The Fully-Conducted Tour

 

Robert Aickman, "The Fully-Conducted Tour" in Compulsory Games edited by Victoria Nelson (New York Review of Books, 2018).

The magic of Aikman is that he always creates a pervasive and unsettling sense of wrongness that a reader just catches out of the corner of the eye. From the paperwork necessary for the tour to the flaking paint and general untidiness of the manor to the lack of any commentary on an ornate door by a tour guide who has been otherwise thorough, all this contributes to a strange atmosphere wrapped around the theme of being left behind.

The thought of being left behind has a strong emotional valence for human beings. It can be a source of fear and alienation but also a source of relief. Like hanging out at the back of a fully conducted tour, we both want to be alone and part of the group. As our protagonist faces being left behind by his wife, who is dying of a terminal illness, he leaves his wife behind at the hotel to tour an old Italian villa alongside a group of elderly foreign tourists beginning to be left behind by the changing world. The tour ends (or just stops) with a remarkably eerie climax leaving our protagonist sitting on an uncomfortable bench surrounded by discarded footwear.

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