Bleak Expectations (32 page)

Laugh complete, he spun on his heel and departed. I lay there on the floor, weak of body and mind, and wondered if this was how it all ended: with nothing but a dead wife, a dishonoured sister and humiliation in the courts to show for a life that until recently had seemed so promising.

¹
A common sight in nineteenth-century Britain. People would often soothe whining children with alcohol, such as infant whisky, child gin and small-person beer. The problem went undetected for a long time as, with their constant dribbling, lack of speech and wobbly gait, most toddlers seem to be drunk anyway.

²
An expression dating back to the Great Plague, when people would often go through up to nine spouses in a month.

I lay on the floor for some hours until Harry came in and discovered me slumped in a cold puddle of my own tears, sobbing with fury and despair.

He tenderly helped me back into my chair, where I continued to sob for some time, and he stroked my hair soothingly, as if I were a distressed spaniel or miserable best friend, the latter of which I most assuredly was, until at long last I ceased my weeping, having wrung every tear from my wretched body.

And as I sat there in a small salty lake of my own creation, a tiny fragment of determination grew in my mind, as if all the tenacity and purposefulness that had been dissolved by Flora’s death had formed a super-saturated solution within my soul into which had now been dangled the thin, crystallizing thread of Mr Benevolent’s visit, around which the dissolved determination was beginning to coalesce, growing into a great lump of staunch intent.

I was going to destroy Mr Gently Benevolent.

For so long he had threatened, menaced and hurt my family, and finally I had had enough and vowed to myself that I would stop him, if possible by legal means but if not then by violent, blood-soaked means, such as stabbing him, shooting him, beating him to death with a cricket bat, tying his limbs to wild horses and having them rip him apart, forcing him to eat a pie with a grenade in it, replacing his blood with oil and then offering him a lit cigar, coaxing him beneath a waterfall where the water had been replaced with strong acid, making him wear a shirt with ‘Eat Me’ written on it and then sending him into the East End, using a blunt razor to peel him like an apple, pretending to mistake him for a trampoline then bouncing on him to death, coating him in peanut butter and letting squirrels nibble him to a slow, painful demise, clipping his ears to a crane and then raising him up so fast that his head came off, or simply punching him until he stopped working as a viable life-form.

You get the idea.

With that vow, I began to reassemble the shattered fragments of my life. I started to eat, drink and move again, gradually regaining my strength. I took control of my business once more, increasing Bin production so I might gather funds for my fight. I wrote to Aunt Lily on the continent, urging her to keep Pippa safely away from Mr Benevolent until I had finished destroying him; and lastly I took the still agonizing grief I felt over Flora and set it aside in a mental box where it lay, always with me, but now a motivating force, not a crippling one.

Eventually, after weeks of effort, I was strong again in both body and mind, and ready for the avenging fray, but before I could turn to Benevolent destruction, there was the matter of the court case against this mysterious and litigious American, Mr Harlan J. Trashcan. I knew my invention was mine and mine alone, with no hint of impropriety, theft or plagiarism about it, but would the courts agree?

I needed a lawyer and could think of no one better than my father’s one-time legal adviser Mr Wickham Post Forberton . . . Oh, you remember the fellow, the chap with the name that took fully twenty minutes to say.
¹
For, though he had been a harsh man, he had always struck me as knowledgeable and scrupulously honest.

With him at my side, I felt great confidence in the unassailability of my position as I entered the famous Courts of Potluckery
²
in all their grim legal glory.

The corridors were panelled in a dark wood that seemed to absorb all light;
³
candles made from paraffin-soaked mice with their tails as wicks burned by the dozen but the weak flames barely caressed the darkness, let alone banished it. All around were the screams of convicted felons, plaintiffs who had lost and clients shouting incredulously at their lawyers, ‘You’re charging me how much?’ Yet none of this shook my confidence.

Stepping into the court itself revealed more horrors. The walls were lined with the stuffed and mounted heads of criminals, a salutary taxidermal warning to miscreants; the judge’s bench was fully thirty feet high and distinctly terrifying to behold in its loftiness; and over everything towered a statue of Justice herself, blindfolded and holding in one hand a noose and in the other a noose. Yet still my confidence remained solidly in place.

‘The court will rise!’ an usher declared, banging his staff of office hard on the floor and even harder on the head of an innocent bystander, who instantly collapsed.

We stood, and the judge entered. He was an enormous man, tall, broad and deep, clad in sweeping black robes and with a vast white legal wig perched atop his head, each side trailing down some thirty or so feet to end in a live sheep.
⁴
Owls nested in the wig’s higher reaches from which they gazed beadily down, suggesting both great wisdom and an ability to eat a mouse in one gulp.

At the sight of such an imposing, frightening figure, I am not ashamed to admit that my confidence wobbled a tiny bit – but I still felt it was fundamentally solid, like a tall building that shakes in the wind not due to weakness but because flexibility is actually an inherent engineering strength in such a structure.

‘The court is now in session. Judge Buford Hardthrasher presiding.’

At the mention of that name and the sight of yet another set of familiar Hardthrashery features, my confidence began to crumble, as if the foundations of that recently mentioned strongly flexible building had been laid by a sub-contractor who had cut corners and therefore not adequately done the job.

To come up against yet another Hardthrasher sibling – could life be more unjust?

The judge banged his enormous, sledgehammer-sized gavel, and the case began.

‘So, the case of Trashcan versus Bin, eh?’ The judge peered down at me from his mighty perch. ‘Are you Bin? Pip Bin?’

I could not deny it, for I was. ‘I am, Your Honour.’

‘So at last I meet the man responsible for the deaths of my four brothers and one sister.’ He stared hard at me, and I felt as if I was shrinking beneath his accusatory gaze. But then he broke off that gaze and even smiled. ‘Luckily for you, young man, I am an excellent and impartial man of the law and will in no way let those deaths interfere with my judging of this case.’

My confidence grew again, as if the sub-contractor for the foundations had been contacted, informed of their inadequacies and had promptly returned to make good the work at no extra cost. Thank the Lord for the unbiased excellence of the British judicial system!

Though as the judge turned away and looked back at his notes, I was pretty sure I heard him mutter, ‘You’re a dead man walking, Bin.’

‘I’m sorry, Your Honour?’

‘Nothing, nothing. Now, who represents the defendant in this case?’

‘I do, Your Honour,’ my lawyer intoned pompously, simultaneously handing me a note, which read, ‘You already owe me three guineas.’

‘Please state your name for the record.’

‘Of course. My name is Mr Wickham Post Forberton Fenugreek Chasby . . .’

As my lawyer began his enormous name, I looked across the court to see if I could spy my opponent in the case. He was a heavily bearded man sitting by himself with no lawyer in evidence and clad in a suit made from the bestarred and bestriped American flag; he also wore a hat on which was perched a stuffed American bald eagle.

He certainly looked American.

My perusal was disturbed, however, by a spluttering noise from the judge as he turned crimson with anger, rage clearly building within him. His mood affected the sheep and owls in his wig and they baaed and hooted angrily as he got redder and redder until, barely three minutes into my lawyer’s name, he snapped.

‘Enough! How long is this absurd name of yours?’

‘Twenty minutes, Your Honour. Forty if I choose to repeat it. Which I might.’

‘I will not have it! You will approach the bench.’

He did so, and I could only watch in horror as the judge reached up to the statue of Justice behind him, took one of the nooses from her hand, lowered it around my lawyer’s neck and began to haul on the other end.

‘I will not have such a ridiculous name in my court! You are to be hanged for contempt of court!’

My lawyer struggled hard, desperately trying to free himself as his face purpled breathlessly, but it was no good: the judge was fearsomely strong and determined, and soon he had carried out the sentence and my lawyer lay dead on the floor of the court.

My first thought was of horror at what had just happened; my second was of how I needed a new lawyer; and my third was of how difficult it was going to be to find a gravestone big enough to fit the late man’s name on.

‘Now, does anyone else have a name that lasts longer than five seconds?’ The judge looked scarily around the court; no one dared move a muscle or speak a word. ‘Good. Then I suggest an adjournment for lunch. Administering justice always makes me hungry.’ He raised his gavel, ready to end the morning’s proceedings, but paused. ‘Oh, and, Mr Bin . . . I’m afraid to tell you that for the duration of this case I have frozen all your financial assets. Attempt to access any of your funds and I will have you hanged for contempt of me. Obviously this action is entirely in line with legal precedent, and nothing personal at all, Sibling-killer.’

‘But how will I afford another lawyer?’

‘You won’t, I imagine. Lunch declared, case adjourned!’

He smashed his gavel down and the court began to empty. I left with my confidence in tatters – how could I win the case without a lawyer? No lawyers in London would act without at least a massive payment up front.

I realized I had no choice: I would have to represent myself, which would not be easy. With all the laws and obfuscatory legal language to be learned, the traditional training for a lawyer lasted six years, and I had just one lunchtime.

¹
See
Chapter Four
, footnote three, and
Appendix II
.

²
Closely related to the Courts of Chancery. Chancery dealt with matters of equity, as opposed to common law; Potluckery dealt with both, its cases being randomly selected by a celebrity drawing them out of a hat in the weekly legal lottery.

³
Possibly wood from the Singularity Tree, whose surface was dotted with tiny black holes.

⁴
On appointment each judge was given a pair of sheep from which to grow their own wig. The longer the wig, the more senior the judge.

I returned home via the library, where I borrowed every book on the law I could, and I began frantically to study; though I was barely eight pages into the seventy-four thousand I reckoned I had to read to stand a legal chance when I was disturbed by my dear best friend Harry returning.

‘Pip Bin! Hello! How goes the case?’

‘Not well, Harry. I have been forced to become my own lawyer. Now, please leave me, I must study.’

‘Right-o.’ Harry headed for the door, but did not make it there, instead stopping and turning. ‘Ooh, quick question, though. Can I borrow some money to invest in a brilliant business I’m starting up?’

‘No, Harry.’

‘At least let me tell you about it. For if you lose your case – which I’m sure you won’t, but you might – and therefore lose all your money – which again I’m sure you won’t but you might – then for a tiny investment in my business now you might still remain rich.’

‘Harry, I am sorry, but I have no money to give. My assets are frozen.’

‘I can light a fire.’ He moved stupidly towards the grate.

‘No, financial assets. What is this business anyway?’

‘I have noticed that there is lots of money to be made from selling vintage wines. And I thought, What about other vintage things? To that end, I have set up a vintage meat emporium.’

‘A vintage meat emporium?’ I asked, barely concealing the baffled contempt in my voice.

‘Yes! Brilliant, eh? I can’t imagine why no one’s thought of it before.’ He looked contemplatively into the distance. ‘Just imagine, huge cellars of maturing meats getting more and more valuable every year.’

‘But, Harry, meat rots.’

‘No, it matures. Look, here is a steak I have been maturing for the past two months.’

He produced a cloche-protected plate. A loud humming came from within, and as he proudly removed the cover, the source of the noise became clear as hundreds of flies flew forth. ‘The flies are a natural by-product of the process. Like sediment in wine. But with wings. Now, go on, have a taste.’

He thrust the plate towards me. I quickly turned away, but not before I had seen a festering piece of green filth that looked less like a steak and more like deadly food-poisoning about to happen; to that was added a repugnant smell that burrowed its way up my nose and into my brain, an odour so pungent that it made my already fraying temper snap with a twang of anger, or twanger.

‘Harry, this is the most ridiculous idea I have ever heard!’ I raged. ‘Even if I could invest, I would not!’

At this, Harry’s face went from one of proud, grinning expectation to a surly frown. ‘Are those the words of a best friend, Pip Bin?’