ŷ������

The opening words sound like a fairy story:
��There was a woman who was beautiful, who started with all the advantages, yet she had no luck.��
But it is immediately clear that this is more Grimm than Disney:
��She married for love, and the love turned to dust. She had bonny children, yet she felt they had been thrust upon her, and she could not love them.��

It was intended to be a ghost story, but there are no ghosts - just supernatural voices and premonitions, and the metaphorical ghost of an off-stage, useless father:
��Though he had good prospects, those prospects never materialised.��

It is as haunting as any ghost story because of the combined effects of lack of love and whispering walls on the boy, Paul:
��The house became haunted by the unspoken phrase: There must be more money!����

The heart of the story is luck, money, and the absence of both.
The heart of Paul longs for love from the empty heart of his mother.


Image: The word “Lucky�� with horseshoe U ()

Luck

Paul asks why they don’t have a car. His mother says it’s because they’re poor (this is relative - they have a large house and several servants, but live beyond their means).
When he asks why, she says, “slowly and bitterly, ‘it’s because your father has no luck.’�� She fails to mention her own compulsive spending.
��Is luck money, mother?��
“No, Paul! Not quite. It’s what causes you to have money�� That’s why it’s better to be born lucky than rich.��

So does dying rich mean dying lucky (or just that you have a bad accountant?!)? Tragedy or triumph?

Make your own luck?

The idea of making your own luck is a cliché. But if you “make�� it, surely it’s skill, effort, and persistence, rather than luck?

Rationalists like me can’t manufacture luck and can’t hope for Paul’s paranormal solution.

That leaves us with a delicate balancing act: to accept and enjoy what we have right now, even as we reach out and up, striving for more and better lives, more and better selves.

More importantly, sacrificial love is more honourable than materialistic greed.


Image: Mother and Paul’s shadow, from a screen adaptation - Valerie Hobson in 1949, I think ()

On the psychiatrist’s couch

Like Oedipus, and like the son in Sons and Lovers, Paul wants to replace his feckless father in the cold heart of his mother. His furious rocking may bring pleasure and relief beyond what's explicit in the story.

But the ending... That's the horror.

Ad astra

As a child, I named my own rocking horse Pegasus because I knew he had wings. Their invisibility was part - confirmation, even - of their magic. Like Paul, my riding was sometimes frantic, mesmeric, dangerous. Pegasus flew me to many and wondrous places. I won no money, but I lived to tell the tales and to see my own, loved, child ride Pegasus as I had done. I saw my own Winner’s Enclosure.

See also

�� I’ve reviewed several of DHL’s short stories HERE. Many of them have themes that overlap with those here.

�� See Sons and Lovers, which I reviewed HERE, for another Lawrencian Paul with a probably Oedipal complex.

�� This sort of ghostless ghost story reminded me a little of Poe. See my reviews of:
- The Pit and the Pendulum
- The Tell-Tale Heart
- The Fall of the House of Usher

�� There are several screen adaptations, but I’ve not watched any of them.

Short story club

I reread this as one of the stories in The Art of the Short Story, by Dana Gioia, from which I'm aiming to read one story a week with The Short Story Club, starting 2 May 2022. I reread it again in The Short Story Club's second anthology, Black Water: The Anthology of Fantastic Literature, by Alberto Manguel.

You can read this story .

You can join the group here.