Thursday, May the 26th, 2005

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Fragment

One enticing item that arrived in the post while I was away was from Elizabeth Shipley, who kindly sent this fragment from the novel The Clandestine History of a Lost Key, Without Which the Boathouse Cannot be Opened Nor the Oratario Performed by Miss Eglantine Cadenza:

Chapter 203 “A Dentist Remember'd”

Emeritus Professor of Greek Per Eliasen crouches beside the telephone in his Aarhus apartment. He has the impression that everyone who rings him is a piano tuner from Leighton Buzzard by the name of Ron. He is poised, hungry for Ron's next delphic utterance.

While he waits, he rereads Nella Buck's exquisite first novel, Lids Without Jars, Jars Without Lids. He has reached his favourite part, wherein Jasper begs Amarinta to acknowledge maternity of his child, and Amarinta stabs Jasper in the throat with a tuning fork, and then both wander out to see if the post has come. Meanwhile

[several lines here obliterated by a marmalade stain]

railway junction.

“More cake, darling?” As she passed the Battenburg, a peacock drifted beneath his nose. It gave him a cool, appraising stare, as if it judged that he might be about to steal its wallet. It then withdrew, but not before a flush had risen to his

[squashed insect here, prob. of the order Dermaptera.]

By the time of her return to the Public Baths that evening, Drusilla Prunt regrets everything. But it is too late. Already the little dressmaker is there, lurking in brine, her extravagant smalls decorously asink. “Hydropathic Cures, 10 Shillings a Limb” she insinuates, eyes akimbo.

[There follows an apparently unrelated recipe for Buttonhooks In Aspic.]

“You are nothing but a furtive tangoist,” breathes Drusilla, greatly daring.

“BACK one, two, quarter-turn . . .” purrs the sodden sempstress. “Three, four, STRAIGHT back, gentleman--”

“Pah!” cries the hapless Drusilla, striving in vain to stuff her gloves into her ears.

“--gentleman starting with his left foot, lady with her

[The rest of the page appears to have been nibbled away.]