She had been quite prepared to kill him and now she was standing in shock in her own garden. As long as he had been there holding the gun at them, there had been a focus to her attention, something to aim at and to be concerned about. Now that the threat had been removed she had to make a decision.
The decision was made for her when Nancy began wailing.
‘My boots,’ were the words that were contained in that ghastly wail, although whether one could have disentangled them from the hurt, animal sounds that carried them along, would be hard to say.
When Penelope reached her she discovered that Mr Funicular had bled somewhat. The frying pan, which had been the heaviest item in the kitchen, had done a lot of damage to the man’s skull, which was clearly more concave now than before, and a puddle of thick, dark blood had poured out. It had seeped along the lane and surrounded Nancy’s feet, lapping at the sides of her boots, staining her soles red-black.
Penelope put her arm around Nancy’s shoulder and led her away, taking small half-steps. Up the lane they walked, and in through the front door of the cottage, retracing the steps Nancy had taken just a few minutes before. Penelope sat her down in the front room, tucked her up in the blanket she herself had slept in the troubled night before (how long ago that seemed!) and after smoothing her brow and kissing her, made her way down the hall into the kitchen.
There she met Simon who was washing his hands in a bowl of red water. She didn’t even think to mention his gender and location, but simply looked at him. He shook his head helplessly, but spoke assuredly.
‘The bullet hit my father’s purse, where he kept his money, Miss. You know, his wallet …’
She nodded, understanding the concept of purses and money perfectly well.
‘You know,’ he continued. ‘You know, how you always hear those stories about bullets being deflected by the lucky Bible or cigarette packet? And how you never quite know whether to believe them or not … he wrote a pamphlet about such stories once, there was an Icelandic Saga where Snorri Someoneson (I forget the details) was left for dead, but the axe of his attacker had struck his … oh, I forget, anyway … but you know the stories …?’
She nodded again. It had happened to her once. The locket with the picture of her father was in a box upstairs somewhere, bent out of shape by a Papua New Guinean arrow.
‘Well, I always thought they were just folktales … too good to be true, you know?’
‘And …?’
‘Well, we never really had lot of money, and he didn’t carry much with him and the bullet passed straight through. I think it hit his heart. I can’t tell, I’m not a doctor.’
Penelope was caught between raising her hand to her mouth and raising it to touch this boy’s cheek. She stopped halfway between doing either.
‘I tried everything I know to revive him … but I don’t know much. Oh, Miss …’
He wiped his hands on his trousers as he stopped speaking and started crying. It was a bizarre moment of politeness: he didn’t want to dirty Miss Penultimate’s towels with his bloody hands.
‘Epitome?’
‘I think he fainted,’ Simon managed to say, his voice wobbling with swelling grief. ‘I don’t think he’s actually shot at all.’
‘Mr Spiggot?’
‘Dead.’
They stood together for a few seconds, then he stepped forward into her arms.
‘Just hold me for a moment, ma’am,’ he said, not really offering her any alternative. He’d never had a mother, not for twenty-four years, and it was right now that he really noticed the lack. So they stood in the middle of the kitchen for several minutes, him sobbing on her shoulder and she stunned, silent, thinking to herself, I have inherited so many boys, how will I ever teach them right from wrong? How can I protect them all?
She looked up, unlikely tears in her own eyes, to see Nancy stood in the doorway looking at them. Penelope was pleased to notice that she’d regained some colour in her cheeks.
When the first rush of his tears had worn themselves out, Simon stepped back and stared into her eyes. It was quite dark in the kitchen, the sun having moved round to the front of the cottage by this early part of the afternoon (it wasn’t even one o’clock yet), but he could see those silent, pale tears rolling down her cheeks and he turned away, knowing they’d only set him off again.
‘What will I tell Rodney?’ he said. ‘How do I explain this?’
But it was a resigned question – no anger, only weariness powered his voice.
Nancy filled the kettle from the tap.
‘Oh, Auntie,’ said Epitome coming into the kitchen.
‘Spiggot’s lying down, he’s not moving … nor is Mr Crepuscular … Auntie?’
‘My boy,’ she said, folding yet another man up in her arms, feeling unqualified for this.
‘Oh, oi! Bloody hell … Christ almighty,’ shouted a voice from outside.
Penelope recognised the voice and felt a slight shift of relief. Nerrin, her gardener, was a good man. He saw no nonsense and didn’t talk much, just took his shirt off, put his muscles to work and did as he was asked. She liked him as much as she liked any man, and knew he’d be of help clearing this mess up.
‘Miss P., are you in there?’ he asked, poking his head through the kitchen door, but not stepping in.
‘Yes Nerrin,’ she said over Epitome’s shoulder. ‘We’ve had rather a spot of bother this weekend, I wonder if you’d be good enough to help us out?’
‘I see … shall I go get a shovel?’
‘I think that’s best,’ Penelope said as the kettle began to whistle on the stove.
Chapter 31
‘Competent fellow required for philanthropic act’
A fortnight later Quirkstandard was wandering slowly around the Zoological Gardens in Regent’s Park. He was by himself and was wearing a black armband over the sleeve of his heavy coat. The summer had turned seasonably cold and wet and the hot days that had marked his unfortunate weekend in the country had long gone. The weather seemed to have changed to match his mood. The sun was hidden behind black clouds and although it wasn’t raining now the pavements and paths glittered with puddles.
Underneath the coat his shoulder ached where the bruises were still fading. He had banged it badly when the bullet missed him and the lawn caught him. In fact it had been dislocated. His Aunt had mended it, but it still hurt when he moved it. He tried not to move it very much, but sometimes he forgot and a sharp numb wince of pain reminded him, not only of his shoulder, but of that dreadful afternoon.
He stood outside the polar bear’s enclosure and as he watched one of the massive beasts climbing out of water, bedraggled and gigantic, he thought of the two friends he’d so recently lost.
The bear seemed to share something of Simone Crepuscular’s gait and shape. Although the animal was so big, it had a grace about it that was familiar. It wasn’t hurried, it didn’t rush about anything, but when it put its paw down or turned its head, he knew that it was just right. He found it hard to believe he had known Crepuscular for less than a week before he lost his friendship and his guidance. Through the medium of the pamphlets, through Crepuscular’s storytelling, it seemed he had been a part of his life for just forever and ever. But Epitome had checked his appointments book and that had the dates in and he knew that time really had been that short.
Now the bear shook its wet, hanging, dirty fur and a great shower of silvery sparks of water leapt across the empty stony pen the animal lived in. How could he not be reminded, in this vision, of his old friend Spiggot? How often, over the years, had he been soaked by an unexpected vigorous shake of his friend’s hair? When they were lads sitting up of an evening in Quirkstandard’s little study at Eton, he’d sometimes come in from the cold and shake just like that all over the buns they’d saved up for a midnight feast and they’d have to dry them out over the merry little fire his man would build for him. They discovered that they actually tasted better like that, and so, after that, they toaste
d them even when Spiggot hadn’t made them wet. The other boys learnt about this new fad and Quirkstandard and Spiggot shared their only moment of popularity at school because of this toasted bun trend. But like all trends it passed and in time they were quietly forgotten again. Neither of them had ever much minded anonymity.
It was only the dirty condition of the bear’s hair and the vast, deep and satisfied groan it emitted (plus the fact that it weighed half a ton) that made Quirkstandard remember that he wasn’t with his dear, dear friend anymore. He was in fact alone.
He consoled himself, as he had done from time to time over the last two weeks, with the thought that Spiggot had been getting on. After all, they’d met more than fifteen years ago, and for a gentleman of Spiggot’s standing (which had always been quite low to the ground) that was a very respectable length of life to achieve. Although this thought was consoling in some ways, still it didn’t begin to fill the hole in his heart that Nigel Spiggot had left.
His thoughts drifted then, from the bear, back to his Aunt’s garden. His Aunt had told him, afterwards, how brave Spiggot had been in his defence of him, and Quirkstandard shed another quiet tear. If he hadn’t been such a fool as to faint then maybe they’d still be together. If only he’d been braver. He’d been being very brave up to the point the bullet knocked him down. He was still a little deaf on one side and had woken up in the middle of several nights feeling the whipcrack of air pass by his ear. He hadn’t mentioned this to anyone.
His Aunt’s gardener had dug a small grave at the far end of the garden and they had laid Mr Spiggot to rest in it. By his side they had placed the India rubber ball he had brought with him and a stick he had become particularly attached to on Saturday’s walk. Quirkstandard had said a few words, thinking of something he’d read in a pamphlet a few days earlier about how Anglo-Saxon chiefs were buried with all their important possessions, the things that would show just who they were and how important they were when they reached the afterlife. He hoped that Spiggot wouldn’t get into trouble for only having a ball and a stick, but he knew that he wouldn’t have really wanted anything else in heaven. When he’d finished his thoughts he threw a handful of earth onto the little body, which still looked so much like his friend, and the gardener had shovelled the rest over him to make a tiny tumulus and they’d gone away.
His Aunt had written a letter to Mr and Mrs Spiggot which didn’t tell them the truth, but which did express her sincere commiserations with Nigel’s final illness – a tale of over-exertion and over-excitement, followed by fatigue and a pneumatic cold, and finally ending with the expiration of a quite elderly and well-lived and well-loved dog. Quirkstandard hadn’t been to see them yet.
The younger Crepuscular had driven him back to London. They brought Simone’s body with them in the back of the car, under a sheet and some blankets. It wasn’t the most dignified return home a father’s corpse has had, but they couldn’t think what else to do. Once in the capital the two Crepuscular boys made the arrangements for their father’s funeral. Quirkstandard provided a little cash for the bribe they needed to pay to the borough coroner to not mention the bullet. The body was cremated in a short service a few days later.
His Aunt and her housekeeper had gone off on one of their travels very shortly after the cremation. Epitome couldn’t remember where she’d said they were going, he was such a dunce for place names, but he knew they would be away for some time, because they always were. He expected a postcard to arrive at Mauve’s any day now.
The zookeeper came along just then and nudged Quirkstandard out of the way with his bucket. Reaching into it he pulled out a dozen fat silvery dead fish and tossed them over the fence into the bear’s enclosure. The bear padded its slow way over to where the piscine feast had landed, swaying its head from side to side and sniffing deeply. When it reached the scattered fish it was visibly disappointed, presumably because (a) lunch was already dead and (b) it wasn’t lovely blubbery seal. After looking up at the zookeeper with a pair of deep lazy hateful eyes for several seconds it ate the fish anyway.
A few days after the cremation, and after his Aunt had left, Quirkstandard had a meeting with the two remaining Crepusculars. They were selling Crepuscular & Sons and wondered if he’d be interested in it. Neither of them had the heart or the desire to take on the responsibility of continuing their father’s work. It had been his baby, his love, his endeavour far more than it had ever been theirs, and now that he was gone, as sad as that was, they each saw different worlds open before them, they wanted to at least try their hands at other things.
Rodney had a wife to support and, as it turned out, a baby of his own on the way. He’d already been offered a job as Assistant Chief Assistant in the Amphibian House of Burton’s Travelling Menagerie & Miniature Circus, a position he’d heard about through a friend at the Charing Cross Road (& Area) Toad Fanciers’ Group. He hoped that a position like that would only be temporary, that given time and hard work he might even make Chief Assistant. In actual fact within six months he would be understudying for the girl in the sequined leotard who rode the great white horses, but that’s really a history to be told at another time.
Simon, on quite the other hand, moved, at Penelope’s rather unexpected suggestion, into her cottage. Or, at least he was staying in the cottage while she and Miss Walker were away. In the meantime he was working with Nerrin to convert the shed into a comfortable residence for his more permanent dwelling. He’d had enough of the city and despite what had happened at that house, or perhaps even because of it, he felt some need to be there, among the trees and near the river. He had taken to this refitting and redecorating task with a surprising amount of gusto and for the first time in ages found he was doing something he more than enjoyed.
When he had rushed to his father’s body, in that same garden some weeks before, he had found, underneath the old man’s great grey beard, not only his father’s split and spilt purse, but also, hanging there on a thin cord, his mother’s hook. He knew what it was, obviously, but it had been two decades since he’d seen it. He didn’t even know that his father still had it, but clearly he’d kept it hidden and close to his heart for all those long, long years, though not quite close enough to have deflected Funicular’s final shot.
Simon took the multi-purpose hand, on its bit of cord, and hung it around his own neck. He showed it, later on, to Nancy and told her what he knew about her mother … about their mother. There wasn’t a huge amount to say though, she having died when he was so very young, and his father having been so reticent, through the barricade of his own remorse and sorrow, to talk about her over the years. They sat in the garden, at the table, touching the silver hook in silence for some minutes before Nancy spoke again.
‘Was she a good woman?’
‘Oh yes.’
‘I’m pleased to know that.’
‘Yes, she was good.’
‘I never really much wondered about her before, you know?’
‘She was a pirate though.’
‘I mean, I didn’t ever know anyone, when I was kid, who had a mum. We were all orphans, you see … I mean, in the orphanage.’
‘So she did kill a few people, and rob them.’
‘And Penelope’s there for me now. She can be quite motherly sometimes. You’d be surprised.’
‘And she did sink some ships, probably with all hands on board. That sort of thing.’
‘I’ve not had a bad life, you see, I mean, with not knowing her. I’ve done alright.’
‘And she did steal a lot of treasure. Dad said she was dead good at her job, though she gave it up when she met him.’
‘But it’s nice to know a bit about her, to hear where I really come from. Though I think more of me comes from the orphanage than her … I mean the things I know, you see?’
‘In fact, somewhere she buried her treasure. I think father said it was on a small island off the Ecuadorean coast, though there’s quite a lot of coast, so that doesn’t really help. He men
tioned a map once, but I don’t know where it is. Some beautiful jewels apparently, that’s what he said she’d said. Well, I’m glad I could tell you something about her, I’m just sad that neither of us really had the chance to meet her properly.’
‘Yes. I’m sorry too. Mostly for you, but a little bit for me too.’
‘I’ve got to go into town now, I have some wallpaper to pick up and I’m meeting a Mrs Althrope to discuss some curtain designs she did for me, though I’m not entirely happy with them.’
‘Goodbye Simon.’
‘Yes, cheerio then Miss Walker.’
He’d discovered an attachment on the hand which worked as a very serviceable wallpaper stripper, though it might have been a machete, with which he took down the garish, tasteless paper Nerrin had originally had on the walls. The paper Simon pasted in its place was much more to his liking, a delicate pale yellow, with small lilac flowers arranged in geometric patterns. He ran this halfway down the wall and, beneath a discrete distinguishing dado rail, he painted the lower half of the wall a speckled duck egg blue. To his eyes the shed was one step closer to being a pleasant place to live.
Quirkstandard bought the Crepuscular’s pamphlet stock and, since they owned the freehold, the brothers rented the shop out to a barber at a fair but healthy price. Epitome collected the pamphlets with a pair of taxi cabs and they now sat in his drawing room. Although he wasn’t actually happy, per se, he had at least been happier at home this last week because Cook had come back, having been invalided out of the Great War within days of joining in. Although he had no legs now he could still boil an egg just the way Quirkstandard liked it, and he even laid the soldiers out, cut and buttered as they should be. His hand trembled a bit as he did so though and he was lucky he had no feet because the amount of boiling water that splashed on the floor was prodigious. Cook and he weren’t alone in the house though because he had offered the role of housekeeper to Miss Dawn, since she wasn’t to be let with the shop premises, and she brought a feminine touch to the place that had long been absent.
The Education Of Epitome Quirkstandard Page 27