Creative Writing – “A Well Respected Man”

By, Miles Estrada |Writer (Fiction)

September 14, 2017

Peter Wimsey would always dress the same way wherever he went. There was no particular reason behind this; he just liked it. Among the multitudinous world of commonplace, twenty-first century infidels, he would stand out in his tuxedo, monocle, top-hat, and pocket watch, and no one seemed to have a care whatever as to his preference of attire; but of course, that was the case when he was back in England, where opulence was indelible, even in this contemporaneous age.

That being said, there was a certain set of unsavory circumstances that transpired concerning the affiliation of a surreptitious French gang, which led to the impromptu deaths of his parents at the age of ten, and his inevitable absconsion from his country so that he might not fall into the hands of his pernicious adversaries. He wandered round the world for a while, with no particular location in mind, to live out the rest of his life (excluding France, of course). When, at the age of seventeen, he settled in the faux Spanish province of San Clemente in California, where he, penniless, parentless, and constantly paranoid of sudden death, attended his final year of secondary school and later made his living as a writer in the region (producing only three plays and a dozen or so short stories during his stay there). However, what Peter wasn’t aware of was that he would soon be discovered by a peculiar lot, the likes of which he had never had the pleasure to encounter before.

When the school year started in the dwindling weeks of August (something he couldn’t side with in any way), Peter left his provisional flat in his customary garb for his first day of school, having depended on himself to always be ready for the occasion. The first day itself was not particularly remarkable, for Peter simply went on from class to class in a fairly humdrum fashion; but the following day was a completely different, one might say tumultuous, matter altogether.

Once let out from his art class for luncheon that day, Peter set out on a steady course for his sign language class, where he would heat up and eat his tortellini in splendid solitude. On his way there, he received many an amiable comment on behalf of his laudatory garments, and these he took with congeniality; understandable enough, for this sort of thing was not at all common on campus. It was was about halfway into his destination when the heterogeneity was laid bare. As he passed on through the “P-quad” as it was called (it was nothing more than a square arrangement of four two story buildings, where the classroom numbers were all headed with the letter P for some reason or other, that faced inwardly to a small profusion of benches and princess palms in the centre of the infrastructure like several thirsty camels at a feign desert oasis), he happened to run into a girl, of all people.

This girl was a small one, with a round, reddish face, fair hair, and eyes as short and blue as marbles, and she wore a black silk shirt with a pair of elephant grey trousers. She asked Peter whether or not he knew a particular student by the name of Robert Strickland from his travels in the South seas. Peter said “Why yes, I do” and that seemed an eloquent enough answer. But when another girl, slightly taller but of similar features, extemporaneously insinuated herself onto the scene, he asked “Why do you want to know?” The first girl revealed herself to be Fanny Strickland, Robert’s younger sister, and Peter held back a thunderous laugh with a vicious bite of his lip, for he knew what the “word” meant; presently, he possesses a prevalent scar there, and can no longer eat soup properly without aid of a steel straw. He shook hands with her, disregarding her rather lewd name, and he went on to state that Robert was in literature class with him. Fanny smiled gaily, and so did the taller girl, whose name was later revealed to be Emily. Slowly, however, though Peter was at first oblivious to it, more and more students made themselves evident to him. First there were the two girls; then six more girls; and then three boys; and ten boys and girls, and then twenty of each sex, until eventually there was amassed a tremendous throng of fifty or a hundred individual members, all equally exiguous, all equally garrulous, and all attracted like birds to a feeder to one thing – that being Peter’s clothes.

A round of questions started up instantaneously, originating from a group of girls beside Fanny, all directed towards Peter. A stoutish Creole girl asked him why he dressed so lavishly, and he said “No particular reason.” A duo of presumably blond Portuguese boys asked if he was from England and what part – having heard his distinct, practically alien accent – and he said “Yes, Leigh, Greater Manchester.” And they went on to state with obfuscation that their “women” were from there, though they looked far too young to pursue a romantic relationship. A pigeon faced brunette shouted at the top of her voice, asking how long he had been in America, and he said “Only but half a year.” A tawny boy, slightly taller than the rest, with long burnt sienna trestles asked if he could try his top-hat on for size, and Peter let him: it completely engulfed his head, and its brim rested on his gaunt shoulders. Peter replaced his hat back on his head, and an especially diminutive boy, a baby almost, asked what he would charge for his sapphire ring; he said “It was priceless.” Two scanty redheaded girls enquired of the miraculous chain that ran down from the second button of his waistcoat to his pocket, and he thence produced his gold plated Smiths pocket watch . The two blond Portuguese from earlier presented to Peter a cadaverous brown-eyed girl, saying that she fancied him  and would love to make of him a potential companion;  Peter said “ Thank you, but I am not looking at the moment.” At this point, it suddenly dawned on Peter that he was in the midst of a queer phenomenon known as “Accelerated Adoration.”

He knew he had to leave.

When a group question was posed by everyone concerning whether they could try on his monocle, Peter disregarded it, proclaimed that he must be going, and gave the whole crowd a collective farewell, to which they gave him many an extended one.

At last. Peter was free, far from the maddening crowd, and a  little more flustered now than he was before. Perhaps, he thought, if I vacated the area after Fanny’s final remark, I might not have ended up so unnerved as I am now. And so he went on with his day entirely disconcerted over that sublime spectacle, his tortellini tasting a bit more sour than usual.

The following day, when Peter Wimsey passed through the “P-quad” once again, he happened to be wearing a bowler at the time, ideally a more innocuous hat than his old favourite. When he reached a certain point in his journey, for fear that he might rouse the loquacious students once more, he removed his hat, and went on his merry way to his sign language class. He wasn’t noticed in the slightest. Yes, he thought, it worked! In fact, this method of his worked for him so well that he continued to do so whenever in that part of the school until he stopped wearing a hat altogether. To ensure that this state of lassitude among the clusters of dwarfs would endure, he traded his tuxedo for more mild suits in buff, dun, and cherrywood colours. He blended in like a chameleon. His mechanical watches were exchanged for Quartz movements, and were only admired by his teachers. Utter gentrification never conquered Peter, for he thought the drab, insipid brand of clothing worn by his fellow classmates beastly. Thus, he proceeded on the course of his final year of schooling, happy and all but sequestered from the interest of the masses; little did he suspect, though, that he would be the forerunner of beneficent gentrification in the years to come.

 As the years drew on, and Peter continued to flourish from place to place in his many muted suits, the former reprobates of his schooldays and their dress began to gradually decrease in numbers. Consequently, as this number dropped, the number of suited gentlemen proliferated year by year until, in the middle of the twenty-first century, the entirety of the world’s populace had consisted of eccentric, highfalutin men and women alone. Peter felt very much at home in this brave new world of sorts, and when the intelligence was disclosed that the malicious French gang of his childhood had finally been dissolved, he stationed his permanent foundations in Cardiff, where he could prosper in safety indefinitely. Because of this, he published hundreds of novels, and thousands of stories in succession, far more than he had put out in San Clemente.

 One day, however, when the ubiquity of formality had reached a point of near fatigue, Peter grew tired of the humdrum banality of the world,  and kept himself shut up in his house for weeks debating what he could wear so as to decimate the hackneyed compendium. Whilst in this interminable destitute, Peter, having completed his five hundredth novel, chanced upon his old attire; tuxedo, monocle, top-hat, pocket watch and all, though a little more dusty now as it were. Peter had some new clothes. He wore these out on a Friday among the platitudinous queues of dull suits, and was immediately recognized as unique; so much so that if the people thought to replicate that look it would only make it seem stale. Laudability met him everyday, and amid all the dry indifferent individuals, Peter found himself a wife, who just so happened to be the little brown-eyed girl offered up to him by the two blond Portuguese in days of yore; evidently, she did like him. They married shortly after their reacquaintance, expected to live out their lives in serendipity, and when that girl was questioned as to the qualities of her husband by her many friends, she would say only one thing, incidentally an answer to all questions: “A well respected man.”