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Great Writing - Home > Extended > Prince of Camden - Chapter 2
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Extended Work
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| Prince of Camden - Chapter 2 | |
| By Eren | ||||||||||
| 14 May 2006 | ||||||||||
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This is the second chapter of my book. I know it needs some work, any advice you folks can offer would be gratefully received. I met my flatmate Steve after a week spent hopefully circling ads in the local paper and tramping around Camden and Kentish town being disappointed. I couldn’t afford to rent a one bed place and I didn’t fancy a toilet cubicle sized ‘studio’, so I called up a few of the people looking for housemates. After several uncomfortable ‘interviews’ with panels of assorted perverts, vegans and actors I was relieved to note that Steve’s was a two bedroom flat, which meant just one flatmate, but it was the last on my list and my expectations were at an all time low. The flat was made up of the ground floor and basement of a shabbily grand Georgian terrace just off Kentish Town High Street. Steve showed me round and described my bedroom as the garden room, which was appropriate since a trail of ivy had forced its way through the window frame and was snaking across the wall, and there was a sort of mushroom growing on a beige patch on the ceiling. The room reeked of damp but it was huge, and there was a tiny private courtyard outside. I loved it, but I tried to contain myself – there was still the interview to get through. After the tour we sat down in the kitchen and Steve picked up an A4 pad and pen. I braced myself for the usual questions – do you smoke/drink/snore/have regular sex? He tapped his teeth with the end of the pen, frowning at the paper, then put it down, and said ‘Is there anything funny about you that I ought to know?’ Here was someone I could live with. I assured him that I was harmless and it was agreed that I’d move in the next day. I felt at ease almost as soon as I’d unpacked my things. As I was pouring cutlery into a kitchen drawer a spider emerged from the dusty Bauhaus-style paper lampshade, dangled for a moment, then dropped to the floor and scuttled into a small pile of dried leaves next to the cooker. The overall impression was of a house being gradually reclaimed by nature, and there was something homely about the dirty laundry everywhere and the way a crate of empty wine bottles jostled for position with Steve’s bike just inside the front door. Steve fancied himself as a cockney villain, and spoke like one, though he was really a graphic designer from Ilford. Tall and slim with, thick wavy dark hair and curiously pointed teeth he spent three quarters of an hour in the bathroom every morning carefully cultivating the impression that he paid no attention whatsoever to his appearance. The high maintenance ‘I just tumbled out of bed’ look was evidently a real winner with the opposite sex as he was never short of female attention. A few weeks after I moved in he invited me to his birthday party at a bar in Soho. He was the life and soul and I heard him in action, flirting outrageously in a pantomime cockney accent with a gorgeous American girl. She seemed taken with him, in fact I know she was as I answered the phone to her four times over the following week, making various lame excuses as Steve grimaced from the far side of the room silently mouthing ‘no’ whenever I offered him the receiver. It wasn’t a one off. There were at least two women actively pursuing Steve at any given time. He was very good at flirting and enjoyed the game for as long as the woman put up some resistance, but he fled in terror the moment someone showed a reciprocal interest in him. Instead of giving up on him the more persistent girls employed guerrilla tactics such as popping round unexpectedly, bottle in hand, sometimes with ingredients for a dinner. (It’s the kind of thing that sounds ok to do in theory, very friendly, quite European, but in reality it’s a terrible idea because of the whiff of desperation). At least one night a week we’d have the ‘I was just passing’ scenario, and Steve would be like a rabbit caught in headlights. In a remarkable demonstration of the veracity of the ‘treat ‘em mean - keep ‘em keen’ theory he was effectively under siege by women friends - a position the majority of the male population would kill for. As a deliberate ploy it would be genius, but it was entirely wasted on him and a major contributing factor to his chronic anxiety. Karen says that people behave strangely because of things that have happened to them. She believes that you can unravel a person’s past like a piece of knitting, and rework it neatly, minus the dropped stitches and loose ends. I’m not sure it works that way. I think the little catches make us what we are, and Steve is a three-sleeved jumper. Not long after I moved in I was short of a mug (all mine were buried in the sink) so I borrowed one of Steve’s. It was in the corner of the kitchen, a navy mug on a wooden tray together with a folded pink blouse. I checked inside (for mould and foreign objects) and it looked clean so I just used it. Steve came into the kitchen and did a double take. ‘What are you doing?’ he cried, in tones that suggested I was levitating above the floor stark naked. ‘That’s Catherine’s cup’. It transpired that the mug had last been used by Steve’s departing girlfriend eight years previously, and had contained the dried remains of her coffee. The blouse was hers too. I had inadvertently disturbed the little shrine and defiled the relics of St Catherine. He forgave me eventually, and told me the story. He and Catherine had bought the flat together after getting engaged, and six months later she’d met someone else, packed her things and left. He waited a while, and when she didn’t come back he started renting out the spare room to help cover the mortgage. I told Karen, and she nodded with a smile as if it explained everything. I suppose I understood. People do odd things for love. I’m not an especially devious person, but even though I moved to Kentish Town with the express purpose of living nearer to Charlie I just let him think it was a lucky coincidence. The plan was that he’d realise how great it was having me nearby, and suggest we move in together. It didn’t work. That was nearly a year ago now, and Steve and I have been cohabiting ever since. We’re just like an old married couple as we bicker a lot and never have sex, though the possibility did come up in conversation once. I was all dressed up to go out when Charlie called and cancelled at the last minute. ‘It’s so frustrating’ I said to Steve, when Charlie had rung off. ‘Look, if you’re desperate I can help out on a part time basis’ he said. It was a joke, and since when is it ‘obnoxious’ to laugh at someone’s joke? I suppose it’s a question of how much and how loudly. It’s not that he isn’t fanciable – just that, well, I know him. For the sake of domestic harmony I said that he was too good looking for me, which pleased him, and honour was satisfied.
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