Spectator Competition: It’s a match

For Competition 3385, with Valentine’s Day looming, you were invited to submit a passage in which one well-known character from literature goes on a date with another. There was a very full inbox, with enough excellent entries to fill weeks’ worth of competitions. It’s tempting to think that some of these imaginative pairings would have real potential. Lady Chatterley’s Mellors rendez-vous’d once with Lorelei Lee and twice with Clarissa Dalloway: it was hard to choose. Sadly I had to disallow Mrs Mala-prop’s encounter with Revd Spooner (‘too late, I understood what he’d meant by a “nosy little cook”’). Her other date was with Holden Caulfield (‘Golden Cornfield?’).

There was a suggestion of ‘shipping’ – that branch of fan fiction that spins romance between pre-existing characters. Some other promising couples: Jay Gatsby and Elizabeth Bennet; Mr Darcy and Mr Rochester; Miss Marple and James Bond; James Bond and Mrs Dalloway; Emma Bovary and Sherlock Holmes; Philip Marlowe and Olive Chancellor; Flora Poste and Beowulf. The list could go on, but to maximise the space for your entries, the £25 vouchers go to those below.

‘This is right; this is charming. It is the perfect place to meet,’ said Clarissa Dalloway. ‘My aunt brought me here often. We ate eclairs usually, and once we saw dear Lady Bristow enjoying tea and a scone all by herself.’

Mellors fixed his resentful gaze onto a lace doily. ‘Is this, then, what tha calls civilisation?’ he asked. ‘This artificiality? Where t’waitresses are deferential and biscuits are soft to the teeth?’

‘Would you have preferred a Lyons?’ she asked.

His eyes took on an undefinable look of derision. ‘Tomorrow let us go into the woods, where we can meet as humans, aye as a male and female, and not ashamed of it. And I shall search there for wild flowers, for bluebells and campions, that I may lay caressingly to decorate tha Lady Jane?’

‘Tomorrow,’ said Mrs Dalloway firmly, ‘I shall buy the flowers myself.