They say never meet your heroes. But I’m about to interview the queen of the uncanny, Lucie McKnight Hardy, so it’s unavoidable.
We meet at Nono in Leeds. I’m so nervous I’ve already downed a glass of verdejo before I hear a voice behind me say, “I thought I recognised that book”. I jump, turn around, and there she is. I have a copy of Night Babies, McKnight Hardy’s new novel, on the table beside me. We laugh and I do my best to prevent imposter syndrome from ruining the next hour of conversation, which is no mean feat after years spent idolising the author of Water Shall Refuse Them and Dead Relatives.
Night Babies is a perfect conjuring of folk horror that draws you deep into the psychological interior of its flawed protagonist, Astrid, and plays with your perception until you’re deliciously discombobulated. I start by asking McKnight Hardy about Astrid, an artist who puts herself and her urge to create above everyone and everything else in her life. I say that I admire her for this, and, as much as she’s an ostensibly unlikable character, I found this aspect of her totally compelling.
“I wanted to come up with a really unlikeable character, because I think they’re so much more fun to write and read,” says McKnight Hardy. I agree. Regarding Astrid, McKnight Hardy says: “I think, and I hope, there’s something that the reader can empathise with. I mean, she’s an atrocious person, and she’s so horrible to Kit and to all the people around her. But I think there’s something there. I think because…we’re inside her head. And I think if you get that far into someone’s psyche, it’s difficult not to empathise with them, even in some small way.”
Lost in art
I wonder if I might be a repressed sociopath for being a little bit in love with Astrid. And would the lead be viewed more sympathetically if she were a man? If the roles were reversed and her long-suffering partner Kit was the one lost in his art, would we think he was quite so despicable?
Night Babies. Copyright John Murray Press.
“I haven’t actually thought about that,” reflects McKnight Hardy. “But I think you’re right. We are so used to women being shown as the nurturers and the caregivers. I didn’t do it in that way…but yeah, she does absolutely no caregiving or nurturing, it’s kind of like, oh wow, hang on, who is this?”
Seeing a woman prioritise herself and her art is confrontational and shocking. We share a moment of seething resentment over this double standard, and I realise that I’ve veered off track. Back to the two locations of Night Babies and how the settings influence the events that unfold.
“I had this fascination with Florence. We go there quite a lot as a family. I’m not an art expert by any means, but I did quite a lot of research. And I liked the juxtaposition of this historical Renaissance art of Florence, with the hostile beauty of the Brecon Beacons.”
According to McKnight Hardy, the idea of the abandoned chapel, the focal point of the action in the book, came from real-life inspiration.
She says that, a few years ago, “we were thinking of moving to the Brecon Beacons, right into the heart of the really isolated part. And one of the houses we went to look at was a converted chapel, which was overlooking a reservoir.”
The estate agent told them that the chapel “had been moved from the bottom of the valley up to the top when the valley was flooded, to create the reservoir”.
Restoring the building to live in would have been too much, but her imagination ran with this inspiration and she created the “sinister backstory” of a chapel and its haunted hillside reservoir – the setting of Night Babies. Throughout the book, we’re never completely sure if the horror is entirely of Astrid’s own making as she loses her mind or if we’re witnessing the slow seeping of a supernatural hostile takeover.
Getting the goosebumps
So, how does the paranormal inform her writing? A confirmed atheist who believes that organised religion is the cause of much of the world’s misery, McKnight Hardy is a sceptic who seeks a rational explanation for everything. And yet, a vivid, chilling experience from her childhood gives her pause for thought. She strokes her arm and shivers.
“Oh god, I get goosebumps when I remember it,” she recalls. Aged about 10, McKnight Hardy got up in the middle of the night and saw “a little boy, in a flat cap and breeches, sitting on the stairs”. Terrified, she ran back to bed.
“The house used to be the village blacksmiths, and they used to have a lot of apprentices living in the old smithy,” she says. She never told her parents about the experience but, years later, she asked her mum if she’d ever had any “inklings” of the place being haunted. “She said no, nothing,” shrugs McKnight Hardy. “So I don’t know. But it’s really stayed with me.”
Amy Stone and Lucie McKnight Hardy. Copyright Amy Stone.
No spoilers, but little children – and, as the book title suggests, babies – are the chief source of the uncanny, the creepy, the unnerving, in her book. With shades of the Village of the Damned, they’re not directly responsible for any of the horrific occurrences, but they facilitate their happening. That is, if they exist – and they’re not a product of Astrid losing her grip on reality. I’d like to think they do, in the same way I’d like to think I had a little haunting of my own when I started reading Night Babies. We talk about the appeal of the supernatural, the human need for ghost stories, and McKnight Hardy says that, regardless of objective truth, she likes that “frisson of excitement”.
I find myself stroking the cover of the book and remember to ask about the design, which was done in-house by the design team at her publisher, John Murray. The striking green, red and white is “riffing on the Italian and the Welsh flag”, she says, smiling. Her Welsh identity is important.
“The other day, on The Wales Arts Review podcast, I got called the ‘Queen of Welsh Horror’, and that made my heart sing.” Between this and Stephen Volk’s quote on the jacket of Night Babies, which proclaims McKnight Hardy as the ‘Queen of the Uncanny’, I feel justified in my pre-interview nerves as I prepared to meet one of my heroes. You’ll not be surprised to learn, however, that McKnight Hardy is nothing like her unlikable lead characters. Not only infinitely patient with my jittery questions, this horror royalty was genuinely interested and interesting – the best kind of interviewee and the best kind of writer. Long may she reign.
Main image: Lucie McKnight Hardy. © Sarah Haile.
