Future Tense (6 page)

“It's just nerves,” said the Duck. “Come on. We'll be late.”

I took my time, looked back at the house again, around at the terraces and trees and gardens, and then up into the empty grey sky. I thought I heard something. And if I listened very hard, I could just make out a roaring sound coming from beyond the clouds.

“What's that?” I said.

“What?”

“That noise. It sounds like the red-eye from New York!”

“It's just the wind,” said the Duck.

“And the house!” I said. “It's aged, the stone's got dark patches—you scheming little rat! This isn't 1803! We're back in the third millennium!”

“Calm down,” said the Duck.

I grabbed his arm and started swinging his scrawny body around and round. Though he tried to clutch it to his pigeon chest, the pistol case flew out of his other arm and skittered across the grass.

“You've brought me back! Why? Where's Emma? Oh my God, what have you done?”

I was whirling him around faster and faster. Both his feet left the ground and he was screaming at me to stop.

“Let me go! Let me go! Steve! I-can-ex-plain-ev-er-y-thing!”

I let go and the centrifugal force slingshotted him at least ten feet through the air and sent him skidding on his backside down the grassy slope. I ran after him and grabbed him by his stupid hippie ponytail before he could scramble to his feet. I wrenched his head back and stuck my nose right up against his.

“Start at the beginning and tell me everything, you devious little bastard!”

“All right, all right! The truth!” he cried.

“I knew there was something fishy going on and I knew you were behind it. Tell me!”

“Let go of my hair first.”

I gave his head one last yank and released him. He immediately scampered away to fetch the box. I ran after him. He picked clods of earth off it and rubbed it clean with his sleeve.

“You maniac! Have you any idea how much a boxed set of Wogdons is worth?”

I gave him a shove. “I don't care,” I said. “What are we doing here?”

“It was a safety measure.” He straightened his glasses. “I've got a helicopter standing by on the other side of the house, if any of the combatants sustain a serious wound, I could have him in Bristol A and E in five minutes.”

“You'll have to do better than that, unless you want to go there,” I smiled. “Now, the real reason.”

“That's the truth. I swear,” he said. “I didn't want to take any chances with… with my son's life.”

He held the gun case close to his heart and gazed off across the immaculate parkland, with a wistfully tragic expression on his face.

“I don't know what I'd do if I lost you, Son. Honest I don't.”

“Yeah, very moving,” I said. “Now tell me the rest.”

He looked round at me, aghast. “That's all there is!” he quacked. “Don't you believe I have feelings?”

“Let me see,” I started counting on my fingers, “there's greed, lust, selfishness, pride—”

“—What a low opinion you have of your father,” he said, sadly.

But I wasn't buying any of it. “So, Bentley's in on it. Who else?”

“Just Bentley.”

“Well, that's a lie for a start,” I said. “How did you get De Quipp here?”

“De Quipp doesn't know anything—he still thinks he's in 1803,” said the Duck.

“Where is he then?” I said, looking round.

“He's out riding.”

I leaned forward to make a point of peering through Duckworth's thick-lensed glasses. “On his own? What if he rides straight into a motorway?”

“My, er, brother-in-law's chaperoning him,” replied the Duck. “Now, can we get on, they'll be back in a minute.”

“Which brother-in-law?” I said. “You must have dozens—you've got a wife in every century!”

“Rufus.”

“Rufus who?”

“It's Aleman,” said the Duck.

“Aleman the Blacksmith—from the Middle Ages?” I exclaimed. “You brought Aleman here? He only has two brain cells—and they're both illiterate!”

“Stupidity has its uses,” said the Duck.

“Yeah, he does everything you tell him.”

“He speaks Norman French,” said the Duck.

“Wait a minute—Aleman's playing Captain Walrus—De Quipp's second—I thought I recognized that moustache!” I once wrestled Aleman the Smithy for the hand of the Duck's sister-in-law, an Anglo-Saxon wench named Betha. I threw the fight, but that's another story.

Suddenly, two riders appeared on the horizon, one silhouette riding tall and elegant in the saddle, the other short and fat, bouncing along beside him.

“They're coming!” said the Duck, seizing my arm.

We watched them ride down the hill into the avenue of limes and then cut across towards the bridge.

“What a farce,” I said. “Okay, let's do it.”

The Duck stopped and waved to them. I walked past him and headed for the line of beeches.

We met on the path. I put my hands in my pockets and posed. De Quipp was still astride his horse at one end—his second holding it steady—the Duck joined me at the other. My opponent dismounted in one smooth movement and started striding purposefully towards me. I set off immediately to meet him before he got to the middle, because I thought it would be bad form to allow him to come to me. Our seconds hurried along behind us, Aleman leading the two horses and the Duck carrying his box of guns. We were now both roughly in the middle of the little avenue of beeches, with the stream gurgling away down the bank, on my left.

“Get those horses out of here,” I said.

Aleman hesitated and then, after a jerk of the head from De Quipp, led them to the other side of the break of trees, on the far side from the stream.

“So, Baron Duckworth,” said De Quipp, strutting around me, hands on hips, looking me up and down, “you dare to teurn up.”

I stood my ground and looked bored while he circled me.

“Have you come to talk or to fight?” I said.

“I yam a chevalier, a Knight of France,” he said. “You insult mee, Baron Duckworth. Now I geeve you the chaunce to take hit back.”

“No,” I yawned.

“Vary well!” he snapped. “Then you geeve mee no choice—I must keel you.”

“Pick a gun and let's get on with it then,” I said.

We both turned to the Duck, who was shaking his head vigorously at me. I had no idea what he meant. He flipped open the catches on the gun case and offered them to us.

De Quipp went to inspect the pistols more closely, but did not touch them. He nodded approvingly at the Duck. Then he turned to me.

“You ask mee to choose?”

It suddenly dawned on me why the Duck had been shaking his head. I was just panicking and wondering what to do next, when De Quipp said:

“You insult mee, Baron! It was I who challaunge you—you must choose!”

I smiled.

Aleman, who had wound the reins of the horses around a low-hanging branch, rejoined us. We exchanged glances, but neither of us gave away any sign that we knew each other.

“You would like me to choose,” said De Quipp, pointing his finger at my nose, “because you sink I yam the loweur one, but hin France an English Baronet his not so high as a chevalier.”

“Whatever,” I said.

“Ahem, I think you'll find you're about the same rank socially, Monsieur De Quipp, according to Debrett's,” said the Duck, smiling with his teeth.

De Quipp shrugged. “Vary well, hif you say so, Sir Julianne. I will not quipple.” He turned to me again and gestured to the case with a flourish of his hand. “Choose your weapon, Baron Duckworth.”

I peered into the case and pretended to be making up my mind, because I didn't want to make it look too obvious that I was only going to go for one particular pistol. I put my finger to my lips. The Duck's right index finger moved along the edge of the box, and was clearly indicating the left hand pistol, as he held it open. I picked it up and weighed it in my hand.

“Good balance,” I nodded. I looked along the barrel, with one eye closed and curled my lip. “Sight's a bit out.” I made an effort to bend it straight, although there was nothing really wrong with it, not that I would have known even if there were.

The Duck scowled at me.

De Quipp quickly took the remaining pistol and expertly turned it over in his hands, checking that every moving part was in working order and the barrel was clean. And then he helped himself to more things from the case—a small flask, a lead ball, some little cloth wads, flint. Then, holding the flask in his teeth, he removed a rod thing from his pistol, which was slotted in under the barrel, directly in line with it. Mine had one, too, so I pulled it out and showed it to the Duck. The Duck shook his head. I shrugged.

“Ahem, Monsieur De Quipp?” said the Duck.

“Oui?”

“In England it is considered proper etiquette to let the combatants' seconds load the guns.”

“Not so hin France,” said De Quipp, briskly pouring gunpowder down the muzzle of his pistol.

I was trying to watch and copy him at the same time, but dropped my flask and bent my ramrod thingy when I went to pick it up.

“Well, this isn't France, is it?” said the Duck. “I must insist you abide by English rules.”

“I hallways load my own pistol,” said De Quipp, rapidly plunging his ramrod in and out to pack his powder down firmly.

Aleman, moving clumsily in his ill-fitting French cavalry sergeant's uniform, which was at least two sizes too small for him, came to my aid and straightened my rod for me. Well, the guy was a blacksmith in his own time, so he knew a thing or two about working metal.

Meanwhile, De Quipp had put the flint in the pan under the hammer and was pouring a little black powder in from the flask. I copied him.

“I insist, sir!” cried the Duck, still trying to get his hands on De Quipp's pistol, presumably because he hadn't had a chance to nobble it yet.

“Thees his most irreguleur!” cried De Quipp. “No shootist hin hall France would permit thees!”

“This is not bloody France!” cried the Duck. “Give me back my pistol!” And he attempted to take it by force.

“Non!” exclaimed De Quipp, struggling with the Duck.

“It's my pistol—I say who loads it!”

“I load hit myself!”

“Let it go—or I won't let you borrow it!”

“Thees his outrageeus!”

“Votre manteau, chevalier?” inquired the not so stodgy-witted as I had thought Aleman.

This had the effect of stopping the quarrel between the Duck and De Quipp, because De Quipp made a point of handing his primed gun to his second, so that he could take off his jacket.

The Duck came to take mine. Remembering the rules stated I should be attired in similar fashion to my opponent, I started to take it off. But then it occurred to me that it might give me an unfair advantage, by providing a few extra layers of protection between my skin and any pistol balls that might come flying towards me, so I quickly pulled it back on again.

“I'm keeping mine on, mate,” I said, elbowing him away from me.

The Duck's attention switched to Aleman, who still had De Quipp's pistol, and now his coat as well.

“Give me his coat,” he ordered, and took it, but snatched De Quipp's gun out of Aleman's other hand at the same time. And ran off with it.

“Sir Julianne!” exclaimed De Quipp, who had been rolling up the right sleeve of his shirt. “Geeve hit back!”

De Quipp gave chase. The Duck pretended to bump into me—and now we had a frock coat and two pistols in our fumbling hands.

“Switch it, switch it!” hissed the Duck.

I tried to grab De Quipp's coat.

“Not the coat, you pratt—the gun!”

I got the message and took the one he was trying to force into my hands, while letting him grab mine from me. We managed to effect this exchange under cover of the coat, so the Frenchman was none the wiser when he caught up with the Duck and snatched back what he assumed to be his own pistol. But, of course, he had mine. And I wasn't sure whether I had loaded it properly or not, because I didn't have a clue what I was doing, and couldn't remember if I had put a ball down the muzzle.

The Duck sidled up to me and spoke to me out of the corner of his mouth, while De Quipp did some impressive stretching exercises.

“Did you load it?” he said.

“I don't know. I don't think I put one of those balls in,” I said.

“Yes you did—I counted 'em and there's two missing—shit—you must have loaded it. What order did you put the powder, shot and wadding in in?”

“In in? Um?”

“Think!” quacked the Duck, speaking through his nose, in that irritating way he had.

“I don't remember,” I said.

“I yam ready,” said De Quipp, tossing his head back haughtily and looking down his nose at me.

“Fingers crossed,” said the Duck. “Let's hope you cocked it up.”

“Get that helicopter revved up,” I said, and did some running on the spot to practise my back-up plan.

“Gentlemen!” cried the Duck. “To your positions!”

I headed for the nearest tree.

Aleman tugged my sleeve as I passed him and turned me round.

“Monsieur, Monsieur!” he said, in a voice so deep and bass-toned it sounded as if it was emanating from somewhere down in the bowels, the bowels of the Earth. “Hit is zat way, Monsieur,” he growled.

“You'd make a great lead singer for a heavy metal band,” I said, having a private joke.

De Quipp was standing in the middle of the path, with his back to me, his pistol held aloft, alongside his head, like that famous poster of James Bond. The Duck was just staring at me with a crooked grin on his face, and pointing.

“Out there?” I said. “I'll be a sitting duck—there's no cover!”