Funicular had not expected this turn of events. In fact he hadn’t expected anything quite like this. He’d come to this cottage expecting that a brave display of strength would finally win Miss Penultimate’s approval. If he could show her that he was a man of action, a man with spirit and spunk enough to match her naturally wild demonic nature, then, he had felt certain, she would automatically be his. A gun, he thought, the most perfect of oiled and tempered machines, that would be the most powerful thing he could handle – imbued with both symbolic and practical properties – to show he was a thinker as well as a doer (and vice versa). It had taken him a while to save up to buy such a beautiful device (it was thirty-years old but the man he’d bought it from had promised him it had been cared for diligently by its former owner who had only ever taken it out on Sundays) – and he’d spent a few evenings lining crockery up on the lawn of Hyde Park and after running through a score or two of bullets he’d almost hit every piece. (He’d then practiced his sprinting and tree climbing in response to the policemen’s whistles – and they had also proved to be more than adequately effective.)
But he hadn’t thought that there’d be other people here when he waved his gun and made his simple declaration (‘I love you, Penny’) to Miss Penultimate. He’d never imagined she’d have other friends, people clustered round her; he’d assumed, somewhat naively he’d be the first to admit, that she’d be alone, bored and waiting for him (even if, perhaps, she didn’t know it). Now these other people just made him nervous, and he was slightly furious about being threatened by this idiot aristocrat.
His gaze flickered from Penelope to Quirkstandard several times, and when at last it settled on the boy, as he still thought of him, he began to worry further. Quirkstandard had removed his jacket and was rolling the sleeves of his shirt up, and with the ugly mark of a faded black eye shining darkly in the noonday sun he looked, surprisingly, quite competently pugilistic.
‘I don’t know,’ Quirkstandard continued as he fiddled with his sleeve, ‘why you’re waving that pistol around, Mr Funicular, and to be quite honest with you I don’t rightly care. As far as I’m aware there is no explanation that would be adequate, nothing that could convince me that you’re doing a Good Thing and so my interest, my curiosity to discover what’s in your mind, sir, has shrunk to zero. I am, however, willing to deal with this like a gentleman. Put the pistol down, after all it is the weapon of a coward, sir, and we can step out into the lane together and deal with this man to man.’ He said this with remarkable fluency and presence, with a conviction in his voice and a squareness to his jaw which was only slightly undercut by the difficulty he was having undoing his right cufflink with his left hand. This difficulty was made more difficult by the fact that he refused to take his eyes away from where they were locked with Funicular’s tiny, but alert, pair. But, eventually, the links fell to the floor and the sleeve was rolled up.
‘Epitome, dear, do be careful. I’m not sure this man is entirely sane,’ said Penelope as she stood up. While the gunman’s attention was away from her she pushed Nancy into the cottage through the half open kitchen door and quietly pulled it to behind her. At least, she took a second to think to herself, at least she’s going to be safe now.
As Quirkstandard began to walk towards Ivor Funicular, Spiggot trotted by his side, excited to see his friend displaying such quality, his little head looking from one man to the other, with little alternating doggish looks of pride and hatred.
Funicular glanced nervously around. The large half-naked man (what the hell, he thought angrily, was Penny doing sitting around with large half-naked men?) was sat quite still on the bench watching everything, breathing deeply. He couldn’t be read at all, Funicular simply couldn’t guess what he might do: he was an unknown quantity. Behind him stood a young man, about the same age as the Quirkstandard boy, whose face had drained pale and who looked quite awestruck. Funicular didn’t think he’d be causing any problems. And, ah, he thought, glancing at Penelope stood beside the door, the sun catching her hair, making her look as radiant as an avenging angel. Her face was frowning, but he knew underneath that she was stirring with admiration for his brave display of power – she knew he was only doing it for her, that over all the years he had followed her, years during which he had collected the newspaper clippings of her doings and her advertisements; she knew that his heart hadn’t wavered; she knew, he knew, that he’d simply been waiting until he was worthy of her and now he was. A trail of crockery in Hyde Park and a resignation letter on his desk said that. His life was hers now, just as hers was about to become his.
‘I’m not here to fight, boy,’ he said, refocusing on Quirkstandard. ‘I’m in love.’
‘Good for you,’ said Epitome. ‘I do so like a happy ending, but that doesn’t explain the old gun, you know.’
‘Ah, well, really, that’s just incidental to my plan. Maybe it’s even unnecessary.’ He turned to face Miss Penultimate again, while leaving the gun pointing at her nephew. ‘Penny,’ he said, ‘will you come away with me? Will you marry me? We can live anywhere, I have some money tucked away and a contact in the P&O offices who owes me a favour for some paperwork I looked over for him … Just say that you’ll be mine and that I’ll be yours forever and this situation in the garden can come to an end.’
Of all the things Penelope had been expecting this was the one thing she really hadn’t expected at all. However, the shattering crack of the explosion that erupted immediately afterwards had.
Epitome Quirkstandard had clearly crossed some invisible boundary line that existed in Funicular’s fuddled little brain. As one man stepped across the line, the other man’s finger tightened into a squeeze on the stiff trigger. Neither man had been expecting that to happen, and, indeed, Ivor Funicular looked just as shocked as anyone else at the fact that it had. He clung onto the gate as he was jerked backwards by the blast and when his mind cleared he realised that another line had been crossed, one that meant whatever happened next he really couldn’t go back to his office, he couldn’t tear up that letter of resignation he’d left before the senior partner found it on Monday morning – he would be an outlaw from now on.
The report of the gunshot echoed back from the Downs, quieter and softer, more like far off thunder. And a chorus of ducks honked their noisy way up in a flurry from their river.
Epitome stopped walking forwards.
A narrow blue-grey twist of smoke drifted upwards and across the garden in the slow afternoon wind.
He stood for a moment before collapsing to the lawn with a hollow thud.
Everyone watched him fall. They stood still, frozen as if they were painted characters in a classical tableau. Only the crump of his body on the grass, which seemed an age in its coming, snapped them out of their dreams. Penelope shouted something wordless, her surface cool cracking for a moment. Simone stood up with a calm, yet violent look of horror on his face, reliving as he was, all the losses he had experienced before, tying himself to the wheel of incarnation with yet another blessed attachment. Behind him Simon picked up an empty wine bottle from the table and hefted it in his hand, thinking that if only there were a way to get round behind this little man on the gate he could crack him one on the back of his head. But there was no way round so he stayed where he was.
And Nigel Spiggot leapt at Funicular.
Like a mythical Fury, with tooth and claw bared and juddering, he pounced. For such a short gentleman it was a most remarkable leap. His eyes glowed with pain, and foam flecked his jowls, which drew back from terrifyingly, surprisingly sharp fangs. And he howled, in grief, in fear, in confusion, in violent hatred; from his throat rose a terrifying, high, inhuman war-cry. But, unfortunately, Funicular’s gun had settled back in the direction it had been facing before and the hammer had rotated ninety-degrees to meet the next of its four chambers and the second bullet hurtled from the barrel with more intention than the first, in the passion of rabid self-defence, and dog and lead met in mid-air and the old man fe
ll to the floor like so much bought and sold meat. One of his little hind legs quivered twice as he lay before the gate, his eyes already glazing over, and then he was still.
‘This has gone far enough,’ shouted Simone Crepuscular, pulling himself up to his full and rather impressive height and stepping towards Funicular.
The gun swung easily to face him, and since there were still some yards between them both, Crepuscular stopped where he was.
‘Put the gun down, sir. Violence doesn’t become you and doesn’t aid any of us. It is nothing but a pointless vent of emotions that could be better utilised by harnessing them through channels of creativity. Put the gun down, man, and let us talk.’
‘Oh do be quiet,’ snapped Funicular. ‘I didn’t come here to listen to some weird old man. I came here to finally be with the woman I love. I came to her with a proposition, don’t you see? I came to propose, to give her the man she has been searching for and has never yet found. I’ve read the papers every day fearing I’d find some announcement of impending wedding bells, but every day I have been justified in my love … she has saved herself for me. I came here for her, not for you, sir,’ he said this last word with such a recognisable sneer that it collected in an oily puddle at his feet. ‘Don’t any of you understand? Why is it so hard to grasp? Why do you all insist on interfering with our finding, with our unfolding, our love?’
Simone took another step forward, albeit a very small one.
‘Love, sir,’ he began, ‘is a large word, and indeed a large world, and is a good thing, but …’
‘Oh shut up, will you? Love is only four letters, it’s not a big word at all … what are you talking about? Penny, what is he even doing here? I mean … what are you doing having men sat around in togas at your house? I don’t like it. It doesn’t make me feel good … I think you ought to stop it, now.’
‘Please, let me go on, Mr …?’ Crepuscular looked to Miss Penultimate for help.
‘Funicular,’ she said.
‘Please, Mr Funicular, let me just say this. Love shouldn’t be a goal to aim at. Love, sir, is not a destination that you arrive at.’ Here he held a hand out, palm forward, between himself and the gun, which was being waved angrily in his direction, as if he believed he could catch any bullet that flew out before it touched him. ‘If you are living your life in that belief, if that is what you are searching for, if you believe that finding love will solve all problems, will be like arriving at a solution to your life, then all your actions are being commenced for the wrong reasons, sir. Love is two things, and only two things. Firstly, it’s not the destination, not the place you end up, love is the origin, is the source, is the place where all journeys begin. When you fall in love, sir, that is the beginning of everything, of a whole world. And secondly,’ he hurried on, because Funicular wasn’t looking very patient with this lecture, ‘love is the way you travel, love is how you move from one place to another. Love is both the origin and the road on which you walk, the mode of transport on which you ride, the stick in your hand, the sandals on your feet. Knowing this, believing this, you will begin, I believe, to do the correct things, for the right reasons …’
‘Oh do stop talking,’ shouted Funicular. ‘I am growing so bored of this. I’ve not devoted the last fourteen years of my life to this woman without knowing what I was doing. I have followed her across the globe, always one ship behind, I have slept in hotels the day after she’s been there, I have collected cigarette butts and railway tickets … do you think this isn’t love? Do you think I’d dedicate my life, when I could’ve been happily enjoying my holidays in London like everyone else or by motoring out to Richmond with my mother … dedicate my life to traipsing the globe for nothing? I’ve heard the stories told about her by tribesman on the frigid plains of Siberia (I didn’t understand them of course because the idiots don’t speak English, but the gestures were most instructive) and I read the newspaper reports of her appearances in small outback towns. She impresses wherever she goes, always leaves some sign of her passing. Legends I expect will be made …’
‘Mr Funicular?’ said Penelope in an attempt to distract his attention from Simone, at whom he was rather agitatedly waving the pistol. She’d never liked guns, didn’t own one herself, but she recognised the Lancaster. It had four barrels and could stop a tiger if aimed well. He was halfway through his complement of bullets and had shown no compunction about using it. If she’d had her wits when he’d first fired she’d have used that moment of shock when he shook on the gate with the thing’s recoil to jump him, but Epitome had fallen (she didn’t want to think on that right now) and she’d been distracted. Besides the gate was yards away from where she stood and she couldn’t be sure of crossing the gap before he aimed and fired again. And now Mr Crepuscular was stood half in the way. If she could only get to the lawyer she could snap his neck, or go a good way to doing so.
‘Yes, Penny?’ Funicular answered, glancing at her but still aiming at Crepuscular.
Her nose wrinkled at his familiarity, as if a foul stench had gusted into the garden.
‘Mr Funicular, I remember now that I warned you, a long time ago, away from the path you appear to have followed.’
‘And I, dearest Penny, took that warning to heart. I have often repeated, to myself, those sweet tough words you spoke. I have caressed their breathy vowels between my teeth and loved each consonant. It took a while, but I came to understand their true meaning, the hidden meaning inside them. It was like poetry, it required unpacking, but I found the challenge you had set me, the promise you had made.’ He looked at her coyly. ‘You are a temptress, madam, and you won my heart that day.’
‘Their real meaning, Mr Funicular …?’
‘Ivor, please, my sweet …’
‘Their real meaning, Mr Funicular, was that I didn’t like you, and the implication was that if we ever met again, I would kill you.’ Simone gave her a glance of shock. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Crepuscular, but I’m not quite the lady, perhaps, that any of you imagine me to be. There seems to be a lot of this going on. Now, Mr Funicular, seeing what you have done to my nephew and his friend, and seeing the way you are still holding that wretched weapon, which, as Epitome rightly said, is the tool of a coward, I am afraid that I shall have to follow through on my promise. This, I must point out, gives me no pleasure at all. After all,’ she said as an aside, ‘who enjoys squashing flies?’ Even as Simone Crepuscular gave her a pained look she wondered exactly how she might get the opportunity to follow her words with her actions, without endangering anyone else. ‘I simply can’t let a pathetic, creeping, creepy creature like you get away with this.’
In the moment that followed four things occurred simultaneously.
First, Penelope reached down to her boot where she kept her knife. She wondered whether she would be able to unsheathe it and throw it before the gunman could fire again. She knew she couldn’t cross the space between them in that time, and the knife was made for flensing and whittling, not for throwing – it was weighted all wrong and she didn’t even know whether she’d be able to hit Funicular with it, let alone injure him. But maybe a distraction was all she needed at this point. Her hand unbuttoned the cover and gripped the haft.
The second thing was that Simone Crepuscular took a step towards Miss Penultimate with the intention of stopping her from doing anything foolish. He couldn’t let her be party to an act of murder, even against so desperate a little man as the one they faced. He would rather have killed him himself than let her do it. But he had no intention of anyone else killing anyone else at all.
The third thing was that Nancy Walker cracked Ivor Funicular very hard round the back of the head with a large and very heavy cast iron frying pan.
And the fourth thing that happened was that as Ivor collapsed, his occipital lobes already mushed beyond cognition, his gun-hand impacted against the gate’s upper bar and fired off one final bullet that careened directly into Crepuscular’s beard.
In the following moments:
Penelope let the knife fall back into its discrete boot-sheath; Simone and Ivor Funicular each fell to the hard earth, one with a slight bump, the other with a much heavier thump as coins spilt with a glittering tinkle on the paving stones; Nancy let the frying pan drop from her small hand, with a muddy clatter, and stood stock still shivering in the lane, pale with panic and fright; and Simon dropped the wine bottle and hurried to his father’s side.
Penelope was torn. Epitome and Mr Spiggot and Mr Crepuscular each lay on the earth in their own little separate worlds, and Nancy stood in the middle of the lane, crying and turning paler and paler. How could she be expected to choose to go to just one of them in a moment like this? Always, in the past, she thought, decisions had come to her so easily, but now they all looked like this … like a big bloody mess. There was a smell of cordite and bloody iron in the air and the sound of that last shot still rang in her ears.
The Education Of Epitome Quirkstandard Page 26