Bleak Expectations (7 page)

‘But that is the size of a small cow. Or a medium-sized pony. Maybe a jolly fat uncle, or eight quite big sheep.’

‘Yes! I know!’ Where his offended tone had come from, I knew not. ‘But a few months of this place and I’ve slimmed down to the perfect size for my age.’

‘Indeed you have, Harry Biscuit.’ In truth, I was being kind, for he still had the heft of perhaps a Christmas pig or a big-boned Shetland pony. But beneath his massiness, I sensed a soul of profound gentleness, decency and strength, with a hint of courage, a
soupçon
of determination and a good dollop of honesty, the whole seasoned with the salt of good humour and the pepper of daring. ‘And indeed I shall help you escape from this place.’

‘Good man! Start planning, Pip Bin, start planning.’

‘I shall, Harry Biscuit, I shall.’

I sensed at once that I had made a lifelong friend; the only question was, how long would that life be? I lay awake pondering plans, the certainty settling over me, like a steadfast blanket, that our escape should be made as soon as possible; and events the next day meant our escape became even more imperative, or imperativer.
¹⁰

⁴
This number is not supposed to represent a footnote, it is meant to represent
y
raised to the power of four.

¹
Sounds a bit like an owl, doesn’t it? Also note that because of all the beatings they received, the boys would have been nice and tender. For further reading into nineteenth-century Public School Cannibalism, see Dr François Gourmand’s
Gnawing and Knowledge: the nineteenth-century pupil as ingredient
(OUP, 1987).

²
Bastardball was banned for good in 1853 after a particularly nasty international match in Sevastopol between Britain and Russia. By half-time the game was horrifically out of hand, and by full-time it had turned into the Crimean War.

³
Like crumpets, but made from beef.

⁴
A potato scone stuffed with raisins and dripping. Famously repulsive. Not to be confused with Spadlington Gorns, a contemporary brand of fried trouser.

⁵
A preserve-filled puff-pastry casing in the shape of a dog.

⁶
Trindlies were a type of goobersham.

⁷
Goobershams were a type of trindly.

⁸
Cheese.

⁹
A bad anachronism, as the events of this book take place between 1806 and 1827 and the term ‘dinosaur’ was not coined until 1842, the first actual Coincid-aurus Rex fossil not being discovered until 1865 in a Dorset chalk-pit, along with the Flukeryx and the Whatarethechancesofthathappening-atops.

¹⁰
Not a real word.

The next day was at least partially a Wednesday afternoon, and therefore time for artillery practice, in which the staff used the pupils as ammunition for the school howitzer.
¹
They had just dressed Chokesbury as a pigeon and fired him into a tree to roost and now it was my turn.

With his trademark subtlety and wit, the headmaster crammed me down the barrel and fired me directly into a wall. Dazed, I picked myself up and noticed that my impact had created a small crack in the wall; and through that crack came a familiar sound.

Tink, tink, tink! went the familiar sound, yet I could not place it.

Tink, tink, tink! it went again and, as my head cleared, I recognized it at last: it was the sound of a hammer striking an anvil. More specifically, it was the sound of the hammer and anvil belonging to my sister, Pippa. I pressed my mouth close to the crack in the wall.

‘Pippa, dear sister Pippa, is that you?

Tink, tink, ti— paused the hammer and anvil.

‘Pip? Dear brother Pip? Is that you?’

It was my sister Pippa! Either that or someone else who owned an anvil, sounded exactly like her, shared her name and also had a brother called Pip, who sounded exactly like me, in which case we could be about to embark on a rather awkward act of mistaken identity and concomitant grotesque social embarrassment. I quickly pressed my eye to the crack in the wall, and saw that it was indeed my sister Pippa! Or someone else owning an anvil, who sounded exactly like her, shared her name, had a brother called Pip, who sounded exactly like me and also looked exactly like her.

This, I decided, was unlikely.

‘It is I, dear sister! I recognized the sounds of your anvil!’

‘The only reminder I have of our dear papa . . .’ There followed a sigh so heart-rending that a nearby sparrow fell out of a tree and died of sadness.

‘But what are you doing here, my Pippa?’

‘I am trapped in this nunnery, St Bitch’s.’
²
Again she sighed, again an empathetic sparrow plunged to its death.

‘There is a nunnery next to our school?’ I was amazed that I had not known.

‘There is a school next to our nunnery?’ She was clearly equally amazed that she had equally not known.

‘Yes, it is the school Mr Benevolent sent me to. But why are you in a nunnery?’

She sighed forlornly again, a further sparrow died and the rest of the flock flew off into the sky to escape more death. Ah, how I wished I was a sparrow! Not one of the dead ones, obviously, but one of the ones that had escaped and now flew free and happy in the sky.

And then the entire flock was obliterated by another salvo of the school artillery and I stopped wishing I was a sparrow and turned my thoughts back to my sister.

‘I am in this nunnery because no sooner had Mr Benevolent taken me into his home than he accused me of trying to seduce him. He called me a Jezebel and a meretricious harlot, then sent me to live here until I am eighteen, at which point he will marry me.’

‘No! I will never let that happen!’ The thought of Mr Benevolent marrying my sister filled me with a sick foreboding and some strongly indignant rage.

‘Dear brother, if it is any consolation I think it is very unlikely to happen.’

‘Phew.’ The foreboding and rage left me like an unwelcome guest on a racehorse stung by a wasp, that is to say quickly, though without the whinnies of pain and shouts of fear that such a scenario would normally entail.

‘Alas, not phew. For tomorrow is Joan of Arc Day in our nunnery . . .’ She paused and sighed mournfully once more. There may have been no sparrows left to die of sadness, but a nearby field-mouse did shed a tear. ‘And I am to be Joan of Arc.’

‘Quite an honour.’

‘Yes. If you like being tied to a stake and burned to a crisp.’

‘No! I cannot find you again and then lose you so soon! Dear sister, I have made a friend here and together we are planning an escape. You will come with us!’

At my words it was as if I heard a church bell tolling in determined agreement with me, until I realized that it was not as if I heard a church bell tolling, I really actually did hear a church bell tolling.

‘Dear brother, that is the bell summoning us to mid-late-middle-of-the-central-bit-of-the-afternoon prayers . . . I must go. But before I do, take this.’

With a metallic scraping she pushed something through the crack in the wall.

‘A tiny lucky horseshoe!’

‘No, a normal-sized lucky pigeon-shoe. I fear we may need it.’

‘How thoughtful you are of the podiatric needs of the animal kingdom!’ Such a kind soul could not be abandoned, whether ’twere my sister or not; but as this kind soul resided in and indeed was my sister, it could be abandoned even less. ‘Do not worry, dear sister, I shall rescue you!’

But she was gone, away to her prayers. I hastened to find Harry Biscuit, thoughts and fears churning in my mind, like worried milk gradually coalescing into determined butter.

‘Harry! I have news!’

‘So do I, Pip Bin. What is yours?’

‘My sister is in a nunnery next to the school but tomorrow they are going to burn her at the stake! What is your news?’

‘The headmaster has moved my birthday forward by two months. I’m going to be eighteen tomorrow, and that means I’m going to die!’

This was news so dreadful it made all other news look good, even news that previously might have been seen as pretty bad.

Yet if before I had had strong purpose, now my purpose was stronger still. If my original purpose had been iron ore, which Pippa’s news had smelted into iron, Harry’s news was like a dose of alloy-forming carbon, hardening my iron purpose into steel. Added to my metallic strength of purpose now came a wave of determination, thrusting me forward in its briny embrace and depositing me on the beach of certainty. This school would not hold me and I would not wait for death to take me, like a scythe-bearing bully: if death did come, it would be on my terms, active and heroic, not passive and cowardly. I clenched my fists, steadied my stance and spoke loudly, clearly and, if I am honest, possibly a little too high-pitchedly to really convey the bravery and resolve I wished to exhibit.

‘No! I have already lost my mother and father,’ I squeaked. ‘I will not now lose my sister and best friend. Tomorrow we escape from St Bastard’s . . . or we die in the attempt!’

¹
Most nineteenth-century public schools had artillery in case the French ever invaded or the poor got uppity. Use of pupils as ammunition was unusual, however.

²
St Bitch is the patron saint of cats, girls’ sixth forms and writers with friends more successful than them. Again, it is impossible to trace an actual place of that name. The most likely candidates are St Miaow’s or the Abbey of Our Lady of the Sacred I’m Going to Scratch Your Eyes Out. The latter was where the Church sent only its finest female devotees, hence its nickname ‘Top Nun’.

Alas, we died in the attempt.

Or, at least, nearly so – or else what would the remainder of this book be other than a long litany of pages made blank by the author’s death many years ago? It would be a mightily short book, or perhaps a mightily long book with multiple pages devoid of ink, words, story, emotion, grammar, spelling misteaks and autobiographical anecdotage. Indeed, the last words of it would not be ‘Alas, we died in the attempt’ but instead ‘No, look out— Eurrggh!’ followed by acre upon voidy acre of this:

Trees would have been felled and paperized for naught, horses would have been boiled into book-glue for fun, not purpose, and print-setters would have lost their jobs through lack of print to set – though the publisher might have made a goodly saving on ink and, indeed, simultaneously created a new product, part book, part blank notebook, a literary-stationery hybrid that would surely have been both financially viable and vinancially fiable.
¹

I may have digressed a little. Let me now return to my life story.
²

Trapped as I was in Britain’s cruellest school, the question of how to escape was one with no easy answer, as opposed to questions such as ‘Would you like a brandy?’ or ‘What is the capital of France?’ to which the answers are clearly ‘Yes, please’ and ‘Who cares?’

Then how lucky it was that my new-found best friend and chum-us maximus Harry Biscuit should have had plans for an escape, indeed plans he had already planned.

‘I have two plans, Pip Bin. Three if you count the third one as well, which I do.’

‘Four plans? But, Harry, that is brilliant!’ This announcement filled me with cheer, excitement and a funny giddy feeling I recognized as hope. Or an incipient inner-ear infection.

‘My first plan is for a new method of transportation, using highly trained geese and compressed air.
³
Look, here is my blueprint . . .’ He unfolded a sheet of paper with the word ‘Geese?????’ scribbled in blue crayon, followed by the word ‘air’.

I began to leak cheer, excitement and hope, like a sad balloon or cracked joy-bottle, and it started to form a large puddle of disappointment at my feet. Yet Harry happily ploughed plannily on.

‘My second plan is for a new restaurant where you dine on raw fish brought to your table by a system of continuously moving belts.
⁴
Good, eh?’

He said this with such delighted aplomb that I felt guilty at the strong desire arising within me to punch him for his plan-uselessness. Somehow I punched him not and merely asked, ‘But, Harry, how will these plans help us escape?’

‘Well, I reckon either of them could make us enough money to bribe our way out of here with ease.’

‘By tomorrow morning?’

‘No. Hence my third plan.’

I clenched my fists in preparation for a physical assault on his next batch of uselessness.

‘A large mechanical swan on which we may fly free from the school and soar to safety.’

My fists unclenched – this sounded like a plan that had legs and, more importantly, wings. Harry moved to a sheet covering an object in the corner of the room and, with a flourish, removed it – revealing not a mechanical swan to safety but a bare table.

‘I shall build it on this. All I need is a forge, a small lathe, a plan of a mechanical swan and a large quantity of iron – and then for that iron to be lighter than air. But given those, we shall be free!’

‘Aaaaaarrrrgggh!’ I said.

‘I knew you’d like it,’ replied Harry.

Reader, I punched him.

Only lightly, for he was my best friend and best friends never punch each other with full force lest best friends they be no more or lest they hurt their knuckles. If the truth be known, my punchiness was not entirely caused by Harry’s nonsensical plans, rather by frustration at the dreadful circumstances in which I found myself. Alas, circumstances have no nose, and Harry did.

‘Harry, forgive me . . .’

‘No need for forgiveness, Pip Bin! Indeed, I am grateful. For my nose was a little blocked, and your punch has dislodged the phlegmy obstacle so I can breathe clearly again! Or, at least, I will be able to do so once the swelling has gone down.’