The Next Glade

[Simon]

This story originally appeared in Intrusions: Strange Tales but I have just

read it in the The Unsettled Dust collection.

It is one of his opaque mysteries which could have multiple meanings and interpretations.

Who is this stranger that the female protagonist meets and that no one else seems to believe exists? Throughout the story we are left thinking that he may well be a figmant of her imagination until the end when her son reveals having seen him when he asks if she is going to marry him.

This seems to me to be a story about the drudgery of our lives and how we cope with that drudgery. It also looks at faithlessness that can be a means of escape and the effect that can have on our relationships and the way we see each other.

Is the next glade Aickman's metaphore for the other side of the fence where the grass is always greener? The first time she crosses the next glade, she is confronted with an idyllic dream that is soured when her dream like man shows an expression of horror when he sees her. The second time the idyllic dream has disappeared to be replaced by nightmare, a symbol of the deep and endless drudgery of our lives.

The next glade seems to be her private place in a wood so small there shouldn't be any private places. Each time her mysterious stranger goes into the next glade he disappears, as if he never existed. When her husband tries to follow her there he cannot penetrate the thicket, cuts himself on the thorns which leaving him fatally wounded. But is it the wound that kills him or the stress and drudgery of his life, and the estrangement from his wife emotionally?

Definitely, I think, one of his more interesting stories.

[Simon]

I've just read this story again (whilst reading the "Intrusions" collection) and this time it struck me how her first and second time entering the "next glade" presented also contrasting visions of an idyllic past (the first time) and horrifying modernity (the second time). Reflecting, of course, the authors well known disdain for modern life.