Barbara Erskine - Distant Voices

Published by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

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London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 1996

This edition published by Harper 2017

Copyright © Barbara Erskine 1996 and as follows:

‘The Toy Soldier’ ( Woman’s Weekly ) 1996; ‘Writer’ ( Chic Magazine ) 1996; ‘Aboard the Moonbeam’ ( Woman’s Story ) 1976; ‘Dance Little Lady’ ( Rio ) 1981; ‘Distant Voices’ ( Woman’s Weekly) 1994; ‘A Family Affair’ ( Rio ); ‘The Fate of the Phoenix’ ( Woman’s Weekly ) 1993; ‘Flowers for the Teacher’ ( Your Story ) 1975; ‘Moment of Truth’ ( Romance Magazine ) 1978; ‘The Poet’ ( Judy ) 1976; ‘Stranger’s Choice’ ( Scottish Home & County ); ‘A Test of Love’ ( Romance ) 1976; ‘To Adam, a Son’ ( Truly Yours ) 1975; ‘Watch the Wall, My Darling’ ( Woman’s Realm ) 1989; ‘When the Chestnut Blossoms Fall’ ( Woman’s World ); ‘Choices’ ( Sunday Post ) 1996; ‘Island Shadows’ ( Sunday Post ) 1996

Cover layout design © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2017

Cover images © Shutterstock.com

Barbara Erskine asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008180911

Ebook Edition © January 2017 ISBN: 9780007375103

Version: 2017-09-08

‘Written with imagination, and spiced with a sharp observation of human foibles. You’ll be hard-pressed to find a better book for your bedside table.’

Yorkshire Evening Post

In Memory of

‘Uncle Stuart’

STUART ERSKINE BIRRELL

1887–1916

a kindred spirit

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Praise

Dedication

Preface

Distant Voices

The Drop Out

Moment of Truth

The Duck Shoot Man

Frost

The Fairy Child

Who Done It?

Watch the Wall, My Darling

OBE

The Gift of Music

Island Shadows

A Test of Love

Witchcraft for Today

The Poet

The Toy Soldier

To Adam a Son

Writer

The Fate of the Phoenix

When the Chestnut Blossoms Fall

The Inheritance

Dance Little Lady

Rosemary and Thyme

Flowers for the Teacher

A Family Affair

Networking

Catherine’s Cat

Stranger’s Choice

Aboard the Moonbeam

Choices

Two’s Company

Keep Reading Barbara Erskine's Novels

Keep Reading Sleeper’s Castle

About the Author

Also by Barbara Erskine

About the Publisher

When my first collection of short stories, Encounters , was published in 1990 I did not expect to be asked to compile a second, so I was enormously pleased to find myself writing some new stories, and making a further selection amongst my old ones, for Distant Voices.

I still very much enjoy writing short stories. For me they are the sorbet between the courses of longer novels. They freshen and stimulate the palate. They indulge the writer’s and the reader’s whim with a quick glimpse into shadow or sunlight. They intrigue, they titillate, they frighten or they amuse.

As in Encounters those stories that are not new have been chosen from more than two decades of writing and are very varied in theme. To select a few for comment or explanation might help to put the collection in context. Three of the stories, for example, A Test of Love, To Adam a Son and Flowers for the Teacher are unsophisticated and sentimental, written in the early seventies for the so-called true-life market, while others like Witchcraft for Today and When the Chestnut Blossoms Fall depict incidents in an older world where romance has grown a little cynical.

There are of course ghost stories – two inspired by my own garden. The core story in Frost came from a sad tale told me about a greenhouse here, thankfully perhaps, now demolished; Rosemary and Thyme is based on an experience which I had myself whilst weeding in my herb garden one morning in early spring.

Catherine’s Cat has laid to rest (or perhaps not?) a terror which haunted me for a while as a child and made bedtime a torment for many months – the suitcase on the wardrobe. The Duck Shoot Man was based on an incident which happened to my mother and my grandmother and myself when we paused on a journey to Edinburgh and spent the night on Lindisfarne.

Dance Little Lady (purely imagination, this one!) was written in the brash eighties; The Toy Soldier (inspired by a toy we found in our cottage) in the more thoughtful nineties, a time of redundancy and re-evaluation.

There are many more, about different times and different places, depicting different moods and both the strange and the mundane.

Three of the stories are much longer than the others. Dance Little Lady, A Family Affair and Watch the Wall are almost novellas – two mini thrillers and one a historical romance – something to get your teeth into.