Bleak Expectations

by Mark Evans

  Hope you are well,

  Love, Pippa

  Then the letter continued in a different hand:

  Dear Pip,

  Just writing to reassure you that I heard Pippa’s cries for help, have entered the room and seen Mr Benevolent advancing on her, and as soon as these brief lines are finished I shall stop him.

  All good wishes,

  Mr Parsimonious

  Though the reassurance that his note provided was short-lived as the letter now continued in a cruel spidery hand:

  Dear Pip Bin,

  Mr Benevolent here, just letting you know that that old fool has put down the pen so it is mine now, mine! And soon your sister will be too. Ha ha ha!

  Ha ha—

  Here there was an inky squiggle as if someone had wrenched a pen off someone else, and then the writing changed to the reassuring script of Mr Parsimonious:

  Dear Pip,

  I’ve got it back! And I—

  Again there was a pen-wrenched squiggle and now the cruel, evil writing reappeared, though it lasted only two words:

  Mine again.

  Before, in a differently coloured ink, my sister’s writing reappeared:

  Dear Pip,

  I have found a spare pen! Help us, Pip, help us!

  Now there came a swift flurry of differently written intercessions, first Benevolent:

  Dear Pip Bin,

  Just a quick line to let you know that I am about to tell Pippa to put that other pen down or I shall kill Parsimonious.

  Yours etc . . .

  Then Pippa:

  Just to let you know I’m going to do that then.

  And, worryingly, the final lines were in a hand all too familiarly nasty again:

  She’s done that and I’ve said ‘good’. I have them now and there’s nothing you can do about it.

  Yours sincerely,

  Gently Benevolent esquire xxxx1

  I was concerned by this latest missive, but also in love. And love triumphs concern every time. I decided that they would probably be fine. Or not. Anyway, what could I do about it? Apart from going to help. Which I wasn’t going to do while I was wooing Flora. And at least there was also a cheering postcard from Harry:

  Dear Pip Bin,

  In the end I did go and join the army. I wish I hadn’t. It is awful. For starters, it turns out I have a terrible fear of the colour red, which is not ideal, what with the uniform, all the blood and the rations being mostly tomato soup. And they made me kill two men. With my bare feet. Which was horrid.

  Yours ever,

  Harry

  PS I did see a funny pigeon though. Hilarious!

  At least it seemed as if Harry was having fun, though I admit I may not have read his postcard all that carefully.

  Because I was in love.

  Did I mention that?

  Ah, love!

  It filled every fibre of my being and every morsel of my soul. My love for Flora made life so much deeper: colours were brighter, noises were louder, tastes were stronger. I could not sleep, could not eat, could not sit, could not stand, could barely kneel without thoughts of her rushing in and crushing all else, like a massive, lovely mammoth.

  And I hadn’t even met her yet.

  But I worked assiduously towards that moment, over a series of more and more geographically proximate teas with the forbidding governess Hardthrasher, until at long last it was the day I was due to actually meet the glorious object of my affections. Really, actually, truly, properly meet her for real, like.

  1 It’s all gone a bit epistolary, I’m afraid. I’m sorry if it reminds any English-literature graduate of being forced to read those interminable chunks of dullness Pamela or Clarissa, or even Richardson’s longest and dullest such novel Letters to and from my Accountant.

  CHAPTER THE THIRTY-FIFTH

  More love, more letters

  On that most glorious of days, I entered the woo-atorium1 and, directed by Miss Hardthrasher, sat incredibly carefully in the suitor’s seat, a high-backed chair with a threatening spike protruding dangerously between my legs towards my gentleman’s special region.

  ‘You have prepared as I ordered, Mr Bin?’

  ‘I have.’

  ‘You took a cold bath for three days?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You are wearing ice-filled underwear?’

  ‘I am.’ I shivered with discomfort; but if that was the lust-denying price of meeting my beloved, so be it. I would have done anything to meet her properly: chopped off my right hand, eaten my own eyeballs, even sung ‘La Marseillaise’.

  Actually, no, not the last.

  Or the other two, come to think of it.

  But ice-pants and a three-day cold bath, fine.

  ‘Good. Then I shall make final preparations.’

  Now Miss Hardthrasher took a hammer, nails and several planks of wood and rapidly built a fence around my chair. ‘Do not move beyond the fence. For my charge is no naïve debutante stumbling across a sweaty stable-boy stripped to the waist and wondering why she’s suddenly gone all hot downstairs.’

  ‘I never thought she was.’

  ‘Very well. I shall fetch Miss Dies-Early.’

  As I waited for my beloved’s arrival, I was nervous. Now our meeting was actually real, fears and worries crowded into my mind like dodgy relatives at a family function, unwelcome and frightening.

  What if we had nothing to say to each other? True, that is the case in many relationships, but usually becomes so only some time after marriage – with good luck, years afterwards, with bad luck, minutes. Or what if in the weeks since I had last actually seen her she had got moosey and munterish? Maybe grown a spot on her nose, or developed some kind of repellent facial tic, even cut her hair. All these things could destroy our love, even though it was obviously strong, true and not shallow.

  I need not have worried.

  As she approached the room, I began to feel quite strange.

  When the door opened, I swear I could hear my heart beating, like a well-struck drum; and as she stepped into the room, it was as if the air was filled with uplifting choral music.

  Then there she was: serene and beautiful.

  And with a choir and a drummer behind her.

  ‘Miss Dies-Early likes music when she enters a room,’ said Miss Hardthrasher.

  ‘It is the least her beauty deserves,’ I flattered, because, blinking heck, she was a cracker.

  She glided across the room like a well-oiled swan, and sat in a chair in the manner I imagine an angel would have sat, though with fewer wings, that is to say none.

  Miss Hardthrasher seated herself on a stool between us, less like an angel, more like a navvy in a dress.

  ‘Now, you may have intercourse.’

  Hello!

  ‘In the traditional, old-fashioned sense of the word.’

  Oh. That sort of intercourse.

  ‘Of course. I thought nothing else,’ I lied. ‘So, are you well today, Flora?’

  ‘How dare you address her so informally and directly! She is no leather-clad Dutch lady-of-the-night beckoning through the steamed-up window of a house of ill-repute!’ Miss Hardthrasher pulled out an anti-lust pokerizer2 and prodded me hard in the ribs. ‘All conversation will go through me!’

  ‘Of course. Forgive me. Would you kindly ask Miss Dies-Early if the day finds her well?’

  The governess repeated my question to Flora, who answered with a shy, coquettish giggle that almost made me burst with loveful joy.

  ‘Miss Dies-Early says . . .’ Now Miss Hardthrasher repeated the giggle.

  It really wasn’t the same.

  Where Flora’s trilling happiness had filled every part of me with a tingling sensation, her governess’s version left me feeling as though I had been filled with wet suet, then hit with a clay hammer, so lumpen and heavy a version of my love’s laugh it was. Nevertheless, I pressed ahead with my intercoursing.

  ‘Perhaps you might now pass my compliments on to Miss Dies-Early on
her dress.’

  ‘No! That is enough of your lustful advances for one day. For she is no drunken floozy seeking to earn the money for a holiday by means of paid debauchery. The staff will dismantle your fence and show you out.’

  Miss Hardthrasher now led Flora from the room; at the door she stopped and, without using the governessy intermediary, my beloved waved quickly at me and was gone.

  Never had I known such intimacy with another human!

  Our relationship now proceeded apace, though at all stages obeying the Byzantine romantic rules of the day.3 At our next meeting I was still behind a fence, but there was a gate in it; at the following meeting the gate was actually opened. Next, I was allowed out through the gate, though Flora was kept safely out of my reach by being hoisted high off the floor in an anti-debauchery harness. Eventually, we were going for walks with each other, though tied to opposite ends of a twelve-foot wooden pole to prevent us getting too close to each other; the pole got shorter with each visit until finally we were walking hand in hand – though, alas, not with each other, I holding Miss Hardthrasher’s right hand, Flora her left.

  Then, after long, frustrating weeks of wooing, our relationship took a turn for the physical.

  It happened as we sat on a courting bench, the governess between us, trowel in hand as she built a small, touch-preventing wall. Flora suddenly leaned towards Miss Hardthrasher and whispered something in her ear; in response that doughty chaperone’s eyebrows rose in surprise so greatly that they momentarily disappeared beneath her hair.

  ‘You are sure, Flora?’ she asked, disapproval filling every word.

  Flora nodded and giggled sweetly – could this creature of Heaven ever do anything ugly? – and tiny spots of blushing red grew on her perfect cheek. Miss Hardthrasher sighed and turned to me. ‘Miss Dies-Early would like you to touch her—’

  ‘Get in!’ I yelled ecstatically, and possibly with less decorum than was appropriate. But the governess had not finished, for now she added a final word to her sentence.

  ‘—shoe.’

  Oh. Well, still, it was something, a pure gesture of love, and what I believe the cruder youth of the time referred to as ‘getting to first base’.4

  I bent down towards Flora’s foot, a sensation of excited love tightening my throat, but suddenly all was blinding agony as Miss Hardthrasher smashed me over the head with her pokerizer.

  ‘Not while she still wears it! Do you think she is some sort of painted Italian courtesan leaning out of a window shouting, “Fifty lire a touch, a hundred to go all the way”? Do you?’

  ‘Absolutely not,’ I replied, massaging my hurt head.

  ‘She will remove the shoe, I shall hand it to you, and only then shall footwear tactility commence.’

  That is what now happened, and as I touched Flora’s delicate, perfect shoe, I felt an electrical charge of unadulterated passion surge through me. It lasted but a second as the governess snatched the shoe back and wiped it with a pine-scented cloth.

  ‘I am disinfecting the shoe of lust, and shall now place it back on Miss Dies-Early’s foot.’

  She did so, and the small red spots on Flora’s cheeks blossomed into a glorious facial sunrise of joy.

  ‘Oh, I am quite overcome with passion!’ she said breathily, and then her eyes rolled upwards into her head and she fainted, first slumping against the courting bench’s arm-rest, then sliding forward and plunging to the ground with a loud thud.

  ‘Miss Dies-Early has fainted,’ Miss Hardthrasher informed me, somewhat unnecessarily, ‘for she is unused to such behaviour, not being a lapsed nun seeking to make up for years of abstinence by touching any man she can get near.’

  ‘Evidently not.’

  ‘Now, after such intimacy, the law dictates you must marry her.’

  Oh, wondrous feeling of love-joy and joy-love that now exploded within me like a mighty, amorous burp! Oh, miraculous sensation of infatuation rewarded! Oh, sublime sentiment of future marital bliss! Oh, imminent weddingy ecstasy!

  1 Special room for courting.

  2 Essentially a rather grandiose term for a stick.

  3 These were officially codified in nine incredibly dense legal volumes. Romance lawyers made a lot of money in the nineteenth century.

  4 This is not the baseball term used in modern sexual vernacular. The nineteenth-century version derived from military vocabulary, first base referring to the primary encampment of an invading British army.

  CHAPTER THE THIRTY-SIXTH

  Weddingy, weddingy, woo!

  It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife – but I was shortly to be in want no more and, even better, the wife I would have want of no more was both astoundingly good-looking and one I truly, deeply adored.

  My spirits were raised further by receipt of another letter from the continent:

  Dearest Pip,

  Mr Benevolent still has us captive but I have managed to find a pen and paper and am writing this secretly. If we can— Hold on a bit, Mr Parsimonious wants to write something.

  Bye for now,

  Pippa

  The familiar cheery hand of Mr Parsimonious now took over:

  Dear Pip,

  Do not worry, I have protected your sister’s virtue thus far and we are planning to try and ow ow ow! Mr Benevolent has just come in and caught me writing this and is now twisting my ear with some tongs. Ow, ow, ow!

  Yours ever,

  Mr Parsimonious

  PS Ow.

  Inevitably, given those words, the next hand was not cheery, but menacing and cruel:

  Dear Pip Bin,

  What’s this I have found? A secret letter? Pathetic! Ooh, must dash as a mysterious figure is leaping through the window.

  Yours despicably,

  Gently Benevolent

  The letter continued over the page in a more jaunty and heroic hand:

  Dearest nephew Pip,

  Have just dramatically smashed through window, wrestled Mr Benevolent to the floor and rescued Pippa and Mr Parsimonious. That villainous wretch has run away like the coward he is, and we are all now safe and well. The weather continues fine for the time of year.

  Lots of love,

  Aunt Lily

  Oh, thank you, noble and fearless Aunt Lily! Now Pippa was under her protection I felt truly relieved, though there was also a mildly unnerving postcard:

  Dear Pip Bin,

  Though that pesky ex-fiancée of mine might have foiled me I will destroy you yet and shatter your sister’s virtue like a moral vase that has been attacked with a naughty hammer.

  Lots of hate,

  Gently Benevolent

  PS Ha, ha, ha!

  But even that could not shake my jolly mood as I approached the final hurdle in my quest to marry Flora: I still had to ask her father for marital permissioning. He was an important man indeed, Lord Backhander, a Member of Parliament and secretary of state for expenses, corruption and petty larceny.

  ‘So you want to marry my daughter, eh?’ He did not look at me as he spoke, instead concentrating hard on something he was writing; later I discovered it was a forged receipt for eighteen fake carriage trips on state business, an otter-house, which was apparently necessary for the defence of the realm, and a completely fictitious second castle in his constituency.

  ‘I do indeed, sir.’

  He stopped writing and looked me fiercely in the eye. ‘And you think just because you are Britain’s richest young man you can flash your money in my face and then waltz off with Flora?’

  ‘No, sir, of course not,’ I protested.

  ‘Hmm. Still, might be worth a try, eh?’

  ‘Um . . .’ My head spun with the implications of his words. ‘Are you suggesting I offer you a bribe, sir?’

  ‘What? No! How dare you, sir? How dare you?’ He stomped about indignantly for a while, to my mind a little unconvincingly. ‘I am merely suggesting we make the marital process easier with a litt
le . . . palm-greasing. Eh? A bit of forearm-oiling or elbow-buttering. Take my meaning?’

  ‘I think so, sir.’

  ‘Although I want to make it quite clear that my daughter is not for sale!’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘But I would be prepared to offer a ninety-nine-year lease on her. More tax efficient. Say, ten thousand pounds, cash or cheque, payable now?’

  So this was how grown men of politics and power did things! What an enlightening and inspiring life lesson! I quickly wrote out a cheque for the bridal amount and handed it over.

  ‘Thank you. You may marry Flora with my blessing. As soon as the cheque clears.’

  Marital permission was granted! I skipped and danced and jigged all the way home, light-headed, light-hearted and heavy with happiness.

  Sadly, Pippa, Aunt Lily and Mr Parsimonious could not make it back from their travels for the wedding, but I gladly bought Harry out of his army commission and he returned to be my best man. On his arrival home, he immediately threw himself to his knees and hugged my legs gratefully. ‘Thank you for saving me from military service, Pip Bin. It was awful!’

  ‘Oh, come now, Harry, it cannot have been that bad. Surely it has at least made a man of you.’

  ‘Yes. A very traumatized man.’ He stopped hugging me, stood up and looked around in a seemingly casual manner. ‘By the way, is Pippa back yet?’

  ‘I am afraid not.’

  ‘Aaargh!’ Harry shouted despairingly. ‘Sorry, bad army memory. Or maybe a bit of dust in my brain. Definitely not upset at Pippa’s absence. Still, you’re getting married to someone you love so I suppose it’s all fine.’

  He was right: it was all fine. Better than fine. It was marvellous, splendiferous and fantastigreat.

  The marriage was to take place in the famous London church of St Wedding, with its towering, triple-layered, cake-like spire, and even though it was set for the next Saturday, on the Tuesday before I decided I could not wait that long and so, taking my future father-in-law’s example, I persuaded the authorities, with lots and lots of money, to swap the two days that week. So Tuesday became Saturday and I was to wed four days earlier.