Bleak Expectations (24 page)

Gosh, but he did find himself amusing.

‘What do you want, Mr Benevolent?’

‘I want to see you destroyed, Pip Bin. I want to see you ruined, like a broken doll or shattered teapot, destitute and alone.’

‘That will never happen.’ Secure in my success, I believed what I said.

‘Oh, won’t it? It nearly happened before. How did your investments work out?’

‘To what investments do you refer?’

‘The mining industry, property and gentlemen’s clubs.’ He grinned like an admittedly well-dressed shark. ‘All those companies were wholly owned subsidiaries of Benevolent Enterprises Limited.’

A chill spread through my stomach, like an instant intestinal ice age. ‘Those were your companies?’

‘Yes. Set up just to get back at you. I’ve lured you to near disaster once, I can do it again.’

‘Not now my Bin is a success!’ Surely this was beyond his power to destroy.

‘Yes, that does present a little . . . ruffle in my plans. But no matter, I’ll think of something.’ He leaned towards me and whispered, ‘I will see you impoverished and broken, Pip Bin. Then I shall force your sister to marry me in order to save you, and I shall have won. Ha, ha, ha!’

The cruelly mocking tones of his harsh laughter rang in my ear as he left me, pausing briefly to turn and wave a coquettish goodbye before melting into the crowd. I was about to plunge into the social mêlée after him, determined to fight him, but my actions were stayed by the sudden arrival before me of a face I recognized all too well from stamps, coins, portraits and statues of the King, for it was the King.

‘Your Majesty!’ I bowed before his royal person both because it was custom and because the King’s accompanying chamberlain had used a long stick to push my head down into a bow anyway.

‘Mr Bin!’

The King knew me – what an honour!

Though he was a mad, lecherous, dissolute by all accounts.

‘Sire, I am honoured you recognize me.’

‘But of course! Your marvellous invention has changed life at the palace much for the better. We now have somewhere to put leftover food and dead servants.’ He gestured around him. ‘In fact, this ball is your doing, because before your Bin thing, this whole room was full of rubbish!’

‘I am glad to have been of service, sire.’

‘Aarrggh! The pain, the damnable pain!’ This non-sequitur momentarily threw me, but fortunately the King now offered an excuse for his outburst. ‘Sorry, sorry, it’s just this gout I suffer from. Feels exactly like a child stabbing me in the foot with a fork.’

I looked downwards and, to my surprise, saw a small child stabbing the King’s foot with a fork. ‘Um . . .’ I hesitated. Should I tell him what I had seen? Then I decided: yes, I should, for though he be royal, he was still a man, as was I, and men talk to men as men, that is to say with honesty and reason and no fibbing. ‘Sire, you do have a small child stabbing you in the foot with a fork.’

The King looked at his foot, then back at me. ‘Yes, I know that. The gout is in the other foot. The child is to equalize the pain across both feet. My doctor ordered it.’ He gestured at a medical man behind him, who looked me in the eye, winked and put a finger to his lips.

‘Aaarrggh, the pain, the damnable pain! Sorry, it’s just this child stabbing me in the foot with a fork. Feels just like gout. Aaarffggh!!!’

I looked down at his feet: one twitched goutily and the other was being stabbed by the fork-wielding child.

‘Aaarggh, the gout! Aarrgh, the child! Frankly, Mr Bin, my life is hell.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that, sire.’

‘Oh, mustn’t grumble,’ he said regally. ‘I do have lots of money and palaces. And I can get away with almost anything with the ladies, you know. Watch this!’ He suddenly turned, spotted an attractive woman in the crowd, then ran and leaped on top of her. As his attending retinue moved to surround the couple and shield the monarchical shenanigans from public view, I could still hear his royal voice. ‘Sorry, it’s just that I’m the King and I can get away with this! Don’t worry, I’ll make any dodgy offspring a duke or something!’ Now the circle of retainers was closed and I could thankfully see and hear no more.

I had just met the King!

And he was barking mad and as fine an argument against hereditary entitlement as I had ever come across.

But still . . . the King!

What other fascinating meetings awaited me this night?

I decided to seek out Harry and Pippa to tell them of my kingly meeting. They were still on the dance-floor, Pippa all elegant pirouettes and spins, Harry all disastrous flails and malcoordination.

‘Sorry!’ yelled Harry, as he gyrated madly and clumsily, elbowing a dowager duchess in the face, bruising a marquess and, judging from the upper-class shouts of pain, quite possibly breaking an earl’s leg.

My watching was interrupted by a tap on my shoulder. I turned to see a man clad in an admiral’s uniform and thought, How splendid, another interesting person to meet, but that thought died as I looked at his blunt, cruel face and its terrible familiarity. And then he spoke, and I sensed that the party might be over, at least for me.

‘Pip Bin? My name is Admiral Horatio Hardthrasher. You killed my brothers – prepare to die.’

¹
Bagatelle’s invention was a precursor to Bazalgette’s complete rebuilding of London’s effluent-disposal system.

²
The famous French ballooning brothers Montcricketier were hired to do this, but tried to save money by using cheaper perfume than specified in the contract, leading to London smelling, in the words of drunk playwright Drinkhard Ginsley Sherrydan, like ‘a right cheap and nasty slapper’.

I immediately did as Admiral Hardthrasher said, grabbing a passing lawyer and starting to dictate my will, but my estate-devolving speech was interrupted by the ferocious naval officer bellowing with laughter.

‘Gotcha! Oh, you should see your face.’

And so that I might indeed see my face, he produced a small mirror and held it before my eyes. I looked shocked, pale and unamused.

‘Prepare to die? No, prepare to be thanked, for I detested them,’ he said, to my great surprise. ‘Terrible brothers, weaker than baby’s gin and softer than a month-old apple. And they never bought me birthday presents.’

Like his brothers, he was a large, fierce-looking man, but unlike them, this Hardthrasher was evidently the veteran of many wars: his face was grimly scarred with powder burns and his uniform was covered with medals, including the highly prized I
Nelson badge given to those who had served at the battle of Trafalgar; and as I shook his offered hand of greeting, I noticed that it was hard to the touch.

‘Forgive my wooden hand. The fact is, after the number of body parts I’ve had blown off in battle I’m made mostly of wood. You see this leg?’ He gave the left one a tap and it resounded woodenly. ‘Teak. The other’s made of balsa – helps me float if I fall overboard. My right arm’s poplar and the left’s made of willow and doubles as a cricket bat. I’m literally a left-handed bat.’ Now he took a fork from a nearby table, ran it prongily down his side and a pleasing musical scale came in response. ‘That’s my ribs. Pure mahogany, cut precisely to xylophonic proportions. My kidneys are elm, my liver sycamore and, as a good sailor, I have a heart of oak. Oh, and my hair is chestnut.’

Truly he was a man of his wood; a small deciduous forest in human form.

‘And did you sail here tonight, sir?’ I asked jokily, for we were far from the sea.

‘Yes. My ship is currently moored in Piccadilly Circus.’ This was unusual, but did at least explain the traffic jam I had encountered earlier that evening, as well as the mast and sails I had seen. ‘I never like to be more than a few hundred yards from her so I had my crew drag her out of the Thames and moor her there. But tomorrow HMS
Grrr
shall return to Portsmouth.’

Suddenly my heart beat faster. For the picture of my father that Aunt Lily had shown me in the newspaper those weeks ago was of the docks in that fine naval town – and the ship he had been in front of was this admiral’s very own HMS
Grrr
. Perhaps this was my chance to go and investigate further.

‘I have always wanted to visit Portsmouth,’ I said non-chalantly, twirling a piece of hair round my finger as if the thought had only just occurred to me and was of no consequence at all.

‘It would be an honour to have such a distinguished inventor on board. Why not come down for lunch tomorrow?’

‘I should like that very much, Admiral.’

‘Then tomorrow it is. Now, excuse me, there are people I need to see.’

The rest of the evening passed in a giddy blur, all champagne, dancing and excitement at the potential discoveries I might make the next day. I remember brief images – Harry and Pippa dancing together amid the human wreckage created by Harry’s dangerously uncoordinated movements; Mr Parsimonious yielding to his innately generous urges and pretending to be a waiter so he could give people things; and Admiral Hardthrasher walking past Mr Benevolent and seeming to wink collusively at him – but the party was no longer the most important thing, that status now being held by my imminent trip to Portsmouth.

Indeed, as soon as the clock struck midnight and announced the arrival of a new day, I boarded a carriage to the south coast, found my way to the docks by following the night cries of desperate prostitutes, and as dawn broke over the Channel I was knocking on the front door of HMS
Grrr
.

‘Too early?’ I asked, as the admiral himself answered it.

‘It’s never too early in the navy. We’ve been up for hours swabbing and swibbing the decks.
¹
Come aboard and let me show you round.’

The ship was a mighty chunk of oaky magnificence, a four-decker and nine-master, with a hundred and forty-seven cannon – it should have been a hundred and forty-eight but the admiral was an enormous snooker fan. We stood on the pointy bit at the front
²
and surveyed the fleet at anchor.

‘Look at all those marvellous ships.’ The admiral sighed happily. ‘Let me tell you their names. We have HMS
Aarggh
, HMS
Eeeurggh
, HMS
Anger
, HMS
Take-that-you-French-swine
and HMS
Take-that-you-British-swine
, which we captured off the French. Ah, my ships, my lovely violent, cannony ships . . .’ He looked lovingly and longingly at them, shuddered briefly with joy, then snapped himself from his passionate naval reverie. ‘Now I shall show you below decks.’

We went down to the next deck, the so-called throat of the ship, the remaining two decks being the stomach and bowels.

‘This is the officers’ mess, so-called because it is traditionally a terrible mess.’ Nearby the ship’s band was practising and I now heard a small drum-roll and cymbal-clash. ‘Of course, your invention’s changed that, so we’ll probably have to call it the officers’ neat from now on.’

We moved on through the ship and entered a vast chamber with large pieces of terrifying-looking equipment on the walls.

‘These are the punishment quarters,’ said the admiral, proudly.

‘It seems the largest compartment on board.’

‘Yes, well, we do a lot of punishment in the navy.’

‘The cat o’ nine tails?’ I said, trying to sound knowledgeable.

‘Cat o’ nine tails? A pathetic tool. You might as well attack the men with a feather-duster. Which we do daily, of course, to keep them free of dust.’ Now he approached a fearsome chunk of metal on the wall, and stroked it fondly. ‘No, we use the dog o’ ten spikes, the rabbit o’ twelve punches and a very angry biting weasel. Proper punishments.’

Though he may have appeared to like me, clearly this Hardthrasher was as violent and cruel as his three late brothers.

‘And if those punishments are not enough, the men go down here into solitary confinement.’

He opened a hatch in the deck, revealing a dark, wretched space. I shuddered at the claustrophobic horror therein.

‘What sort of crime would see a man sent down there?’

‘Only three things: cowardice in battle; being rude about the King; or murder. So in you go.’

Without warning, he shoved me hard in the back and I toppled forward through the hatch with a shout of alarm and a squeak of fear. I landed hard at the bottom and looked up to see the admiral glaring down at me.

‘When I thanked you for killing my brothers, I thought you had only disposed of Jeremiah and Ratched. But in the meantime it has come to my attention that you were also responsible for my brother Ezekiel’s demise.’

Ah. The beadle.

‘I was not! Technically it was several blocks of stone with the Bible written on them that killed him!’ I protested. Weakly, it has to be said.

‘I don’t care. I may have hated the other two, but I loved that man like a brother. Because he was.’

‘But . . . how did you find out?’

The answer came not from the admiral, but from a new, familiar arrival whose face now loomed over me framed in the hatch.

‘He found out from me.’