In Competition No. 2510 you were asked to submit a scene from The Archers written in the style of D.H. Lawrence.
Entries were thin on the ground this week. Perhaps you just couldn’t face Lawrence and his much-mocked florid excesses — or maybe it was The Archers that put you off. Fewer didn’t mean worse, though, and there were some fine Lawrentian flourishes. Alanna Blake exploits parallels between Clarrie Grundy’s current tight-lipped disapproval of William’s new girlfriend Nic, and Paul Morel’s mother’s smouldering resentment towards Miriam Leivers in Sons and Lovers. A normally affable Eddie metamorphoses into the volatile and violent Walter Morel. Bill Greenwell mines the rich comic potential in the Worm of Ambridge storyline and in what Lawrence’s biographer John Worthen calls his ‘profuse, incremental repetitions’.
This week’s bonus fiver flutters into the lap of Basil Ransome-Davies, who nails Lawrence’s lapses into obstructive melodrama and reminds us why he was a target for feminist bile. The other prizewinners, printed below, are rewarded with £30 each.
Jennifer: We can still make everything all right, can’t we, Brian?
Brian: Make everything all right? Is that your answer to the deep, burning man-hunger that penetrates life to the quick, to the organic soul of creation, embracing the dark, subconscious ithyphallic forces which desert the petty obsessions of the ego to plumb the volcanic depths of passional destruction and annihilation?
Jennifer: Well, you have…you know, been putting it about a bit.
Brian: And do you know what, Jennifer? Do you know what the woman-talk, the woman-fuss, the drip-drip-drip of mundanity that is death to the spirit, always shuns, passes by? It is the law of submission to the will of the Ultimate, to the mystery of mastery, to the blood-root. Even a dried-up insect like Tregorran, even your unmanly, benighted apology for a son, understands that.
Jennifer: Yes, well …I’ll just go and put the kettle on.
Basil Ransome-Davies
Lynda: And he in his pyjamas!
Robert: Well, I think it’s amusing, highly amusing, droll, droller than a sliver of gristle on the plate of a Willy Wet-Legs.
Lynda: But a boa! Underneath the very, the very bed upon which he had lain.
Robert: Something to expiate, haven’t you?
Shula: Bats!
Alistair: But they have been dispatched, in the times, the long-ago times before the stooks rose and fell in harvest. And besides, this was a snake, and a deep brown, a very deep brown and yellow constrictor.
Shula: It was almost iridescent. And when Clarrie gave out that throaty call, in the church, in the pew…
Alistair: I would have laid good money it was a boa.
(Knocking)
Joe: Is that thee, Lynda?
Lynda: You can’t come in.
Joe: Hast seen him return, his roots, to the very loins, the thick and muscular loins of the land?
Bill Greenwell
Clarrie: (Trembling inwardly at her son’s anger and feeling a shrinking from this commonplace girl.) What have you got yourself into, William?
Eddie: Ee, be silent, woman.
Clarrie: I will not watch him demean himself again. The Grundys may not be gentlemen farmers. But they are a cut above them Horrobins — and see where that marriage led. Will is my son. I bore him. I will have what is best for him.
Eddie: (Raising his hand, threateningly). Damn it to hell, Missus. Let him rut where he will.
William: A black anger is stirring in me. You do not understand. I am no child, but a man, a father. Almost I hate you. You favour Edward, Mother, yet you expect me to fulfil your bigoted ambitions. I regret that I cannot see you decide my future, neither mine nor George’s if the matter comes to that. Let us leave, Nic, with our dignities intact.
Alanna Blake
Lynda: So glad you’ve accepted my invitation to be part of the village production of Lady Chatterley, George. A real gamekeeper. We’ll save so much time on research and method-acting.
George Barford: ’A dunna play-act. ’Tes in the blood.
Lynda: That’s why we need you. Just be your natural self — let your inner flame of manhood burn hard and gem-like, darling!
George: Ay, but who’ll be my comely wennet?
Lynda: It’s Shula. And, Alan Franks is Sir Clifford, although he’s finding the motorised wheelchair that Grey Gables are lending stressful.
George: Nay, ’tes the soul-sickness of the lily-white-handed folk. ’Appen, stoat to leveret, hawk to jinny-wren, is nature’s way.
Lynda: Er, I’m sure you’re right. What’s that you’re holding?
George: A garland of sukebind to dilly-dally o’er my liddle maidy.
Lynda: Jolly good! But do save it for dress rehearsal. Not that we’ll really be needing much of one.
Simon Machin
Caroline: Morning, Eddie! Taking your garden gnomes to the fête?
Eddie: Yeah, it’s a right lark, this modern diversified farmin’ racket.
Caroline: Is it just me, or are those gnomes more demonstratively masculine than usual?
Eddie: They’re just as Nature intended. And who can blame ’em? You’re a fine figure of a woman, Caroline Pemberton.
Caroline: Eddie, stop it!
Eddie: Well, you says stop it, but does you mean it? Leave off all your hoity-toity manners and you can feel a charge between us sure as I can. If you was closer to Nature, you’d be in my cider shed quicker ’n lightning.
Caroline: But we’re both married!
Eddie: Blummin’ heck, that’s just paper. What you an’ me’ve got, it’s…
Caroline (huskily): Visceral, Eddie. The word you’re groping for is visceral.
Eddie: No, I’m gropin’ for sommat beyond words.
Caroline: A language of pure feeling?
Eddie: Nah, me cowboy hat with horns.
Adrian Fry
Competition No. 2513: Dream date
You are invited to submit a Spectator Love Bug advertisement for a well-known literary character (maximum 150 words). Entries to ‘Competition 2513’ by 20 September or email lucy@spectator.co.uk.
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