by Frank Almond
“So why are we bothering to practise?” I asked.
“That’s what we’ll be practising,” said the Duck. “I want to make sure you don’t hit anybody. Me, for example. Come on—the sun’s nearly up.”
I smiled. “I like the sound of this. I’m going to come across as a right hero when I discharge my pistol in the air.” I put on a French accent. “No contest, Monsieur—blam!”
“And this sort of thing spreads through the Gloucestershire set like a dose of the clap. The Duckworth family name will be solid gold round here, mate. I wouldn’t be surprised if we get invited to a few top drawer balls,” said the Duck. “Never know—might get you married off.”
“Behave. I’m spoken for. Will Emma be watching?”
“Sorry, no women allowed on a field of honour. It’s bad luck.”
“Well, it’s always bad luck for one of ’em, isn’t it?”
“You just want to show off—it’s not allowed! But don’t worry, I’ll make sure she hears about what a hero you were.”
I straightened my cravat. “Just make sure she never finds out what really occurred.”
“No worries. Just go out there and enjoy yourself, my son. It’s your day.”
I slapped his shoulder. “Thanks, Duck,” I said. “You know, I had my reservations about this, but now I see what you were up to.”
“You do?”
“Yeah. All you’re interested in is making a name for yourself with your new neighbours.”
“Guilty,” smiled the Duck. “You got it in one.”
“Don’t worry, it’s cool,” I said. “I know what you’re like, but I do see you’ve worked this so we both get what we want for a change.”
“You get your brains from your father,” he grinned.
* * *
We walked down the main staircase, side by side, two resolute figures, determined to uphold the family honour—whatever the cost to Monsieur De Quipp! There’s something ennobling about walking to a field of honour at the crack of dawn, with your second, even when you know the duel has been fixed and you can’t lose.
We crossed the elegant black and white chequered hall and entered the long gallery, passing all the paintings and household antiques my father had acquired recently. I wondered who all the noble figures in the portraits were. Okay, they were not ancestors, I know, but I felt sure they would have been proud of what I was doing, as long as you left out the bit about the cheating.
“Who’s the guy in the ermine robe?” I asked, as we walked under a huge oil painting of a curly wigged Restoration-type with rosy cheeks.
“Dunno,” replied the Duck.
“What about her?” I said, pointing at the full-length portrait of an equine-nosed young lady in a blue silk ball gown, leaning against a Palladian pillar.
“I think she’s German,” replied the Duck.
“Don’t we have any real ancestor paintings?” I said.
“I’m going to get a few done—you, me, Emily and Emma—the kids—might even make up a few,” he said.
“You could get Turner to do them,” I said.
“No. He’s too expensive. I know this bloke in Soho. You just send him some Polaroids, slip him a few quid, and he’ll knock off as many as you want, all in period costume.”
“That’s right,” I said, “do it properly.”
“When do I have time to sit? I’m a hunted man. Besides, there’s no money in portraits—nobody buys ’em.”
The English aristocracy say that if you have to buy your own furniture, you are not a true aristocrat. Well, my old man bought his as a job lot, but at least he knew the makers personally.
We reached the end that backed onto the east terrace. Bentley was waiting for us with two glasses of Dutch courage on a silver tray.
“Cheers, Benters,” said the Duck. He passed me mine. “There you go, Son, get that down you. Jamaican rum, from my plantation. That’ll put hairs on your vest.”
“I hope you’re not a slaver,” I said.
“Do me a favour,” said the Duck. “I only bought it as an investment. I’ve never even been out there.”
“Well, I don’t suppose it matters,” I said. “They’ll be banning slavery in 1807, anyway.”
Bentley raised an eyebrow.
“Probably,” I added.
Bentley took our empty glasses.
“Thanks, Bentley,” I said.
“May one be permitted to wish you good luck, sir?” he inquired.
“You may,” said the Duck.
“The very best of luck, sir,” said Bentley. “I hope you win.”
“Thanks, Bentley.”
“He won’t need any luck, Benters,” said the Duck. “His opponent’s only a Frenchman.”
“To be sure, sir,” said Bentley.
“And no match for a Duckworth,” I added, getting into the swing of the thing.
“I hope not, sir. I’m offering very good odds for you,” said Bentley. He set off on the long walk back up the gallery.
“Odds?” I called.
“Just a harmless flutter, sir.”
“On my life? How long?”
“Two hundred to one, sir,” replied Bentley.
“I’m not that confident, Bentley.”
“Against, sir.”
“Against?” I turned to the Duck. “Does he know about the you know what?” I whispered.
“Er…”
“You said you wouldn’t tell anyone!”
“I only told Benters—he’s just taking a few side bets for me. At odds of two-hundred to one against—the punters are ripping his arm off!”
“You’re running a book on your son’s life? Haven’t you got any scruples?”
“I couldn’t resist it. Anyway, we can’t lose.” He tapped his box of pistols. “We’ve got an edge.”
“Edge? That’s a bloody cliff! It’s cheating.”
“I prefer the term creative certainty.”
“This is all a tissue of lies, isn’t it?” I said. “This whole set-up—the house, the title. What are you doing back here in this snobby society? You’ll never fit in round here. You’ve only got one principle—get in first and do unto others before they do unto you. You’d be better off hobnobbing with the mob in twentieth century Las Vegas.”
“I’ve got a condo in Vegas,” said the Duck.
“Well, why don’t you go and live in it?”
He opened the tall terrace doors for me.
“I’m sick of all this pretence.”
“I’m an antiques dealer. This is where all the best stuff is,” said the Duck.
We both stepped outside into the chill March air. The morning mists were still hanging in the trees and there was a muffled stillness everywhere.
“Give me that gun,” I said.
The Duck opened the case as we walked to the terrace parapet and handed me a pistol.
“Sure this is the right one?” I said. “That’s a point—how am I going to know which one’s mine? They both look the same.”
“Not a problem,” said the Duck.
“Not for you maybe. You’ll be hiding behind a tree.”
“As the challenged,” he said, patiently, “it is your privilege to have first dibs. Now, I will hold the case open towards you like this.” He demonstrated.
“Right.”
“No, left,” said the Duck. “You choose the pistol with its butt on the left—the one you’re holding. Got that—the left?”
“The left? Right.”
“No—the left!”
“Yeah, all right, I know which side’s my left,” I said. “Here, hang on—your left or my left?”
“We’d better make up something, so you don’t forget,” he said. “I know—left—that’s ‘L’ for loaded. Got that?”
“And ‘R’ for reject—I reject the right one,” I said.
“No, the right one is on the left,” said the Duck.
“Oh, shut up. Just point to the bloody thing!”
I aimed dow
n at bushes and statues in the formal garden below us, and pretended to blow them away, with sound effects. Blam! Blam-blam! Pow!
“Give me that!” said the Duck.
I held it out of his reach and made him jump for it, till he gave up trying to take it off me.
“All right,” he said. “Show me how you’re going to shoot into the air after De Quipp goes down.”
I pointed directly up into the air and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened, of course, because it wasn’t loaded, so I did the sound effect. Blam! And the echo. Bla-blam!
“No,” said the Duck.
“Yeah, well, I’ll just do it my way,” I said, tired of all his fussing.
“If you fire it straight up like that, you could have your eye out!”
“How?” I said sceptically.
“Give it here, I’ll show you.”
I reluctantly handed over the gun.
He demonstrated. “If you hold it right up above your head, like you had it, you’ll have bits of hot lead and powder sparks falling straight down in your eyes. Hold it out like this—he held his arm out and bent it at the elbow—and discharge it away from your body, but directly up in the air. Got it?”
“Yeah. Give it here then.”
“No, it’s going away now, till we get there.”
“Call that a practice? I haven’t even fired the bloody thing yet!”
“Ammunition costs money.” He put the gun carefully back in its brown baize lined case and shut it. “Come on, this way.”
He dashed off down some steps on the eastern side of the house, leading to the formal garden. I followed on his heels. And caught him up.
“How far is it?”
“Not far. See those beech trees?”
There was a line of beech trees running parallel, but far to the left of the main avenue of trees—which, I think, were limes—and the Duck had indicated these. They seemed to border a level path going to a small bridge over a stream. It being early spring, they were not yet in leaf, but there were rookeries in the high branches, and the residents were stirring and drying their feathers in the sun, which was just beginning to break through. They let out a few piercing cackles as we approached.
You know that feeling you get sometimes when something just doesn’t feel right? Well, I was getting it in spades.
We had traversed the garden, with its topiary and symmetrical hedging, and were just going down the verdant slope to the stream. It should have been a walk in the park, but it felt more like a walk in the dark.
“Wait,” I said.
The Duck stopped and turned about. “What is it now?”
“I don’t see De Quipp,” I said.
“He’ll be here,” said the Duck.
I looked back at the house. It seemed impossibly large, sitting there in the perfect green landscape, with its neo-classical arches and pillars, and sheer walls, streaked with grime—like an illusion.
“There’s something wrong. I can feel it.”
“Your senses are working overtime. The old adrenalin’s pumping.”
“Is that what it is?” I gazed around me. “Everything just feels different.”
“It’s just nerves,” said the Duck. “Come on. We’ll be late.”
I took my time, looked back at the house again, around at the terraces and trees and gardens, and then up into the empty grey sky. I thought I heard something. And if I listened very hard, I could just make out a roaring sound coming from beyond the clouds.
“What’s that?” I said.
“What?”
“That noise. It sounds like the red-eye from New York!”
“It’s just the wind,” said the Duck.
“And the house!” I said. “It’s aged, the stone’s got dark patches—you scheming little rat! This isn’t 1803! We’re back in the third millennium!”
“Calm down,” said the Duck.
I grabbed his arm and started swinging his scrawny body around and round. Though he tried to clutch it to his pigeon chest, the pistol case flew out of his other arm and skittered across the grass.
“You’ve brought me back! Why? Where’s Emma? Oh my God, what have you done?”
I was whirling him around faster and faster. Both his feet left the ground and he was screaming at me to stop.
“Let me go! Let me go! Steve! I-can-ex-plain-ev-er-y-thing!”
I let go and the centrifugal force slingshotted him at least ten feet through the air and sent him skidding on his backside down the grassy slope. I ran after him and grabbed him by his stupid hippie ponytail before he could scramble to his feet. I wrenched his head back and stuck my nose right up against his.
“Start at the beginning and tell me everything, you devious little bastard!”
“All right, all right! The truth!” he cried.
“I knew there was something fishy going on and I knew you were behind it. Tell me!”
“Let go of my hair first.”
I gave his head one last yank and released him. He immediately scampered away to fetch the box. I ran after him. He picked clods of earth off it and rubbed it clean with his sleeve.
“You maniac! Have you any idea how much a boxed set of Wogdons is worth?”
I gave him a shove. “I don’t care,” I said. “What are we doing here?”
“It was a safety measure.” He straightened his glasses. “I’ve got a helicopter standing by on the other side of the house, if any of the combatants sustain a serious wound, I could have him in Bristol A and E in five minutes.”
“You’ll have to do better than that, unless you want to go there,” I smiled. “Now, the real reason.”
“That’s the truth. I swear,” he said. “I didn’t want to take any chances with… with my son’s life.”
He held the gun case close to his heart and gazed off across the immaculate parkland, with a wistfully tragic expression on his face.
“I don’t know what I’d do if I lost you, Son. Honest I don’t.”
“Yeah, very moving,” I said. “Now tell me the rest.”
He looked round at me, aghast. “That’s all there is!” he quacked. “Don’t you believe I have feelings?”
“Let me see,” I started counting on my fingers, “there’s greed, lust, selfishness, pride—”
“—What a low opinion you have of your father,” he said, sadly.
But I wasn’t buying any of it. “So, Bentley’s in on it. Who else?”
“Just Bentley.”
“Well, that’s a lie for a start,” I said. “How did you get De Quipp here?”
“De Quipp doesn’t know anything—he still thinks he’s in 1803,” said the Duck.
“Where is he then?” I said, looking round.
“He’s out riding.”
I leaned forward to make a point of peering through Duckworth’s thick-lensed glasses. “On his own? What if he rides straight into a motorway?”
“My, er, brother-in-law’s chaperoning him,” replied the Duck. “Now, can we get on, they’ll be back in a minute.”
“Which brother-in-law?” I said. “You must have dozens—you’ve got a wife in every century!”
“Rufus.”
“Rufus who?”
“It’s Aleman,” said the Duck.
“Aleman the Blacksmith—from the Middle Ages?” I exclaimed. “You brought Aleman here? He only has two brain cells—and they’re both illiterate!”
“Stupidity has its uses,” said the Duck.
“Yeah, he does everything you tell him.”
“He speaks Norman French,” said the Duck.
“Wait a minute—Aleman’s playing Captain Walrus—De Quipp’s second—I thought I recognized that moustache!” I once wrestled Aleman the Smithy for the hand of the Duck’s sister-in-law, an Anglo-Saxon wench named Betha. I threw the fight, but that’s another story.
Suddenly, two riders appeared on the horizon, one silhouette riding tall and elegant in the saddle, the other short and fat, bouncing along beside him.
“They’re coming!” said the Duck, seizing my arm.
We watched them ride down the hill into the avenue of limes and then cut across towards the bridge.
“What a farce,” I said. “Okay, let’s do it.”
The Duck stopped and waved to them. I walked past him and headed for the line of beeches.
We met on the path. I put my hands in my pockets and posed. De Quipp was still astride his horse at one end—his second holding it steady—the Duck joined me at the other. My opponent dismounted in one smooth movement and started striding purposefully towards me. I set off immediately to meet him before he got to the middle, because I thought it would be bad form to allow him to come to me. Our seconds hurried along behind us, Aleman leading the two horses and the Duck carrying his box of guns. We were now both roughly in the middle of the little avenue of beeches, with the stream gurgling away down the bank, on my left.
“Get those horses out of here,” I said.
Aleman hesitated and then, after a jerk of the head from De Quipp, led them to the other side of the break of trees, on the far side from the stream.
“So, Baron Duckworth,” said De Quipp, strutting around me, hands on hips, looking me up and down, “you dare to teurn up.”
I stood my ground and looked bored while he circled me.
“Have you come to talk or to fight?” I said.
“I yam a chevalier, a Knight of France,” he said. “You insult mee, Baron Duckworth. Now I geeve you the chaunce to take hit back.”
“No,” I yawned.
“Vary well!” he snapped. “Then you geeve mee no choice—I must keel you.”
“Pick a gun and let’s get on with it then,” I said.
We both turned to the Duck, who was shaking his head vigorously at me. I had no idea what he meant. He flipped open the catches on the gun case and offered them to us.
De Quipp went to inspect the pistols more closely, but did not touch them. He nodded approvingly at the Duck. Then he turned to me.
“You ask mee to choose?”
It suddenly dawned on me why the Duck had been shaking his head. I was just panicking and wondering what to do next, when De Quipp said:
“You insult mee, Baron! It was I who challaunge you—you must choose!”
I smiled.
Aleman, who had wound the reins of the horses around a low-hanging branch, rejoined us. We exchanged glances, but neither of us gave away any sign that we knew each other.