The Education Of Epitome Quirkstandard

by A. F. Harrold

  ‘It sounds pretty tragic. Does everyone die at the end?’

  ‘Well, no, the play was actually a comedy, about a very short man who lived up to his name. The tragedy was it made its way to the stage at all. Wasn’t a success, you see? Queen Victoria, she was the queen at the time, sent a telegram the very next morning declaring herself to be … oh, what was the phrase she used …? “Unenchanted” by the play. It had to be withdrawn after just

  two performances and great uncle Prolix was shamed. I hadn’t been born at the time, you understand, but I heard about it all later on. Occasionally as a boy I’d be taken to a party and great uncle Prolix would be sat in his Bath chair at one side of the room, squeezing his little rubber duck, and splashing a little, while everyone else would sit on the other side of the room and whisper about him. It was all most pointless, like most family feuds I imagine, since he was practically deaf anyway. Until her dying day Queen Victoria snubbed him and she hasn’t spoken to a Quirkstandard since, but I never really worry about that since garden parties can be so dull, don’t you think?’

  ‘Oh,’ said Rodney, trying to wrestle the conversation back to something he understood or cared about. ‘I’m not a member of any Club like that, but I do go along to the Charing Cross Road (& Area) Toad Fanciers’ Group. It’s kind of an informal club, you know? We meet twice a month in the Methodist Hall and compare toads we like. Sometimes someone fancies a frog, but like your Victoria woman, if they do, we snub them.’

  Quirkstandard nodded at this and felt the room begin to spin. He decided to lie down once more.

  ‘I’m going to lie down now,’ he said, just before he passed out again.

  ‘Fine, I’m going to have a sandwich,’ said Rodney.

  Chapter 3

  Sequins, Dreams & The Circus

  The Crepuscular whose name was inscribed above the shop window and who was father to Rodney and his brother had been given at birth the rather unexpected name of Simone. Perhaps his mother had wanted a girl, or maybe the midwife had made a mistake when she opened her mouth intending to say the words, ‘Mrs Crepuscular, you have a son,’ or perhaps the vicar got confused when he was stood at the font … Whatever had occurred, the fact of the matter was that Simone’s mother dressed him in dresses and frilly lacy items up until his twelfth birthday, which was, the neighbours all agreed, a little later than was usual. He’d also been encouraged to help out with all the cooking, which was, perhaps, better than sweeping other people’s chimneys or opening little doors to control the airflow through a coalmine, but was still, on the whole, hardly manly.

  In the mornings, however, he was sent to the local village school. Whether it was to learn things or whether it was to help the local schoolmarm, with a view to taking over the job in years to come, Simone never discovered, since as soon as he was out of sight of his mother’s kitchen window he’d skip off in the opposite direction. If the sun was warm he’d wander along to the local brook and the little bit of woodland that backed onto the farmland and, with a rod and a piece of string, he would annoy small animals. Sometimes he’d lie down in the sunshine, rest his forearm over his eyes to provide some shade and have a doze, since he’d been up at four o’clock baking bread and getting the hot water steaming for his father’s wash basin.

  Whatever he decided to do, he would, as soon as he reached the little stream, strip off his dress and his bloomers and hang them over a branch out of harm’s way, to keep them clean and dry. Over years of missing school he created quite a cosy little den for himself, hidden there among the trees, with a riverside view, and he furnished it with a little lamp and a stool with a fitted umbrella which he could huddle under if it rained and get on with his embroidery … and his daydreaming.

  He daydreamed about The Circus. Always about The Circus. He had only ever visited a circus once in his life but that visit had left memorable marks in his mind. On that one special evening he had become so excited by the spectacle, so delighted, excited and overwrought by the experience that he had embarrassed both his parents by pulling off his dress, leaping over the barrier and running round and around the sawdust ring, singing and laughing and bouncing about at the top of his voice and his legs. Only a deft rugby tackle by a swift-thinking clown managed to restrain the boy. His parents had to collect him after the show from the ringmaster’s office, since they were too ashamed to own up to owning him while the rest of the audience were still present. As it happened, the ringmaster wasn’t all that put out and offered what he claimed was a fair price to hire the child out for the summer season, but Simone’s parents immediately refused the offer on principle. The principles in question being (a) surprise that the suggested price was so miserly and (b) shock that the ringmaster was unwilling to haggle.

  So, in his little den young Simone would close his eyes and find himself transported to a big top filled with clowns and elephants and girls in sequined leotards swinging back and forth high over everyone’s heads and men with enormous moustaches, muscles and dumbbells and tiny little leopard-skin off-the-shoulder outfits. There were sea lions in his imaginary circus who would flollop their way across the sawdust up onto a plinth where they would play God Save The Queen by squeezing the bulbs of a series of horns. Real lions would jump lazily through flaming hoops, jugglers would dazzle and amaze with their displays of virtuosity and their glittery balls, and it would have taken a dozen white horses with feathery headdresses to drag him away from the dreams he had of a dozen white horses with feathery headdresses.

  In 1862 Simone Crepuscular turned twelve and his father, who had maybe wanted a son after all, slipped a pair of trousers inside his birthday card. He pointed at them and grunted something embarrassed in a kind, fatherly manner, coughed, made vague buttoning motions in the vicinity of his waist, muttered, ‘Don’t tell your mother,’ and went off to work. Simone was left to attempt to put the things on all by himself. He tried them first one way round and then the other. Neither way felt right. It was all so … well … restrictive, he thought. But at the same time he did feel a little tingle of normalness ripple up through him. Finally, he was a man.

  The moment had come for him to run away from home, and from his mother in particular.

  He packed his meagre possessions into a large handkerchief and his luxurious possessions into a rucksack and ran out the back door. He tripped as his trousers flopped to his ankles and tumbled headfirst down the steps, but he picked himself up quickly, the adrenalin coursing through his body, having bruised nothing but his pride and his head. After having another go at fastening the buttons of his brand new flies he ran off down the narrow cobbled street in the direction of the village green.

  As soon as he had made his way round the duck pond he saw that his intuition had been right. The green was covered with tents and mechanical apparatus. He stood under the eaves of the village tree and watched the burly men milling around in their shirt sleeves with grease and sweat wrinkling on their foreheads, smoking cigarettes and talking loudly and laughing carelessly. Occasionally a lady would pass by, walking across the green with a small puppy or dog on a lead, and she’d shout something crude at the men and make a sign with her free hand, at which point they’d quieten down and look a bit shy and embarrassed, being good chaps on the whole.

  Simone became more and more sure, the longer he watched, that this was the life for him: this was what he wanted to do and to be. The cigarettes, the leaning, the whole ‘having friends’ business all seemed mightily attractive, if only in its novelty. So, he mustered up the courage to approach the most impressively moustachioed and extravagantly uniformed man around and followed him as he slipped into a big red tent, in the first chamber of which stood a large mahogany desk.

  The impressive moustache began to examine some papers on the desk, his back to the entrance, and it was a minute or two before Simone summoned enough courage to announce his presence with a miniature cough.

  'Excuse me, sir?’ he added, meekly.

  ‘What? Eh, excuse? Eh, w
hat what?’ sputtered the surprised gentleman, straightening his back and spinning round on his heel.

  ‘Excuse me sir, I’d like to join up,’ whispered Simone in a sheepish tone.

  ‘Join up, eh? Eh? What?’ replied the man, rebuttoning the buttons he’d unbuttoned upon entering the tent. ‘This is most irregular, what? Do you have references, eh? A medical examination? What, eh? Most irregular indeed. Eh? What? What!? What, if I may entertain the idea for a moment, what is it you think you can do? Eh?’

  ‘I want to …’ Crepuscular paused, suddenly feeling a touch foolish. Young, shy, foolish and entirely out of his depth.

  ‘Come on, eh? Out with it … boy? Come on, what?’ blustered the big moustache with no let up.

  ‘I’d like to …’ Crepuscular’s nerve failed him once more. What he had wanted to say, more than anything, was that he had longed all his life to fly on the highest trapeze, far above the crowds, high above the eyes and hats and sniggers of adoring audiences, freed from the ties of people’s expectations and the reach of their long umbrellas. What he wanted to say was that he longed to be like one of the birds of the air, like an eagle, soaring, soaring proud and solitary through the high thin air, but at the same time that he desired, he longed to find a warm, secure place deep in the bosom of the heart of a loving circus family, because he believed that there was a bond of friendship and love holding together the very kernel of the heart of every circus. He wanted to belong somewhere for himself, to be loved for himself, for who he was and not for some myth of gender-determined identity imposed upon him by a loving but misguided mother.

  But he said none of this out loud, not his dreams, not his daydreams or his ambitions.

  Seeing the gleaming buttons on the big moustache’s bright uniform’s chest he had a sudden flash: an image of himself in years to come in baggy tights. His sequins, badly sewn on, flapping loose on his chest. His leotard flicking desultorily under his arms in the breath of some passing breeze. Looking up he imagined he was stood at the foot of an immense ladder that stretched forever above him. He could hear the cold drip of grease falling from rung to rung, descending towards him, drip by drip down the years, and he knew that as soon as he reached out for that ladder he would climb, slip and fall, and that he would do it again and again. It seemed unshakeably inevitable. He couldn’t share his dream with this marvellously uniformed stranger, with his giant, curling and officious moustache. All he saw was this little boy’s face reflected back from a myriad of highly polished brass buttons.

  ‘I’d like to … to help out,’ was all he said, not denying his dreams entirely.

  ‘Help out, eh? Very well, what? This is, you understand, most irregular though? Eh? What? But, I say, a boy with your sense of duty mustn’t just be turned away, what? Eh? It would be a crime, a dereliction of my duty, eh? Normally I don’t stand for folks marching into my tent and just demanding things, but you boy, eh?, I can see are just full of spunk and duty, what? Eh? We need boys like you? New blood, eh? But there are correct channels and offices, what, eh? Proper ways of doing these things, eh? But … well, I do happen to have the

  appropriate paperwork here, look, so … You can read, yes, what, eh?’

  ‘A little, sir,’ Simone lied.

  ‘Well, that’s all right, it’s mostly small print anyway, what? Eh? You are sixteen, eh? Just say yes and sign here …’

  He handed Simone a pen, showed him where to place his signature and as soon as the cross was in place at the foot of the form he called for the Captain to come through. The Captain very kindly led Simone out of the Major’s tent and showed him to the men’s billets where he was given a bunk, a uniform, a handbook of military regulations and a lukewarm welcome. The very next morning the whole camp was packed up and posted to India. Simone Crepuscular had his first experience of the utter wretchedness of sea travel and swore to himself that if he ever survived this experience he would search in future for a circus that only travelled by land, or even better one that just stood still and let the people come to it.

  So overwhelmed was he by the new and exciting world he had entered of peeling potatoes and polishing belt-buckles that it was nearly six months before he discovered he had joined the Army and this only occurred when he wondered out loud one day just when the girls with sequins would be arriving. One of his colleagues sat him down and read to him the contract he had signed by mistake and it was then that Simone learnt that he was indentured into the forces for a minimum tour of service of twenty-one years, with no time off for good behaviour.

  ‘But there are elephants,’ he said meekly, thinking it might make a difference, as he pointed out of the barracks window at India.

  Chapter 4

  Moonlight & Pamphlets

  When Epitome Quirkstandard opened his eyes he found that he was no longer lying on the table and there was no longer any light coming in through the window. Even in the darkness it only took him a moment to discover that he was now lying face down on the floor. The flagstones were cold under his new black eye. He must’ve rolled over in his sleep, he thought as he stumbled to his feet, that must surely have been it. It was a sensible conclusion to have reached based upon the evidence to hand and he felt a small curl of happiness at having reached it so swiftly.

  He found his way, yawning and aching, to a chair and he sat down.

  The night was quiet around him and the building was silent. A floorboard in the room above didn’t squeak eerily and the drainpipe didn’t rattle to itself in the wind outside the window. It was clearly quite late, Quirkstandard thought. He had arrived at the shop in the early afternoon and the natural assumption was that he hadn’t gone far in the intervening time. Out the window he could see a small square paved yard, lit by a few stars and overhung by grey clouds that turned silvery each time they exposed the fat full moon.

  In the distance he heard a faint tinkling. Listening close he counted two strikes. Two in the morning then. He liked London: there was something frightfully comforting in the sound of Little Ben in the long dark of the middle night. (Little Ben was the smaller of the bells held in the clock tower of the Houses Of Parliament, traditionally struck between 11pm and 6am so as not to annoy the neighbours quite so much. It was removed in 1942 to make munitions.)

  He thought back to the many nights when he’d lain half-awake (or half-asleep, depending on whether he was feeling optimistic or pessimistic that night) on one of the guest beds at Mauve’s after having eaten too hearty a meal or having drunk a tipple or two of port, and how the pale lavender curtains would waft in the summer breeze. Often he would sigh loudly with pleasure at the simplicity and quality of his life: a faint tinkle, a cool waft and what more could a gentleman possibly want? Often when he sighed particularly deeply he would receive a firm prod in the back from the gentleman in the bunk beneath his, who clearly wasn’t feeling quite so contented with the world, but this was, Quirkstandard told himself, a small price to pay.

  On a hook near the stove he found a cloth, which he held up to his bloodied nose and stepped through the door into the front room of the shop. He called out a speculative greeting, although not very loudly, it being so late, and received no reply. This time a floorboard did creak upstairs, but it was only the house settling and no further noise followed. It seemed he had been forgotten or abandoned and when he tried the handle of the front door he found it was firmly locked.

  Perhaps he might find a way out through the back door? But just as he was about to turn and head back to the kitchen to try it, a stray beam of moonlight rushed through the shop window and dimly lit the room. He noticed for the first time what it was the shop seemed to be stocked with. All along each wall were row after row after stack after shelf after pile after heap of bits of paper. Picking one up at random he saw that they seemed to be pamphlets of some sort.

  He moved to the doorway where the moonlight was brightest and read the cover: The Birds Of Hyde Park & South-East Iceland: An Enthusiast’s Guide. Inside it were sketches and descrip
tions of just what it had said, the birds of Hyde Park etc. Quirkstandard had visited Hyde Park a number of times (he had once spent a fortnight boating along the length of the Serpentine with his pals Harris Flirtwater and Nigel Spiggot) and naturally he recognised some of the waterfowl: there was a crested grebe called Walter who was well known to everyone, but then there were a number of others Quirkstandard thought he had only ever caught glimpses of. He read on and learnt more (although he wasn’t quite sure where Iceland was). The pamphlet contained tips on the best ways to spot and identify different birds, on their feeding and breeding habits, annotations of their songs and calls, pictures from a variety of angles and a short snatch of history, both about the avian species in question and of the locales described.

  By the time Dawn arrived Quirkstandard had read – Fastenings Of All Description & Colorations, The Goodness Of Bread & Other French Cheeses, and A History Of The English-Speaking Porpoise. Just as he finished this last one there was a rattle in the lock of the door and a small woman walked in with an enormous nose and a broom.

  ‘Golly, um, good morning,’ offered Quirkstandard civilly, if a trifle flustered.

  ‘Good morning yourself,’ she offered back without the least surprise.

  ‘Er, I’m Quirkstandard,’ said Quirkstandard.

  ‘And I’m Dawn,’ said Dawn.

  ‘Very pleased to meet you.’

  ‘Yes, they told me they had a gentleman locked away in here. ‘Man with a weak temperament,’ they said. ‘Having a lie down,’ they said. ‘You be kind to him, Miss Dawn,’ they said. ‘Well, I’ll be kind,’ I said. ‘If he’s been tidy,’ I said. ‘You be kind all the same,’ they said. ‘He might have money,’ they said. ‘He might have money,’ I said. ‘But if he doesn’t have manners then what’s all the money in the world worth?’ I said. ‘Money’s worth money,’ they said. ‘And bad manners means more work for me,’ I said. ‘For which we pays you money,’ they said. ‘When you remembers,’ I said. ‘You be kind to him all the same,’ they said. ‘If he’s been tidy,’ I said.’