Bleak Expectations Read Online Free PDF Page B

didn’t run too far she was fine.
    ‘Let her run. It changes nothing.’
    ‘I shall go after her and talk with her.’ Mr Parsimonious stood and left, looking sadder than a penguin with a fish allergy.
    ‘I, too, must leave. I have a case in Chancery. A no-win, big-fee case. But before I go . . .’ My father’s lawyer approached me. ‘Your father was a close and dear friend to me, young Pip, and therefore I should like you to have this in his memory.’
    He handed me a small parcel. I felt a lump forming in my throat, like undissolved flour in a badly made white sauce. This stern legal gentleman had a heart after all, it seemed. I started to open the parcel with trembling fingers.
    ‘What is it?’
    ‘My invoice.’ I stopped opening the parcel with now angry fingers. ‘Good day.’
    He swept his gown behind him and left. Now it was just Pippa and I . . . and Mr Benevolent, who sneered at us sneerily and disdained at us disdainfully. ‘Right, time for boarding-school, young man.’
    ‘Already? But that is . . .’ I realized I did not know what that was. I think I thought it was awful; I’m pretty sure I thought it was terrifying; I definitely didn’t think it was super or lovely or beezer.
    ‘So why don’t you and Pippa say goodbye to each other? After all, you will never see each other again.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘Er . . . I mean, not for a while. It was a perfectly innocent slip of the murder – I mean tongue.’ Benevolent looked at us for a second. ‘Oh, just say goodbye and be quick about it.’
    I approached Pippa, tears in my eyes. She approached me, her eyes also glistening. In fact, I had sort of assumed that I would do all the approaching and that she would stand still and wait, so her simultaneous approach caught me a little bit by surprise and we awkwardly bumped into each other. We both took a step backwards, which left us a little too far apart for a proper farewell, then finally shuffled close enough to say goodbye.
    ‘So, dearest sister mine . . .’
    ‘Yeah, whatever.’ Mr Benevolent grabbed me and started dragging me towards the door. ‘Goodbye, Pippa, goodbye, Pip, goodbye, house, goodbye, everything.’
    I could hear Pippa weeping as he dragged me roughly out of the house. Poppy was nowhere to be seen, so I could not even have the briefest of farewells with her. Outside was a waiting carriage, two broad, snorty horses pawing the ground impatiently in front of it and on top a coachman with a cruel, meaty face, a greasy, high-collared coat and a long, fierce whip that he cracked in my direction.
    Mr Benevolent hurled me inside, slammed the door and the carriage was away, the horses pounding down the drive, the coachman yelling and whipping and driving. I tried the door: it was locked. With no windows to open or smash, I was trapped. I pounded on the carriage walls, but no response came from the coachman, and as my new-found prison lurched from side to side on its breakneck rush, fear gripped me like an angry boa constrictor and I worried I would never see my home again.

     
    1 In 1817 George III, the famous Mental Monarch or Krazy King, madly attended a funeral in bright green and purple robes instead of the traditional black. Rather than embarrass the King, people pretended it was a fantastic idea and adopted it as a country-wide custom. Not until some years later was black reinstated as the official colour of mourning.
    2 Some academics have written about the meaning of Benevolent’s offer of a peanut and banana treat and whether it is connected to the peanut and banana factory next to the monkey hotel. Idiots.
    3 For reasons of space, the name has been edited to a fraction of its full length. The name is so long because the book was originally published in monthly parts, and at one point Sir Philip got writer’s block. By having a four-thousand-word name, he could fill a whole month’s pages without having to advance the story one bit. The full name can be found in Appendix II .
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