Lament of a Girl Led Astray (score from Sister Morphine).

Put a tenner on the table as yer leavin’,

Put a tenner on the table

                                          won’tcha, dear.

Put a tenner on the table.

                                         if yer love me,

’Cos a girl ’as gotta live . . . 

’Cos a girl ’as gotta live . . . 

’Cos a girl ’as gotta live on more than

cold and bitter beer.

For many years, I admit, yes, we’d conducted a sort of meretricious relationship, which had branded me, I suppose, as a species of ‘kept woman’, for there was a lighthearted understanding that we should assist each other financially from time to time, when low on funds.

        Hence, when Douglas stole from the warmth of my bed in the small hours, I would often run to the piano to vocalise my penniless state in a patter song of my own devising . . . 

        The mock pathos of my Lament of a Girl Led Astray and jangling honky-tonk beerhall accompaniment had generally been productive of more than a tenner.

        Then, a change fell upon all things, when, in the light of one exceedingly feeble dawn, he confessed he was leaving me for a younger, more provident woman.

        ‘After traipsing after you all these years! You . . . you . . .’ I stuttered, quite beside myself with anger. ‘You . . . you . . .’ 

        Douglas turned slowly at the threshold. 

        ‘Well?’  There was a peculiar twist to his lips as if he were pleased to be hurting me.

‘You . . . you . . . bally bastard!’ I finally managed weakly.

        He gave a derisive little laugh and slammed the door.

        ‘I don’t care a blind fig who she is,’ I shouted after him senselessly, I was so angry, ‘or a brass farthing for your petty fornications!’

        Even now, his desertion, in retrospect – as I gazed in a reverie at the river’s oozy bed – prompted a bitter taste in my mouth; his laughter had simply added wormwood to gall.

Dispossession, Page 319, Sister Morphine (2008).

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Catherine Eisner believes passionately in plot-driven suspense fiction, a devotion to literary craft that draws on studies in psychoanalytical criminology and psychoactive pharmacology to explore the dark side of motivation, and ignite plot twists with unexpected outcomes. 

see Eisner’s Sister Morphine (2008)

http://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/sister-morphine.html

and Listen Close to Me (2011)
http://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/published-this-autumn-listen-close-to.html 
and A Bad Case (2015)

http://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/a-bad-case-and-other-adventures-of.html