After Midnight by Daphne du Maurier

On a sharp December day, the wind changes – and the birds begin to gather.

In the twisting alleyways of Venice, a grieving couple catch a glimpse of their lost child.

A woman returns home to find no trace of her existence.

From the inimitable imagination of Daphne du Maurier, these thirteen stories pierce to the dark heart of our relationships: between men and women, humanity and nature, love and obsession, the future and the past. Uncanny, provocative and spine-crawlingly terrifying, these tales will keep you up long after midnight. Whatever you do, don’t look now…

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I’ve been slowly working my way through the novels of Daphne du Maurier, but haven’t yet read any of her shorter works of fiction.  When After Midnight, a newly published collection of thirteen macabre tales became available as part of a Kindle Daily Deal, I couldn’t resist.  As with any collection of short stories, there were some that I enjoyed more than others, and I’ll focus on my favourites in the collection. 

The Blue Lenses

The Blue Lenses was the first tale in the collection, and quite possibly my favourite.  Marda West is in hospital awaiting an eye operation, and is unable to see when we meet her.  As such, the story starts out with descriptions of what she can hear, smell, touch, and taste, but we get no visual clues, remaining in dark with Marda as to what her surroundings and those treating her look like yet still inferring, as Marda does, what those characters might be like. 

Marda’s surgery is a two-stage process, the first stage is to fit blue lenses which will return her sight but without full colour, with a second stage restoring her sight in full.  But when the bandages come off after the first operation, those around her have the heads of animals and Marda descends, quite understandably, into a state of paranoia.  Her first thought is that this is some horrible trick that’s being played on her, although she can’t see why anyone would go to so much trouble nor what they’d gain from it.  Worse, when she dares to mention it, no one understands what she’s talking about, leading her to question her own sanity. 

I loved the subtle horror in this story as the reader understands before Marda what she’s seeing and the implications of this strange gift / curse, depending on your perspective.  While she does come to the same realisation, she tries to dismiss the experience after the second operation when her vision returns to normal.  du Maurier puts one final little twist in at the end, which rounds the tale off beautifully and while nothing’s stated, Marda’s fate seems inevitable.

The Apple Tree

The Apple Tree introduces the reader to an unnamed widower but one who is not in a state of mourning, instead feeling relief that his wife is no longer around, even though he can’t admit that out loud.  Seen through his eyes, Midge comes across as a dour woman who experiences little joy, her time spent martyring herself on the altar of domesticity.  While we get no other perspective in this tale, another side to Midge gradually emerges, and we see a woman who was in love with her husband but always looked down upon by him. It seems that, even at the end, she always did her best for him, resigned to a life with an unpleasant man who doesn’t appreciate her.

When the widower notices an apple tree in his garden some months after Midge’s death, he sees in it a resemblance to his wife, slowly developing an obsessive hatred of it. This is made worse when its wood doesn’t burn well and its fruit is sour, although no one else notices anything unusual about it. 

The Apple Tree is a psychological tale that never fully crosses over into the supernatural, despite hinting very strongly at Midge seeking revenge from beyond the grave.  And given what we know, I’m not at all ashamed to say that I wanted the unnamed widower to suffer.  It’s cleverly done, as his dismisses his initial thoughts as a flight of fancy, becoming increasingly paranoid as the tree refuses to be ignored.  When he’s finally had enough, he decides to chop the tree down, a final act of desperation that he hopes will bring an end to it… It’s an atmospheric tale that carefully treads the path between one man’s paranoid delusions and the idea of a woman getting her own back for a lifetime of misery.

The Birds

Perhaps the most well-known of du Maurier’s shorter work thanks to the Hitchcock movie, I loved the sense of inevitability in this tale.  Told from the perspective of Nat Hocken, we see his first experience of birds trying to enter his house, attacking him and his children but with no real harm done.  Initially passing it off as the behaviour of frightened creatures, it soon becomes clear that this is not a one off or localised event as the birds continue to gather and attack. 

The Birds take on an apocalyptic air as we see the devastation wrought by the birds.  Nat and his family, as a result of that initial and relatively mild attack, get ahead of it, boarding up their house and gathering what provisions they can with a siege mentality.  It seems clear that they’re amongst the few who are prepared, particularly when radio broadcasts from London stop…

Part of what’s chilling about this tale is seeing nature turn on us when we so often see ourselves as a dominant force, and I think that this is particularly true of birds which so often have positive connotations such as peace and wisdom.  And I think that the gradual build up is very well done, as we initially see hedgerow birds such as sparrows and blackbirds involved, gradually increasing in size and building up to birds of prey…

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While I’ve picked out three of my favourites for this review (and with honourable mentions going to Split Second, Don’t Look Now, and The Breakthrough) I highly recommend this collection of short stories. The tales are very different, but one element they have in common is a degree of ambiguity. du Maurier likes to leave things unsaid, and this collection felt similar to the works of Shirley Jackson in that respect. A perfect collection for dark winter nights.