Quoits and Quotability

by William Stafford

  Title Page

  Quoits and Quotability

  William Stafford

  Publisher Information

  Published in 2015 by

  Andrews UK Limited

  www.andrewsuk.com

  The right of William Stafford to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998

  Copyright © 2015 William Stafford

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. Any person who does so may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Quentin

  “It is a truth universally overlooked that a young man with a fortune must be-”

  Must be... must be... What?

  Quentin Quigley threw down his quill in frustration. He balled up the sheet of paper and tossed it over his shoulder to land among so many of its kind that had already met an identical fate.

  He stared at the new sheet on his desk, blank and pristine and rendered all the more starkly dazzling by the sunlight pouring in from the window. The rest of the familial estate was enjoying an agreeable spell of sunshine but, high in his fusty garret, the youngest of Squire Quigley’s sons was pursuing loftier ambitions. Not for him the simple, restorative pleasure of the sun’s warmth on the face. Not for him the vulgar pastimes of the common folk; he could hear them now, playing some game or other in the stable yard, their cheers, jeers and coarse language rising on the hot air and assaulting his sensitive ears even in his lofty remove.

  It was no wonder he was unable to concentrate and make headway with the opening sentence of his three-volume novel. Yes, that must be it: the low people in the estate’s employ were making it impossible for his mind to settle. It was insufferable. Insupportable! Further to which, writing paper was expensive.

  Quentin rose. He adjusted his frock coat, which was cut short at the front after the latest fashion; he liked the way it made his legs seem longer. He donned a hat of black silk newly delivered from London, perhaps the only one of its kind in the county. He was determined to have strong words with those rowdy, base fellows, to break up their recreation and send them back to their labours for which, indeed, they were being paid. He paused at a looking glass on a landing to ensure the set of his jaw was just so. Of all the Squire’s progeny, it was young Quentin who took most after the mother, his three elder brothers being large, robust specimens with thick necks and barrel chests and unruly tufts of red hair sprouting just about everywhere the eye could see.

  Unlike them, Quentin was slight of build and a little below the average height for a lad of nineteen. His hair was black; he wore it long and it hung in natural curls that were the envy of all the young ladies of the region who were forced to truss up their tresses in coils of paper in order to achieve anything approaching the same effect. His eyes were large and a piercing kingfisher blue, and his nose, although a little on the large side when viewed in profile, bearing the sharp angularity of a schoolroom set square, yet, when seen from the front, had an altogether striking effect in conjunction with the strong chin and the high cheekbones. The gauntness of his countenance was softened by an abundance of curly eyelashes and, when the disposition took him, by an arresting smile that treated the onlooker to flashes of his perfectly straight, brilliantly white teeth, making the whole exceedingly handsome indeed.

  But there was to be no smiling in the youngest Quigley’s near future. He would have it out with those ruffians and send them packing - something his father the Squire ought to do. In Quentin’s opinion, his father was far too lenient and overly indulgent with the workforce. Quentin supposed it was because the Squire missed the bluff society of his elder sons, who were all married off and moved out, leaving the youngest son and the sire alone in the rambling mansion with no common interest to engender conversation. While the father longed to speak of angling and the hunt, the son was preoccupied with poetry and watercolour sketches. This disparity in their interests made for some exceedingly dull dinners and led the Squire, in his less generous moods, to question the faithfulness of his dear, late wife.

  Satisfied that he appeared sufficiently stern, Quentin strode through the kitchens and out into the yard. The din of the men’s merriment had not abated. If anything, they were even more raucous - and this was to the good, for to catch them in flagrante was preferable to coming upon them post facto.

  He turned the corner of the stables and was presented with the sight of men clustered in a semi-circle, their backs to him. They were encouraging one at their centre to take his throw. An arm was raised high above their heads, in its hand a horseshoe, eliciting a cheer that was swiftly superseded by a respectful silence as the player prepared himself and got his eye in. The throw was made and the horseshoe hit its mark, curling around a stake driven into the dirt. The thrower celebrated but the men did not; they had lost a good deal of money by this result.

  “What is the meaning of this?” Quentin demanded with the backs of his fingers pressed against his hips. “This dreadful racket must desist at once!”

  The men broke up. Someone muttered ‘It’s the little prince’ but Quentin affected not to hear. Their parting revealed the identity of the victorious tosser: an elderly man in a powdered wig and wrinkled stockings that accentuated the bandiness of his emaciated legs.

  “Father!” the young Quigley cried in dismay.

  “What ho, my boy!” the Squire shuffled around but remained in an inelegantly hunched posture. “Kindly retrieve my lucky shoe for me, would you? Only I do not seem able to stand up straight again.”

  At this, the men snickered but most did their best to conceal their amusement. Their employer’s bad back went in some way to compensate for their considerable losses.

  Quentin cast a supercilious eye around the workers. He dismissed them, after a curt reminder that they ought to remember how fortunate they were even to be allowed through the gates. They shuffled away with soured expressions and the pejorative epithet ‘little prince’ was uttered a few more times. Only when they had departed did the son approach the father. Remonstration must wait until they were both indoors and no longer a spectacle for the lower orders.

  “I cannot budge an inch!” Squire Quigley exclaimed. “I am quite bent double like a question mark.”

  “Come, father,” Quentin whispered. “To the house.”

  “Alas, I am stuck,” the old man cried. “Even the mere thought of removing myself from this spot gives rise to the most excruciating agony.”

  Quentin stamped his foot with impatience, aware they were the object of ridicule and whispered commentary.

  “I’ll help you, sir,” said a gruff but not unpleasant voice. Approaching from the stable doorway was Francis, the hand.

  “That won’t be necessary,” said Quentin.

  “I think it be,” said Francis, placing his rough hands on the Squire’s hips. “We must walk him like a lame foal.”

  Quentin blustered but held his tongue when he saw how his father responded to the stable hand’s touch. Painstaking progress was made toward the French windows of the drawing room, with Quentin leading in a haughty, funereal gait, while the stable hand and the Squire shuffled behind, like a
man shifting a statue.

  As soon as they were indoors, Quentin closed the window and drew the heavy curtains across them, cutting off the sunlight and plunging the room into gloom. Francis lowered the old man onto a chaise, lifting those spindly legs. The Squire looked like an overturned beetle with its limbs in the air.

  “You may leave us,” Quentin said, tight-lipped.

  Francis dipped his head and touched his forelock. “I reckon he has need of the doctor.”

  “Thank you!” Quentin snapped.

  “I could fetch him, if you like.”

  “Are you still here?”

  “Sir.” Francis backed away, slipped between the curtains and out. Exasperated, Quentin pinched his sharp nose and shook his dark locks.

  “This is what comes of playing games,” he chastised his father. “You are not built for such pursuits and now you pay the price.”

  On his back, the Squire laughed, despite the pain it brought him. “On the contrary, my boy. Those fellows paid the price. Do you know, I have cost them each a day’s wages! That will teach them not to take on the former champion of the county, what! In my day, quoits were all the rage but I was undefeated. Let me tell you-”

  Quentin turned his back. He looked at a chink of light at the curtains, left by the stable hand on his departure. “You would like the doctor to call, I suppose.”

  “That mountebank! He shall want paying, you know.”

  “You may use your winnings, and let it be a lesson to you.”

  The Squire appeared even more pained by the loss of his gains. “My wife is dead,” he grunted.

  “What mean you?”

  “I mean that the position of one who may nag me to within an inch of my life died with her. You are merely my son - my youngest son - and you should comport yourself accordingly.”

  “If we are here to talk about comportment-”

  “Sirrah!” the Squire attempted to sit up. A twinge ran through him and he swore. Red-faced and breathless, he lay back. “Fetch me the charlatan. Perchance he has some poultice or potion might assuage my discomfort.”

  “I’ll send-”

  “No, sirrah; you yourself shall go. It is past time you made yourself useful around the place. Now, go. And do not tarry. There is something of great import we must discuss upon your return and my recovery.”

  More than a little stung by his father’s admonitions, the youngest Quigley left the drawing room. A ride to the village required a change of clothing. He slipped up to his room and exchanged his frock coat for his riding jacket and his black trousers for his riding breeches. He eschewed the riding hat; he preferred the feel of the wind through his hair. Suited and booted, he went out to the stables where, to his surprise, Francis had his horse saddled and ready.

  “I could still go for you,” the stable hand offered, leading the stallion from the stall.

  “On my Satan?” Quentin sneered. “I don’t think so.”

  “No, sir; I’d take the dun mare, of course.”

  Quentin snatched the reins. “I shall go. Satan is the swiftest horse in the county.”

  “That he be, sir.” Francis gave the horse’s black hide an appreciative stroke. Quentin shuddered as if the hand had brushed his own person.

  Francis opened the door and Quentin led the horse out into the sunlight. A placid beast at rest, Satan’s nostrils quivered in anticipation of exercise and open country. Quentin stepped into a stirrup and mounted the saddle. The stable hand was looking up at him in what might be perceived as admiration. Quentin felt some kind of acknowledgment was due.

  “Thank you,” he nodded. Satan trotted primly across the yard and along the long drive to the main gates. The stable hand’s face remained in Quentin’s imagination for quite a while. The impertinence! Looking at me in that manner! It was no good; he would have to be dismissed.

  Out on the open road, Satan cantered happily, glad to be free of the stable’s confines on such a gloriously sunny day. The rider, too, was not immune to the weather’s charms. Quentin tilted his face to the sky, revelling in the rays and the cool air against his cheeks.

  The village of Little Quigley lay five miles ahead - if one stuck to the beaten track, that is. Confound that, the rider sneered. He knew of a short cut across the sward and through the woods that would lose two miles at least and save some precious time. Father was in agony and pain brings one to say the most alarming things. The concern over paying the doctor, for example. Perhaps that was merely a wish not to fund chicanery; the Squire held the medical profession in contempt - well, every profession met with his disdain, come to think of it.

  And what was that matter of import he wished to discuss? Quentin wracked his brains. His stomach flipped; it was most likely the old, recurring problem: when was the boy to be married and to whom?

  Quentin set his jaw. He urged Satan to speed up, steering him from the road and across the rolling expanse of grass toward the woods. “Yah!” the boy cried. The ride would blow these considerations away like dandelion seeds in a breeze.

  Quack

  The tiny village of Little Quigley - a few houses clinging to a winding, cobbled street - was as picturesque as ever in the afternoon sun. The houses were rounded, like loaves of bread; some were as colourful as birthday cakes. One might expect Hansel and Gretel to stroll along at any moment, helping themselves to mouthfuls of the masonry.

  Quentin enjoyed the sound of Satan’s hooves on the cobblestones, drawing the attention of the denizens of this cosy hamlet and therefore their admiring gazes. He sat erect in the saddle, his face flushed from the ride across the country, his cheeks coloured and his hair wild. He left Satan at the hitching post and strode into the doctor’s office. The people in the front room, awaiting the physician’s attention, failed to remark on Quentin’s entrance, preoccupied as they were with their several ailments, a cough here, a broken arm there, prompting him to consider going back out to the street and coming back in again.

  There were spare, mismatched chairs but Quentin spurned them all. He headed directly to the door that led to the back room in which Doctor Goodhead conducted his consultations and, without knocking or observing any of the other niceties one might expect, barged straight in.

  The doctor was wrapping the hand of a young woman. Both physician and patient turned to see who was intruding so boldly. Their stares pleased the young Quigley immensely to the point where he almost forgot the urgency and purpose of his visit.

  “You must come at once,” he urged. “Father has done something to his back.”

  Doctor Goodhead, a handsome man in his early thirties and as yet unmarried, ignored the impudent young man’s implorations and continued to tend his patient. “Now, Lizzie, keep the dressing dry and try to remember which end of the carving knife is the handle and which the blade.”

  The girl Lizzie simpered and giggled. She produced a cabbage from her basket and placed it on the table as payment, then she got to her feet and left, passing the impatient Quentin on her way out and awarding him a lingering yet inscrutable look.

  “The audacity!” Quentin complained.

  “A cat may look at a king,” smirked Doctor Goodhead, washing his hands in a bowl.

  “What mean you?”

  “Never mind. Now, Quentin, I might as well ask what mean you? Barging in when there are people out there, waiting their turn.”

  “Actually,” the young man blushed, “It’s Quentin. I prefer the French pronunciation now.”

  “Do you indeed? Well, Kon-tan, what brings you here so precipitously - and do not say your fine black stallion because I have heard all of your quips before.”

  “It’s Father. His back. You must come and have a look at it.”

  “Must I? I’m afraid that is out of the question. I have other people to see both here and in their homes. There is not
the time.”

  The boy was visibly peeved.

  “And do not pout so; it is most unnervingly appealing.” Doctor Goodhead opened a cabinet and perused the shelves. His hand closed around a brown bottle with a thick stopper. He took it down, took out the bung and gave the contents a tentative sniff. “Here,” he replaced the stopper and handed the bottle to the boy. “Apply this and keep it covered. First thing in the morning and last thing at night. After several days, the Squire should be as right as rain.”

  Quentin looked at the bottle’s murky contents with a quizzical expression.

  “I mean for your butler to do it, of course. I don’t expect your sense of filial duty extends to applying poultices to your ailing father. What has he done? Sustained some injury?”

  Quentin shook his head, exasperated. “He was playing horseshoes with some of the men. You know, like a game of quoits.”

  “Ah, quoits!” Doctor Goodhead waxed nostalgic. “I used to play for my school.”

  “It’s a beastly game,” said Quentin. “Utterly vulgar.”

  “Now,” the doctor raised a finger, “Do not disparage the sport of gentlemen the world over. There is nothing wrong with a game of quoits, young man. It inspires comradeship, bonhomie, and healthy competition among men, whatever their rank or station in life. It is the great leveller. And I used to make quite a packet, I can tell you. Why it was quoits that funded my studies at medical school.”

  Quentin heaved his shoulders. “Oh, can’t you come and do it? It has been too long since you were at the house and I should like your advice on what I am writing.”

  “Writing?” Doctor Goodhead’s eyebrows twitched in surprise. “You have piqued my interest, I must confess. The thought of you writing anything... And there’s that pout again.”

  He produced a black bag from under a table and began to fill it with medicaments and supplies. “What are you reading at the moment?” he asked. “I mean, something must have fired your imagination and inspired you to take up the quill.”