Hadley has a penchant for 1960s-era England and quite a few of the ten stories assembled in this, her third collection of short stories, now available in paperback, are set in that era.
In the opening story, An Abduction, Pink Floyd and Grateful Dead are on the stereo. Likewise, Herman Hesse’s Steppenwolf is in the back pocket of one of the dope-smoking boys, who transport the early teenage Jane out of her sheltered life towards a striking vision of decadence in a nearby house, where the parents are away. Hadley is adept at conjuring the luxuriance and indolence of summer in this leafy and rural English backwater. One of the young lads uses the F word to describe the overpowering hot weather. Jane blushed: his word was so forbidden that she hardly knew how she knew it – the girls never used it at school. It was an entrance, glowering with darkness, into the cave of things unknown to her.
The story expertly draws out the strands of young love and infatuation. As evening descends, the boys produce a needle and little glass vials of methedrine, but the action never teeters into the awfulness that seems to hover.
In The Stain, a young mother finds herself caring for an old man, a likable but crotchety South African emigré. In time, the carer discovers something disturbing about the man's past. However, before this news can effect any new dynamic, the author imposes a neat narrative twist which forestalls any such effect. To say how would be to spoil things, but it is a clever move and shows a writer in admirable control of the material.
Deeds not Words seems slight by comparison with some of the more substantial tales assembled here. The story is set in the days of the Suffragettes, as a young female teacher embarks on a passionate affair with a married colleague who eventually signs up to fight in The Great War.
One Saturday Morning is another of the 1960s-era stories which pivots around the visit by a friend of the parents of the young girl protagonist. The girl sees something which she should not have seen, but such is Hadley’s skill that she can turn the event around and steer its dramatic moment towards a subtle rather than sensational denouement.
The title story Bad Dreams is also told from the standpoint of a young girl who, in an odd fit of anarchy, upends all the furniture in the family sitting room during the night when she awakes following a bad dream. The story doesn’t quite work, and its effort to signal something about the relationship between the young girl’s parents, following the mother's discovery of the upended furniture the following day, somehow does not wash.
Hadley works away, without fuss or undue press coverage, and has produced a number of acclaimed novels and two previous collections of short stories. She could easily be overlooked at a time when younger guns are constantly celebrated. Her new stories should be strongly considered for that next Book Club choice.
