Book Read Free

Bleak Expectations

Page 5

by Mark Evans


  Oh, and the ball wasn’t actually a ball: it was the youngest boy in the school.

  Each team was divided into five groups: the kickers, whose job it was to kick the ball; the hitters, whose job it was to hit the ball; the punchers, whose job it was to punch the ball; and the pitchforkers and shooters, whose job it was to pitchfork and shoot as many of the opposition as possible. Or pitchfork and shoot the ball.

  The youngest boy in the school was unlucky indeed.2

  The risks were not just as I have described above: in the mêlée, boys would again try to eat each other. To this day my elbow bears the scars of a desperate gnaw from Spindlesham minor. Indeed, I would have lost the entire arm to him had he not been distracted by Westington taking a huge bite out of his foot. Yet no boy bore ill-will to any other boy for an attempted eating: each part of you that was consumed was a part that could no longer hurt.

  The school’s mortality rate was horrific. It seemed to me just a natural consequence of the barbaric curriculum and lax approach to pastoral care; I suspected no actual machinations or scheming in the daily casualty lists. But that thought was driven from my mind one night. It may have been a night of horrible discovery, but it was also the night my life was lit up by the tiny bit of hope I mentioned in the chapter heading.

  At the time, the dormitory was in shock. Earlier, Nesterton had been crying because he was homesick, so the headmaster had come in and beaten him. The beating had made Nesterton cry even more, so the headmaster had beaten him again, and Nesterton hadn’t been able to stop crying so eventually the headmaster had taken him out and shot him. The shooting had proved a protracted process, for the headmaster had provided a blindfold. Alas, the blindfold was for him, not Nesterton, and it had taken him at least fifty-eight shots finally to strike lethally.

  With Nesterton’s tears still echoing in my ears and, worse, his sigh of relief as the fatal shot had struck home, I became aware that another of the boys was now approaching me.

  ‘Psst! Are you still awake, New Bug?’ It was a voice I did not recognize. This was hardly surprising: few of the pupils had the strength to speak.

  ‘Yes, I am awake. Who are you?’

  His face came closer, as did the rest of him – had it not, it would have been strange indeed. He was a boy of about my age, with a curled mop of hair and features that instantly suggested good humour and jollity.

  ‘The name’s Biscuit. Harry Biscuit. What’s your name?’

  ‘Pip. Pip Bin.’

  His good-humoured face furrowed in thought. ‘Pip Bin, eh? Pip Bin . . .’ He was thinking hard indeed. ‘Pip . . . Bin . . . Pip Bin . . .’ He mused on, rolling my name around his mouth experimentally. ‘Pip Bin . . . hmmm . . . Pip Bin . . . Pip . . . Bin . . .’ His face unfurrowed as some conclusion was evidently reached. ‘Pip Bin . . .’ Or reached yet not. ‘Pip Bin . . . Pip Bin, eh? Then I shall call you . . . Pip Bin.’

  ‘Oh.’ It seemed a poor conclusion for such long deliberation.

  ‘For if a nickname you are to have, then it is best if it is the same as your normal name, for otherwise correspondence may go astray.’

  I nodded, as this did indeed make sense.

  ‘May I ask what brings you to St Bastard’s, Pip Bin?’

  I did not mind telling him and told him by telling him. ‘After my father died, my mother went insane . . . and my guardian sent me here.’

  ‘Ah! A familiar story. Exactly the same happened to me. And to Beastleham, Frobisher and Dribblington minor. In fact, every boy at the school has a father who has died, a mother who has gone insane and a guardian who has sent them here. I don’t suppose you’re set to inherit a lot of money when you come of age?’

  ‘As a matter of fact, yes, I am.’

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘You’re not—’ But I could not complete my sentence before he interrupted.

  ‘Yup, I’m Harry Biscuit of the Warwickshire Biscuits.’

  ‘Then your father invented the biscuit!’ I knew the name had sounded familiar. This was the son of the man who had finally given the nation something to eat while drinking tea. Other than cake. Or scones. Or muffins, pikelets, crumpets, bumpets,3 warm fat Yorkshire rascals, cold thin Lancashire scamps, Spudlington garns,4 roast lamb, trifle, tarts, flans, scoopies, jam spaniels,5 pasties, trindlies,6 goobershams7 and cheese.8

  ‘He did. And there’s a lot of money in biscuits. It seems to me that this is a school for rich boys with no dad, a mad mum and a lot of money in trust. Now, let me ask you a question, Pip Bin: how long do you think you’ll be at this beastly place?’

  ‘Well, until I’m eighteen, I suppose.’ I assumed that, at that point, I would legally inherit my father’s wealth and proceed to live a life of high-class luxury. But this Harry Biscuit soon disabused me of that notion.

  ‘Wrong!’ He seemed to invest this single word with great joy at my lack of correctitude. ‘You see, Pip Bin, no one has ever left this school alive. No one. Apart from one boy, and he was dead.’

  ‘But that’s ridiculous! I know the school is dangerous but . . .’

  ‘But nothing. If anyone ever survives to the age of eighteen, wallop – that’s their lot. Think back on what you’ve seen while you’ve been here . . .’

  Lying there in the darkness, I considered everything I had seen in the past weeks and realized that Harry Biscuit was right. On Thogglesden-Barclay’s eighteenth birthday the headmaster had reported the tragic news that his birthday cake had exploded inside him. When Pistleton turned eighteen, the headmaster had bought him a birthday present and, seeing as it was his eighteenth birthday and he was to become a man, he had thematically bought him a man-trap. Alas, the man it had trapped was Pistleton himself, killing him instantly. Beasley’s eighteenth-birthday treat had been a trip to a cannon factory; all that had returned had been a bucket of what was left of him. Grobisher had had an eighteenth-birthday fight with a tiger and lost; and Ffffffffffffforbes-Twangle had died when his giant iron birthday card in the shape of the number eighteen had accidentally toppled on him after the headmaster had given it a good shove. All dead, and all on their eighteenth birthday; yet I could not believe it was deliberate.

  ‘But . . . it could just be coincidence,’ I protested.

  ‘If it is, it’s one so big it’s a Coincid-aurus Rex.’9

  That was indeed a large and terrifying coincidence.

  ‘The thing is, Pip Bin, I turn eighteen in two months and I don’t want to die. So I’m going to need your help to escape.’

  ‘Me? Why me?’

  ‘Look at all the others . . . too weak and feeble to do anything.’ He gestured around the dormitory. He was right. The grinding effects of the school’s hideous regime had weakened nearly all the boys to a point at which they could barely carry their own bodies about the place, let alone escape. ‘But you, Pip Bin . . . you’re still strong.’

  Again, he was right. I was weakening fast, but as yet I still had some of my youthful vigour and strength. As, it seemed, did this Harry Biscuit. He was far and away the most robust boy in the school, stout and ruddy-cheeked, oozing sap and brio.

  ‘How come you’re still strong, Harry Biscuit?’

  He coughed awkwardly. ‘Because when I arrived here I weighed . . . four hundred and seventy-eight pounds.’

  ‘That is quite a lot.’

  ‘Well, when you’re the son of a big biscuit magnate, there are lots of free biscuits lying around . . . It happens.’

  ‘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 determ
ination 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.

  CHAPTER THE SEVENTH

  A wall-based incident changes things

  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 her
oic, 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’.

  PART THE TWOTH

  CHAPTER THE EIGHTH

  An unexpected aid-provider providentially provides aid

  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

 

‹ Prev