There's a lot of irony behind the scenes this time out. This New English Library book is larger than Smith's previous bunch for that publisher at well over two hundred pages, but it has the smallest cast of characters perhaps thus far in his entire output and the least amount of action. There are precious few characters in play outside the Brownlow family, if we count two significant others as part of that clan, and nobody else is remotely at risk between the prologue and the final page. Of course, if the latter means what we think it does, then Smith makes up for the death count there and then. What's more, for a book in which very little actually happens, we know plenty about its evolution.
Like so many of Smith's stories, it has roots in a bizarre true story from his old stomping grounds, in this instance the exploits of the Revd. William MacGregor, vicar of St. Editha's in Tamworth for a decade in the late nineteenth century. He was a rich man, who used much of his fortune to help his community as a public benefactor, but he was also an amateur Egyptologist who made quite a few trips to Egypt and brought much back with him, including a pair of mummies that he gave an important place in his study. Sadly, they started to decompose in the British climate, so he chose to lay them to rest in a Christian burial at the bottom of his back garden by the river.
Smith wrote about MacGregor in a few articles, mentioning the mummies even in general pieces like 'The Reverend William MacGregor' and especially in ones like 'My Buried Mummies', in which he visited the Bolehall Manor Club in Tamworth, formerly MacGregor's cottage, to see the study, which at that point had become a billiards room. He also adapted the story into fiction, leading to an Egyptian themed cover for 'London Mystery' to accompany his story, 'The Mummy', about two Egyptologists stumbling on a tomb and one having a vision there of a beautiful priestess who has borne a child to a prince and so must see it killed in front of her as an offering to Isis before she's killed herself in punishment.
That story is reprised here, with this previously unnamed priestess given the name Dalukah and the prince becoming her soldier lover Aba-aner. Their baby is killed but so are both of them, with their bodies entombed for millennia until a British clergyman, the Revd. Mason, discovers them and brings them home to England, where, just as MacGregor did, places them in his study until a growing smell prompts him to give them a Christian burial in his garden down by the river. Sound familiar? Well, that's our prologue and during it we meet a small cast of characters beyond just a thinly disguised vicar. It's when we leap forward in time for part one that the world shrinks.
Our focus is the Brownlow family, who live at number 12 in the upscale neighbourhood known as River View, and we stay with them there for the vast majority of this book. The man of the house is George Brownlow, but as we begin he's very much at the mercy of his wife, Emily, in more than one sense. Back a way, he lost his job and she won big on a Spot the Ball competition, which she's kept quiet all these years to maintain a different image to their neighbours. She's a real piece of work, a stuck up Hyacinth Bucket type, who's making everyone's life a misery in the holy name of keeping up appearances.
George is the primary target of her disdain, but they have two kids too, both grown and eager to be able to move out and away from her. Their son is Barry, who works at a solicitor's office even if he rides a common motorcycle, and has a girlfriend who Emily sees as class, Rita Hendon, who's a professional at a research laboratory. Their daughter is Sheila, who's dared to invoke her mum's wrath by dating Adrian Capper, a common-as-muck boy from a council estate. And that's our cast, for almost the entire novel to follow, with a smattering of supporting players popping up once in a blue moon to remind us that there's a wider world than just number 12.
Oh, and there's Set. Yes, the Egyptian god of all sorts of things dark. He never shows up in person but he's a palpable presence throughout the book, once George finds his amulet in his back yard. Guess what was later built on Revd. Mason's land where he buried those two Egyptian mummies? Yes indeed, River View. George has visions, like the Egyptologist in 'The Mummy', but seeing two people instead of just one, Dalukah and Aba-aner, who had been cursed by Set, a curse that's now transferring over to the Brownlows, who will gradually serve to repeat history.
Of course, that's been a theme of quite a few Guy N. Smith novels in the early eighties, not least the Mark Sabat novels, but up to this point, he's done it as a supporting plot device deep into the third act. Here it takes up the primary thrust of the novel. George is already worried about how the world might end, what with the mad Libyan leader Col. Gadaffi threatening Israel and their local conflict threatening to spill over into the broader Cold War with its omnipresent shadow of nuclear holocaust looming large over George's future. So he decides to annoy his wife by digging a nuclear shelter in their back garden. That's when he finds the amulet of Set and everything else follows from there.
When I say not much happens in 'Accursed', I mean in the traditional sense. There aren't a heck of a lot of characters given anything to do and Smith ventures deep into his character building, with each of the Brownlows and their significant others given plenty of opportunity to manifest their thoughts and frustrations to us. Much of this story takes therefore place inside the heads of this highly focused primary cast, while George makes steady progress on his shelter and becomes, as he does so, more dominant and more lost in Egyptian research until he shaves both his head and his eyebrows to become a priest of Set carrying out the god's bidding.
While he transforms, the local area suffers a redux of the plagues that hammered Egypt back in historical times, but Smith never loses his focus on the Brownlows. At one point, George calls an appropriate specialist hotline to report the locust he's captured in his garden and he's told that it's nothing to worry about, contrary to what we read only four years earlier in Smith's 'Locusts'. There's a plague of frogs which memorably interrupts Sheila and Adrian getting it on in the park, prompting them to run home buck naked, squishing frogs as they go. There's a plague of flies and what I guess is a plague of boils and, well, they all end up mostly ignored as Set's hypnotic spell on George spreads to Emily and the kids.
And so it goes, with a sad inevitability about it because we know relatively early on where it will all go and, sure enough, it does, escalating slowly throughout the book and much quicker during the final chapter until a pessimistic final page. There's an occasional glimpse of hope, but it never becomes much more than a glimpse and that's about it. None of these characters ever really had the potential to save the day or change its outcome and, well, maybe that's the point, given what we have to believe happens on that final page. None of us can do anything.
I can't say I didn't enjoy this, because it's always fun to rekindle an old acquaintance with a Guy N. Smith novel, but it's a notably different read to what went before it, which surprised me. During this monthly runthrough of all his novels in order, I've been surprised at how much more I got out of some of his more downbeat books that I'd previously remembered with less fondness. This one wasn't one of those. I don't remember being disappointed by it, but I am little now. It is what it is and I guess what it had to be, for a metaphor representing nuclear armaggeddon, but it's not one I'm likely to dive back into again any time soon. ~~ Hal C F Astell
