“The Red Room” however begins in an old dark castle and you are immediately plunged into the story with descriptions and introductions happening along the way.
The story does not start in The Red Room but in a communal room with a table. This setting is daunting not only because of the appearance of the room but also because of the people who occupy it, a man with a withered arm and a woman with pale eyes. These are not nice looking people. We know from the first sentence the gist of the story and it is clear that a ghost or the story of a ghost will be involved. “it will take a very tangible ghost to frighten me.”
The old people create an atmosphere for the reader starting with the woman, “and eight-and-twenty years you have lived here and never seen the likes of this house.” Until the man leaves they repeatedly say to him, “it’s your own choosing,” this is quite a discouraging thing to say and adds extra tension. The entrance of another man adds to the weirdness of the old people and to the house by the way he is described. “I heard the sound of a stick and a shambling step on the flags in the passage outside, and the door creaked on its hinges as a second old man entered, more bent, more wrinkled, more aged even than the first. He supported himself by a single crutch, his eyes were covered by a shade, and his lower lip, half averted, hung pale and pink from his decaying yellow teeth.”
The build up towards a climax continues in “The Darkness Out There” by carrying on to reflect a relatively pleasant place but the mention again of “Packers End” makes it obvious that it will be part of the conclusion of the story - it is ”The Darkness Out There.” Penelope Lively talks about “Packers End” being one of those places you’re scared of from when you’re young, and how all the small children thought it was full of witches and tigers. When they were twelve or so they were no longer scared of witches and tigers but of the German plane and other things too, such as rumours of a young girl who was assaulted by “two enormous blokes, sort of gypsy types.”
As Sandra makes her way to Mrs Rutter’s she pictures her future, “One day, this year, next year, sometime, she would go places like on travel brochures and run into a blue sea.” She goes on dreaming until she is surprised by Kerry Stevens, who is to help her and Mrs Rutter’s; he is not who she had hoped for.
They make their way to the house, where Mrs Rutter "seemed composed of circles, a cottage-loaf woman.” They all make polite conversation about school and work then Mrs Rutter sets them to their tasks. Kerry mows the grass and Sandra helps inside with some cleaning. While Sandra works she sees a photo of Mrs Rutter’s Husband who died in the early years of the Second World War.
“The Red Room” continues in a similar way to the “The Darkness Out There” building up to an eventual climax with the man making his way through the house to “The Red Room.” On the approach to the room fear starts to work on him, and as shadows from a bronze group appear to him to be a person crouching you can imagine him being startled. This creates a feeling of apprehension in the reader as you don’t know what will be around the next corner or in the room. He “opens the door of the red room rather hastily” and he shuts the door behind him immediately. He “stood with the candle held aloft, surveying his vigil, the great red room of Loraine Castle.” As he remembers the duke who died here while doing the same thing he was, fear again creeps upon him.
The candle he holds does not allow him to see to the other end of the room, “and left an ocean of mystery and suggestion beyond the island of light.” So it is unclear whether or not there is not already someone or something in the room. The man checks all around the room to reassure himself that there is nothing in there, this makes him more relaxed – “my precise examination had done me good.” After his thorough examination of the room he finds the fire is laid, and he lights it. He pulls up a chair and a table to create a barricade, he also has a gun to hand. This shows that he is obviously still scared that something may be there. He again becomes more nervous when he notices an area of deep shadow, “ had that undefinable quality of a presence” … “to reassure myself, I walked with a candle to it.” He leaves the candle there so as to give it light.
He starts to entertain himself with rhyme but the echo of his voice makes him uneasy, then he remembers candles he had seen in the passage, “with a slight effort, walked out into the moonlight” he returns from the moonlit corridor with ten candles and arranges these new ones with the old so not an inch of the room is left without light. “There was now something very cheery and reassuring in these little streaming flames”
In “The Darkness Out There” Mrs Rutter continues her nice old lady image and gives Sandra and Kerry chocolate biscuits. When the two finish their jobs Kerry comes in from outside and they have a cup of tea. Kerry with no relevance to anything asks, “Is that the wood where there was that German plane came down during the war?” Sandra does not like to talk about it, “It always gives me the willies” she says.
Mrs Rutter said that she had seen it come down “we’d heard the engine and you could tell there was trouble, the noise wasn’t right and we looked out and saw it come down smack in the trees.” Mrs Rutter then makes excuses for why she and her friend Dot didn’t contact anyone. “We hadn’t a the telephone”… “Dot said we should bike but it was filthy night, pouring cats and dogs.” What she said next, Kerry didn’t like. “And we didn’t know if it was one of ours or one of theirs, did we?”
“But either way…” Kerry started before Mrs Rutter interrupted him by continuing her story, telling them how they cheered when they found it was a German plane. This would have been acceptable during the war but Kerry and Sandra do not like the attitude of the old lady and are shocked when she tells them that one of the crew was still alive and that she and Dot just left him. “Tit for tat, I said to Dot” she obviously saw it as revenge for her husband who had died earlier in the war.
She continues to make more excuses for why they didn’t go and get help the next day, “I said to Dot I am not walking to the village in this, and that’s flat,” (meaning the bike tyre) “and Dot was running a temp, she had the flu or something coming on.”
When she tells them that he was there alive for two nights Kerry is so horrified that he gets up and leaves. The reaction of Kerry is understandable in modern times but during the war the airman was the enemy and Mrs Rutters attitudes and actions are justifiable if not commendable.
After Sandra and Kerry leave everything returns to being perfect and the girl realises that there was nothing to fear in the wood only a story and an old woman.
To sum the story up, Penelope Lively writes Sandra’s thoughts. “You could get people all wrong she realised with alarm. You could get people wrong, and there was a darkness that was not darkness that was not the darkness of tree shadows and murky undergrowth and you could not draw the curtains and keep it out because it was in your head.” She had not liked Kerry at the beginning because he was not one of her set at school, he was acne ridden and not someone she expected to be in the ‘good neighbours club’ but his attitude to the story changed her opinion of him and she looked beyond the acne and found his true character. Neither she nor Kerry would go near Mrs Rutter again because although she appeared to be a sweet old lady from the outside she had a dark inside and past.
The ending of “The Red Room” happens quite quickly, it is after midnight and one of the candles goes out, at first the man puts it down to a draught. He calmly relights that candle. After doing this, another goes out, “Odd! I said. Did I do that myself in a flash of absent mindedness?” As he stand up another goes out “This won’t do”. He starts talking as if to himself but also to someone or something. This continues with more and more candles going out. He becomes increasingly hysterical until all the candles go out and then the fire. He tries to make his way to the moonlit corridor but as it is so dark he knocks himself out by hitting himself on the corner of the bed.
He wakes up the next morning with all the old people around him, “You believe me now,” says the old man “the room is haunted?” the man replies “Yes.” The old people say I told you so and start trying to guess who it is who is haunting the room. “There is neither ghost of earl nor ghost of countess, there is no ghost there at all; but worse, far worse-“
“Well?”
“The worst of all things that haunt poor mortal man, said I; and that is, in all its nakedness – Fear! Fear that will not have light nor sound,” he is saying that there is nothing materialistic in the room only the fear of something that may be there.
The old man with the shade agrees and talks about how there is always fear; “You can feel it in the day time, even on a bright summers day.” He says there will be fear in the room forever, but it is only fear as there is nothing actually there.
The fear in both the stories is similar, in that it is not of anything real. In “The Darkness Out There” the fear initially is of rumours, it is not until Kerry confronts Mrs Rutter that they find the truth. After that there is no longer anything to be scared of, only the old lady’s past and the fact that something terrible happened there once. Penelope Lively builds up the fear well, Sandra starts in a wonderful place full of flowers but ends up in an old house near “Packers End” with an old woman who she sees as terrifying for letting the German pilot die.
The title does not give much away at the beginning but relates well to the story. “The Darkness Out There” refers not only to the literal darkness of “Packers End” but also the truth some people hold; the darkness of Mrs Rutter.
The fear in the “Red Room” is perhaps more justifiable in that someone did die up there while doing the same as the man, but again it is rumours of a ghost or some other supernatural being that makes the man scared. The fear is increased by the darkness. The going out of the candles may just have been them running out, and it was his mind that was telling him that it was caused by something supernatural. The man, like Sandra, is placed in a fearful position, he is on his own in an old house with only his mind and imagination.
I think that “The Darkness Out There” is a better story because you come from a perfect place into a horror story whereas in The Red Room you know from the first sentence where the story will lead.
The stories were both based on fear coming from your own senses and imagination, although the actions of Mrs Rutter were truly frightening.
