Bleak Expectations (4 page)

My sisters wept, too, great gusty sobs of grief echoing round the room, the floor slickening with salty tears. But there was another sound as well, a sound not in character with the moment: it was the sound of laughter.

I looked up, and there, framed in the doorway like a malicious painting, stood Mr Gently Benevolent. It was his laughter. How could he find this funny? Perhaps he did not: perhaps this was merely a gentleman repressing his emotions so deeply that they came out the other side in an opposite fashion. His words, however, dispelled that idea, like fog in a furnace.

‘I do enjoy being the bearer of bad news. Pain is so . . . nourishing. Weep, Bin family, weep. For Thomas Bin is dead and today is a glorious day!’

Now my shivering and crying ebbed as rage engulfed me, hot and red like a cross tomato. My young fists clenched and I rose to my feet . . . but grief had weakened my heart and immediately the dizzy reality of the situation made my vision go grey and my legs buckle. I collapsed into unconsciousness, the last sounds I heard being Benevolent’s mocking laughter and my own voice repeating over and over again, ‘Father . . . Father . . . Father . . .’
³

¹
One of a series of popular terms of acclamation ranging from ‘capital chap’ through ‘provincial-city chap’, ‘market-town chap’ and ‘really-rather pleasant village chap’, all the way down to the frankly insulting ‘couple-of-cottages-on-a-bend-in-the-road chap’ and ‘that man is a total hamlet’.

²
There is no evidence that such an animal ever existed. The most likely explanation is that over the years Poppy’s puppy was repeatedly kidnapped and replaced with a smaller dog as some kind of elaborate practical joke. In those days rural British life was incredibly dull and people would do anything to break up the tedium.

³
Sad, isn’t it?

My childhood until this point had been a perfectly knitted sweater of joy; now, caught on a rusted nail of misery, it began to unravel at speed.

My mother was driven mad with grief and retreated to a cupboard, where she sat wrapped in wretchedness and swaddled in sorrow. After several mother-cupboarded days, I approached, determined to persuade her out. The door opened with a squeak – though whether that was the sound of unoiled hinges or my mother’s anguish within was hard to tell.

‘Mama . . .’

There came no response.

‘Mama, please . . .’

There came still no response.

‘Mama, please . . . You have been in this cupboard for five days now.’

Response there came now some.

‘That is because this is the linen cupboard, and I am a piece of linen.’

I could not let this falsehood go unchallenged. ‘You are not a piece of linen! You are my mother!’

‘Fie upon you, sir. I am not your mother! For I am a prettily patterned tablecloth, and my children are all naughty little napkins!’

‘Mama, no, I am not a napkin, I am your son, Pip . . .’

‘Pip? I see no Pips!’ She covered her eyes with her hand and turned her head away from me. ‘Now run along, child, for I am awaiting the return of my husband. He’s a terribly dashing double-pleated curtain.’

‘But, Mama!’ I protested. ‘Papa is dead!’

‘I know. I may have quite a wait! Ha ha ha! Ha ha ha ha!’

Her laugh was not that of a sane woman. Indeed, it was that of a mad one. High-pitched and falsely ecstatic, each ‘ha’ was like a hyena-wielded dagger to my tender young heart. I could face it no more, and slammed the cupboard door.

‘Ha ha ha! Ha ha – ow!’

I had inadvertently trapped my mother’s finger in the door. It caused her but brief pause, however, and the soul-piercing laugh soon resumed, its awful sound echoing in my ears as I fled.

The rooms and corridors of our home, once so full of joy and laughter, were now full of only pain and sadness. There was no bollibling, only woement and cryification. We played no games, sang no songs, danced no merry jigs, except ironically.

Poppy had Mr Humswell teach her the saddest note he knew and she played it repeatedly on the pianoforte, bleakly striking B-miserable over and over with a grief-stricken finger. Pippa set aside her anvil – she said that striking it was too much like striking the memory of Father – and donned a bright green and purple mourning dress.
¹
For my own
part I
decided that, now I was the man of the house, I should show no childish tears and bottled every emotion inside myself, like sad sherry.

Mr Parsimonious visited, but even his gifts of nine kinds of rare orchid, some salmon, a stained-glass representation of the battle of Agincourt, two dozen crystal wren’s eggs and a funny sculpture of a bottom offered no grief-relief. Alas, accompanying him was Mr Benevolent, whose presence saddened us further.

‘A dashed-darn idiot, your father, and now he’s dead. No loss, really.’

‘It is a loss to us, sir,’ Pippa said. Poppy and I nodded our agreement.

‘Cowards, eh?’ Benevolent sneered, showing all the empathy of a malicious stone.

He may have been odious – in fact he definitely was – but he could at least answer something that nagged at me. I gulped like a nervous heron and asked, ‘Please, sir, you were with our father in the Indies. How did he meet his end?’

A part of me did not want to know; another part needed to know; a third part could have gone either way.

‘Very well. I shall tell you.’ His dark eyes gleamed with delight at the dead-fathery news he was about to impart. ‘Your father had created a hotel in the Indies made entirely from monkeys.’

This unexpected building material startled Poppy. ‘Sorry . . . Did you say monkeys?’

‘I did. He trained them to stand on each other’s shoulders, binding themselves together to form a rigid but flexible framework. It was a triumph, this monkey hotel. People came from miles to stay in it. And then . . . someone opened up a factory right next door.’ He shook his head, as if this was the most regrettable and terrible thing anyone had ever done.

‘What sort of factory?’ I asked.

‘A peanut and banana factory. The monkeys went berserk and tore your father limb from limb.’

I was astounded. ‘But . . . but who would do such a stupid and evil thing?’

‘No idea.’ Benevolent reached into his pocket and produced a bag of sweetmeats. ‘Anyone fancy a peanut and banana treat?’
²

I was too distraught to take one of his nutty, nana-y delights, my mind filled with the image of my father trying desperately to fight off crazed monkeys and failing even unto death. I felt a hand on my shoulder and looked up to see Mr Parsimonious, his face tight with tension, yet his eyes moist with empathy. Or some sort of eye condition.

‘Dear Pip . . . I am sorry . . .’ It was empathy, not eye condition.

‘Parsimonious, stop being weak.’ Benevolent’s voice acted like a scald to Mr Parsimonious’s hand, and he swiftly withdrew it. ‘There is business to attend to.’

‘What business?’ I asked.

‘First, the question of your mother. And the answer to that question is: an asylum.’

Benevolent clapped his hands and two burly men entered, three, if you counted one of them twice. They went to the linen cupboard, opened it, removed my mother and carried her from the room.

She struggled and cried out, ‘No! I can’t go to the asylum! I haven’t been ironed! And my napkin children are all stained with soup!’

Pippa, Poppy and I leaped forward to save her – but to no avail. Mr Benevolent seized us by the collar and all we could do as we were de-mothered was cry out in fear and frustration.

‘Mother!’

We wept; we sobbed; we tearified. Benevolent stared at us, his face a rictus of disdain. ‘Oh, don’t be so nauseatingly sentimental . . .’

There was but one person we could appeal to. ‘Mr Parsimonious: will you not stop this?’

Mr Parsimonious twitched with angst and guilt. Or it may have been a nervous condition. ‘I am afraid I can do nothing, a fact that makes me both guilty and angst-ridden.’ It was angst and guilt, not a nervous condition.

‘But why not?’

‘Because it is a matter of law, not conscience.’

‘If I may clarify . . .’ This comment came from the corner, where a bewigged and be-gowned figure had been standing silently all this time. It was my father’s lawyer, a man so distinguished that his name took fully twenty minutes to say. As a lawyer, he charged by the hour; his name was his greatest asset.

‘Please do clarify Mr Wickham Post Forberton Fenugreek Chasby Twistleton Montmorency Aurelius Pargordon Jezthisby Cumquatly Pobbleton Tendling . . . [text omitted]
³
. . . Beastworthy Fennelham Jones.’

‘It is quite simple. The estatelment of the deceased deady person including but not excluding or outcluding all chattels, listingtons, possessionaries and what we lawyers call “stuff” has devolved to the bequestified normally nominal nominee nommy-nommy-nom-nom. Nine shillings and sixpence, please.’ He always added his fee to the end of every sentence.

‘But, Mr Wickham—’

My father’s lawyer held up his hand to stop me. ‘Please. Given the circumstances we may dispense with formality. You may call me sir.
⁴
I shall, however, bill you for the entire name.’

‘Sir, I do not understand your lawyerly talk.’ How could I be expected to? I was barely seventeen: all I understood was horseplay and whittling.

‘It’s quite simple.’ My father’s lawyer took a deep breath, then proceeded to speak more quickly than any man I had previously heard. ‘Base fee, fee simple, habeas corpus,
res ipsa
,
ad hoc
, subtract
hoc
, divide
hoc
and drink hock, yummy. Yes? One guinea and half a crown, payable two weeks hence.’

I still did not understand, and let him know it in no uncertain terms or, to put it another way, in certain terms. ‘But that is just gibberish!’

Mr Parsimonious spoke soothingly. ‘No, it is the law. But close.’

‘Look, you little dimwit, it’s perfectly obvious.’ Mr Benevolent sighed as if I was the stupidest thing he had ever seen. ‘Your father’s will makes me your guardian. I control you, your sisters and all of your father’s money.’

‘Surely, as his heir, the control and money are mine.’

‘Not until you are eighteen. Which is, oh-so-unfortunately, some time away. In the meantime you are to go to boarding-school. And Poppy and Pippa will live with me until they are old enough to be married off or sold to high-class bordellos.’

At this, Poppy exclaimed loudly, ‘Never! I will never leave our home!’ She leaped up and ran from the room, out of the front door and thereby left our home, which was exactly what she had just said she would never do. Although I suspect when she had said ‘home’ she had actually meant to include the grounds as well, in which case as long as she didn’t run too far she was fine.

‘Let her run. It changes nothing.’

‘I shall go after her and talk with her.’ Mr Parsimonious stood and left, looking sadder than a penguin with a fish allergy.

‘I, too, must leave. I have a case in Chancery. A no-win, big-fee case. But before I go . . .’ My father’s lawyer approached me. ‘Your father was a close and dear friend to me, young Pip, and therefore I should like you to have this in his memory.’

He handed me a small parcel. I felt a lump forming in my throat, like undissolved flour in a badly made white sauce. This stern legal gentleman had a heart after all, it seemed. I started to open the parcel with trembling fingers.

‘What is it?’

‘My invoice.’ I stopped opening the parcel with now angry fingers. ‘Good day.’

He swept his gown behind him and left. Now it was just Pippa and I . . . and Mr Benevolent, who sneered at us sneerily and disdained at us disdainfully. ‘Right, time for boarding-school, young man.’

‘Already? But that is . . .’ I realized I did not know what that was. I think I thought it was awful; I’m pretty sure I thought it was terrifying; I definitely didn’t think it was super or lovely or beezer.

‘So why don’t you and Pippa say goodbye to each other? After all, you will never see each other again.’

‘What?’

‘Er . . . I mean, not for a while. It was a perfectly innocent slip of the murder – I mean tongue.’ Benevolent looked at us for a second. ‘Oh, just say goodbye and be quick about it.’

I approached Pippa, tears in my eyes. She approached me, her eyes also glistening. In fact, I had sort of assumed that I would do all the approaching and that she would stand still and wait, so her simultaneous approach caught me a little bit by surprise and we awkwardly bumped into each other. We both took a step backwards, which left us a little too far apart for a proper farewell, then finally shuffled close enough to say goodbye.

‘So, dearest sister mine . . .’

‘Yeah, whatever.’ Mr Benevolent grabbed me and started dragging me towards the door. ‘Goodbye, Pippa, goodbye, Pip, goodbye, house, goodbye, everything.’

I could hear Pippa weeping as he dragged me roughly out of the house. Poppy was nowhere to be seen, so I could not even have the briefest of farewells with her. Outside was a waiting carriage, two broad, snorty horses pawing the ground impatiently in front of it and on top a coachman with a cruel, meaty face, a greasy, high-collared coat and a long, fierce whip that he cracked in my direction.

Mr Benevolent hurled me inside, slammed the door and the carriage was away, the horses pounding down the drive, the coachman yelling and whipping and driving. I tried the door: it was locked. With no windows to open or smash, I was trapped. I pounded on the carriage walls, but no response came from the coachman, and as my new-found prison lurched from side to side on its breakneck rush, fear gripped me like an angry boa constrictor and I worried I would never see my home again.

¹
In 1817 George III, the famous Mental Monarch or Krazy King, madly attended a funeral in bright green and purple robes instead of the traditional black. Rather than embarrass the King, people pretended it was a fantastic idea and adopted it as a country-wide custom. Not until some years later was black reinstated as the official colour of mourning.