Bleak Expectations (14 page)

In a matter of seconds the carriage had passed over me and I was still alive. I was also filled with an intoxicating mix of fury and injustice, as if I had just downed a glass of angry, legally qualified gin, and I leaped to my feet in pursuit of Mr Benevolent.

‘No, Pip!’ It was Aunt Lily, reaching to try to stop me. ‘You cannot catch a coach and horses at full gallop!’

‘Watch me,’ I replied, as I sprang sprintily forward.

My legs were as strong as mighty oaks but much more flexible; my lungs were like huge bellows; my will was as of tempered steel. My feet skimmed the ground as lightly as one of those funny beetles that can walk on water,
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my velocity was so great that the countryside around me blurred like a rained-on watercolour painting and I was gaining on them. I could do this: I could catch them and save my mother. I knew I could!

And then I ran into a tree.

As the carriage rounded a bend my speed was too great to be able to turn in time and I skidded off into a nearby copse, striking a tree at full tilt.

Luckily, it was a young sapling, which bent springily to absorb my energy, thereby significantly lessening the impact.

Unluckily, it then rebounded to twang me straight into a fully grown oak, which had no such energy-absorbing springiness.

Ow.

Really, really ow.

Sweary, cursing ow.

And not only physical ow but also mental ow because I saw the carriage pulling away: I had not saved my mother.

‘Oh, bad luck, Pip Bin,’ said the ever-encouraging Harry. ‘I reckon you would have caught them if it hadn’t been for that tree.’

‘Come on, we can still prevent the marriage!’ Even tree-bruised and sapling-battered, I was not to be stopped.

‘Pursuit of your mother must wait.’ This unwelcome delaying interjection came from Aunt Lily. ‘We have to free the asylum inmates first.’

‘But they are just dribbling crazyators!’ With the dodgy moral clarity of youth I considered their mad lives worth far less than my mother’s.

‘Nevertheless, would you leave them in the care of that man?’

She pointed back towards the house where Dr Hardthrasher was lining the loons up for treatment; we could hear his prescriptions from where we stood.

‘Right, I’ve got a few theories I want to try out.’ He made a Napoleonic patient kneel in front of him, then picked up a cricket bat. ‘Let’s see if I can’t beat the madness out of you.’ He proceeded to play a series of violent cricket shots using the patient’s head as a ball. To give the doctor credit, his technique was excellent – head still, good foot movement, nice high elbow – but the results were awful: severe external damage to a head that was already damaged within.

‘Any good?’ asked the doctor, of the now unconscious patient. ‘Hard to tell. Right, next theory: can I burn the madness out of you?’ He wielded a can of fire-juice
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and advanced on a group of three nutters, who had been tied together and surrounded with kindling.

At these sights, I had to agree with Aunt Lily, for this was surely the nastiest man of medicine I had ever seen, a doctor who, when he spoke the Hippocratic oath, must have rewritten it to start with the words ‘First do lots of harm.’ I wondered who was the madder: the madman or the medical maniac who treated the madman.

It was clearly the latter.

He was a right old psycho, though the patients were all still tap-tap-curly-wurly cuckoo.
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Nevertheless, they did not deserve such a Hardthrashery fate and we moved to intervene as he finished sprinkling the inmates with the flammable liquid.

‘Right, it’s time for a loony inferno! Anyone got a light?’

‘No,’ said Aunt Lily, stepping forward. ‘But I have got a sword.’

To prove her point she now drew it and placed the tip against the doctor’s throat, but this did not frighten him in the least.

‘Ooh, is it one of those new light sabres?
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Spark it up and we’ll have flambéed crackers-brains all round!’

‘I don’t think so. Step away from the kindling, Doctor.’ He did so, emitting a small, disappointed whine, like a kitten that has just discovered it will grow up to be a cat and not a much nobler dog. ‘Children, free the maddoes.’

Pippa, Harry and I did just that and the crackpots wandered away, muttering Napoleonically. ‘
Austerlitz, c’était bon. Waterloo, c’était merde.
’

‘Now, what are we to do with you, Dr Hardthrasher?’ Aunt Lily asked.

‘You could let me go. I haven’t tested half of my theories yet. This new electricity thing seems ideal for treating madness. And I’d like to stick a straw too far up a patient’s nose and see if I can suck the insanity out of their brain.’

‘That’s not going to happen, Doctor. What shall we do, children?’

We discussed the matter briefly and decided that justice would be best served by leaving him at the mercy of his patients. On announcing this to them, they became less dribbly and much more focused, rushing to gather tools and materials, then quickly constructing a rudimentary guillotine and outfitting the doctor in a rather convincing Louis XVI costume they had run up.

Then, like the mad people they were, they ignored the razor-sharp blade on the guillotine and instead simply pushed the whole thing over on top of Dr Hardthrasher, who managed to shout, ‘You weak-minded, mock-Napoleonic, pseudo-imperial—’ before being crushed and emitting one final ‘splat’.

Oops.

We had hoped that they might show mercy, but they had not, and now I felt responsible in some large way for the deaths of both Hardthrasher brothers, a feeling of guilt that weighed heavily upon me.

Actually, I didn’t feel that bad – they had been a right pair of gits – and we merrily readied ourselves to set off in pursuit once more, with Pippa and Harry removing their clocky, admirally disguises, and Aunt Lily asking, ‘Where is the wedding to take place, Pip?’

‘In a local church, I suppose.’

‘Yes, but which one?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You don’t know?’

Now I noticed that my companions were all staring at me. An icicle of fear suddenly grew in my brain, instantly starting to melt and send chill drips of panic down my spine.

‘I sort of assumed you knew, Aunt Lily. You seem to know everything else.’

‘That’s the one thing I didn’t know. For some reason I thought Benevolent had told you.’

‘Well, not that I remember . . .’

‘Well, that’s it, then, game over,’ said Aunt Lily. She stalked off and sat in the grass nearby, head in hands, and with a cold, horrible certainty, I knew now we could not prevent Mr Benevolent marrying my mother and that all was lost.

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Greek muse of dance. Other muses included Thalia, muse of comedy, Sentimentalia, muse of greetings-card writers, Morethanmyjobsworthia, muse of security guards and petty bureaucrats, and Graham, muse of sensible names.

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He means either a water boatman, skim-daddy or windsurf louse.

³
Nineteenth-century term for petrol.

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Other phrases for madness at the time included bonk-bonk-twisty-wisty-chaffinch and knock-knock-bendy-wendy-parrot.

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With criminals often using ‘Got a light?’ to lure victims close for a mugging, a sword with a cigar lighter on the end was invented so you could offer a light from a safe distance. And with a sword in your hand.

All was frowns, sad shakes of the head and incipient tears, not least in myself. Had we come so far only to fail at the last?

But then my mind tingled with the tiny, tickly fingers of a memory trying to get my attention. ‘Wait a minute! Back at school Mr Benevolent gave me an invitation to the wedding!’

This re-energized Aunt Lily, who leaped eagerly to her feet. ‘Where is it?’

‘He ripped it up.’

‘Ah.’ De-energized, she once more sank down into the grass.

‘But before doing so, he showed it to me, albeit very briefly. Perhaps if I could remember what it said . . .’ I furrowed my brow in memory-thought. Nothing. I tried harder, pursing my lips and crinkling my eyes. Still nothing. I looked skywards, closed one eye and wiggled the tips of my ears. And still no – but wait! Now a mind-image floated before me, the invitation mentally coalescing until it was whole and readable before the eyes of my memory.

‘Well?’

‘It is at the church of RSVP!’ I said triumphantly. ‘No, hang on, that’s not right. I know! The church of St Reluctant!’

‘Of course! The patron saint of unwanted weddings.’ Aunt Lily quickly unfolded a map. ‘This is an ecclesiastical map of Great Britain. Every church is marked.’ She traced her finger across the paper and stopped. ‘There! It is but a few miles from here.’ Now, looking alternately at the map and the countryside around us, she rotated a half-circle round, then stopped and pointed. ‘And what remarkable luck – you can see the steeple from here. That way!’

But we had barely taken a step in the direction she had indicated when a strange occurrence occurred, as occurrences are wont to do. Ahead of us lay a shrubbery that bordered the adjoining property, and as we stepped forward, so did one of the bushes therein.

‘Aarggh!’ yelped Harry. ‘A walking rhododendron!’

‘Nonsense,’ I corrected him. ‘It is not a rhododendron. It is an azalea.’

‘No, it is neither,’ said Aunt Lily. ‘It is a person disguised as such.’

I looked closer within the foliage where I could discern human features: an eye here, a leg there, possibly a chin, two arms and a mouth – and luckily not in that order or it would have been a freakazoidal sight indeed.

It was Pippa who first joined the limbs and features into a correct and, indeed, recognizable order. ‘Poppy? Dear sister Poppy, is that you?’

Now the ambulant shrub spoke, and with Poppy’s voice. ‘Pippa? Beloved sister Pippa? And dear brother Pip?’

I was a bit miffed that I was merely dear Pip while Pippa was beloved, but I set aside the sibling league table of affection and simply rushed to embrace her in a hug, as did Pippa.

‘Oh, joy!’ said Poppy. ‘I have been living wild in the countryside these past weeks, disguised as a rhododendron.’

‘Told you,’ interjected Harry, smugly, so I flicked him with one of Poppy’s twigs. ‘Ow.’

‘You said that you would never leave our home, and you have not!’

‘Indeed not. All this time I hoped you would return and now you have and we three siblings are reunited! Poppy, Pippa and Pip!’

‘Pippa, Poppy and Pip,’ Pippa echoed.

‘Pip, Pippa and Poppy,’ I, too, chimed.

‘And Parry Piscuit!’ Harry tried to join in, failing miserably. We stared at him. ‘Sorry, just feeling a bit left out.’

‘Poppy, this is my new best friend, Harry Biscuit,’ I introduced, hoping to make him feel more left in.

‘How do you do, the second Miss Bin?’ Harry said, blushing much less than when he had met Pippa – perhaps he was getting used to girls.

‘And, Poppy, this is—’

‘Aunt Lily, yes, I know,’ said Poppy, astounding me, for if neither Pippa nor I had ever heard of Aunt Lily until recently, how had Poppy? ‘Mama used to sing us songs about brave Aunt Lily fighting foreigners.’

Pippa and I looked at each other, bemused. I did not remember this and clearly neither did she. ‘But—’

‘You two never used to listen properly to poor Mama. But I did, which is why I am her favourite child.’

Oh, well, this was fine news! Apparently Poppy was Mama’s favourite child. After the recent ‘beloved’ and ‘dear’ sibling incident, it turned out I was now way down the filial affection league as well. But I clamped down on my jealous feelings, for rescuing Mama was the priority, not laying the highest claim to her affection. Though secretly I thought that if we did rescue her and I could somehow claim all the credit for it, I might yet make myself top child.

‘Anyway, it’s really great to meet you at last, Aunt Lily. Your adventures sound amazing! I wish my life was that exciting.’

Aunt Lily surveyed her leafy niece, then pronounced, ‘That is a fine rhododendron disguise. Your skills at blendy-in-ness do you credit.
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Skills you might perhaps one day use in the Secret Service.’

‘Ooh, that sounds fun. I’d like that,’ Poppy said.

‘We’ll see. But, first, let us rescue your mother!’

As if to underscore the seriousness of our mission, a peal of thunder now tolled across the sky, like the angry flatulence of a weather-god; perhaps today Zeus had eaten of the baked beans of Fate.

Aunt Lily pointed at the dark clouds that had gathered above us like a flock of rain-bearing black sheep. ‘If it rains, it will aid us, for it will turn the rough country roads to mud and slow Benevolent’s carriage.’

‘Then let it rain!’ I imprecated the skies, and they answered with a pit-pat of pluvial drops.

‘Harrumble!’ shouted Harry. ‘Pip Bin can control the weather! Can you make it snow next, please? I love snow.’

‘No, Harry. For it was not divine power, it was merely the chance confluence of my words with the enhanced statistical likelihood of precipitation in the presence of heavy black clouds,’ I explained.

‘That’s near enough for me, Pip Bin, O rain-master.’

I shook my head in fond despair at my enthusiastic but brain-limited friend, and we re-commenced our maternal pursuit.

We had been going barely a minute when Harry asked, ‘Are we there yet?’

‘No, Harry,’ we replied in unison.

‘Oh.’ He sighed in return. ‘Then could someone else please carry the anvil for a while? It’s really hurting my arms. I think it may have stretched them a bit as well.’

He had been carrying Pippa’s anvil for a long time, and indeed his hands did now seem to swing ape-like around his knees.

‘Can’t we just leave it?’ Aunt Lily and I asked simultaneously.

‘No,’ insisted Pippa. ‘It has proved both useful and lucky so far. Pip, why don’t you carry it?’

‘But . . .’

‘Oh, Pip, yes, you must carry Papa’s anvilly Pippa-gift!’ Now Poppy was on Pippa’s side there was no choice: if two sisters jointly asked a brother to do something he was legally bound to obey.
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