Bleak Expectations (13 page)

‘Ah, home!’ she said, thus far her thoughts running the same as had mine. ‘At night in the nunnery I often dreamed of returning here!’ With substitution of school for nunnery, still our thoughts were matched. ‘And often I dreamed of strong men in tight breeches lifting me bodily on to a heaving stallion’ – here, I admit, our thoughts diverged somewhat – ‘then clasping me tightly to— But hold! Home’s all different!’ Now our thoughts re-entwined as she saw what I had seen.

Where once the great sandstone manor had shone with happiness and gleamed with rich joy, now it glowered with misery and gloomed with woe. There were bars over the windows, and not jolly, drinks-dispensing ones but the harsh keep-people-in-y kind; a cruelly spiked fence surrounded the garden; and on the lawn where once we had joyfully shuffle-hooped, bashy-batted and spong-ed, now wild-haired and rolling-eyed people shuffled slowly around, dribbling and emitting strange sounds such as ‘blurrggh’, ‘maaaah’ and ‘wib’.

‘Sadly, the place has been turned into an asylum,’ sighed Aunt Lily.

That at least explained the dribbling lawn-ruiners. Though actually, with hindsight, the grass probably thrived under such constant drooly watering.

‘Oh, brilliant,’ sarcasmized Pippa. ‘Our home is full of mentalists!’

Dear reader, please forgive my sister her insulting language: it was simply the times we inhabited. In these more enlightened late Victorian days, we would never use such a demeaning word for those afflicted with mind-illness or soul-problems, preferring more sensitive, scientific terms such as ‘lunatic’, ‘insanonaut’ or ‘derangeatron’; but back then we called a nutter a nutter and knew them as mentalists, whack-jobs, lady-minds, soft-heads and der-brains.

And, as Pippa had said, our home was full of them.

‘How has this happened?’

‘Your mother fought hard against being removed to an institution until eventually Mr Benevolent decided that if the loon wouldn’t go to the asylum then the asylum must go to the loon. Hence this.’

Pippa and I had little time to digest this piece of fact-food, because just then there was the trotty-horsed sound of a fast-approaching carriage.

‘Quick, we must hide! Into the ditch!’

Aunt Lily bundled us into the shallow no-no
¹
that ran round the edge of the garden. From there we peeked out as the carriage pulled up outside the house, the coachman opened the door, and a familiar foot emerged. That familiar foot was attached to a lower leg I knew well, and which itself connected with a thigh I had seen many times before; the multiply-glimpsed thigh adjoined a hip I had some acquaintance with, that hip in turn abutting a torso I oddly didn’t recognize at all. The neck, head and face atop the torso were, however, only too prominent in my memory, and I could not help but whisper the name of their owner: ‘Mr Gently Benevolent . . .’

‘Yes,’ agreed Pippa. ‘But why is he naked?’

Naked or not – and he eye-blushingly was – his arrival now was good news, for it meant he had not yet collected and married my mother. Despite setting off from the school a full twelve hours ahead of us, the time-sappingly meandering roads and lanes of rural England had clearly severely delayed his carriage, while we had travelled cross-country as the crow flies or, in our case, as the pony drags.
²

The coachman handed Mr Benevolent some clothes, and, as he started to dress, a tall, angry-looking man approached him – and this man, too, seemed oddly familiar.

Even bizarrely familiar.

Indeed, impossibly familiar.

For his body, face, mannerisms and hairstyle were identical to those of the late Headmaster Hardthrasher – the same tremendous height, the same pointed nose, chisel-like in its cruelty, the same sadistic glint in his eyes. How could this be? Was I dreaming? Was it supernatural intervention? Surely the Devil himself had reanimated the headmasterly corpse, re-headed him and now placed him here to torment me from beyond the grave – it was the only conceivable explanation.

‘Ah, Dr Hardthrasher,’ Mr Benevolent greeted him. ‘I bring news. Your twin brother Jeremiah is dead.’

Oh, a twin brother. Yes, that was a much more likely explanation.

‘How did he die?’

‘There was an attempted escape from the school and an explosion in the salt- and pepper-mines. He died like a steak in a bad restaurant: over-seasoned and cooked to a crisp.’ He paused briefly, then added, ‘Oh, and with an anvil for a head.’

‘Ah, Steak d’Anvil, my favourite.’
³

This Dr Hardthrasher seemed barely bothered by the mortal fraternal news, and his next words explained why.

‘I can’t say I’m surprised. He was always weak, Jeremiah. Weaker than a coward’s handshake, with a milksop’s heart and a cream-twit’s brain. No man at all. Whereas I, Dr Ratched Hardthrasher, am a man’s man.’ He stopped and wrinkled his brow in thought for a second. ‘No, I am selling myself short. I am a man’s man’s man.’

Now Mr Benevolent interjected: ‘Personally, I’ve always thought of you as a man’s man’s man’s man. You’re the most manny man I’ve ever met.’

‘Don’t be such a sycophant, Benevolent.’ Even my nasty guardian flinched at this large, cruel man’s verbal swipe. ‘Now, why are you here?’

‘I have come to collect Agnes Bin to take her away to be married.’

At this, I could barely restrain myself from leaping out of the ditch and yelling, ‘Mother!’ so I did not restrain myself and did just that.

‘Mother!’ I shouted, before strong hands grabbed me and hauled me back into the no-no, where I sat in embarrassed, nervous silence, acutely aware of having just behaved in a distinctly Harryish manner.

Had I got away with it? Or had either of the men seen me? For a few seconds I thought I had escaped their notice, but then: ‘Did you just see a giant rabbit?’ Mr Benevolent asked. Thanks to the remnants of my school-escaping disguise, at least he thought I was a rabbit and not a boy.

‘I did not,’ said Dr Hardthrasher. ‘Perhaps you imagined it. You may have caught a little dose of madness by being so close to the fruit-loops here.’
⁴

‘Maybe. But it said, “Mother”. I heard it.’

‘As your personal mind-straightener,
⁵
I know of your obsession with your mother and what she did to you. It is quite natural that any hallucination would say, “Mother”.’

Mr Benevolent looked sceptically at the doctor, but then his face relaxed into acceptance of the frankly dubious-sounding explanation. ‘You are wise as well as strong, Doctor. Like a weightlifting owl.’ Reliefy phew, I thought. ‘Perhaps to avoid further contagion it is best I take Agnes Bin and leave quickly.’

Alas, Pippa had clearly not learned from my own leapy-outy, shouty-mothery mistake because she now leaped from the ditch and yelled, ‘Mother!’ in a similar fashion to me, though in a higher voice and with less adolescent soon-to-be-man hair. Immediately and disastrously, Harry, too, leaped to his feet in sympathy and started yelling, ‘Mother! Not my mother! Her mother!’ while pointing at Pippa.

Aunt Lily and I quickly hauled them down, but the damage was done.

‘And now I can see a grandfather clock, and the late Admiral Nelson pointing at it!’ Mr Benevolent said, a tiny quiver of fear in his voice.

‘Such an authority figure pointing at a clock is clearly a manifestation of your desire to hurry away.’

‘Yes, of course. You are right, Doctor.’

Thank goodness for the disguises I had once derided! And Mr Benevolent’s credulity in the face of a scary man with a medical qualification.

‘I shall have her sent out. In the meantime, I must call the roll.’ The doctor now headed towards the shambling lunatics and lined them up. ‘When I call your name, answer nice and clearly.’

Though the protracted war against France was long over, there were still certain obsessions shared by the mad people of Britain, obsessions that now became obvious.

‘Napoleon?’ said the doctor.

‘Here,’ said one of the shambling dribblers.

‘Napoleon?’ repeated the doctor.

‘Here,’ answered another dribbling shambler.

‘Napoleon?’

‘Here.’ And now another.

‘Napoleon?’

‘Here.’ And another. Such unpatriotic lunacy these people showed, believing themselves to be a diminutive French dictator!

‘Napoleon?’

‘Here.’

The doctor stopped in his Napoleonic roll-call. ‘If you were really Napoleon, would you not speak French?’

The derangeatron stared at him, caught out by the medical logic. But then: ‘I meant . . .
ici
.’

The doctor, outmanoeuvred in the matter as if by the tiny military genius himself, sighed and continued with the next eighteen names, all of which were Napoleon, until he reached the end of his list with a satisfyingly different name. ‘And Wellington.’

At last, a patriotic loon! This was a fine bit of madnessing, thinking he was Britain’s greatest ever soldier. But his response did not sound brave, instead being tentative and tremulous.

‘Um . . . here.’

I immediately realized the reason for such tentativeness as the Napoleons instantly all shouted, ‘What? My nemesis? Here? Get him!’

Dozens of mad mock-Napoleons jumped on the wacky would-be Wellington, and a huge fight began. But then, amid the insanonaut carnage, silhouetted against the sky, I saw her: my mother.

She was calm, noble, beautiful.

And obviously still bonkers-omatic, as she talked madly to no one, arms waving crazily, a banana in each ear and what seemed to be a toast-rack on her head – she obviously still believed she was a tablecloth.

Pippa had seen her too, and now we held each other tightly, the sight of our poor, deranged mama making us both happy and simultaneously sad, a bittersweet feeling, like an emotional kumquat.

Two asylum orderlies carried her to Mr Benevolent’s carriage, then threw her inside and slammed the door after her.

‘And so to be married. Ha, ha, ha!’ My naughty guardian now climbed up beside the driver, who cracked his whip hard, lurching the carriage into motion.

‘We must stop him!’ I shouted, and, springing from the ditch like a scalded greyhound that had sat on a thistle, I raced to the centre of the driveway and stood in the path of the accelerating carriage, causing the coachman to haul on the reins and drag it to a stone-scattering, hoof-skittering halt in front of me.

‘Why have you stopped for an imaginary rabbit?’ Mr Benevolent demanded of the driver.

‘I am neither imaginary nor rabbit,’ I said, stripping off my rabbity disguise to reveal that beneath it I was me.

‘Pip Bin! Still alive! I thought you long dead by now.’ Mr Benevolent’s face was a mix of surprise and massive anger.

‘No. I am not long dead. In fact, I am long alive.’ ‘That’s not really a phrase.’

‘Phrase or not, it is what I am. And I am here to reclaim my mother.’ I put my hands on my hips, narrowed my eyes and pulled a heroic face.

It did not get the reaction I had hoped for.

I’d been hoping for at best a complete surrender, with Mr Benevolent handing my mother over and possibly even crying a bit, and at worst him looking a bit scared and agreeing to discuss the matter.

Instead he laughed.

‘Ha, ha, ha!’ he went. Then again: ‘Ha, ha, ha!’ And again: ‘Ha, ha, ha!’

The mere repeated use of the letters
h
and
a
does not convey the Benevolent malevolence contained in the laughter; if only there were some way of recording his laugh and playing it through a device so that you, dear reader, might not imagine it but actually hear it – but, sadly, that is totally impossible and always will be.
⁶
Suffice to say it was nasty, bullying, superior laughter with an almost physical effect.

I felt my cheeks reddening with humiliation.

Still he laughed. My heroic face was starting to crumple into a miserable one. The laughter went on, and now my hands left my hips and swung awkwardly at my sides. He continued laughing, and though my eyes remained narrowed, it was now less with manly determination and more with trying not to cry.

Finally he finished, his cruel mockery having stripped me of all vestiges of any manliness I had thought to own.

‘Reclaim your mother? I don’t think so. And as for being “long alive”. . .’ here he paused for one dismissive ‘ha’ that made me feel more cowed than a browbeaten toddler or a badly teased heifer ‘. . . I don’t think that’s a state you’ll remain in for long.’

He now seized the reins and whip from the coachman, snapped one and cracked the other, and the horses charged straight at me. There was no time to move before their equine bulk met my boyish slightness, and as I fell to the ground all was suddenly thundering hoofs and the knowledge of imminent, horse-footed, carriage-wheeled death.

¹
Where a ha-ha is a ditch to keep animals out of property, a no-no is designed to keep inferior classes of people out of posh people’s gardens.

²
Rural roads followed old, traditional tracks and were notoriously indirect. One lane in Dorset linking the two villages of Here-be-Here and There-be-There was nearly forty-seven miles long, despite the villages being only five hundred yards apart geographically.

³
In hard economic times many blacksmiths doubled as restaurateurs, and would forge steaks from bits of highly heated cow, bashing them into shape and simultaneously tenderizing them on an anvil.

⁴
The germ theory of madness was widely held until the mid-twentieth century, doctors believing it was passed on by the insanefluenza virus.

⁵
Nineteenth-century term for psychiatrist. Also used were brain-bender, thought-masseur and de-mentalizer.

⁶
Sir Philip was wrong: six months after he wrote those words, the first wireless laughtergraph system was invented.

Oh, glorious hoof ballet! Oh, wondrous horsy dance! Oh, majestic equine prestipeditation that let me survive! For, despite Mr Benevolent’s murderous intent, the gracious muse Terpsichore
¹
didst surely inspire the horses to daintily trot past and round my frail human body, sparing me from injury or death.