Bleak Expectations (23 page)

I quickly decided that we must all find jobs, but the question was, of what kind?

‘Is there money to be made by being pretty?’ asked Pippa, over breakfast one morning.

At this, Mr Parsimonious and Harry coughed awkwardly and seemed to find something incredibly interesting to stare at in their porridge.

‘There is, dear sister. Sadly, I fear not in a wholesome way. Indeed, possibly only in a distinctly dodgy way.’

‘As long as it made money . . .’

‘I forbid it!’ I slammed my hand on the table in a pretty darned manly man-of-the-family way.

‘Very well. Then I shall take up my anvil once more and manufacture footwear for the animals. I’m sure they will pay handsomely for shoes.’

I knew not of any animals that would do so, having neither the pockets to carry a wallet or purse, nor the opposable thumb to open one, but it was better than the unsavoury options open to her otherwise. ‘An excellent idea, dear sister. Once again Papa’s gift will aid us.’ Now I turned to Harry, slightly dreading what job he might have decided to do. ‘Harry Biscuit, what about you?’

‘Well, I have been keenly researching the job market and have made a decision.’ Could it be a sensible one by any chance? ‘Therefore I have decided to take to the music-hall stage with an act entitled “Harry Biscuit: The Human Swan”. Fame and fortune await!’

I had been right to dread the job he had chosen and wrong to hope that it might be a sensible one, but did not want to discourage him so merely said, ‘Well . . . good luck with that, Harry.’

‘Meanwhile I have decided to set up as a business adviser.’ This seemed rash from Mr Parsimonious, given his recent efforts in ruining me. ‘I shall offer people advice and then run after them, begging them to do the opposite of what I just said.’

That seemed much more sensible, though still mad.

‘What about you, Pip Bin? What are you going to do?’ asked Harry.

‘I have got the best idea of all of us. For I have decided that I shall become a best-selling novelist,’ I announced.

There was silence in the room – doubtless caused by admiration for my clever idea – until it was broken by Harry. ‘Is that going to make lots of money?’

‘Of course. Bound to. Loads of people do it. How hard can it be to write a novel?’

Again there was an awed silence at my cleverness so, taking advantage of it, I left the room and retreated to my study. Brimming with confidence, I sat down at my desk, quill pen in hand, blank sheet of paper before me, and began.

‘
Chapter One
,’ I wrote.

Instantly, my confidence fled and a wave of self-doubt assailed me: was that a good start? Should it be
Chapter Two
? Or a prologue? Or even a preface?

I scrumpled up the piece of paper and began again, this time deciding to leave chapter numbers, prologues and prefaces out of it and just get on with my story.

Now, what to put?

Aha!

‘It was the best of times . . . and so everyone was happy and jolly the end,’ I wrote. I read it back. Apart from being far too short for a novel, it was rubbish.

I scrumpled up that piece of paper also, and began again once more.

‘“I’m here for my papers,” said Mr Pickwick.’

Nonsense!

More scrumpling and I began again once more anew.

I scratched and scribbled and came up with: ‘How Ebenezer Scrooge hated Christmas . . .’

Gibberish! Who was this stupidly named Scrooge and why did he hate Christmas? How could anyone hate Christmas? Christmas was brilliant!

Scrumple; re-begin again once more anew afresh.

And so it went: write, scribble, scratch, read, scrumple, begin again.

Three days later, I was still unpublished and was also knee deep in discarded rubbish first pages of bad novels.

I was also exhausted, suffering from both writer’s cramp and block, and distinctly worried that the workhouse beckoned once more.

There was a knock at the door. It was Harry, who had brought me a restorative breakfast of brandy porridge and whisky toast. ‘Good morning, Pip Bin. How goes the novel writing?’

‘Badly, as you can see.’ I indicated the huge mass of scrumpled paper, which Harry was now wading through. ‘How did “Harry Biscuit: The Human Swan” go down at the music hall?’

‘Not so well, actually. I broke a man’s arm, and the King tried to eat me. Ow!’

‘What?’

‘I just got a paper cut from one of your discarded goes at a novel. Ow! And another one!’

‘Yes, it is both inconvenient and dangerous. But what can one do?’ I shrugged in rubbishy resignation. ‘There is simply no way to dispose of waste and detritus other than tossing it casually on to the floor or out of the window.’

For that was the case in those messy, pre-waste-disposal days. London suffered terribly as people dumped their rubbish wherever they could: it blocked the streets; it clogged the Thames; it filled the houses, turning them into slums and driving the inhabitants rubbish-mad; it cultivated disease, filth and rot; and huge piles of the stuff would regularly topple fatally on to innocent bystanders and passers-by – waste in general killed more people per year than tigers, and back then tigers killed loads.

We even had a slogan for it: rubbish is rubbish.

And, thanks to my pathetic attempts to write a book, my room was now full of it.

Then, as I considered the discarded paper around me, it happened, as I suddenly had a glimmer of the concept that changed everything and made my fame and fortune, an inkling that grew rapidly into a notion and then into a full-blown idea.

‘Hold on a second, Harry,’ I said, holding my head very still lest the developing thought fall out of my ear. ‘What about some sort of waste-disposal device, perhaps cylindrical, closed at the bottom, open at the top . . . into which you could put discarded paper or indeed rubbish of any variety? Yes, that could work. Though I’ll need a name for it . . .’

‘For what, Pip Bin?’

‘Of course! Harry, you’re a genius! I shall name it after myself and call it . . .’ Here I paused as if to allow Providence to turn her fate-y head and hear this word that would change the world. ‘The Piperator!’

‘Great name!’ Harry agreed, and with that I rushed to build my idea into a real, concrete thing, though obviously not actually made of concrete because it would be far too heavy for a start.

I rushed to Pippa’s room where she had been working at her anvil. As I entered, she had just finished affixing a pair of tiny metallic shoes to a pigeon’s feet and was now setting him free from the window.

‘There, my little feathered friend, fly free, your feet now protected from stuff!’

She released the pigeon and with a desperate pigeony coo it completely failed to fly, the weight of its new footwear instead sending it to a splatty death on the pavement below; but I cared not, for I was after the anvil.

‘Pippa! I need your anvil!’

‘You may not have it. For I am doing my good podiatric deeds on it.’

Try telling that to the recently deceased pigeon, I thought. But I said it not, instead instantly resorting to emotional blackmail. ‘Papa would definitely want me to use it for what I’m about to do.’

At this mention of our father, she could not resist and yielded the anvil to me with only a bit of a slappy brother-sister fight.

I worked at my Piperator day and night, hammering, shaping, forging and generally metal-working like a maniac. But a maniac with a plan. Within a week, my prototype was ready, and I invited Pippa, Harry and Mr Parsimonious to the unveiling.

‘Behold, the Piperator!’

‘Good grief! Why, that thing must be fully twenty feet high and six feet across.’

‘Well, new technology’s always quite big at first, but it’ll soon come down in size. Remember the first Spinning Jenny? It was the size of Manchester but now you can easily fit one into any ordinary ten-acre factory.’

They walked round it, admiring the great metallic waste-disposal unit.

‘Why doesn’t one of you try it out? Pippa?’

‘But how does it work?’ she asked.

‘Do you have anything you wish to discard?’

‘Why, yes. This apple core I have been carrying round for several months for want of anywhere to put it.’

‘Then simply climb the ladder and drop it in the top.’

She did as I said, hesitating momentarily before dropping the apple core inside, where it landed with a small, appley thud.

‘Oh!’ Pippa sounded surprised and delighted. ‘It seems so complicated at first, but actually it’s quite intuitive.’

‘What do you think, Mr Parsimonious?’ I was eager to hear his opinion.

This most generous of men frowned as if in distaste. ‘It is a terrible idea and will never catch on,’ he said.

‘That is marvellous news!’ Given his recent form of being exactly the opposite of right on everything, I was going to make a fortune.

‘Though the name “the Piperator” is excellent,’ he added.

This was not good news, for the same reason his previous poor opinion had been good news.

‘Right, I need a new name.’

‘How about the Disposathon 4000?’ suggested Harry.

‘Brilliant name!’ enthused Mr Parsimonious.

‘No!’ I shouted.

‘Lionel?’ re-suggested Harry.

‘Even better!’ re-enthused Mr Parsimonious.

‘Aaargh!’ I now said, despairing of ever finding the correct name.

‘I have an idea,’ said Pippa, quietly. ‘It should be named for our absent parents with our family name.’

‘The Bin? Hmm . . . Mr P?’

‘Dreadful name.’

‘Then the Bin it is. It shall go into production tomorrow. And one day I hope that there may be a Bin in every town in Britain!’

‘Harrumble for Pip Bin and his brilliant eponymous rubbish-disposal device!’ Harry now cheered, and I knew that the cheers were deserved and that by my invention I had saved my family.

I was wrong about my assumption that one day there would be a Bin in every town in Britain. For, thanks to those great twin drivers of the industrial revolution, science and child labour, the Bin was a success beyond my wildest imaginings.

It soon shrank in size to fit any domestic room and sales rocketed faster than a madman trying to reach the moon. They came in different colours and – perhaps my finest idea – a range of different sizes so that once one Bin was filled you could simply discard it in another, slightly larger, one.

Soon I was that richest of men, a thousand-aire.

But beyond that was the social capital I gained. For the Bin transformed conditions in Britain like nothing since the Black Death, only in a much more positive way, unless you were a rat, because they did really well in times of plague and less well when rubbish disappeared.

And it did disappear.

Before long houses were bigger from lack of rubbish; the roads of London were passable once more; and the Thames was restored to its former merely sewage-filled glory, for Sir Christopher Bagatelle’s amazing system of cleaning the sewers by firing a massive steel ball through them was yet to be invented.
¹

Disease rates dropped, life expectancy rose, and the capital smelt better than it had since the Lord Mayor’s ill-fated attempts in the previous century to spray its streets from huge perfume balloons.
²
I rapidly became not only Britain’s richest man but also its pre-eminent social improver, which led to invitations and requests from all sorts of people, not least of whom was King George IV.

Yes, the King himself invited me to the palace for a ball.

I, who had so recently been in the workhouse, now went to the palace as a rich, respected man. Pippa, Harry and Mr Parsimonious came with me, though they were much less rich and respected than I.

‘Oh, how glorious it is, like a fairytale!’ Pippa was right: the opulence was stunning and the waiting staff were dressed as fairies, all diaphanous wings and antennae on their foreheads . . . though, hang on, that would make them more butterflies than fairies so maybe Pippa was actually wrong.

Still, it was pretty spectacular.

The Royal Hall was enormous and packed with people, some of whom were dancing, some of whom were talking, some of whom were taking sexual advantage of their social inferiors. Above hung great chandeliers of crystal, and all around were tables groaning with platters of exotic foods, including rare fruits such as mango, womangone, pineapples, pineoranges, dragon fruit and scary plums. Then in the centre of the room was the crowning attraction, a champagne fountain created by a small whale, which was spraying great plumes of fizzy wine skywards through its blowhole.

‘I shall get us champagne!’ Mr Parsimonious rushed whale-wards, took some glasses from a table and began chasing after the champagne spray trying to fill them.

‘Oh, may I dance, dear brother Pip?’

‘Of course, Pippa.’ I offered my arm to my sister, assuming she wanted to dance with me, but instead she turned to Harry.

‘Harry Biscuit, will you dance with me?’

‘Me?’ Harry reddened with embarrassment. ‘Um . . . yes. I shall dance with you! Though I warn you, I am quite clumsy on the dance-floor.’ As if to prove his point he immediately smashed into a waiter bearing a laden tray, sending both tray and waiter flying. ‘Told you! Sorry – sorry, everyone!’

They made it to the dance-floor without further mishap, if you exclude the duchess Harry tripped up and the major-general he accidentally elbowed in the ribs, and began to dance.

As I watched them and, from the corner of my eye, saw Mr Parsimonious gleefully trying to catch the spraying champagne, I felt a feeling I hadn’t felt in a long time: happiness.

And then that happiness fled as I heard a familiar, unloved voice.

‘Pip Bin, how utterly undelightful it is to see you.’

You’ve probably already guessed, but I’ll tell you anyway: it was my evil ex-guardian Mr Gently Benevolent, as glowering and malicious as ever. I refused to rise to his unpleasant baiting, and decided to be polite to him instead. ‘Ah, Mr Benevolent. Good evening, sir.’

‘Good evening? “Good evening,” he says!’ His face contorted into a puckered grin of nastiness. ‘Let me tell you something, Pip Bin, your good evenings will not last if I have my way. One day soon I shall greet you by saying, “Bad evening,” and you will have no choice but to sadly shake your head and say, “Yes, yes, it is a bad evening, they all are now.” Ha, ha, ha!’