Books

Review by Francis Sheppard

Diabolism is an ancient study. Here the figure of the Devil is an avenging angel, putting wrongs to rights by decapitation of heartless criminals through the power of his parthai  sword. The fiend, otherwise known as ‘Harry’, has a day job as a skilled industrial worker, his workplace offering access to an underworld of killers’ accomplices. If William Blake is right in ‘That Energy, called Evil, is alone from the Body’ then the character has both energy and evil in abundance. That is, until confronted by his nemesis ‘Excalibur’ (that happens to appear on a traction engine’s nameplate) at which point he falls into a fit and later dies a far-from-pleasant death.

If the story was about good v. evil  and the eventual triumph of the former, then it would be short indeed. As the title suggests, the setting is the rural western fringes of the West Midlands, where the wooded heights of Ridge Hill and the A449 trunk road below, separate us from the darkly suggestive ancient lands beyond. There are indications that ancient deities may inhabit these nearby groves, some of them malign, who may explode into the local community.

As to this local community, Clay offers some credible observation. Kingswinford is a place to which people have migrated, unable to form alliances with the emerging cultures and heritages that have appeared in the hinterland towns. Therefore they are an unsettled bunch, without the social solidarity to deal with the deathly threat let loose among them. Not only does ‘evil’ run riot in the leafy suburbs; it also makes its lethal presence felt in the backstreets of Dudley and Sandwell, with similar devastating results. For readers who love the Black Country there is a host of references and place-names. Yet the region is correctly identified as one of poverty and tragedy; throughout a strong correspondence is shown, between the industrial complex that is the West Midlands and its outlier, Kingswinford.

Several characters are used to tell the story. There is Mary, the devout daughter of a priest-turned-killer, her naïve friend Polly, a desiccated ex-hippy musician turned bookseller called Dave and, besides the scheming Lucifarian at the centre of the plot, there is the most-awful Satanfist who, when not inflicting S&M outrages on his (male) partner, is employed by the fiend to paint devilish images all round the interior of a well-appointed Kingswinford home. Unfortunately a two-way process, the ‘evil’ that he depicts has seeped into him. He is destined for a sticky end. These, together with a few minor voices, are given a sympathetic hearing by the author. My problem with these narrators is that they continue to develop as characters only up to a certain point. After that they exist only to tell the story.

Perhaps because he has only a retrospective narrative function the opening speaker Martin Icement has the most credible and vital voice. As he meditates on his early life, full of mistakes, he begins to reveal the various plot-lines. Yet if his function is to promote initial interest in the novel he does well. He is the unknowing innocent. We regret his eventual departure from this life, while several of the hard-hearted characters that surround him, do not.

An economy with words, a terseness of style, is evident throughout the book – whenever the story is being narrated. ‘Phatic’ dialogue is used only for effect, for slowing down the narrative before it races ahead, always unpredictable and therefore thrilling, given the terrible circumstances in which characters are found. It made me think about lives of neighbours, known only on the surface. These lives are deeply marred, but at the end there is a sense of resolution, of things becoming good again, and Kingswinford once again a lovely place.