Free Bleak Expectations by Mark Evans Page A

relief. For the curriculum is incredibly limited and the pastoral care practically non-existent.’ Joy filled me like a sack of happy jam.
    ‘Leave? Gosh, no. This school will make a man or dead boy of you yet. No, the good news is this.’ My guardian paused, then smiled, and I sensed that the good news he brought was not good news, and that actually a huge steam train of nasty news was bearing down upon me. ‘I have decided I cannot wait until your sister is old enough to marry, so instead I am to marry your mother.’
    Ladies and gentlemen, the train recently arrived at Platform Pip is for Misery Town, calling at Woe City, Anguish Halt and What-the-Heck Junction.
    ‘Marry my mother? I do not understand . . .’ A sick feeling grew in my stomach. Possibly because of recently having eaten for the first time in weeks but more probably because of this news, which was as ungood or bad as I had feared.
    ‘If I marry her then I shall have all your family’s money and social standing.’ His obsidian eyes glinted with malice. ‘Are you not delighted?’
    I was not delighted. Indeed, I was de-delighted.
    ‘When is this to happen?’
    ‘Tomorrow. By three o’clock, I shall have a new wife and fortune and you shall have a new papa.’
    Now the sick feeling was replaced by a mix of hot anger and cold fury, like a baked Alaska of rage.
    ‘Never! I shall never call you Papa!’
    ‘You will call me Papa, whether you like it or not. And you will like it, whether you like it or not.’ He smiled at me like a small human shark. ‘Son . . .’
    ‘No!’ I hurled myself at him, fists flying, but Headmaster Hardthrasher seized me by the collar so that my fists found no Benevolenty target but instead only air. Though that air got pretty bruised, I can tell you.
    ‘Now, here is your invitation to the wedding.’ Mr Benevolent drew a beautifully embossed card from his pocket, flashed it briefly before my eyes, but then, rather than handing it over, he instead ripped it into tiny pieces, before gathering the fragments, setting fire to them and then dissolving the residual ashes in a bowl of acid. ‘Whoops. How careless of me. Looks like you won’t be coming. However, you may share in the wedding feast, for the headmaster has kindly agreed you may have an actual meal tomorrow in celebration. Let me fetch it for you.’
    He stepped across to a bag and rummaged inside. The rummaging continued for some time, the bag evidently being capacious and hard-to-find-things-in-y.
    ‘It’s here somewhere. Perhaps in this compartment? No. Or this one? No.’
    ‘Is that one of those new-fangled Gladstone bags, Benevolent?’ the headmaster asked.
    ‘Dear me, no, Headmaster. It is the much more fashionable Disraeli bag, 4 which has many more compartments. For, as the great man once said, “When it comes to compartments, lay them on with a trowel.” Is it in here? Nope . . .’
    ‘Ridiculous.’ Mr Hardthrasher snorted derisively. ‘Bags should be like women: simple, and with one lockable opening.’
    ‘Aha!’ Mr Benevolent had found what he was looking for and turned, brandishing a tin. ‘Look: special delicious soup for you.’
    I could not help but feel that his soupy gift was not a generous one, for the label on the tin read ‘Poison’. I informed him of that fact. ‘It says “Poison” on it.’
    ‘What? No, it says . . .’ He turned away, grabbed a pen and scribbled hurriedly upon the tin, then showed me the amended label. ‘. . .
poisson
.’
    By the hurried addition of a scrawled extra
s
it did indeed now say that.
    ‘It is French fish soup?’
    ‘Yup. Definitely. Must have been a misprint in the fish-soup factory. Tsch, the French, eh?’
    We may have been opposed in many ways, but we could at least agree on the inefficiency and plain wrongness of the French, in particular their notoriously inefficient and government-subsidized soup industry. Reassured, I took the tin from him.
    ‘So, around three o’clock tomorrow,