Competition | 4 June 2011

Lucy Vickery presents this week’s Competition

In Competition No. 2698 you were invited to submit a short story that begins, ‘Of course he knew — no man better — that he hadn’t a ghost of a chance, he hadn’t an earthly.’ and ends ‘And Reginald came slowly across the lawn.’ The given words are the first and last sentences of ‘Mr and Mrs Dove’ by Katherine Mansfield, superlative writer of short fiction and object of Virginia Woolf’s envy: ‘I was jealous of her writing — the only writing I have ever been jealous of.’
Chris O’Carroll revisits Mansfield’s story and conjures up a parallel universe in which a semi-emancipated Reggie dreams of putting the symbolic doves to death. His fellow winners, printed below, earn £25 each. The bonus fiver is G.M. Davis’s.

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Of course he knew — no man better — that he hadn’t a ghost of a chance, he hadn’t an earthly.