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Great Writing - Home > Extended > Prince of Camden - Chapter 3
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Extended Work
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| Prince of Camden - Chapter 3 | |
| By Eren | ||||||
| 15 May 2006 | ||||||
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Here's the third chapter of my novel. I'm new to writing, and any comments or advice you can offer would be much appreciated. Chapter 3 It’s funny, the things that go through your head in unusual situations. As I lay sprawled on the pavement outside the off licence, half straddling a toppled moped and clutching a bottle of merlot, my first thought was - I look like a wino. Then I felt relieved because nobody had noticed, but sorry for myself for the same reason. I was just staggering to my feet when a tall, dark haired man appeared from inside the restaurant next door. ‘Are you ok? I’m sorry about the bike, it shouldn’t be there.’ I glanced at his face ready to apologise, British style, for falling over, but found I couldn’t speak. He had olive skin and the darkest brown eyes I’d ever seen – irises like giant pupils. All I could think was ‘I’m not wearing any makeup’. ‘Um….yes…fine’ I mumbled eventually, trying to look away from the blackness of his eyes. He smiled and I felt myself blushing. ‘You’re sure you’re ok?’ I muttered that I was, brushed myself off and hurried away, conscious that he was watching me go, and probably laughing at the mud patch on the back of my jeans. Steve had already started eating by the time I got home. I took two of his Nurofens, giving him a hard warning look. On a normal day such an act of defiance would have triggered a list of complaints, like ‘I knew you were taking them, why don’t you buy your own? And you’ve been using my shampoo – it’s fifteen pounds a bottle that stuff. It’s not funny Kate, I had to buy the toilet rolls again this week’, and so on. Thankfully he seemed preoccupied, and settled for making a show of watching me carefully as I put the packet back in its correct place in the cupboard. We shared the tall kitchen cupboard and it was crammed with tins and packets. There was a sort of culinary face-off going on between Steve’s foodstuffs and mine. His raffia tangled boxes, bottles and jars were mainly sour things, and included olives, capers, shallots in balsamic vinegar and pickled limes (I once challenged him about the purpose of these, and he claimed they were ‘snacks’). My tins were mainly baked beans, soup and fruit cocktail (for balance), plus there was a tinned meat pie I’d bought to irritate Steve. There was a second identical cupboard on the other side of the kitchen. When I first opened it I was surprised to find it was packed ceiling high with dozens of cornflake boxes, neatly arranged so that the same edge of each box was facing the front and every shelf was filled. I pulled out a box, thinking that Steve must be heavily into breakfast, and found that it was empty – they all were. For some reason it gave me a frisson of fear – not the boxes themselves, it was the collector I was worried about. When Steve got home I nervously broached the subject, and for a terrifying moment he appeared to be unaware that the boxes were there. I threw open the cupboard door, half expecting them to be gone, and he said ‘Oh yes, the installation.’ They had been arranged, he explained, by his previous flatmate – which made me feel better, until he drew my attention to the symmetry of the arrangement. When I suggested we throw them out and use the cupboard he called me a philistine, which won the argument as I had to back down to avoid revealing that I didn’t know what it meant. I was just scraping some bolognaise out of the pan, to go with a colander-shaped dome of cold spaghetti, when Steve forgot all about the Nurofens and said ‘Marta’s coming.’ I’d met Marta a couple of weeks earlier. She’d dropped in to see Steve, who wasn’t expecting her and had to go and change out of his pyjamas. She’s Norwegian and looks like a model, though she’s really an accountant, and contrary to appearances (according to my prejudice) she was friendly and down to earth. ‘Are you and he…?’ she asked, once Steve had left the room. ‘No…. god no’ ‘I like him,’ she said, smiling conspiratorially and looking like an advert for milk. I admired her no nonsense Scandinavian approach. She had every reason to be confident, because she was, as Steve and his mates would say, a ‘belter’. Steve re-emerged and Marta glanced at me – my cue to leave them alone for a bit. ‘Um, I’ll just…’ I rushed for the door under cover of my unspecified excuse. ‘Don’t be antisocial’ said Steve, stepping sideways while opening a bottle of wine and effectively barring my exit. Short of bodily moving him out of the way, which would mean touching him, I was trapped. Twenty minutes of small talk later he yawned like a dog, announced that he was going to bed, and disappeared. Marta looked momentarily confused and I guessed she was weighing up the possible interpretations of the move, but by the time she’d finished her wine ‘total snub’ had given way to ‘challenging free spirit’ and she left promising to return. It seemed she’d decided to give him another go. Steve played me the answering machine message. ‘Hi Steve, it’s Marta. Listen, I’m free this evening so how about I come and make you dinner? See you later…….don’t spoil your appetite.’ There was a special perky emphasis on the last part of the message. I doubted that Marta had ever had to expend effort on a man before, unless you count energy spent turning people down. Steve’s face was a picture of dismay, stiffening into indignance when he saw me smirking into my pile of spaghetti. ‘Well I’m glad somebody finds it funny, I’ve done nothing to encourage that girl’ he said, prodding agitatedly with his fork at a knot in the wooden kitchen table. ‘You must have given her your phone number.’ ‘Yes….as a friend, but she’s started saying things that make me anxious.’ It would have sounded disingenuous coming from anyone else, hilarious even, but his distress was genuine. ‘Why don’t you just talk to her and explain?’ I said. He squirmed in his chair avoiding eye contact. ‘You could try and find a way to put her off ’, I suggested ‘How can I do that?’ Tell her a bit about yourself I thought. ‘Er, I dunno, behave strangely, let her think you’re neurotic or something.’ ‘That’s the most stupid idea I’ve ever heard’ he said, and was about to warm to his theme when the doorbell rang. ‘That’s her’ he said, jumping up like a startled cat, ‘tell her I’m not in and I won’t be back till late.’ I started eating my spaghetti. ‘Kate, did you hear me – that’s her, she’ll see the light on, go and tell her…’ ‘I don’t like lying to her, she’s nice’ I said, through a mouthful of spaghetti. ‘I’ll wash up’ he said, rashly. ‘What, everything?’ I glanced at the stack of festering dishes in the sink - it was a deal. Marta looked disappointed even before I told her that Steve was out, I suppose she thought I was going to try and join them for dinner. ‘But didn’t he get my message?’ she asked, after I had given her the bad news. It struck me that a British woman in Marta’s situation would be bolting back down the path, flaming with embarrassment and silently vowing to become a nun. ‘I don’t think so, he went out straight from work….’ Marta’s shoulders slumped with the weight of the two bulging carrier bags of food she was carrying, and I realised that she was waiting to be invited in. If Steve really had been out I would have asked her in for a cuppa and I was sorely tempted to do it anyway. Steve was listening in, and he’d have to run to the kitchen and hide – served him right. ‘Can I come in and use your bathroom?’ she asked, and all at once there was a pleasing scurrying noise from the lounge. If she heard it she didn’t say anything, and five minutes later she was gone. ‘Invite her in why don’t you?’ said Steve, attacking to deflect my attention away from the fact that he’d been crouching in the hoover cupboard. ‘Don’t start on me, you’re the one with the problem, you’re dysfunctional!’ I said. ‘You and me both mate’ he retorted. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ ‘It means Kate, that you’re just as fucked up as I am. Your love life is a shambles – and spare me that crap about personal space’, he said, as I opened my mouth, ‘Charlie only sees you when he fancies a shag – that’s not a relationship.’ ‘If that’s the case then why would I keep seeing him?’, I asked, my hands slowly balling into fists at my sides. ‘I’ll tell you’ said Steve, triumphantly ‘it’s because you are fucking petrified of taking a risk. You’ve been seven years in the same job for the same reason.’ He stopped, pleased with his argument. ‘I can see you put some thought into that’, I snarled, ‘but I’m afraid I can’t take you seriously because you just hid in a cupboard.’ I was fuming, and I meant to be scathing but the unintentionally comic was never wasted on Steve, and he started to laugh. I felt an overwhelming urge to punch him and for a horrible moment I thought I might burst into tears. These two influences combined to give me a strangled facial expression which stopped Steve in his tracks. ‘I’m sorry mate, I didn’t mean to upset you’ he said, surprised. ‘The lab burnt down’ I said ‘and I’m not sure I’m going back.’ Steve looked shocked, and smothered any urge he might have felt to ask me whether I was responsible. Instead, he put the kettle on and listened as I spilled the whole story. Once I’d started I couldn’t stop and I told him everything, including things I hadn’t meant to, like the fact that I was scared of spending two months in my own company. After I had finished Steve stirred his coffee meditatively, frowning with the effort of hard thinking. ‘How old are you?’ ‘I’m 28, you know that.’ ‘I’m just checking,’ he said ‘because you’re talking like you’re 40 - you’re too young to be making do.’ He pointed at me with his teaspoon. ‘People exploit you because you let them.’ ‘I never said I was being exploited,’ I retorted, spilling some of my tea ‘I’m just stuck in a rut’. ‘If you say so’ he shrugged, and disappeared upstairs, coffee in hand. Telling Steve was quite cathartic, and the relief I felt wasn’t in any way diminished by the fact that he had quite clearly missed the point. We were often at cross purposes – I put it down to male and female viewpoints, that and the fact that he was preternaturally irrational. From what I have told you so far you may have assumed that Steve led a celibate life. Apologies for the oversight, but no, far from it. He had one night stands, usually one or two a week – but never a repeat performance. It went like this – he’d bring someone home late on Friday or Saturday night and they’d wake me up with the noise as they came in, laughing and squealing. Then they’d rigorously test the springs on Steve’s bed for about an hour before I managed to get back to sleep. I never met any of the women, they’d always gone by the time I got up. Funny thing was, they almost always left something behind in the bathroom – lipstick, earrings, a spangly thong (ok that was just the once). Steve’s theory was that the rogue items were left behind as a territorial statement. He was always in a foul mood the morning after and he’d make a show of asking if the items were mine, and then flinging them into the bin. I didn’t agree with him about the reason. At first I thought they did it as an excuse to pop back the next day, but nobody ever did. In the end I decided that the girls who left things behind wanted to be more than just one night stands. They wanted Steve to think about them again, so they left something to remind him. When I went to clean my teeth that night I saw that Marta had left a lipstick in the bathroom. It made me feel sad, though I wasn’t sure why.
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