Although the stack of pamphlets in the drawing room was large and even though Quirkstandard had only ever penetrated the smallest corner of them during his few days of delving under Mr Crepuscular’s guiding eye, he found it difficult to pick one up now. Looking at them saddened him. He couldn’t help but think of Mr Crepuscular when he did. He simply couldn’t muster the same enthusiasm he’d once had for them. Too much, he said to himself, has happened, even if he didn’t understand exactly what most of it had been about. Heigh ho.
Today, which was a Sunday, he had come to the Zoological Gardens in Regent’s Park for the first time in years. After his Sunday dinner he had felt overwhelmed by a wave of nostalgia and desire to indulge it. He had used to come to the Zoo as a young gentleman, recently out of school, with good old Spiggot. They’d spend hours outside the wolves’ cage, watching them pace up and down, staring out with those great golden, amber lupine eyes. Spiggot hoped that the bitch at the back would one day notice him, though she never did, or never looked like she did. Even Epitome had to admit, as Spiggot vocally commented, that she was a most beautiful creature.
He walked now from the polar bear’s enclosure towards that of the lions. He didn’t want to go and see the wolves today, thinking that that might be too much for him. But cats, he thought, and big ones at that, would be just as beautiful and less memory-stirring to look at. As he approached the iron bars that separated the public from the animals he stopped. A hand had touched his arm.
‘Lord Quirkstandard? Ah. What a coincidence!’
‘Oh,’ said Epitome, recognising the man after only a moment of thought. ‘Mr Pybus, fancy seeing you here.’
‘Indeed, eh? I’m here with the wife and the nippers, they’re off in the Lizard House, but I thought it was you over here and then I saw that it certainly was you and so I decided to come and speak to you. Ah. Just to say ‘hello’, as it were.’
‘Well, hello then!’
‘Hello, back to you, your lordship.’
‘Well, Mr Pybus. It’s been lovely seeing you, eh?’
‘Indeed Lord Quirkstandard, sir. Yes.’
They looked at each other for a moment, each realising that maybe conversation wasn’t the easiest art to master.
‘So, Mr Pybus,’ said Quirkstandard at last, ‘any news?’
‘Oh. Ah. Yes. As a matter of fact, yes. I’ve got the Aeolian Hall booked, that’s in Battersea, for next Thursday evening.’
‘Wonderful, I look forward to it.’
‘Yes, that’s good. I’ve talked some pals of mine into putting up some posters round the place, like you suggested, do you remember? Ah. And hopefully that’ll bring a few people in. I mean it’s early days isn’t it? But I’m hopeful. I told some chaps who sounded interested, but sometimes people are just polite, aren’t they? Ah.’
‘Yes, some people. But then some people are interested. It’s hard to tell. But like you say, Mr Pybus, it’s early days now and from big oak trees little acorns come, as they say.’
‘Yes, I guess that’s not half true, Lord Q.’
Albert Pybus had answered an advertisement that Rodney had helped Quirkstandard place in the Evening Standard – ‘Competent fellow required,’ it had read, ‘for philanthropic act.’
One evening Quirkstandard had been sitting up late at night in the drawing room, unable to sleep, and leafing idly through the pile of pamphlets. ‘I can’t see myself getting much out of these,’ he’d said to the room. ‘My days of learning have passed. But,’ he continued out loud to anyone who might be listening, ‘there are all sorts of people out there in the world who might still want to know things, who might have horizons that do still need expanding.’ And so he pulled out a pencil and piece of paper and jotted down some cursory notes for the establishment of what he called The Common University – right down to the name. Well, to be honest, only down to the name, but he liked the name and behind it lurked a vague idea of how it might work.
When Mr Pybus called round to discuss the advertisement they thrashed out some more details between them. The Common University, they decided, would run free lectures, subsidised by Quirkstandard’s fortune, for anyone who couldn’t afford the normal fees charged by the established universities. They could be sure of reaching the neediest areas of society that way. The subjects of the lectures would cross all categories, originally (at least) taking their inspiration from Crepuscular’s work, but maybe later, they speculated, they could expand and cater to all and any areas of learning that were requested of them. Pybus had the dream of eventually running it like a real university, and not just a fancy mutual improvement society, and they’d issue certificates and degrees to those who’d completed the requisite number of courses … but such plans and such ends were far off in the future.
They agreed that the first lecture would be on the subject of Victorian India & The Circus and would be based on the very first of Simone Crepuscular’s pamphlets. Quirkstandard had thought this only right and fitting. Pybus agreed to give the lecture, since he claimed to be a competent public speaker (something that pleased Quirkstandard no end, since he had been terrified that someone would ask him to speak in public which always was just, well, not exactly, well, you see, not exactly … yes, well … just, sort of, a bit like this …).
‘I’m looking forward to it very much, Lord Q. I’ve been reading through the pamphlet you gave me – lord, if I don’t remember reading it as a kid, oh, donkey’s years ago?! It all came flooding back – and I’ve taken the essentials, boiled them down into what I think’s going to be a very neat little talk. I think you’ll be proud and we’ll make your friend proud too, I hope.’
‘Friend?’
‘Yes. Ah. I mean the late fellow who wrote the thing. Mr Crepuscular.’
‘Oh yes. I hope he’s proud. But I won’t blame you, Mr Pybus, if he’s not. I mean it sounds like you’re doing your very best.’
‘I hope so. I hope so. It’ll be fine. No, it’ll be better than that. Ah. Assuming anyone turns up to hear it.’
‘Well, let’s hope so, Mr Pybus, let’s hope so. You’re very kind, thank you. So, I’ll see you on Thursday?’
‘Yes, Thursday, about six o’clock at the Aeolian Hall.’
‘Jolly good, I’ll be there. Cheerio then.’
‘Cheerio, your lordship.’
The two men gave each other a little wave and parted, Albert Pybus heading off to the Lizard House and Quirkstandard turning to face the lions.
‘Oi there, mate – watch out!’ shouted a stout, red-faced zookeeper, walking slowly in Quirkstandard’s direction.
Epitome looked at him and wondered what he wanted. He was waving and saying something, but a growl behind him covered up the gist of the chap’s message.
And then, all of a sudden, he was knocked to the ground and pinned there by a great weight. Warm breath struck his left ear and a low roar, rumbling up into the lowest ranges of human hearing, almost deafened him. Oh, he thought, it’s a lion. And indeed it was, the cage door had been left open after the lunchtime feeding and it was just as Quirkstandard stood there that the lion noticed and decided to take advantage.
Now he understood what the chap in the uniform had been saying.
The warm breath in his ear, the crushing weight on his back and the pinpricks of claws he could feel pressing through his heavy coat, had him paralysed. He thought of everything that had happened to him recently, he thought of all the things he still had to do, and he wondered, quite calmly – surprisingly calmly – if this was how things really ended.
At any moment he expected the jaws (he could see them in his mind’s eye, he knew what a lion looked like when it yawned, how pink its tongue is, how yellow those teeth) to clamp down on his neck and he thought, well, maybe this is for the best. My friends are gone, and I’ve started my legacy, my own university – Mr Pybus is a good chap, I’m sure he’ll make a go of it. But it’s a shame that Miss Dawn’s only had her new job for a week and then she’s going to have to look for
a new one; and Cook, what’s he going to do? And Auntie Penelope, who’s going to tell her that I’ve been eaten by a lion? Oh dear, he thought. And then he thought of Spiggot.
He could actually see the little chap barking in front of him, stood there on the macadam path, his ferocious jaws open and a mean glint in his eye as he faced up to the king of the jungle, as he barked angrily as if he were guarding Epitome from harm. Quirkstandard smiled to see his old friend again, smiled to see him so vigorous in the face of overwhelming odds.
‘Don’t worry Spiggot, old chap,’ he wheezed out of lungs only able to half fill under the lion’s weight. ‘Don’t worry about me. I’m doing all right. But thanks for coming back. I’ve missed you, you know. Oh, it’s good to see you …’
But the lion’s jaws didn’t close. The zookeeper arrived just as Quirkstandard fainted from lack of air and he prodded with his pointed stick and spoke in his special stern zookeeperly voice.
The lion was smart enough to recognise the man who fed him three times a day and promptly stepped off the prone gentleman and padded quietly back into his cage. He had grown up in there and although his brief adventure in the outside world had been fairly interesting, all he had learnt from it was that he was, after all, the sort of creature who preferred the familiar. He liked his meals served cold and not all wriggly and warm; and although his instincts had instructed him to pounce, he hadn’t really known what to do next.
The zookeeper apologised to the old lady and her little dog who had been minding their own business by just passing by when they were growled at by the lion and he offered her a pair of free tickets to Madame Tussaud’s by way of compensation. All staff at the Zoo carried a pair just in case something went wrong.
Only then did he kneel down beside Quirkstandard and feel his neck for a pulse. It was there and it was beating quite regularly. The zookeeper breathed a sigh of relief. Fatalities in the Zoological Gardens always brought crowds the next day and several annoying pieces of paperwork and all a zookeeper really wants is a quiet life tending his animals.
This gentleman, he judged from his breathing, would be fine if he was given some air and a bit of space and maybe a cup of tea in the zookeepers’ lodge. He rolled him over and sat him up and after a few minutes Quirkstandard was able to stand. He had the cup of tea and though he didn’t say anything while he drank it the zookeeper got the impression that he was probably quite all right and so he went to get back on with his duties and asked Epitome to shut the door after him when he left the lodge.
Quirkstandard sipped his tea – it was strong and sugary and did him good.
When the cup was empty he sat for a while and looked at the calendar on the wall – it had a picture of a giraffe for this month. Giraffes didn’t remind him of anything.
He sat looking at it for a few minutes, savouring the feeling.
After a while he slipped out of the lodge, made sure the door was shut properly behind him, passed the polar bear as he left the Zoo, glanced at it quickly, smiled quietly to himself and walked all the way home.
The End
By the same author
Poetry
Logic & The Heart
Flood
Entertainments – Poetry, Prose, Pictures
Postcards From The Hedgehog
The Man Who Spent Years In The Bath
Poetry for Kids
I Eat Squirrels
First published in the UK in 2010 by
Quirkstandard’s Alternative
79a Northumberland Avenue
Reading
Berkshire
RG2 7PT
www.afharrold.co.uk
www.quirkstandardsalternative.co.uk
Copyright © 2010 A.F. Harrold
The moral right of A.F. Harrold to be identified as author of this work is asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act of 1988.
Cover design by Richard Ponsford
The Education Of Epitome Quirkstandard Page 28