In our discussion of Kipling’s story, we have argued that this tale (from 1904) represents Kipling’s attempt to write a new kind of ‘ghost story’, in which no actual ghost is present. Vickery became obsessed with this film and ended up following the travelling circus around the country, deserting his service, in his determination to see the footage of the woman he knows in real life … again … and again. Shortly before he deserted his post, Vickery went to see a showing of the motion pictures with Pyecroft, at the local travelling circus show, and they saw the image of Mrs Bathurst on the screen, large as life, in some footage of a mail van. It involves a then-new invention: the cinema. The precise nature of Vickery’s ‘relationship’ with Mrs Bathurst is never articulated by the men, but something happened which piqued their curiosity. The ensuing tale – which is told in a clipped, elliptical, and remarkably authentic style – concerns Vickery’s mysterious relationship with Mrs Bathurst, a young widow who ran a boarding-house near Auckland in New Zealand where the two men had stayed in the past. One of their number, Pyecroft, begins telling the others about a man, Vickery, who deserted the service in mysterious circumstances. A group of men who work for the railways in South Africa sit about telling stories to each other.
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