And He Shall Appear by Kate van der Borgh

 

And He Shall Appear

by Kate van der Borgh

The unnamed narrator in Kate van der Borgh’s debut novel And He Shall Appear is a music teacher and choir director who returns to Cambridge University, where he was a student in the early aughts, after being invited to be one of the judges in auditions for a music scholarship. The scholarship has been set up by Frances Cavendish in memory of her son Bryn, one of the narrator’s classmates at University. Unlike the narrator, who came from a working class background, and whose northern accent immediately marked him as an uneasy outsider, Bryn was wealthy and had the right connections, making him one of the most glamorous students around. Darkly charismatic, Bryn also knew how to be the soul of every party, delighting and spooking his coterie of admirers with impressive and inexplicable magic tricks. Through a shared musical connection, the narrator becomes an unlikely member of Bryn’s circle of friends.  His initial unqualified admiration for his larger-than-life companion dampens when he starts to suspect that Bryn’s magic is much more sinister than a party piece. There are clues that Bryn is dabbling in the occult, and using it to wreak revenge on those who stand in his way. Dark things happen wherever he goes, and whoever crosses him ends up haunted and cast aside. The narrator’s present-day visit to his old university brings back recollections of the ultimately tragic events of the time, and awakens harrowing ghosts which may have better been left undisturbed. Defeating death might be Bryn’s ultimate sorcery…

I had first come across Kate van der Borgh’s fiction through The Fiction Desk, a journal that had published two of her well-crafted short stories.  While those pieces had an understated realism, her first novel is a work of supernatural fiction – an atmospheric ghost story with a decidedly “dark academia” aesthetic.  And He Shall Appear delivers all the thrills one would expect of the genre.  It starts off with a bang with a really unsettling scene, and there are plenty of nail-biting passages before the sleight of hand of its final part. The narrative is satisfying, even though, as in the best ghost stories, it does not provide neat answers and there is, throughout, an underlying ambiguity as to whether the supernatural trappings are all in the narrator’s mind. The campus setting – Cambridge around 2001 – is lovingly recreated, inspired as it is by the author’s own experiences as a music student at the University.

Beyond the tropes of the genre, which it uses to great effect, the novel also provides thoughtful social and psychological commentary. Through the contrast between the self-assurance of Bryn and the narrator’s self-effacement, van der Borgh highlights the remnants of a class system that still makes itself felt in contemporary society, including in tertiary education. As the author points out in her introduction, some students seem to have all the right connections. “Privilege” is, in itself, a kind of magic, which allows “people from certain backgrounds to move through the world differently”. 

In this respect, the novel is also a psychological study of a student who, because of his inferiority complex, seems ready to metaphorically sell his soul to the devilish “Bryn Cavendish” in exchange for acceptance and glamour. I liked the smart touch of having the narrator “unnamed”, as if he has given up his own personality. More than that, in two instances in the novel, Bryn gets to give the narrator an invented name. The act of “naming” suggests “ownership”, and there is a poignant symbolism behind Bryn “taking possession” of the narrator.  (which, the narrator suspects, he might literally be doing through occult practices).

One of the special things about this novel is that it is imbued with music. Music shapes the plot – it is what brings the narrator, and Bryn (and other key characters) together. It lends authenticity to the voice of the musician-narrator, who often resorts to musical metaphors to express himself. The musical references also provide an oblique counterpoint to the story.  Thus, for instance, the recurring figure of Peter Warlock (1894-1930), a favourite composer of the narrator’s, is a particularly apt choice. Warlock famously dabbled in the occult and shocked more conservative friends with his debauched lifestyle. He stands in for Bryn, of course, but also, in a way, represents the insecurities of the narrator (“Peter Warlock” was a pseudonym for the decidedly more mundane “Philip Heseltine").  The narrator’s choir, “Voices from Before”, specialises in English music of the early twentieth Century, repertoire which evokes an idea of a lost idyll, shattered by the tragedies of war. There are references to Shostakovich – who himself lived through a reign of terror (albeit, unlike our narrator, not of a “supernatural” kind). And it certainly cannot be a coincidence that the song which Bryn and the narrator perform together is Butterworth’s Is my Team Ploughing, which sets a Housman poem featuring a conversation between the ghost of a man and his friend, who is still alive. Music haunts this novel.  (Readers who are interested to hear works and composers referenced in it are welcome to head to this Spotify playlist…)

And He Shall Appear is an assured debut which can be enjoyed at so many levels. These are still early days, but I’m ready to bet this novel will be big.

The Mephistophelian looks of Peter Warlock

And He Shall Appear is published in the UK by Fourth Estate on the 12 September, 2024 and in the US by Union Square & Co on the 1 October, 2024.

Cambridge Photo is by David Iliff (License: CC BY-SA 3.0)