Bleak Expectations

by Mark Evans

  Dearest brother Pip,

  I heard about the court case against Mr Trashcan. What a horrid man he sounds! And for you to be condemned to death is so unjust. To set that injustice to rights, I therefore wrote to Mr Trashcan asking if there was anything I could do which would see him drop the charges with posterity and thereby free you.

  He said there was.

  Oh, Pip! I can hardly write this, but must. For he said if I agreed to marry him then he would ensure that you were freed.

  In consequence, I have agreed to the marriage. So that you might be free. Doubtless it will be hideous, and every time his rough American hands come near my soft English bosom I shall shudder, and not in a good way, but if it saves you from death, it must be done.

  Your ever-loving sister,

  Pippa

  The letter fell from my trembling fingers and fluttered to the floor – though given the gravity of the news it bore it should have plummeted.

  ‘But – but this cannot be!’

  ‘Oh, it can and will be. Tomorrow she will marry Mr Harlan J. Trashcan, and the instant the deed is done it’s wig off, beard begone and goodbye accent, and she will realize who she has truly married. Me. Your worst enemy. Shacked up with your sister. For ever! Nee-yah, ha, ha, ha!’

  Truly his new laugh was a despicable thing, like being verbally shot, stabbed and punched simultaneously.

  ‘But at least I shall be free!’ It was a small comfort to me, but better than none.

  ‘No, you won’t. Because as she is saying, “I will,” you will be saying, “That rope’s awfully tight – eeeeurrrrfgggh.”’

  ‘So the deal you offered was false. You lied to her.’

  ‘Well, duh. Of course. Oh, and incidentally, just to rub it in, the marriage will take place in the church of St Wedding.’

  ‘You besmirch the place where Flora and I swore our love!’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I do. And one final thing . . . It’s always nice to die as a family, so you might as well have this. I have no further use for it.’

  He beckoned to two guards who dragged a sorry-looking figure into sight: my mother. They opened the cell door and threw her in.

  ‘Ooh, is this the new linen cupboard? Hello, I’m Agnes the tablecloth. You must be a towel. How do you do?’ She offered me a mad hand and I shook it, glad to feel my mother’s touch, no matter how crazed; but it was not a long touch, for she now turned to Harry. ‘And goodness me, you must be the fattest bed-sheet I have ever seen!’

  ‘She will hang with you tomorrow.’ Benevolent’s eyes glistened with happy malice.

  ‘Why? What has she done to deserve such a fate?’

  ‘Nothing. I simply tired of her. Judge Hardthrasher condemned her to death as a favour. Right, well, that’s that. Enjoy being dead, Pip Bin. It’s not been a pleasure knowing you.’ He tipped his hat at me ironically and left.

  But he had lit a fire within me, a fire I had thought long extinguished, and I now ran to the cell door and yelled after him, ‘Mr Benevolent! Mr Benevolent!’

  He stopped and turned back to face me. ‘What? Do you have some pathetic last words of futile resistance?’

  ‘No. I just wanted to tell you something. By bringing my mother to be hanged and threatening to marry my sister you have made a huge mistake.’

  ‘Have I? Feels pretty right to me.’

  ‘You’re wrong. Because, for the first time in a long while, I have a reason to live. And that reason is to save them, save myself and then kill you, Benevolent. No force on earth can stop me, for my name is Pip Put-that-in-the Bin, husband to a murdered wife, son to a maddened mother, brother to a soon-to-be-defiled sister . . . and I will have my vengeance, in this life or the next.’

  The corridor outside the cell was only dimly lit, but I swear I saw Mr Benevolent’s face blanch at my words.

  ‘It’ll have to be the next, then, won’t it?’ he retorted, but though his words were bold, his tone was shaken, and I knew I had frightened him. I watched him leave with my spirits returned, my courage high and just one problem: I had not the first clue as to how to go about wreaking the vengeance I had promised.

  1 A famously huge man who earned a living in the freak shows of the nineteenth century. He died after eating a ton of apples for a bet; the apples fermented inside him and the expanding gases exploded him in a massive fountain of cider. After his death he was discovered to be in fact not a man, but a small, pale hippopotamus in a suit.

  2 Like money-lenders but for food. Obviously. Food-lenders originated in medieval Italy, and the biggest grew to become the Gourmand Banks we know today. Or would do if they existed.

  3 A survey of Sir Philip’s domestic accounts shows that in his entire adult life he never bought anything remotely resembling salad. Indeed, he hated it so much that while in his country-house retreat he invented the sport of clay-salad shooting, where lettuces were fired from traps and shot at with bullets made from meat.

  CHAPTER THE FORTY-NINTH

  Day of destiny; ending of endings

  I had told Mr Benevolent that no force on earth could stop me, but in the end the cell door did a pretty good job, for it would not yield, no matter how much I pounded and bashed at it. I even got Harry to lean on it with his newly massive bulk, but it merely creaked under the strain and held fast.

  Dawn arrived all too quickly. Inside the prison I could hear the sounds of London waking outside, sounds once commonplace but now special, for they were among the last things I might ever hear.

  I racked my brain for escape ideas; none came.

  As the time grew nearer to my date with a noose, I could hear people arriving in the prison courtyard – for it was to be a public execution – and the merry chatter of the touts outside offering tickets.

  The supporting act was two floggings and a man in the stocks being pelted with animal excrement, and the cheers and excitement of the crowd were great indeed, sadistic, ordure-throwing voyeurs that they were. As their cries of delight dwindled, it was time for the main attraction.

  Us.

  Or, to be more specific, Harry, my mother, me and three nooses.

  We were led out to great baying and howling from the bloodlusty horde of onlookers. Ahead of us was the scaffold, three ropes hanging down and swaying ominously. Around it stood soldiers drafted in to keep the slavering crowd in check, and to one side was a table where Judge Hardthrasher sat, his eyes wide with eager anticipation.

  I held my mother’s hand tightly, desperately trying to squeeze even just one word of sanity from her before we died. Alas, it seemed as if it was not to be.

  ‘Ooh,’ she said. ‘Is it washing day? Are we to be hung out to dry?’

  ‘Sadly, Mama, we were hung out to dry a long time ago.’

  ‘Do the fat one first,’ shouted the judge, over the noise of the crowd. ‘I like seeing a fatty hanged. And bring me food! All this justice is making me hungry.’

  A minion scurried to do as he said as the prison executioner, a surprisingly affable psychopath named Gibbet Geoff,1 manoeuvred us to beside the nooses, each of which had our names embroidered on it in gold thread.

  It was a nice touch, actually.

  Gibbet Geoff placed the noose around Harry’s neck; this was it.

  ‘Goodbye, Harry Biscuit.’

  ‘And goodbye to you, Pip Bin. See you in Heaven, I hope.’

  His dignity was great, as was his size. He shed no tears, but stood nobly, straight-backed and calm, as the executioner released the trap door beneath his feet.

  Harry plunged downwards, the rope tightening around his neck and the wooden scaffold creaking under the strain of his bulk. If only it would break, freeing him! But it did not.

  To make the spectacle last longer, hangings back then strangled rather than the more modern method of neck-breaking, and my poor best friend swayed and swung chokily, his face going red, the breath being throttled from his body.

  Above the cheers of the crowd, I could hear the judge gloating. ‘Ha! Look at the sw
inging fatty!’ He was truly enjoying himself, and where a decent, moral human might have been sick to the stomach at the sight, he was hungrily stuffing food into his drooling, hate-filled face, great chunks of pie and cheese.

  Cheese.

  There was a tingle at the back of my brain as Harry dangled desperately.

  It was something about cheese, something Harry had said – and then I remembered, and at last saw a possible way out for us.

  ‘Harry! Look at the judge! Look at his cheese!’

  A now purple-faced, half-throttled Harry managed to turn himself to look at the judge and his curdled-milk-product snack.

  ‘Ooh, cheese, delicious . . .’ Harry managed to croak.

  He said no more, but it did not matter: the cheese had worked its weight-gaining magic for, as Harry had told me, on looking at it he had instantly gained half a stone. Those extra pounds did the trick, the straining scaffold now giving up the unequal fight against his destructive mass, cracking and splintering and ultimately collapsing in a heap of shattered timber.

  ‘I’m not dead!’ cried Harry, joyfully.

  ‘Oh, but you will be,’ shouted Judge Hardthrasher, foaming with furious spittle. ‘Guards!’

  The soldiers surrounding the now ruined scaffold unslung their muskets and ran threateningly towards us; and another thought tickled my brain, a memory of something else that could help us, an event in a dock on the Kent coast some months back involving a rogue button and a startled tuna.

  ‘Harry!’ I shouted. ‘You must breathe deeply and strain!’

  ‘What?’ He looked briefly baffled, but then his face lit up in understanding. ‘Oh, nice, I get it.’

  He took a deep breath, puffed out his stomach and chest and strained. While putting on all that weight, he had clearly never found the time to replace his clothes, and consequently they were far too tight on him, bulging and almost bursting with excess flesh, the buttons pulled tautly to breaking point. His straining efforts now took them past that breaking point and they popped off with a ping, their dense, brassy weight skimming through the air at huge velocity straight into the path of the oncoming soldiers, striking and stunning them in their tracks. The crowd ran for cover to avoid the ricocheting missiles, and our path to freedom was clear. I picked up my mother, shouted to Harry, ‘Run!’ and then, obeying my own instruction, ran myself.

  We raced across the emptied yard and had nearly attained the exit-y safety of the unattended gate when Judge Hardthrasher stepped into our path, his personal noose in his hand, his face twisted with violent hate, spittle-flecked and furious.

  ‘I don’t think so, Bin. I mean to have a hanging, and I will have one!’

  He quickly slipped the noose around my neck and started to pull. I dropped my mother and tried desperately to free the chafing, choking rope from my throat, managing to whisper a pleading ‘Harry . . .’

  As I scrabbled to get my fingers between rope and neck, I could hear Harry breathing in and straining once more, followed by the ping of his one remaining trouser button firing. To my distinct and potentially deathy disappointment, it missed the judge, who happily kept trying to strangle me to death.

  ‘Damn!’ said Harry. ‘I am out of ammunition.’

  ‘But I am not!’ cried an approaching voice, which was accompanied by the sound of thundering hoofs, and suddenly there was my aunt Lily, flintlock pistol in hand, appearing as if by magic from nowhere or, more likely, by horse from round the corner. She now fired with a precision almost unimaginable, her bullet striking the rope in the judge’s hands and severing it.

  I fell to the ground, spots of air deprivation before my eyes, and at last pulled the noose from my neck.

  ‘Aaargh!’ screamed Judge Hardthrasher in frustration and, turning, he let fly an almighty, rage-filled punch that caught Aunt Lily’s horse on the jaw. He was a huge, angry man and the blow felled the beast in its tracks, an incredible and terrifying sight for anyone to behold, but probably for no one more than the horse itself. ‘Why does everyone keep spoiling my hanging fun?’

  Aunt Lily had rolled free of the falling horse and bounced to her feet ready to fight. ‘Run, Pip, go and save Pippa.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘No buts. She is your priority. I shall deal with this judge.’

  I stood and picked up my mother from the ground beside me.

  ‘Oh, I’ve got smudges on me now. I’ll need a good wash.’

  ‘And you shall have one, Mama, as soon as we have saved Pippa.’

  ‘Ooh, I once had a little napkin called Pippa . . .’

  Was this a sign of imminent re-saning? There was no time for pondering the matter, however, as the ferocious judge had now re-gathered his bullet-shortened noose and was advancing on us again.

  ‘Go!’ Aunt Lily thrust herself into the judge’s path as I started to run, Harry behind me, slowed by having to hold up his now buttonless trousers. ‘For it is a far, far better thing I do now, than I have ever— Eeeurggh!’

  I looked back to see the judge slipping his noose around her neck and pulling – but Aunt Lily swiftly kicked him in his uniquely gentlemanly parts2 and he let go again with an agonized ‘Oof.’ I suspected that somehow she would be all right in this battle, and I even pitied the judge a little.

  Actually, of course I didn’t, my only regret regarding him being that I would now not be the one who killed him and therefore I would not bag the complete set of dead Hardthrashers.

  I could see the spire of St Wedding’s soaring high above the roofs and I hurried down the narrow streets of the East End in that direction, Harry right behind me. Our escape had been noted, however, and as we ran, a platoon of soldiers appeared in pursuit. We rapidly got closer to the church, but the soldiers rapidly got closer to us; surely I could not fail and be thwarted so near to my objective! Fortune herself seemed to agree with me, in the form of Harry, for as we raced out of one particularly narrow alley I noticed he was no longer with me.

  ‘Harry! What are you doing?’

  ‘Giving you a chance, Pip Bin.’ The soldiers were nearly upon him, but Harry stood where he was, nearly blocking the passage completely with his gigantic bulk. There was a cheese shop nearby and he started looking repeatedly in its window, each glance expanding him more and more until he was tightly jammed between the walls of the alley, or walleys. The soldiers ran into him, bouncing off his massy solidity, unable to shift him. ‘Now go, Pip Bin, go and save Pippa. And . . .’ he paused, looked briefly at the ground, then up at me, sincerity and certainty filling his face ‘. . . tell her I love her.’

  ‘What? You love Pippa?’

  He nodded. ‘With all of my heart.’

  That explained a lot about his weepy behaviour in her absence; and I was instantly certain that Pippa would reciprocate his love. If he lost a bit of weight first. Not that she was shallow and obsessed with physical looks but, you know, Harry was really, really, person-crushingly big.

  I said no more, simply gave him a nod of thanks, respect and friendship,3 and, saved by the Harry, I ran onwards, the church so close now and the only question being: would I reach it in time? Barely a minute later and I was there, and as I approached the door I could hear the wedding ceremony beginning inside.

  ‘Who gives this woman to be married?’ I heard the vicar ask.

  ‘I do,’ Mr Parsimonious replied, standing in for our still-missing-feared-dead father.

  ‘Good, good. And now let us confirm who is to be married. You are Mr Harlan J. Trashcan?’

  ‘Sort of,’ came the hated but disguised voice of Mr Benevolent in response.

  ‘And you are Pippa Wheelie Bin?’

  ‘I am . . .’

  Poor Pippa! She sounded so reluctant, so alone, so scared! I readied myself to burst in and stop the proceedings, but hesitated, because if I was right, I would soon be able to do so in a manner that had real style to it.

  ‘First I must ask whether any persons here know of any lawful reason why these two should not wed.’
>
  That was what I had been waiting for, and now I pushed the doors open and stepped in with a bellowed ‘I have a reason!’

  There: that was much more dramatic.

  The disguised Mr Benevolent turned to me with a spasm of disgust; Pippa turned with a look of surprised hope; and the vicar gazed at me with curiosity and excitement – I think all clergy secretly hope that someone will burst in at that point in the marriage ceremony.

  ‘And what reason might that be, young man?’

  ‘She is my sister!’

  ‘That’s not exactly a lawful reason for them not to wed, is it?’

  Vicars could sound so condescending.

  I put my mad, tablecloth-minded mother down in a pew where she set about trying to fold herself neatly, and marched towards the altar.

  ‘Then how about false identity, false representation and false . . . false . . .’ I could not think of a third false thing, but then with a flash of inspiration I did, reaching out and pulling the wig from Mr Benevolent’s head. ‘False hair!’ In fact, I now thought of several more false things. ‘And a false beard!’ I ripped the false beard from his chin. ‘And a false arm!’ I grabbed his arm and started to pull it off.

  ‘The arm is real, you imbecile,’ said Mr Benevolent, in his true voice. Both Pippa and Mr Parsimonious gasped in horror.

  ‘No! Mr Gently Benevolent! To think I nearly married you.’ Pippa placed a horrified hand over her mouth and buried herself in the safety of Mr Parsimonious’s pseudo-paternal embrace.

  ‘You still shall marry me. Once your pesky brother is dead. On guard!’4 My evil ex-guardian drew a huge sword from a hidden scabbard and slashed at me. I managed to leap swiftly backwards and he cut only air, but he advanced on me, cutting angrily, and I was gradually pushed further and further down the aisle to avoid his blows. I searched desperately for a way to fight back as I retreated, but all too soon there was no further I could go, as I hit the cold, unyielding stone of the church’s wall.

  ‘Nowhere to run, Pip Bin,’ said Mr Benevolent, raising his weapon high for a killing blow – but I had deliberately aimed for that part of the wall and now desperately scrabbled with my hands to reach what I knew was mounted on it, and as he swung down at me, I found it.