Sauce material

In Competition No. 2900 you were invited to write a short story that ends on a condiment of your choice.

The germ of this comp was the writer Richard Brautigan’s wish to end a short story with the word ‘mayonnaise’, an ambition he fulfilled in his 1967 novel Trout Fishing in America. Actually, strictly speaking, he didn’t. As an eagle-eyed friend and self-confessed pedant pointed out to me, the word that appears in most editions is the deliberately misspelt ‘mayonaise’.

The pun-merchants had a field day this week and there were several Cluedo- and Wodehouse-inspired entries. The winners take £30, D.A. Prince pockets £35.

Keith hadn’t listened properly. It was Jane’s chief complaint against him, and constituted most of their conversation these days. His retort was that her voice rattled something in his brain, shaking loose other connections. Last week she’d screamed at him as, puzzled but not wanting another argument, he had sliced a lettuce and popped it in the toaster. ‘Post! Post!’ she had yelled. ‘Letters! Before the post goes.’ He’d taken the dog, a more congenial conversationalist, and walked the long way round to the postbox. Today’s trip to London was an attempt to get back some joie de vivre; she would shop, he would visit a gallery, and they would meet, mid-afternoon — but where had she said? He could see her, almost hear her, throwing the words over her shoulder, then vanishing before he could decode it. Something about a statue of churros, and piccalilli.
D.A. Prince
 
The sun slathered the snow beyond the window until it was the colour of half-congealed mustard: almost ochre. Dominic stared at it. It had been a big step forward: he had paid Anthea’s husband to go away, and he would keep on paying — a huge, recurrent drain on his luckily very considerable resources.