AMP: Artists' Meeting Place and Resource Collective

For earlier Chapters and an explanation of this dreadful story, see blog: The Cardiff Grandma. WARNING: This novel contains fake Welsh.
In the last chapter, howling ships and lurching coyotes. What next for Samantha Panther, shameless correspondent?
The Cardiff Grandma Chapter 60

Mr E. had been descending for over 90 seconds. He’d started counting the seconds after what must have been about eight minutes, when he could no longer convince himself that it was his long absence from the real world of time, Very Tiny Ping physics, child psychology and witchcraft that made the descent – for descent, it was – seem longer than what used to be usual. And slower. Faintly below him he heard a mournful bay, or maybe a roan. Except that horses don’t bark. So what was it?

‘What is it, Lassie?’ indagated Samantha, anachronistically supposing that the Spanish indagar had an English equivalent then as it does now all of a sudden.

It was indeed Lassie, and her eager elegant snout swung insistently between the reporter and a lif(f)t door on the underground dock into which they’d barged. Lifft? They must be in – no, it couldn’t be. Swatting the swinging snout out of her face, she raced across the deck pushing sailors out of her path, hit the end of deck and meeting the void heroically sprang across it with the grace of a catamount. This drove Lassie wild. She hated being outheroined. Snarling, she followed Samantha’s lead. Someone would pay for this!

The old Bangladeshi chuckled watching this, and turned and went below. He was proud of the girl; she’d passed the test: she’d resisted all of his avant advances, all of his vintage charms, his craggiest profile, his entendre-entendre, his suggestive mm-hmm, his allusive allusions how he knew she was a girl who could control her deepest impulses – reminded him of himself, he thought proudly. They all did. They were Di’s children, by god only knew what fathers, but he was still in love with his long-stormed-out former wife, and his tender-headedness had impelled him to be sure they were all accounted and provided for. Samantha was the last on his list; he’d now met and tested all twenty-seven of his ex’s illegitimate daughters. Tested them because before the sage old diplomat wrote them into his will he wanted to be sure they merited it, that they had the single-minded grit necessary to fight back the rising tides of their lust and defeat animal passion in pursuit of their goals. Why? Because, as his own dear mum used to say. Uncannily, all twenty-seven had succeeded, conquering temptation as if it were child’s play, deflecting, dodging, backstepping, straightarming, with the reflexes of seasoned rapiers. One of the Cardiff lot had even pushed him off a kerb! Fortunately, the bus-driver, didn’t see him, but the bus did, and had he been less nimble he’d have fallen under its wheels. And been crushed. ‘How could she do this to me?’ he’d have asked in deep disappointment before he died. Never mind that now. Samantha made up for all that. She was magnificent!

Samantha the Magnificent was now furiously pressing the lif(f)t button, Lassie right beside her, woofing like a Great Dane* , her genteel voice amplified through the magic of bio-adaptive electronic ferretry. ‘More on this later’ Samantha quickly made a mental note, adding, ‘ (the mike)’. Would the lif(f)t never end it’s arduous descent and arrive for Christ’s sake? Mr E. had been asking the same question at irregular intervals just to break the tedium. The barking grew louder. Then, at last, the lif(f)t stopped. The doors opened. Something swift and willowy snatched Mr E from the device and tossed him aside, sending him skidding on his posterior along some wet planks and into the drink.

Simultaneously, Samantha snatched something bent and frail out of the lif(f)t and not waiting to see what it was, she tossed it aside, falling breathlessly into the device as the doors were closing. ‘Thank god. There must be a ladies’ room up there somewhere!’ She pressed the button for the ground floor and the lif(f)t began its slow slow slow ascent. Lassie, who’d jumped aboard in Samantha’s wake, curled up for a nap. She’d taken this trip before.

Sitting on the submarine’s sole bunk, the wagered old Bangladeshi ambassador withdrew a well-worn leather wallet from the back pocket of his dhoti. He unsnapped it and a foot of accordion-folded photopocket spilled across his ancient lap. The faces of four young women and one young man stared up at him in startled surprise. the Cardiff lot - all able to withstand the most withering seduction and not succumb: these women were focused. This lad, however, the one Di claimed was his, he’d not met yet. Was he as blurry as he looked? If the chappie really was his, it would be his only son. He thought it might take a different kind of test, one appropriate for a male…something easier to pass… an old man landed in the water outside his portal.

* Possibly nuclear physicist Niels Bohr or maybe even linguist and grammarian Otto Jespersen