I could have picked several stories from this collection, many of which foreshadow a mood we now think of as ‘Aickmanesque’. Something strange happens, it’s not always clear what, and the protagonists are left changed, and darkened, by their experiences.
This little vignette is an early bit of ‘municipal gothic’, perhaps, with a working class character at its centre, which was unusual for the time. He’s a nightwatchman on a building site, with a wife and child at home. On a cold night, when he feels especially lonely, he engages a loitering stranger in conversation and invites him to sit with him by the dwindling brazier.
The stranger asks him a series of snide, undermining questions. Is he certain his wife is faithful? Is the job worth it for the poor money they pay? Couldn’t he do any better? We begin to suspect that the stranger is Death himself, but don’t hope for a tale of redemption after A Christmas Carol:
“The stranger seemed to have said his say, his head drooped a little more; he might even be dropping off to sleep. Apparently he did not feel the cold. But the night-watchman was breathing hard and could scarcely stand…”
Rather than death, I wonder if the stranger might not be that self-doubting voice we all hear in the fretful small hours.
First published in Night Fears, 1924. Collected in The Travelling Grave and Other Stories, 1948
A Personal Anthology 