Not to be confused with A. L. Kennedy or Pat Barker, A. L. Barker was one of those authors who can find consolation for mediocre sales in the admiration of their peers. Auberon Waugh and Rebecca West both considered her exceptional. She published eleven novels, one of which earned her a place on the 1969 Booker shortlist, yet she was also a prolific writer of short stories. Many of these engage with horror and the supernatural. Though far from callous towards her characters, she tends to view them and their motives with scepticism. In ‘Lost Journey’, her young narrator falls for the sexy sidekick of a seemingly demented and impossibly ancient woman, Gerda Charles, who claims to the cousin of Queen Elizabeth I’s favourite, Robert Dudley. Like the ‘strange stories’ of her contemporary, Robert Aickman, ‘Lost Journey’ follows a hapless protagonist drawn by erotic yearnings to the edge of disaster. But there is more overt comedy here than in Aickman, as the supernatural and the everyday converge. A.L. Barker liked to think of her shorty stories as ‘dark explosions’, and this is one of the best of them.
First published in Element of Doubt, Vintage, London, 1992. Reissued as a standalone title by Galley Beggar, Norwich, 2014
A Personal Anthology 