The Education Of Epitome Quirkstandard

by A. F. Harrold

  And then, as she was looking at Penny, the old Crepuscular noticed her and smiled at her. She gulped her wine and turned back to look at the younger chap. Maybe she could win this game after all. If the idiot nephew was getting there, then surely, resourceful, pretty, charming and witty Nancy Walker could get there first …

  ‘Coriolanus,’ said Quirkstandard.

  ‘Shush, Epitome, we’re only on the third syllable – that’s far too long.’

  ‘Actually, Miss Penultimate …’

  ‘You shush too, you’re not allowed to speak.’

  ‘Simon, you know better than …’

  ‘Dad! Miss Penultimate! Mr Quirkstandard has it.’

  ‘Well, he’s got something.’

  ‘Nancy?!’

  ‘No, I mean he’s guessed the play.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘What was it?’

  ‘Coriolanus.’

  ‘Is that what you said, Mr Q.?’

  ‘Oh, er, yes. Just something I remembered from school.’

  ‘It’s Shakespeare.’

  ‘Oh, golly. I didn’t know that. I just remembered the sound of it. It sounded like what Mr Crepuscular had spelt out – ‘core, ee, oh!’ – you see?’

  ‘Yes, we see.’

  ‘Well, Mr Q., it’s your turn now.’

  Simone Crepuscular turned to Penelope Penultimate and said quietly, ‘He’s really come on, you know. I hate to boast, but he’s been reading my pamphlets all week and I notice a difference from when I first met him on Tuesday. I can’t claim the credit though, he’s done it all himself, Miss Penultimate, but I do feel some modest satisfaction in it.’

  ‘I’ve noticed something too, yes. I’m so pleased you’ve got him reading, Mr Crepuscular, and I’m so pleased it’s your marvellous pamphlets that he’s found. There’s a lot of trash around, but you’ve … well, you know, I think you have something special there … I really must read some more. Maybe when you get back to London you could make a little selection for me, of things you think I might like. You could send them down, or even bring them yourself if you wanted to come back for a bit more fresh air.’

  ‘Thank you, Miss Penultimate, that’s very generous, very kind. I shall set my mind to it as soon as I’m back to the shop.’

  Nancy snorted, spilling some wine on her dress.

  ‘Oh do be more careful Nan,’ said Penelope turning and patting her arm, ‘you know how hard wine is to get out.’

  Nancy knew. Of course she knew. Of course I know, she thought, standing up and pouring the last few splashes of the last open bottle into her glass. Of course I know, that’s what I do, wash and scrub and apply the soda water, apply the vinegar, sprinkle the salt – I know the stains, I know the solutions. That’s my bloody job.

  She thumped back down in her seat.

  Quirkstandard stood up from his and took Simon’s place in the middle. Simon sat down in Quirkstandard’s seat, next to Nancy.

  ‘Five words,’ someone said, in response to some raised fingers.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘No, you’re not supposed to talk.’

  ‘Oh, sorry. Yes. I forgot. Um, but it is five words.’

  ‘Yes, we got that.’

  Quirkstandard stood there for a moment, still with his hand raised.

  ‘Um?’

  ‘Aren’t you going to tell us what it is?’ asked Nancy.

  ‘Oh,’ said Quirkstandard, suddenly looking confused, ‘I thought that was sort of the point of the game. But I could tell you if that’s …’

  ‘No, I mean what sort of a thing it is.’

  ‘A book or a play, Mr Q., that sort of thing.’

  ‘Oh, yes, it’s a …’

  ‘Sshhh.’

  He stood for a moment with both his hands out in front of him and tried to decide what to do with them.

  After another moment he lowered them again and spoke.

  ‘How do you do a pamphlet?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Miss Penultimate. ‘I don’t think I’ve seen anyone do a pamphlet before.’

  ‘I think it’s a sort of unfolding motion like this,’ said Simon, making a sort of unfolding motion with his hands.

  Nancy nudged him and smiled.

  ‘Thank you, right, spot on,’ said Quirkstandard as he approximated a version of Simon’s unfolding gesture with his own hands.

  Nigel Spiggot snorted, barked and rolled over in his sleep.

  ‘No,’ said Quirkstandard, looking at his pal with confusion, ‘it’s a pamphlet.’

  ‘Shush dear.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Mr Q., no more talking.’

  ‘Yes, I know, but people keep …’

  ‘I know, but maybe this once you don’t need to apologise …’

  ‘Oh, sorry, right.’

  ‘Sshhh!’

  Quirkstandard held up his first finger.

  ‘First word.’

  He lowered the hand and looked puzzled.

  ‘Um, how does one do a ‘what?’’ he asked.

  ‘Mr Q.?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Is it by any chance, What I Did In India?’

  ‘Yes. Oh well done Mr Crepuscular. That was jolly quick and jolly clever of you. I’d hardly got going at all, and there you are steaming in.’

  Nancy muttered something. Simon Crepuscular leant in so he could hear what she said when she repeated it.

  ‘What the bloody hell is that? I’ve never even heard of it.’

  ‘Oh, that? That’s one of dad’s … I mean my father’s … pamphlets. It’s very good, it’s all about India and the circus and all that sort of thing. It’s funny and informative. You’d like it.’

  Nancy leant back and looked at the old man. So, he’d been able to guess his own pamphlet when the idiot Earl had spent all week reading it. Big surprise, she thought. Doesn’t make him the bloody winner though, does it?

  Penny had rested her hand on his arm as she congratulated him and was laughing at something Nancy hadn’t heard.

  ‘I’ve had enough of this,’ she said suddenly, standing up with a wobble and a whoosh in her head. ‘If you need me anymore tonight, ma’am, I’ll be in bed.’

  She curtseyed crudely and opened the kitchen door.

  ‘Nan?’ said Miss Penultimate in a tone that conveyed additional information, maybe a question, that was only apparent to her and the girl. One of her eyebrows raised an eighth of an inch, but Nancy ignored it and went indoors.

  ‘Very well then,’ Miss Penultimate said to the closed door, ‘I probably shan’t be late up myself.’

  The door said nothing.

  *

  In actual fact she was quite late going up to bed, since she spoke for a long time more with Simone Crepuscular. They wandered out into the lane to take the noise of their conversation away from the others who had climbed into their sleeping bags shortly after the end of the game of charades, all (except Spiggot) feeling lightheaded and happily dozy.

  In the lane, as the thin bright moon shone down, silvering the hedgerows, they talked about the Amazon and the Pacific. Miss Penultimate tucked her arm through one of Crepuscular’s, to stop him from getting lost in the dark, she announced, even though the stars were blazing now with a bright pale luminescence and the road was clearly lit between the pitch dark of the hedgerows.

  ‘How did you come to be doing what you do, Miss Penultimate?’ Crepuscular asked at one point. ‘I mean, I ended up wandering as a result of a poor education. I was something of a stupid boy, but I can’t imagine the same was …?’

  ‘Oh, it’s a long story. It’s hard to say where it begins. Where it began. I went on my first adventure, my first expedition, in … oh, when was it? 1887? Thirty years ago? Goodness, but, yes … Yes, that was the trip. I had just turned twenty-one and I wanted to do something away from the family. You see, well … isn’t that where these things always begin? Sarah and I, she was my sister …’

  ‘Mr Q.’s …?’

  ‘Yes, Epitome�
��s mother. Well she and I didn’t have what you’d call a normal childhood, as such.’

  ‘Few of us do, Miss Penultimate.’

  ‘I suppose so, but …’

  ‘My boys, both of my boys were brought up, for the most part, on the hoof. Across Asia and South America. Where’s the stability in a life like that? Where’s the normality? I feel sorry for them sometimes, when I think what they might’ve had – a secure home, a mother who loved them, proper schooling – they both missed out on all that. The only constant in their life – the only thing they knew would not change from one morning to the next was me. That’s no life really. Not a childhood anyway.’

  ‘I’m sure you did your best, Mr Crepuscular.’

  ‘Oh, please, call me Simone. I’ve never held with excessive formality between friends.’

  ‘Friends?’

  ‘Yes, I think we’ve come that far today, Miss Penultimate, don’t you think?’

  ‘Oh yes. Friends it is then. And Simone, you may as well call me Penelope.’

  ‘I think I’ll call you Miss Penultimate, Miss Penultimate, if you don’t mind. It’s how I best think of you. I’ve never really been a Mister, not a gentleman as such, but you … well, you deserve a bit of respect and I want to pay it.’

  ‘Very well.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I’m sure though, Simone, that you did the best for your boys that you could. I’ve only met the one but he seems to be a perfectly civil young man, as far as a young man can be, that is … I mean, he takes after you.’

  ‘You don’t much like men, Miss Penultimate, I know that, but yes, both my boys turned out well, in spite of everything. And I think most people do. My childhood was as unorthodox as any. I had a mother who’d wanted a girl. Well, you can tell from the name. I guess I have her to thank for everything – for forcing me to run away in the first place, and later for the chance of you reading my works, my writings …’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure …’

  ‘Would you have though? If there’d been a fellow’s name on the front, instead of mine?’

  ‘Well … maybe not.’

  ‘Of course not, you’re a woman of deep principles, Miss Penultimate, and I respect that.’

  ‘It’s strange isn’t it?’

  ‘Isn’t it?’

  ‘There your boys are, growing up with you and no mother, and there, on the other side of the world, twenty years earlier, there were Sarah and I doing just the same.’

  ‘You mean growing up without a mother. Not growing up with me.’

  ‘No. Quite so. Our mother left our father just before I was born. I was the elder, Sarah came six years later. I always looked out for her, from the start. But my father’s sister never thought we would be able to … well, cope with a baby, and she insisted on coming in and poking about. Well, helping out, she said, but it always seemed like poking about to me.’

  ‘Sorry, did you say your mother left before you were born?’

  ‘Yes. It’s a bit silly really. I can see why she might have wanted to leave my father, he wasn’t, well, he wasn’t very good at bringing home the bacon, to use a colloquialism. She ran off, I never really heard how or why, or with whom for that matter, but one day there was a knock at the door and my father opened it and there I was in a little basket with a note telling him to deal with the consequences of his own mistake for once. And then six years later there was another knock at the door and another basket and there was Sarah.’

  ‘That is …?’

  ‘Odd?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Yes, well I suppose it is, unless it’s your life, in which case it just is what it is. Which it is.’

  ‘What did he do? Your father.’

  ‘Well, he took us in and looked after us, what else could he do?’

  ‘No, no. I meant in general – what did he do?’

  ‘Oh. Yes, of course. Well, he was an inventor. And he did odd jobs. But really he was an inventor and, as far as I can guess, that was what drove our mother away. He had the most brilliant ideas. He was like Leonardo da Vinci, except none of his ideas ever worked. None of my father’s that is. I think da Vinci’s worked …’

  ‘Sometimes. Some of them.’

  ‘Oh. Well, the house was full of mechanical apparatuses that fell apart when you touched them or which automatically sliced carrots and fingers and shirtsleeves. It was a dangerous place at times. And me and Sarah were growing up in the middle of it. I mean we soon learnt not to fiddle with things and our Aunt, who was just a busybody as much as anything, left when I was ten and Sarah was four after she had caught her elbow in an automatic mangle he’d built for mashing potatoes. Fortunately for her it didn’t work very well. It didn’t have the pressure it needed to crush them, the potatoes, otherwise she would’ve lost her arm. But it scared her enough that she finally left and let the three of us be. And so then it was just Sarah and myself.’

  ‘And your father.’

  ‘Well, he was busy. If he wasn’t drawing or building some new contraption that was sure to fail to make our fortune, then he was out doing whatever work he could find, at the market or at the docks, in order to buy food and materials – not always in that order. Sarah and I went to school, and to the library. We were really in charge of ourselves.’

  ‘Lots of children, Miss Penultimate, are left in charge of themselves, and certainly were in those days, and many, many of them have not turned out to be half as witty and smart as you.’

  She smiled.

  ‘Well, we had a stroke of fortune. That’s really all it was. Otherwise I might still be roaming the streets looking to better myself somehow. Do you know, we used to steal fruit?’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes. Sarah would go and cry, being only little, and I’d stuff apples and whatever else there was into my bag. I used her as a distraction, Mr Crepuscular …’

  ‘Simone.’

  ‘… I used poor Sarah as an accomplice and I never even asked her. Do you realise that? She was only a little girl and I told her to go and cry where everyone could see her. And she always did what I said.’

  ‘You were only a girl, Miss Penultimate … only a little girl too.’

  ‘No, I don’t think so. I was never only a girl. Not really. We grew up so quickly.’

  ‘Some of us never quite grow up. Which is worse? Which is better?’

  ‘Oh. I don’t really know what I’m saying, Mr … Simone. I don’t normally drink quite so much wine.’

  ‘Ah! No, me neither.’

  ‘But you see he discovered this plant, a bush. It was oriental and it grew these little fruits. He bought it from a traveller …’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘I never knew, he only said it was ‘a mysterious traveller’ …’

  ‘No, I meant who are you talking about?’

  ‘Oh, my father.’

  ‘Ah, yes!’

  ‘So, he had this bush with these little fruits and he knew … oh, he had a feeling and this time it was a good feeling, this was going to be it, this was going to be the invention to make his fortune … but, of course, he’d had that feeling a hundred times before and they’d come to …’

  ‘To nothing?’

  ‘Usually even less than that. He only had two fingers left on his right hand. Those were the sort of mistakes he’d made. But this time, he was sure it was going to work out. But he didn’t have a clue. I really could see why our mother left … he wasn’t stupid by any means, but certainly he had no luck and no common sense. He submitted patents for all sorts of products to be made from these fruits, but none of them ever made a penny, because they were all impractical, unnecessary or just lunatic. Then one day I heard him complaining about his shoe laces.’

  ‘His shoe laces?’

  ‘Yes, you remember how, back before the seventies, they were always fraying and you could never get them through the holes, the eyes of the shoe? The eyelets?’

  ‘I’ve always worn sandals I’m afraid, but I think
I know what you’re going to say …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That it was at that moment he had the eureka idea that lead to the invention of the aglet? That in a flash he saw that if he popped a little thing shaped like one of these fruits on the end of the lace it would no longer fray and would always go through the hole?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘No. He didn’t have the idea. But I did. I was twelve years old at the time and a child can’t register a patent, so my father had to register it in his name. He didn’t want to. He was kind (which was one of his problems) and it took me a whole night to convince him that he had to do it. And once he did, well the aglets took off and we never looked back. We moved to a big house, he hired a nanny to look after Sarah, I was sent to a boarding school, and his brother finally remembered that he existed and became a partner in Penultimate’s Aglets.’

  ‘Your Penultimate Aglet Won’t Be Your Last.’

  ‘Yes. I came up with the slogan too.’

  ‘I remembering seeing it on a packing crate in Lío, in about … oh? … 1892.’

  ‘Lío?’

  ‘Oh, a small town, in Ecuador as it turned out, that I spent a few years in. The slogan stuck with me. I never quite knew what it was for … I’d not seen an aglet in Asia, and they were only just catching on there then in Latin America. But I always remembered the slogan.’

  ‘Such a small world.’

  ‘Yes, but it still takes a long time to go all the way round.’

  ‘Yes.’

  They walked in silence for a bit, scuffing their heels and listening to the scuttling noises that came from the hedgerows all around them.

  ‘When I left school, I was eighteen then, I did the usual things a girl of my nouveau riche class was meant to do, but I never did them very well. I used to get into scrapes and my father had to bail me out once or twice. He was embarrassed, because it meant his name was in the papers again, but I think secretly he approved. He’d always wanted adventure. But his brother didn’t like me. Asked me to keep quiet and sit at the back, if you will.