To describe the redoubtable matron Lady Snatch as a poshtitute was in point of fact slightly wide of the mark. For, much as there can be no doubt as to the genuine, which is to say legal, nature of her union to the noble whose name she bore, and much as she most certainly did earn her bread and gear by dint of relaxing the stiff muscles of tired businessmen; withal, those who knew her well, and those with an ear for the tinny tones of the American Midwest, dismissed out-of-hand those intimations occasionally evinced by ignorant and gullible persons, that the wisps of poshness which clung about her were of a provenance that was in any way intrinsic to her. —
poshtitute, Lady Kelly Snatch
The trade which Lady Snatch carried on was, to reiterate a point fulsomely made in another chronicle, very much at the behest of her spouse, who in his Skimpolish shiftlessness most grievously ponced off her; and necessitated moreover that she be much in the company of Mr Francis MacMahon, who applied himself most sedulously in the office of her Ladyship’s theatrical agent, which is to say pimporetto - an office which he very smartly combined with that of being the pharmacist by appointment to the household at … er …Squattocrat Towers. Ever was her Ladyship very badly in need of hosiery and a bath, a shortcoming which Mr Francis MacMahon generously, if somewhat puzzlingly given the damage it wrought upon his pimpery, overlooked. I can only imagine this to have been because, underneath that uncompromising exterior of his, Mr Francis MacMahon was a secret snob, who admired disgusting bohemianism as in some way redolent of insouciant devil-may-care aristocracy. —
Francis MacMahon, Squattocrat Towers
Mr Francis MacMahon’s beneficence extended to setting Her Ladyship up in business premises. That is to say, he ensconced her in an apartment in Beggarswell Close, Little Mogadishu, sublet from a certain Mr Warsame Bishaar Dihoud who, for certain reasons which he never did care to disclose, had found it expedient to quit those purlieus and renew his acquaintance with the Kismayo of his childhood. In this manner, Lady Snatch settled, or at any rate subsided into a routine, or at any rate a habit, of entertaining a stream, or at any rate a trickle, of gentlemen, who availed themselves of the full range of personal services which she offered at all hours of the day and night. Every day, or for that matter night, she would thus swink and sweat, thrust and pump, buck and bone, until the neighbours were sleep-deprived and scandalised, and she had earned enough tribute to lay at the feet of Mr Francis MacMahon, in order for that excellent fellow to supply the Afghani frankincense and myrrh upon which she and her life’s companion had come to depend. —
Beggarswell Close
Lady Snatch was disgorged that vesper from a vehicular conveyance onto the pavement outside … er … Squattocrat Towers, just as Mr Ian Corby, having concluded the business earlier related between himself and St Just, had snuck up the stairs past a by now thoroughly gremitant Lord Snatch, and made good his escape up the chimney whence he’d come. Evidently in a state of extremis, the normally redoubtable spouse of the noble just mentioned struggled on disarranged limbs up the steps to the strong door which barred the place. Upon this she scratched and tapped, all the while emitting feline mews, and favouring the world at large with forthright opinions regarding the iniquitous hand dealt her by the spinners and measurers and cutters of thread. —
Lord Snatch, Squattocrat Towers, St Just
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