Lambeth I

Michael Elmstead is pretty pissed when he finally leaves the office party. He had tried to pull Samantha all night and failed miserably, which did not help stem his alcohol consumption one bit. In fact, it just became a bit of a vicious circle: have a drink to loosen up, hit on Samantha, get rejected, drink some more, try again, rejected, drink, hit, rejected…literally ad nauseum, until that little homing signal goes off in his head and tells him to stop embarrassing himself as it is now time to go home. He had probably started drinking a little too early and a little too vigorously to make it to the end of the party in any kind of fit state. But he had a good day; closing a few good sales on which he would earn a hefty commission, and was ready to celebrate. He thought, rather mistakenly as it turned out, that Samantha was sending him ‘all the right signals’ as she helped close the deals, but she was just excited to be doing well in her new job and to get some of the commission.

Michael was happy with his career development and his overall stake in life despite failing to get Samantha to come home with him. He had worked hard to rise up in Harris Frank and Company, an estate agency with a large number of offices dotted throughout London. He worked in the Southbank and Waterloo office on Stamford Street, which was near one of the campuses of King’s College. It was a good area to work, centrally located and populated by a nice collection of upwardly mobile people and young students. He had worked there for several years now and knew the property market well. The company dealt in the higher-end rental and sales market, and Michael specialised in luxury flats overlooking the Thames. He had the gift of the gab and his boss always joked, ‘Michael, you could sell the German language to the Germans if you had to.’ He could close a deal without appearing pushy, and in the absence of a home life to brag about since his divorce of three years ago, he ploughed into his work with noticeable aplomb and vigour.

Once hearing the internal homing signal, he gets his stuff together as best he can, says some clumsy ‘goodbyes’ to his colleagues and then stumbles in semi-controlled fashion out the door and down the street to catch the Tube home. It is late May, reasonably warm, so he only has a light overcoat on over his suit in case of rain, which seems to always come when he least expects it. He gets to the end of Stamford Street and has to use a labyrinth of underground walkways to navigate his way around the Imax Theatre, which never seems to show any real films, just panoramic ones about space, airplanes, cars or anything else that makes him want to puke given that the screen is nearly three stories high. Waterloo Station is on the other side of the Imax, and it is from there that he grabs the Northern Line home to his flat in Camden. He doesn’t mind the commute across London as it is fairly easy compared to some people, like Samantha, who has to catch a bus, a tube and then walk a fair way to the office.

He doesn’t notice the man behind him as he starts walking down Charlie Chaplin Walk, a name which always struck him as a little bizarre, especially for some poxy underpass surrounded by 1960s architecture made of very ugly poured concrete. ‘The bloody Imax is probably a listed site’, he mumbles to himself as he just hears the skid of a leather shoe on the pavement behind him. The clutch of a very powerful hand around his windpipe catches him completely off guard, which when combined with his drunken state, throws him off balance and makes him instantly disoriented. He clutches at his assailant’s hand on his neck to try to break free, but he is amazed at the strength of the chokehold, especially since it is a one-handed grab. As he continues to struggle, a sharp pain develops just under his bottom left rib. The pain becomes excruciating as it grips his chest. He thinks he is having a heart attack, but realises much too late that a large and very sharp blade has been shoved into him. The choke hold around his neck is released, he gasps for air, and blood starts to foam up out of his mouth and run down his chin and neck. He starts to choke on his own blood, and as he manages to look down, he sees only a large, tapered blade being slid out from under his ribcage. In the few seconds he has left, he sees that the blade is drenched in blood and is being wiped clean.

He collapses to the ground; his head hitting the pavement with tremendous force as a large quantity of blood splashes out of his mouth and back down to cover his face, partially blinding his view. As the blood continues to gurgle forth out of his mouth, he vomits violently and asphyxiates himself on a mixture of gin and tonic, lager, sausage rolls, samosas, onion bhadjis, tortilla chips and Mexican salsa. He never manages to see who it is as the blood stops pulsing its way out through the small incision just above his diaphragm.

Romance

Romance

Clouds of sugar spun to sticky sweetness
Melting to nothing on the tongue.

Motion frozen, conversation held
And dangling in mid-air.

Tunes fading in the light of morning.
Smudged mascara, lipstick blurred,
Eyes red with weariness.

Clutching hands and fumbling kisses,
Lip to lip, and tongue to tongue.
Bodies straining to be one.

'Chanel No. 5' or Patou's 'Joy
Lingering on a dress.
The smell of sweat
Drying to acrid aftermath.

This is romance.

The March of Romance across My Landscape - by Izzy Garland

The assignment is to write about “Romance”. Time magazine says that romance is dead. The last romantic movie to really make it big was “Titanic” – everything else, since then, has sunken ignominiously. We are, after all, now living in a “war culture”.

When I was twenty years old, so long ago that I have to dust cobwebs off in my brain to remember, I was a silly young girl who adored romance novels; ate them up like they were chocolates. In fact I very often ate them with chocolates! I started innocently enough with Regency Romances, which I aspired to write…

‘Oh, la, Sir! How you do flatter a girl!’ Andromeda batted her long eyelashes coquettishly at Lord Marchfeather.

For his part, Sebastian Marchfeather was utterly bored with girls like Miss Winston-Stanley-Knife-Jones. These young minxes would knock on the door of his large estate, in Kent, at all hours of the night claiming that their carriages had broken down. He would have thought their footmen would have been mortified at the effrontery, but they all seemed to be as shameless as their mistresses.

And then there were the young ladies who contrived to faint at his feet at the tedious balls thrown by their not so terribly cunning mothers. They were “over come by the heat”. Or had seen a dead rodent or a corpse on the path…

There. You see? It’s no good. I do actually think that Regency Romances can be good fun and an excellent medium for humour, but derision has kicked in. Oh Georgette Heyer, where are you when I need you?

I married at twenty-three, and as a young matron felt I could move up a level on the romance scale. I finally knew what it was all about and was free to read and write anything I wanted.

She was out of breath and the dogs were nearly upon her. The flinty walls of Drumhell Castle hardly cut through the pain of her ragged gasping as she collapsed against them in fear. Her auburn hair had come lose from its pins and hung long and twisting down her back. Lord Olliphant would set his huge mastiff, Satan, to grab her by her curls should he catch up with her.

But just as the pack closed in upon her, sturdy arms reached out from the shadows and drew her through a hither-to unseen doorway. Sebastian Marchfeather pulled her into his strong embrace, his black cloak enveloping them both, rendering them invisible to prying eyes.

‘Sebastian…’

‘Hush my Darling; you are safe now; from Olliphant and his dogs, at any rate.’

Her chest heaved a sigh of relief and yet her heart beat harder as the tips of her breasts brushed against Sebastian’s muscular upper body. And then she was crushed to him, his mouth slanting over hers time and time again. A throbbing began in her loins and was matched by the rod of his manhood straining against his leather trousers, wanting to be free.

If only the severed head had not fallen from the shelf as they lunged about the room. As it glanced off her shoulder she tripped over an unattached arm and two disembodied legs…

Oh how can you write a “Bodice Ripper” if you start laughing at the absurdity of it all?

“Nothing in our cultures, not even home computers, is more overrated than the epidermal felicity of two featherless bipeds in desperate congress.” says Quentin Crisp.

In my thirties I had my own passions a plenty and no need for books or stories to keep me going. And when I stopped reading them, the Regency Romances limped off to the corner to sulk and Bodice Rippers became the laughing-stock of lonely people with nothing but electricity to satisfy them.

So I just lived my life. I divorced, re-married and time moved on. My very own baby grew up to be a young married woman who dotes upon lurid “Cowboy Romances”, of all things! But then these young things think nothing of wearing low slung trousers that show acres of flesh and the stringy bits of the thongs they call underwear. Times change and I am now a “Wrinkly”. (To be followed by being a “Wobbly”, I'm told.)

I’m aware that I’m not yet dead, however. Occasionally some man will develop an attachment to me and find pretexts to chat me up whilst staring at my bosoms. It amuses me to observe that they are completely oblivious to the fact that I can see that their words are being addressed to the two items that live below my neckline and can not answer. Silly men, I am far too old and too tired for your slap and tickle. I think I’ll just settle for slap and send you on your way. Crime and humour have won the battle for my affections. I’m yours with a curled lip and a sneer, Sirrah.

I look up and see that my husband has put some wild daisies in a white jug on the mantle to my left. He smiles at me and winks. When my tired feet ache at night he rubs them. If my food hasn’t digested properly he makes me a soothing tea, no matter what the time. That, my friend, is romance.


©Izzy Garland - 1st October 2007