Her hands had always smelt of carbolic soap, but he had loved her anyway.
Still looking into the wardrobe he realised it had grown late. He laid a selection of clothes out on the chair for the morning and, by the shaft of moonlight which blazed through the uncurtained window, he read once more the piece of card that Snatchby had given him. Were he actually serious about this education business, Snatchby had said (Quirkstandard had mentioned it to him in a flurry of excitement just after he’d mentioned it to Spiggot), then he, Snatchby, knew of just the establishment and just the gentleman who might be able to help.
Sat up in bed he read the card a final time before becoming sleepy and slipping into dreams where his dashing, handsome self, armed with self-confidence and a boundless natural intelligence, strolled with a firm and implacable swagger around Town. He almost always slept soundly.
The bed had belonged to his father years before who had rarely slept well in it, and certainly not in those last few cashless months before marriage. After the marriage he moved up to a bigger bed that he shared with Lady Quirkstandard, and if he had sleepless nights there the reasons were usually quite different.
When, in that larger bed, he woke in a sweat and fright over the family fortunes (maybe from a dream in which he strolled around Town with a swagger and natural intelligence but no trousers and with the ghost of his father asking to borrow a fiver until next April), he could just roll over and look at the peacefully slumbering form of Sarah Penultimate-Quirkstandard and know that there lay the ravishing embodiment of a great big allowance (paid bi-annually), and this all by itself, was quite enough to stop him fretting further.
It was also in this larger bed that, shortly after their marriage, it is assumed that Epitome Quirkstandard was conceived, though in the way of newlyweds of the late nineteenth century it could very well have been almost any upstairs room of the house, or several noted knotted clumps of woodland within walking distance of their front door, or in that small passage between the kitchen and the scullery.
It was while Sarah Penultimate-Quirkstandard was pregnant with Epitome that she heard Balustrade Quirkstandard give a startled yelp one morning in the midst of their shared pre-natal exercises.
‘What is it my dear?’ she asked.
‘My fortune,’ he replied, stubbing out his cigar. ‘It seems to be under the escritoire.’
And so Epitome was born, two weeks later, in the spring of 1891, into a family blessed with a lasting love and two quite large funds of money. He gurgled as contentedly then in his brand new cot with his Nanny gazing dotingly into his big blue eyes as he slept soundly now in his own old bed after his long and exciting day of discoveries at Mauve’s.
Chapter 2
Shops, Pavements & Strange Men
The next morning Epitome sprang out of bed with a new-born enthusiasm, splashed some cold water on his face (from the hot tap, but the boiler had run out of fuel in the night), rubbed it with a towel and stepped into his dressing room in order to dress. He looked at the clothes that he had carefully laid out the night before and laughed. His Aunt would be so proud, he imagined, to think that he had become so self-sufficient so quickly.
He pulled on a snug pair of long johns and a white vest, above which he buttoned a cool green checked shirt. A pair of navy blue plus fours were tugged up over his underwear and he buttoned the fly up at the front and slid his arms into the warm embrace of a brown hound’s-tooth riding jacket and his feet into a soft warm pair of worn and comfortable russet-shaded carpet slippers. He failed to tie his tie but tucked it instead into his breast pocket, hoping he’d meet someone later on in the day who might be able to help out.
Picking up a walking stick and putting his father’s deerstalker (what better to go and track down an education in?) on his head he closed the front door and strode once more in the direction of Town, feeling, this time, exactly like a proper gent.
*
The first thing he did was head to Mauve’s for a spot of breakfast, followed by a rustle of the newspapers, a quick spell in the billiards room and then a bite of lunch, immediately after which he had a tiny smattering of dessert, followed by, since there weren’t as many gentlemen in the Club that day as expected, seconds. After this busy morning and feeling significantly fuller than he had felt for literally hours, he decided to be firm with himself and to prevaricate no longer, to not draw things out, to neither avoid nor dodge the point or issue, because, frankly, the time had come, and there was no denying it, for which and with which and into which it could no longer be put off or avoided, however challenging it seemed, to embrace, enwrap and enter his future. He pulled out Snatchby’s bit of card, drew a deep breath and grabbed a final brace of sandwiches before gathering up his hat and his stick and striking out into the streets of London in search of, well, an education.
Within half an hour he stood outside the premises in Charing Cross Road that Snatchby had recommended to him. He compared the name on the piece of card he had in his hand with the copperplate wording of the signage above the shop’s windows and confirmed that they were the same – Crepuscular & Sons: Educators To The World.
For a moment he wondered what to do next and then reached out for the door handle. It didn’t budge, neither the handle nor the door to which it was attached. He tried turning it both this way and that, as well as pushing and pulling, but it seemed, upon reflection, that the door was probably locked. Maybe, Quirkstandard thought, there’s another entrance around here somewhere? He looked around.
To the right of Crepuscular & Sons was a very busy doorway leading into, what a sign announced to be, The Café Coffee Shop & Cafeteria. As he inhaled the scent of coffee, late afternoon breakfast and buttered buns, his stomach gurgled in sympathy (noticing the tiniest of corners which hadn’t been filled at Mauve’s and which were feeling left out), but he turned away from it, his mind overruling his body’s mere physical desires. Oh, he thought, high-minded and more than little proud, I’ve reached a turning point in my life, which has hitherto been wasted in the vapid pursuit of billiards and the next hot meal or cold snack; no, I am a new man seeking new things and if that means missing an extra meal or two along the way, then stoic I shall be in the face of whatnot. It was quite the longest thought Quirkstandard could remember having had for years, and even if it trailed off a bit at the end and meandered a little in the middle, well, he still felt more than a little impressed with himself.
To the other side of Crepuscular & Sons was a shop whose sign read The Charing Cross Woad Shop. Once or twice a minute the tinkling doorbell tinkled as someone entered or exited the shop, and delivery boys on pushbikes came and went with bottles wrapped up in brown paper and string thunking dully in their baskets. It didn’t seem to be quite so popular a shop as The Café Coffee Shop, but it still had a steady stream of customers and wobbling bicycles. It was only Crepuscular & Sons that seemed to maintain a steady business of nobody at all.
Quirkstandard returned his attention to the door handle. He wondered whether maybe he hadn’t quite got the grip of it right the first time and gave it another few experimental twists. Nothing at all budged except for one trickle of sweat that appeared on his forehead. It was, after all, the summer and he probably hadn’t actually needed to put the long johns on.
When dressing he had forgotten to pack a handkerchief in his pocket and so he wiped away this little dribble with a fingertip which he then turned his gaze upon. He had never really examined his own sweat before (nor that of any one else). Indeed the number of things he could remember studying in any depth at all could very well be counted on the fingers of one hand, and the hand wouldn’t even have needed to have escaped minor industrial injury over the years. Curiosity was not his middle name.
He held his finger up in the sunlight and marvelled as London reflected back at him from the glistening bead of sweat poised on its tip. As the light played across his retina, splashing electricity through his brain in miniscule but useful amounts, he was overcome by a bri
ght wave of beauty. His knees wavered a bit and he felt giddy. Perhaps he should have sat down at this point, but he was entranced by the rapture of this close and deep aesthetic experience: the rainbow reflections of the world around him, held up on his fingertip as if he were a magician. But wrapped up in the aesthetics were a bundle of other questions of a more empirical nature: What is it, he wondered, that makes this bead of sweat glister so? (Indeed, what is it that makes this bead of sweat?) From whence does this tiny rainbow vision arise? What makes London revolve so? These quasi-romantico-scientific thoughts (couched in just the language that Quirkstandard felt was appropriate but which was, almost certainly, unnecessarily florid) crept through un- and underused pathways in his brain, physically connecting axons and dendrites that had been strangers for years by sending snapping sparks across dusty synapses. Thoughts collected, stared at each other, sent out new thoughts and basked in the attention the brain they resided in was paying them for once and then Epitome Quirkstandard fainted.
Fortunately for him he fell onto the pavement and not into the street where a passing motor vehicle could have caused him serious injury. The only dangers he faced on the pavement were being trod on by passers-by, bitten by rats or territorially marked by passing dogs, but it seemed as if his luck was with him this morning as very few of these occurrences happened. The major immediate upshot was a distinguished bruise on his forehead which he must have gained either on the way down to the ground or immediately upon arrival there. In all other ways he was almost entirely unharmed.
*
Shortly after he came to he opened his eyes, and there, looming above him, was the face of a man he had never seen before in his life.
He shut his eyes.
He wondered where he was and tried to investigate what he could remember.
He remembered that he’d gone somewhere, and then he hit an impasse. It was a start though, wasn’t it?
He tried to focus on where he was now.
He seemed to be lying on a table. Well, it seemed to be a table. It certainly wasn’t a bed, divan or sofa: it wasn’t soft for one thing and for a second thing he didn’t have a blanket draped over him. So it had to be a table; you never had blankets on tables. Except for those tables that had tablecloths on: they were like thin blankets weren’t they? Or more like sheets, he corrected himself. But is a blanket not just a thick sheet? He didn’t know, and couldn’t think who to ask. Oh, so maybe it’s not a table? It wasn’t a floor though. He could tell that because not only did he have an unaccountable sensation of altitude but the fingers of one of his hands twirled in the air off the edge of whatever surface was supporting him. So either he was lying on a table, without a tablecloth, or he was lying at the top of a flight of stairs.
He opened his eyes again. Still that other face looked down at him. ‘You’re awake then?’ asked the voice of the face.
‘Um, yes,’ Quirkstandard managed to squeak. He was somewhat surprised when his answer came out an octave or two higher than he had expected.
‘Good.’
‘Um, yes,’ Quirkstandard repeated, trying to get his voice down to more recognisable heights.
Pause.
‘I was beginning to think you might’ve been a goner, mate,’ said the face. 'We were gonna have to decide what to do with you.’
‘Um, yes?’ Quirkstandard said, cursing himself as his voice regained the falsetto through fear: he couldn’t help but note a note of menace in his interlocutor’s tone.
‘That’s a very high voice you’ve got there, I mean for a man of your build. D’you always speak like that?’
‘Um, yes … I mean no,’ ventured Quirkstandard, forcing his voice down lower than was natural in an effort to find some normality.
‘Ye-e-es,’ said his inquisitor with deliciously worried slowness.
The fellow drew the word out over several seconds for three reasons. Firstly he wanted to intimate his incredulity; secondly he wanted to create a bit of thinking time as he worked out whether the chap on the kitchen table was dangerous or not; and thirdly he rather liked the sound of his own voice.
The man to whom the voice belonged was Rodney Crepuscular, one of the sons mentioned in the shop’s name. His brother, Simon, had found the slumped and unconscious Quirkstandard propped up against their door when he came to open up again after a late long lunch and with the help of his father, who lived above the shop, had carried the somnolent gentleman through into the backroom-cum-kitchen, where he had, indeed, been laid on a table. Simon had then gone back out to buy some milk, while his father had returned upstairs to continue with his writing and Rodney had been left in charge of Quirkstandard’s wellbeing.
While he had been unconscious in the street Quirkstandard had been remarkably lucky. Not only was he not beaten up, kidnapped or trodden on, but the only theft that had happened, in a city where cutpurses and handkerchief thieves were still persistent problems, had been to a small portion of his moustache. But since it had been getting a bit bushy this really wasn’t any great loss. His deerstalker hat was gone too. Still, also and as well, he would think when he noticed it, no great loss.
Quirkstandard sat up.
Rodney took a step backwards.
Quirkstandard wobbled a bit and felt the blood rushing around his body and up to his head where it set in to aching. He lifted a hand to where it hurt most.
‘Is this a lump?’ he asked, in more or less his normal speaking tone. ‘The old noggin feels a bit bigger here than there … and it hurts. Ow. Crikey.’
‘It’s purple,’ offered Crepuscular.
Quirkstandard thought for a moment as he prodded gently at the bruised area. He jokingly imagined it might blend in nicely with the sofas at Mauve’s. He’d seen some of the younger chaps go so far as to buy scarves and gloves of various purplish hues in order to do just this, but this usually only led to swearing as they put their items down and then never found them again, so subtle and succinct was the camouflage effect. A bruised head, on the other hand (or on the other head, he corrected himself, ha-ha!) had at least one advantage over a glove: no matter where he rested it, he’d always be able to find it again, since it was attached, well, to his shoulders.
‘It might blend in nicely with the sofas at Mauve’s,’ he said.
Rodney Crepuscular stared at him blankly. He was still trying to decide, from the little information he was gathering, whether his brother had dragged a lunatic or a gentleman in from the street. The way he was dressed he could easily have been either, and though his accent certainly sounded sophisticated Rodney had heard tell of plenty of upper class imbeciles wandering the streets after having murdered their families and staff simply because the crumpets weren’t buttered just how they liked them. His mind was not yet at ease.
‘It’s my Club,’ Quirkstandard said, seeing the blank face of his saviour and assuming he simply awaited elucidation.
‘Well, when I say it’s my Club, obviously I don’t mean I own it or anything. In fact I’m not sure who does own it really or what it’s all about or where it comes from or what it does or has done, frankly. Um, what I mean to say when I say it’s my Club is that I occasionally have a drink there most days and sometimes a spot of luncheon or dinner … or both … and there are free newspapers …’ He was getting into the flow of this now, having steered the conversation, and indeed his mind, back onto a piece of turf he felt he knew something about, even if that something was not an awful lot as he was beginning to realise, and he continued, utterly ignoring or not noticing the look that had crossed Rodney Crepuscular’s face, ‘… and I meet with other gentlemen there, of course, old Harris Flirtwater and Spiggot of course, and so on. Some of them I went to school with, you know, and it’s so nice to keep in touch and find out what they’re up to these days. Stiffy Tipminster, for example, is something biggish in the army, and old Fiddling Gingerfield has become an anarchist in the British Library … I mean, none of us ever expected him to get a proper job like that, not old Fiddling, I m
ean, really!’
‘An anarchist?’
‘Yes, he spends all day scurrying around the bookshelves stacking things away and making little index cards and indexes and the like. Inky fingers, you see? He comes into the Club of an evening sometimes and talks about it for hours over billiards. I only ever really understood just about the gist of the thing, but he seems to enjoy it and really, that’s what’s so important in life, don’t you think?’
‘An anarchist?’
‘Oh, yes. Loves it. I don’t remember seeing you there though? Maybe you’re a member of a different Club. I know some of the chaps belong to a few, but that always seemed a bit of a dud effort to me – I mean if you want to chat to them, they need to check their diaries to make sure they don’t have to be somewhere else! I only belong to the one. It was my father’s idea, he’d also been a Mauve’s chap, I think, and well, I found, when I finished school, that there was a card waiting for me in the hall saying that I was invited to be a member and so, there you go, I’ve just been there, ipso facto as it were, ever since. Although I do go home, too, of course … I don’t want you to think …’
‘Prolix, ain’t you?’ interrupted Rodney just before Quirkstandard meandered to a halt of his own accord. He looked at his watch wearily.
‘Er, Epitome, actually, Epitome Quirkstandard. Prolix was my great uncle. Maybe you’re confusing us. Did you ever meet him? Although now I think about
it he wasn’t actually all that great. A bit of an ineffectual old duffer really, so they said, killed by a clematis as I recall …’ Quirkstandard paused as if struggling to remember something, ‘a tragedy …’
‘Why, was he young?’
‘Oh no, he was eighty-seven when he died, but he was a playwright. His most famous work, The Black Eye Of Albert Hugginsbottom, was a tragedy, that’s what I meant.’
The Education Of Epitome Quirkstandard Page 2