Book Review - 'The Man in the Picture' by Susan Hill

I came across this little story by chance while clearing out a couple of cupboards. It was part of a collection of short stories amongst some old hardcover books I’d put aside to be altered for craft projects. Once I’d finished with the clear-out, I settled down to read it.
‘A mysterious depiction of masked revellers at the Venice carnival hangs in the college rooms of Oliver’s old professor in Cambridge. On this cold winter’s night, its eerie secret is revealed by the ageing don. The dark art of the Venetian scene, instead of imitating life, has the power to entrap it. To stare into the painting is to play dangerously with the unseen demons it hides, and become the victim of its macabre beauty…’

This is the second Susan Hill story I’ve read after ‘The Woman in Black’; the novel itself is quite small, about 160 pages, and I finished it in one sitting.

Unlike ‘The Woman in Black’, Susan Hill has placed ‘The Man in the Picture’ in a contemporary setting but it’s similar to the former novel in the way the story is told – a character narrating an earlier time in his life, which starts off routine before hints of horror begin to seep in.

The story is told in first person by Oliver, who lives in London but is in Cambridge to visit a favourite former tutor, Dr Theo Parmitter, “an old Cambridge bachelor for whom the college was his family.” According to Oliver, Theo is “tremendous company, witty, acerbic, shrewd, a fund of stories that were not merely the rambling reminiscences of an old man. He was a wonderful conversationalist…”

It’s a “bitterly cold January night…” and the pair are in Theo’s rooms in the college, “stretched out comfortable in our chairs before a good fire. But the winter wind, coming as always straight off the Fens, howled round and occasionally a burst of hail rattled against the glass.”

And so, the stage is set for the telling of a creepy tale revolving around an oil painting that’s been in Theo’s possession for many years.

Oliver describes it for us – “It was of a Venetian carnival scene. On a landing stage beside the Grand Canal and in the square behind it, a crowd in masks and cloaks milled around among entertainers… people were climbing into gondolas; others were already out on the water… The picture was typical of those whose scenes are lit by flares and torches that throw an uncanny glow, illuminating faces and patches of bright clothing and the silver ripples on the water, leaving other parts in deep shadow…”

The story switches to Theo’s point of view as he tells Oliver, first of his childhood and how he came to appreciate art, through to the circumstances leading to his purchase of the oil painting and a couple of events that followed, which left him somewhat unsettled.

There’s a break in Theo’s story where he appears to have fallen asleep. Oliver leaves him and decides to take a walk before retiring.

The streets are deserted, and he passes a lone policeman when “without warning, I stopped because a sense of fear and oppression came over me like a wave of fever… I glanced round but the lane was empty. The fear I felt was not of anyone or anything, it was just an anonymous, unattached fear…”

This inexplicable fear is followed by the sounds of “a cry and a couple of low voices… a scuffle and another desperate cry.”

But there is no one about. And when he sees the policeman again, moments later, the man shows no sign of having heard anything. The feeling of dread lifts… “A car… glided past me. A cat streaked away into a dark slit between two buildings. My breath smoked on the frosty air. There was nothing untoward about and the town was settled for the night.”

As he makes his way back to the guest room he is occupying at the college, Oliver is confronted by another peculiar, disconcerting incident, for which there is no explanation. But he tells no one of it.

The next evening, Theo continues with his story, which sees him travelling to Yorkshire to visit the elderly Countess of Hawdon, who has extended the invitation as she wishes to talk to him of the picture. As he tells Oliver, “… my story is nothing, it is merely a prelude to the story told me by an extraordinary old woman.”

The Countess is “extremely old, with the pale, parchment-textured skin that goes with great age; skin like the paper petals of dried honesty. Her hair was white and thin, but elaborately combed up onto her head… She wore a long frock… on which a splendid diamond brooch was set, and there were diamonds about her long, sinewy neck. Her eyes were deep set… a piercing, unnerving blue.”

The story switches to the Countess as narrator as she tells Theo of her young life, many years before, when she met and married her husband at the age of twenty. He had been on the verge of being engaged to another woman – there was nothing formal between them, only an understanding – when he and the Countess met and fell in love. Understandably, the jilted party was left furious and hurt.

And that vicious hurt would have awful, macabre consequences.

Theo briefly picks up the narration after the Countess finishes her tragic story before we’re finally back to Oliver’s point of view.

The story is then wrapped up in about twelve pages, with the final chapter told by Anne, Oliver’s wife. This was a bit jarring as Anne has only been mentioned briefly before.

I found the ending a tad rushed and anti-climactic; to be honest, I could see it coming. It’s as if the story idea had run out of steam. Which is unfortunate as it had started so well.

Having said that, I did enjoy reading it, although not as much as ‘The Woman in Black’; the feeling of unease I felt after reading that story stayed with me for days. ‘The Man in the Picture’, on the other hand, had me slightly unnerved while I was reading it but that feeling disappeared when I shut the book.

My favourite scene is the one I described when there is a break in Theo’s story early on and Oliver goes for a walk in the deserted town. I liked that break, which felt natural, giving the reader a chance to share Oliver’s unease when he’s left seriously shaken by unexplained events. I like the way Hill described the scene, subtly adding to the slow-building tension.

I’ve said it before and I shall repeat myself – I do enjoy Susan Hill’s style and her ability to communicate so much, using simple, straightforward language. Like ‘The Woman in Black’, this story is told succinctly with no extraneous explanations or descriptions, yet it still manages to convey the gradual build-up of suspense with no need for copious amounts of overt blood and gore.