The ending of Not After Midnight

[Cory]

I don't think I properly got the ending to this story.... Could someone please explain what happens in the end? Thanks.

[Feliks]

Well, you have a lot of company, Many people find the ending cryptic, confusing, obscure. Its intended by the author to be that way. The underlying theme of 'distorted vision' which runs throughout the tale, is used by DuMaurier to disrupt normal, straightforward, linear, A-B-C storytelling. Thus, we feel a little bit of the same queasy disorientation which the characters in the story do; when they realize that 'what they see' is not trustworthy. The author is reminding us how much we are slaves to our strongest sense: vision, often at the cost of every other faculty.




SPOILERS - SPOILERS - SPOILERS - SPOILERS BELOW!!!!





A married couple in England has experienced the tragic loss of one of their children. They both experience feelings of blame and guilt and reproach. The husband, is somewhat more affected than the mother (he was closer to the accident). A few years pass and the couple find themselves on a trip to Venice (city of distortion, reflection, mirage) where the husband is restoring a cathedral. He finds himself catching repeated glimpses of a small child-like figure in a red raincoat, very similar to how his daughter was dressed when she died. Against his rational judgment, he pursues the figure; and at the end of the story finally catches up with it. The point is, he totally believes that somehow it is his deceased daughter; when logic should inform him that it cannot possibly be. That's all I should really state in this summary.

[Cory]

Thanks for your reply. However, perhaps you're talking about "Don't Look Now"...? I was asking about "Not After Midnight", the one where the protagonist goes to Greece?

Thanks anyway!

[Feliks]

You're right. My mistake. I was mislead by the fact that the discussion is found attached to the 'Don't Look Now' book page(?) I incorrectly assumed it was the same story (but merely a difference in English vs American titles).

[Cory]

It's all right. "Not after midnight" is also included in this book, "Don't Look Now". I think it's the second short story. By any chance, have you read it?

[Feliks]

Unfortunately I have not. Missed it, somehow. Wasn't in the collections which came my way. I'm a fan of her writing achievements though, so I am very pleased to see any DuMaurier-related discussion. What I'd also like to encounter sometime, is a chat about her father.

[Jonathan]

The ending to "Not After Midnight" is rather cryptic, inviting you to piece together what may have happened. I understand that it was Stoll, drown and impaled on the anchor, that Timothy Grey saw through the depth of the water. Grey's fear was that he neither, like Stoll, would escape the clutches of the obsession. That Grey began to act out his obsession, in conformity with his dream, once he was back at school in England becames clear as I read again the first few paragraphs of the story. His appearance and behavior were markedly changed: He tried to cavort and fraternize with the boys that were his pupils only to be laughed at. Nothing more sinister appears to have become of it though. I interpret Grey's obsession based on the content of the note he finds in the rhyton as well as the reference made to Socrates (who is said to have had bulging eyes) misleading the boys of Athens (executed for this as a crime). Grey seems to have become disturbed with the lusty satyr he was becoming. This is what he would see in the mirror after contracting the age-old sickness (similar in some respect to Death in Venice). For me, there are loose ends not fully explained in DuMaurier's story centering on the identity of Stoll's wife: a snorkeling lady, creeping around at night doesn't seem coherent to me. Does she play out her own mythological persona? That one is influenced by the depth of history and mythology of a place is the theme I draw from DuMaurier's story.

[Cory]

Cheers for the reply! It makes a bit more sense now. Though, I'm still not sure why the protagonist was warned not to see them after midnight but I guess it was just a confusing story :p Thanks for your help.

[Nujumereads]

Hi, I'm a bit late to this thread but, adding to Jonathan, I think it is important to remember that Timothy Grey has had some psychological issues which he was trying to escape in Greece. The psychoanalyst diagnoses him with "emotionally destructive identification and repressed guilt" however TG seems to be in denial about this. He furthermore seems to think that everyone knows and that his pupils make fun of him. This could be true, but this could also be just in his imagination. What is interesting is that when he gets to Greece he is the one who becomes fixated on the Strolls and everything he describes we should see through his eyes.
My personal interpretation of the ending is that Mrs Stroll simply killed her husband because he was a drunk and he was, at least, emotionally abusive. TG however, making the connection to the diagnosis in the beginning, is on his own path of self-destruction which he believes to be out of his control due to the "curse".

[Patricia]

I definitely don't understand this story. Don't know what the age old sickness is that fellow sufferers plead predisposition, etc. Also, who is the one who "first made the magic deemed himself immortal" Am I missing something by not knowing Greek mythology?

[Nick]

[Another late replay] I was puzzled by this story, too. At the beginning, it seems that Grey has handed in his resignation because he can no longer work at a boys' school, and everybody seems to know why, and he understands why they almost laugh at it. That suggests that he has committed no crime, as such - or he'd be in jail, or fired from his job - but that he may do. I took this to mean a rather old-fashioned, and certainly pre-legality, interpretation of homosexuality as a sickness of some kind, treated by onlookers with a knowing and slightly contemptuous amusement.

[SPOILER] I started to realise I'd been to that part of Crete when I saw mention of the island of Spinlonga. It's in the bay surrounded by the town of Elounda, and you can get boat trips to Spinalonga, which was a leper colony. I thought then that Grey had somehow caught leprosy, maybe from drinking the barley water from the old pot discovered there... which would have been silly, and, probably not very amusing.

He has either caught the 'disease' of an unhappy strain of alcoholism, or feels guilty because he has witnessed a murder and has not acted upon it in a way that the upright and uptight citizen he was would not be able to bear. (But in that case, why doesn't he just act on it and just go to the authorities about Mrs Stoll and her companion?) Or he may have caught the mania to search for and collect stuff from the past, which will distract him from his general life.

All in all, not a very satisfactory story. The beginning really made me want to know what had happened. The middle part was very atmospheric in setting the scene on Crete, the dialogue and interaction great. The ending left me a little disappointed.

The action on the island reminded me a little of John Fowles' The Magus, in which a local luminary on a small Greek island messes with an impressionable younger man - also, like Grey, a teacher of young boys.

[Marian]

I've just finished reading that short story. I had high hopes throughout it and somehow thought of a more demonic end where the narrator would be victim number 2 and also found drowned. What a let down! I'm not really sure what to make of it.

[Robert]

Not after midnight: It seems like Grey is living a controlled and seclusive life in denial of his peadophilian homosexuality. The magic brew (some kind of ancient psychedelic?) awakens him to his true nature with full force.