Free Bleak Expectations by Mark Evans Page B

you guzzle that down and then Bob’s your uncle and Benevolent’s your father. Albeit very briefly. Ha, ha, ha. Ha, ha, ha!’
    He began to laugh and continued for some minutes, pausing only for breath and to motion between the tin of soup and myself before bursting into guffaws again. It was a strange sense of humour that found such fun in the idea of a boy eating soup, but then I was young and couldn’t possibly know the mind of my elders. After a while, the headmaster joined in as well, his deep, mocking laughter mixing with Mr Benevolent’s into a harmony of hilarity, which, despite the horror of my circumstances, I somehow found as contagious as funny cholera or chucklesome typhus, and, without really knowing why, I, too, ventured a laugh.
    ‘Ha . . .’ I began, but instantly the other two stopped, leaving me laughing into a hollow silence as they stared at me.
    ‘Nothing funny here, boy.’
    ‘Right.’
    ‘Now, you run along . . . son.’
    ‘No! Never!’ Again I flew at him. Again the headmaster seized me, thus preventing my assault, only this time he also hurled me through the door of his study – which was fortunately still open or it would have hurt much more than it did, though the amount it did actually hurt was still a lot as, even though my fall was broken by a passing schoolmate, he was so thin from hunger that his boniness provided a distinctly unsoft and poky landing, possibly more painful than simply landing on the stony floor might actually have been, though I would never really know, as I did not want to re-enter the room and ask the headmaster to throw me out again only this time straight on to the corridor floor as some sort of control experiment.
    As I lay on poor, uncomfortable Jaggery minor, the mental livestock began their noises again, a bestial thought cacophony that took Pippa’s imminent Joan of Arc-ing, Harry’s impending and deadly birthday and now Mr Benevolent’s forthcoming nuptials to my mother and blended them together into one animal roar that screamed: Escape!

     
    1 No, they don’t.
    2 Yes, they are.
    3 The Georgians and the Victorians tried to hold nature to human standards, including dressing animals in clothes. They put fish into striped bathing costumes, made dogs wear top hats and once dressed the elephants at London Zoo in three-piece suits – an idea abandoned when one escaped and set up his own accountancy firm, thus leading to the famous myth of the Elephant Man.
    4 The author is clearly mistaken as the Gladstone and Disraeli bags were not invented until much later, in accordance with the law of the time that all Prime Ministers should have luggage named after them. Most have now fallen out of use, with the exception of the Gladstone bag and the ever popular Palmerston sack, with its two separate compartments for simultaneously transporting scrambled eggs and legal papers – the so-called barrister’s breakfast bag.

CHAPTER THE TENTH
In which the escape begins a bit
    There are many forms of waiting. The waiting that is for a longed-for and joyous event and therefore drags on agonizingly but is tinged with anticipatory excitement; the waiting that is for a dreaded and wretched event and therefore glowers sullenly through the hours; and, of course, the waiting that is taking plates of food to people in restaurants.
    My wait to visit the servant and learn what hope of escape she offered was none of those, but maybe a sort of mix of the first two. The hours moved slowly, like a laudanum-addicted sloth, or treacle that has been handcuffed to a rock.
    Finally, as the clock ticked round towards midnight, Harry and I crept out of the dormitory, stepping round the sleeping forms of our schoolmates whose sleepy snores and somnolent snuffles were punctuated with whimpers of ‘Mother’, whispers of ‘Help’ and wails of ‘Aaarrrgggh!’
    We crept creepily towards the dining hall and, as we arrived outside, the school bell tolled twelve – we were on time. But of