by J.G. Ballard. The granulated rock gets everywhere. 

Mark Valentine's take on the significance of sand is somewhat gentler than those examples, but nonetheless intriguing. An eccentric scholar - is there any other kind in a story? - invites three people to visit his seashore mansion. Each of the guests has a particular expertise that relates to the strangely patterned sands of that particular coastline. One is a veteran guide to the treacherous shore, the second practices divination by sand, the third makes sandglasses but also has a strange paranormal gift. Between them they explore the possible significance of the ephemeral patterns, and almost come a metaphysical cropper in the process.

This is a seaside tale that successfully evokes British beaches at their more mysterious and even menacing. The next time I am on the coast, I will seek out the shifting, rippling patterns. But cautiously.

'Laughter Ever After'

 

This is part of a running review of Lost Estates by Mark Valentine (Swan River Press 2024)

Two stories in this collection - 'The Seventh Card' and 'Maybe the Parakeet Was Correct', first appeared in ST so of course I rate them highly. Moving swiftly along we come to the next tale, whose premise might be baffling to some younger readers. Or is the song The Laughing Policeman still well known? Somehow I doubt it.

Humor being central to a tale of supernatural persecution is not common. The only story vaguely like this one that springs to mind is 'A Psychical Invasion', the first of Blackwood's John Silence tales. There are of course lots of stories - Wells' 'The Inexperienced Ghost', for instance - that are humourous, but that's another matter. 

Anyway, 'Laughter Ever After' sees a bibliophile (yes, another one!) going to a small provincial town in search of an obscure pamphlet containing a ghost story. The story, our collector knows, concerns a song written and made famous by Charles Penrose, a music hall performer. Penrose, we learn, followed up The Laughing Policeman with the Laughing Postman and other chortling characters. He was, it seems, the classic one-hit wonder who tried to repeat his success but found he didn't really have a winning formula.

This one blindsided me, as the ending manages to feel artistically right and at the same time raise just enough doubt as to what is going on. All in all, it's a piece that sticks in the mind, a clever take on the M.R. Jamesian idea of the scholar whose quest takes him way too close to the heart of a mystery. 

'The House of Flame'

This is part of a running review of Lost Estates by Mark Valentine (Swan River Press 2024)

The life and death of General Gordon is little known today. A typical Victorian hero - courageous, strange, and obsessive - Gordon's spiritual beliefs informed his many military exploits. He suppressed slavery in much of North Africa, led an 'Ever Victorious Army' that defeated the insanely destructive Taiping rebels in China, and then died in controversial circumstances at the hands of Mahdist rebels in the Sudan. 

And it is the death of Gordon that begins this unusual story, or perhaps meditation is a better word. A young man takes to his clergyman father the terrible news learned from newspaper vendors in a small Welsh town. Later, he discovers a small book that outlines Gordon's mystical ideas. The young man is the writer known as Arthur Machen, and his contemplation of Gordon's intellectual legacy informs his visionary approach to literature.

I found this story interesting, but as I have only read Machen's better known works I suspect that I missed out on some significant references. But, as stories about (non-fictional) writers go, this is a fine example of its kind. 

'Fortunes Told: Fresh Samphire'

This is part of a running review of Lost Estates by Mark Valentine (Swan River Press 2024)

Disappearances, Chesterton remarked, are harder to account for than manifestations. After all, the family ghost is merely keeping up appearances. In this story Mark Valentine interweaves two narratives, one of a chap called Crabbe, and the other of a friend who investigates (to the best of his ability) Crabbe's vanishing. 

This is Machen territory, to some extent, with emphasis on the mysteries of landscape and deep, strange folklore. Crabbe has undoubtedly left our world - but did he end up in a better place? We read of 'voices in the garden. Lord serpent and the moss boy, iridescent...' It is a world of wonders, but is it safe? Crabbe seems to be losing his sense of identity. But is it really a loss? Or the laying down of an all-too-human burden? 

In the end it is indeed the mystery that endures. The nameless friend resolves to follow the path Crabbe took, an apparently innocuous trail across an unremarkable part of England. We can be sure he will find something. Perhaps even the person he cares for. It is as much a story about friendship, of doing the best you can, as it is about other realms, other realities. 

I'm enjoying this collection. It is relaxing to read to good prose, to encounter interesting ideas. I am writing this on election night. I hope to wake up in a new realm tomorrow. 

'Worse Things Than Serpents'

 This is part of a running review of Lost Estates by Mark Valentine (Swan River Press 2024)

The title of this story comes from an innocent remark by a character in Thomas Hardy's first published novel. Hardy's reference is to a musical instrument. But in this tale, Mark Valentine's bibliophile narrator finds something far stranger. 

Anyone who has visited Hay-on-Wye knows that there are bookshops without shopkeepers, where you can leave money in an honesty box after taking some obscure paperback from a somewhat straggling array. In this tale the protagonist finds himself in an isolated shop full of books on one particular theme - the Brazen Serpent. I am sadly ignorant of the significance of this entity but significant it certainly is. 

The atmosphere is well evoked. Do I take something and leave the money? Do I leave a note of my address so I can pay later? The book hunter decided to do the latter, but then a sudden tempest arises, the lights fail, and he encounters strange, tactile sensations in the darkness. This M.R. Jamesian touch is neat, as is the later suggestion that leaving any form of document in such a place might be hazardous. 

A slight story, perhaps, built around a single incident, but a good one nonetheless. I look forward to the next tale from the Lost Estates.

'A Chess Game at Michaelmas'

This is part of a running review of Lost Estates by Mark Valentine (Swan River Press 2024)

Chess is a fascinating game at which I am very bad. Fortunately I have yet to inherit a country estate where the requirement of the lease is that I should be prepared to play chess with the King should he ever drop by at Michaelmas. This seems like a fictionalised version of one of those quirky English traditions that foreigners find charming. (A genuine tradition, the peppercorn rent, is explained by the author here.) 

As the story, unfolds, we discover that perhaps something altogether stranger and more hazardous than a quirky legal arrangement is involved. The narrator, a man of antiquarian pursuits, is called in to offer advice on the mysterious chess game, which has never actually been played. He meets both the heir to a pleasant if somewhat run-down house and lands, and a young woman with some knowledge of local folklore. 

LOST ESTATES by Mark Valentine (Swan River Press 2024)

I recently received a copy of this handsome volume (thank you very much to Swan River) and will offer my thoughts on the contents in a running review. In the meantime, consider the lovely cover. Two of the stories will be familiar to ST readers as they first appeared in the magazine.

Contents


“A Chess Game at Michaelmas”
“Worse Things Than Serpents”
“Fortunes Told: Fresh Samphire”
“The House of Flame”
“The Seventh Card”
“And maybe the parakeet was correct”
“Laughter Ever After”
“Readers of the Sands”
“The Understanding of the Signs”
“Lost Estates”
“The End of Alpha Street”
“The Fifth Moon”

“Sources”
“Acknowledgements”
“About the Author”