Written With My Left Hand Read online

  Written With My Left

  Hand

  Nugent Barker

  First published 1951 by Percival Marshall & Co

  This edition published 2014 at

  Coverley House, Carlton-in-Coverdale, Leyburn,

  North Yorkshire, DL8 4AY, UK

  The publishers have made every effort to trace the copyright holders of this work, but without success. They would be pleased to

  hear from any person with information about this.

  With thanks to Douglas Anderson, Richard Dalby,

  Mike Ashley and Phil Stephensen-Payne

  This edition of

  The first edition of this volume was dedicated

  To my Mother

  Contents

  Foreword by Douglas Anderson

  Bibliographical Notes

  Curious Adventure of Mr Bond

  Stanley Hutchinson

  The Six

  I and My Wife Isobel

  Whessoe

  Interlude

  The Spurs

  Death's Door

  Gertie Macnamara

  The Invalid

  Out of Leading-Strings

  Mrs Sayce’s Guy

  Expectation of Life

  A Passage in the Life of Dr Wilks

  The Strange Disappearance of Monsieur Charbo

  The Thorn

  One, Two, Buckle My Shoe

  Aimless Afternoon

  The Announcement

  Crescendo

  Life and Death of the Princess Gertrude

  Foreword

  Written with My Left Hand—a marvelously evocative title, perfectly presenting the unifying theme of what might otherwise be considered a disparate collection of twenty-one tales, and it is a title that recalls the old associations of left-handedness with the sinister. One idly wonders if the writer of these tales was himself left-handed, and one wonders many other things about Nugent Barker (1888-1955), but the facts about him that can be gathered together are limited.

  These twenty-one tales comprise, so far as is known, Barker’s entire literary output. They were originally published in irregular clumps over a twenty-three year period. Five came out between 1928 and 1931; another six from 1934 through 1936. Four appeared in 1939, and the remaining six were original to Barker’s only book, Written with My Left Hand, published by Percival Marshall & Co. of London in 1951. (According to the dust-wrapper blurb, ‘The Spurs’ was Barker’s latest work.)

  Barker had débuted with two stories published simultaneously in December 1928. Both of these attracted the attention of Edward J. O’Brien, the noted anthologist, and one of them, ‘Whessoe’, was reprinted in his Best British Short Stories of 1929. The volume itself is dedicated to Nugent Barker, and it also contains a short biographical notice—one of the few sources of information on Barker, so I copy it here in full:

  Barker, Nugent. Educated at Cheltenham College. Began life as a black and white artist. In 1914 the doctors failed to pass him into the army on account of his eyes. Has recently devoted himself entirely to literature. He comes from one of the oldest Irish families, the Nugents of Westmeath. He lives in London. (p. 352)

  In the 1930s, O’Brien selected two further stories by Barker for reprinting in his annuals. Also in the 1930s, John Gawsworth included some of Barker’s work in the anonymous horror anthologies he was then compiling. A few more facts on Barker come from Gawsworth’s brief biographical notes: his birth year of 1888, and the names of the magazines to which he contributed.

  In March 1934, Cornhill Magazine, then edited by Lord Gorell (Ronald Gorell Barnes, 1884-1963), published the first of seven Barker stories that would appear in its pages. In 1950, when Barker planned to collect his stories into a book (an earlier attempt had been thwarted during World War Two), Lord Gorell was invited to contribute a ‘Foreword’ to the collection. The result is a short puff-piece that unfortunately tells us nothing more about Nugent Barker, though Lord Gorell certainly had nice things to say about some of the stories. And he advised readers to ‘read this collection, not all at once, but bit by bit, savour it and enjoy it: it includes some very distinguished imagination and some first-class writing.’

  Barker indeed had a ‘very distinguished imagination’, and we can only wish that we had a large number of examples of his black and white art to accompany his stories—if only to see how well the expression of his visual imagination might stand up beside his considerable writing talent. As it stands, I have been able to find only three published examples of Nugent Barker’s artwork, all to accompany an article on the West Indian republic of Haiti, ‘My Experiences in the “Black Republic” ’ by Frank Rose, which appeared in the June 1919 issue of The Wide World Magazine. These black and illustrations are competent magazine work, somewhat in the manner of the famous contemporaneous Punch artist George Morrow.

  For long the little that we have known about Nugent Barker is what is found on the dust-wrapper of his book, which states:

  Nugent Barker was born in London, and still lives there with happy memories of West Sussex. He was educated in the early years of this century at Cheltenham College, where he distinguished himself at drawing and essay writing and at nothing else whatever. His father was a member of the Stock Exchange, and a consummate game shot; his mother’s old Westmeath family gave him his Christian name.

  When living in Oscar Wilde’s old house in Tite Street, he started a ghost story, ‘Whessoe’, (included in this book) and soon afterwards he had the pleasure of meeting Whistler’s ghost one midnight in the garden.

  But now we can fill in some of the gaps. Nugent Barker was born in Streatham on 29th March 1888, the first of three children of Harold George Barker (1862-1925), a member of the Stock Exchange, and Rosetta Nugent, née Strachan (1863-1949), who was related to the prominent Anglo-Norman family of Nugent; they were married on 16th April 1887 at St Peter’s Church in the Parish of St Peter, Bayswater, Middlesex. Nugent had two younger brothers, Guy Strachen Barker (1890-1953) and Harold Stanley Barker (1894-1970), both of whom married, unlike Nugent who remained a bachelor, but neither brother appears to have had any children. The brothers grew up in affluence, in a house in Kensington with several servants.

  Nugent was first educated at Pennington House in Bognor (now Bognor Regis) in West Sussex. He applied for admittance to Cheltenham College in Gloucestershire in November 1901, and entered in September 1902, residing in Boyne House until he left in July 1906. Nugent’s time at Cheltenham College overlapped with that of Herman Cyril McNeile (1888-1937), the writer better known as ‘Sapper’, creator of the Bulldog Drummond series of adventure tales.

  The Barker family seems to have moved to Tite Street in Chelsea in the 1920s, and by the end of that decade to Fairholme Road in Hammersmith and Fulham. London Electoral Registers show Nugent, his mother, and his brother Harold (later with his wife) living there from 1929 to the 1950s. (Nugent’s brother Guy was a merchant, and lived for some years in China.)

  Nugent Barker planned to publish his collection of stories in the early 1940s, but it was delayed by the war. He dedicated it to his mother, but she did not live to see it published, dying in 1949 at the age of eighty-six. It finally appeared in May 1951, with a colourful and atmospheric dust-wrapper (signed ‘Eisner’), and portrait of the author by Ian Tillard on the lower cover.

  Nugent Barker died on 14th September 1955 in Fulham. Barker’s stories live on their own merits, occasionally reappearing in various anthologies, and in the republication of his collected works, the single volume held in your hands, first reissued by Tartarus Press in July 2002 and now again in 2014. Admirers of Walter de la Mare and John Metcalfe will also relish Nugent Barker’s stories, and be pleased to admit him into the compa
ny of such august writers.

  For providing me with assistance and information on Nugent Barker, I’m grateful to Mrs. C.A. Leighton and Tim Pearce of Cheltenham College, Peter Stoll, and Richard Dalby.

  Douglas A. Anderson

  Bibliography of Nugent Barker

  ‘Aimless Afternoon’

  Cornhill Magazine, January 1939

  Written With My Left Hand (1951)

  ‘The Announcement’

  Cornhill Magazine, March 1934

  [John Gawsworth, ed.] Crimes, Creeps and Thrills (1935)

  Written With My Left Hand (1951)

  ‘Crescendo’

  Cornhill Magazine, March 1939

  Written With My Left Hand (1951)

  ‘Curious Adventure of Mr Bond’

  Cornhill Magazine, July 1939

  Edward J. O’Brien, ed. The Best British Short Stories of 1940 (1940)

  Argosy [reported but not seen]

  Written With My Left Hand (1951)

  Edmund Crispin, ed. Best Tales of Terror 2 (1965)

  Alfred Hitchcock, ed. Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Stories That Scared Even Me (1967)

  Charles M. Collins, ed. A Walk with the Beast (1969)

  Alfred Hitchcock, ed. Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Stories That Scared Even Me, Part One (1970)

  Alfred Hitchcock, ed. Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Slay Ride (1971)

  ‘Death’s Door’

  [John Gawsworth, ed.] Masterpiece of Thrills (1935)

  Written With My Left Hand (1951)

  ‘Expectation of Life’

  Written With My Left Hand (1951)

  ‘Gertie Macnamara’

  Cornhill Magazine, January 1935 [As ‘Witches in the Mill’, including only the first part of the story (pp. 99-102) as collected in Written With My Left Hand.]

  Written With My Left Hand (1951)

  Argosy, August 1951

  ‘I and My Wife Isobel’

  Cornhill Magazine, December 1939

  Written With My Left Hand (1951)

  ‘Interlude’

  Written With My Left Hand (1951)

  ‘The Invalid’

  Fortnightly Review, December 1928

  [John Gawsworth, ed.] Thrills, Crimes and Mysteries (1935)

  Written With My Left Hand (1951)

  ‘Last Call’ [see ‘A Passage in the Life of Dr Wilks’]

  ‘Life and Death of the Princess Gertrude’

  London Mercury, August 1931

  Written With My Left Hand (1951)

  ‘Mrs Sayce’s Guy’

  Life & Letters, May 1929

  [John Gawsworth, ed.] New Tales of Horror by Eminent Authors (1934)

  Written With My Left Hand (1951)

  ‘One, Two, Buckle My Shoe’

  Written With My Left Hand (1951)

  Hugh Lamb, ed. Star Book of Horror No. 2 (1976)

  Richard Dalby, ed. The Mammoth Book of Ghost Stories 2 (1991)

  ‘Out of Leading-Strings’

  Life & Letters, December 1934

  Written With My Left Hand (1951)

  ‘A Passage in the Life of Dr Wilks’

  Written With My Left Hand (1951)

  Argosy, July 1952 [as ‘Last Call’]

  ‘The Six’

  Cornhill Magazine, August 1935

  [John Gawsworth, ed.] Thrills, Crimes and Mysteries (1935)

  Argosy, January 1943

  Written With My Left Hand (1951)

  ‘The Spurs’

  Written With My Left Hand (1951)

  ‘Stanley Hutchinson’

  Life & Letters, March 1935

  Edward J. O’Brien, ed. The Best British Short Stories of 1935 (1935)

  Written With My Left Hand (1951)

  Argosy, October 1951

  ‘The Strange Disappearance of Monsieur Charbo’

  Life & Letters, January 1931

  Written With My Left Hand (1951)

  ‘The Thorn’

  Written With My Left Hand (1951)

  ‘Whessoe’

  Life & Letters, December 1928

  Edward J. O’Brien, ed. The Best British Short Stories of 1929 (1929)

  [John Gawsworth, ed.] Thrills, Crimes and Mysteries (1935)

  Written With My Left Hand (1951)

  Richard Dalby, ed. The Mammoth Book of Ghost Stories (1990)

  Richard Dalby, ed. The Anthology of Ghost Stories (1994)

  ‘Witches in the Mill’ [see ‘Gertie Macnamara’]

  Curious Adventure of Mr Bond

  MR BOND climbed from the wooded slopes of the valley into broad moonlight. His Inverness cape, throwing his portly figure into still greater prominence against the floor of tree-tops at his back, was torn and soiled by twigs and thorns and leaves, and he stooped with prim concern to brush off the bits and pieces. After this, he eased his knapsack on his shoulder; and now he blinked his eyes upon the country stretching out before him.

  Far away, across the tufted surface of the tableland, there stood a house, with its column of smoke, lighted and still, on the verge of a forest.

  A house—an inn—he felt it in his very bones! His hunger returned, and became a source of gratification to him. Toiling on, and pulling the brim of his hat over his eyes, he watched the ruby gleam grow bigger and brighter; and when at last he stood beneath the sign, he cried aloud, scarcely able to believe in his good fortune.

  ‘The Rest of the Traveller,’ he read; and there, too, ran the name of the landlord: ‘Crispin Sasserach’.

  The stillness of the night discouraged him, and he was afraid to tap at the curtained window. And now, for the first time, the full weight of his weariness fell upon the traveller. Staring into the black mouth of the porch, he imagined himself to be at rest, in bed, sprawled out, abundantly sleeping, drugged into forgetfulness by a full stomach. He shut his eyes, and drooped a little under his Inverness cape; but when he looked again into the entrance, there stood Crispin Sasserach, holding a lamp between their faces. Mr Bond’s was plump and heavy-jawed, with sagging cheeks, and eyes that scarcely reflected the lamplight; the other face was smooth and large and oval, with small lips pressed into a smile.

  ‘Come in, come in,’ the landlord whispered, ‘do come in. She is cooking a lovely broth tonight!’

  He turned and chuckled, holding the lamp above his head. Through the doorway of this lost, upland inn, Mr Bond followed the monstrous back of his host. The passage widened and became a hall; and here, amongst the shadows that were gliding from their lurking-places as the lamp advanced, the landlord stopped, and tilted the flat of his hand in the air, as though enjoining his guest to listen. Then Mr Bond disturbed the silence of the house with a sniff and a sigh. Not only could he smell the ‘lovely broth’—already, in this outer hall, he tasted it . . . a complex and subtle flavour, pungent, heavy as honey, light as a web in the air, nipping him in the stomach, bringing tears into his eyes.

  Mr Bond stared at Crispin Sasserach, at the shadows beyond, and back again to Crispin Sasserach. The man was standing there with his huge, oval, hairless face upturned in the light of the lamp he carried; then, impulsively, and as though reluctant to cut short such sweet anticipation, he plucked the traveller by the cape, and led him to the cheerful living-room, and introduced him, with a flourish of the hand, to Myrtle Sasserach, the landlord’s young and small and busy wife, who at that very moment was standing at a round table of great size, beneath the massive centre-beam of the ceiling, her black hair gleaming in the light of many candles, her plump hand dipping a ladle soundlessly into a bowl of steam.

  On seeing the woman, whose long lashes were once more directed towards the bowl, Mr Bond drew his chin primly into his neck-cloth, and glanced from her to Crispin Sasserach, and finally he fixed his eyes on the revolutions of the ladle. In a moment, purpose fell upon the living-room, and with swift and nervous gestures the landlord seated his guest at the table, seized the ladle from his wife, plunged it into the bowl, and thrust the brimming plate into the hands of Myrtle, who began at o
nce to walk towards the traveller, the steam of the broth rising into her grave eyes.

  After a muttered grace, Mr Bond pushed out his lips as though he were whispering ‘spoon’.

  ‘Oh, what a lovely broth!’ he murmured, catching a drip in his handkerchief.

  Crispin Sasserach grinned with delight. ‘I always say it’s the best in the world.’ Whereupon, with a rush, he broke into peals of falsetto laughter, and blew a kiss towards his wife. A moment later, the two Sasserachs were leaving their guest to himself, bending over their own platefuls of broth, and discussing domestic affairs, as though they had no other person sitting at their table. For some time their voices were scarcely louder than the sound of the broth-eating; but when the traveller’s plate was empty, then, in a flash, Crispin Sasserach became again a loud and attentive host ‘Now then, sir—another helping?’ he suggested, picking up the ladle, and beaming down into the bowl, while Myrtle left her chair and walked a second time towards the guest.

  Mr Bond said that he would, and pulled his chair a little closer to the table. Into his blood and bones, life had returned with twice its accustomed vigour; his very feet were as light as though he had soaked them in a bath of pine needles.

  ‘There you are, sir! Myrtle’s coming! Lord a’mighty, how I wish I was tasting it for the first time!’ Then, spreading his elbows, the landlord crouched over his own steaming plateful, and chuckled again. ‘This broth is a wine in itself! It’s a wine in itself, b’God! It staggers a man!’ Flushed with excitement, his oval face looked larger than ever, and his auburn hair, whirled into bellicose corkscrews, seemed to burn brighter, as though someone had brought the bellows to it.