Robert Aickman Readers discussion

I've seen some reviewers describe this story as one of Aickman's more straightforward. It didn't strike me that way at all, I finished this story last night feeling as bemused as ever. It must have affected me quite deeply as I had an Aickmanesque inspired nightmare that night from which I awoke in cold sweats.

On the surface this is a tale about a sexually inexperienced man, who still lives with his mother, who starts dating a women he meets at the theatre, but begins having a sordid affair with her more attractive friend and room-mate.

The protagonist finds it increasingly difficult to juggle two relationships and the guilt and events culminate in a tragic (and possible fatal) accident to one of the women as he runs from the flat in a panic. He runs back home, to the comforting and safe bosom of his mother.

But as usual there are throwaway lines that don't seem to make much sense and look like clues to a deeper layer of meaning beneath the surface. Many comments seem like superfluous to the purposes of the story and yet may offer an insight into the heart of the story. What was the true nature of the relationship between the two women (with such similar names) Helen and Ellen?

When I awoke from my nightmare, the story popped straight back into my head and it suddenly occurred to me that perhaps Ellen was the embodiment of the protagonist's fantasising, a stark contrast from his dull, cold and conventional dates with Helen who always seemed so blank and devoid of emotion. Ellen was everything Helen wasn't; warm, sensuous and highly sexualised. His visions of seeing Helen everywhere, there watching he and Ellen, reflected his guilt and shame. His gradual laming a physical manifestation of his emotional trauma. When Helen finally tried to develop their relationship into something more intimate and physical, he couldn't handle it; the conflation of reality and his fantasies.

Seeing events in this light, it makes the ending all the more tragic. His abandoning of an attempt at a mature, adult relationship, his running back to mother, from who's comforting embrace one feels he is now unlikely ever to leave again.

great analysis Simon. i will have to reread this one.

I like that you mention the throwaway lines. They occur quite early, too, such as '“Perhaps I'd better have your address? I might get a sore throat.”

What does that actually mean? It's vaguely interpretable as normal conversation, but then this is Aickman...

It seems to me, when I try to attach meaning to Aickman's stories, that whatever theories I come up with always leave some gaps, something unexplained.