Gr8t Expect8ions

Chapter the First

I'll bring you up to speed in the most direct way I know how, I owe you that much for taking the time to visit me. Straight up, no prevarication, right to the nub, this is what you need to know.

This is not the best place to have this conversation, it is not something I ever imagined happening. But here we are and I have to make the best of it. If you can take my story out of here, let it fall on willing ears and kind hearts alike.

Make up your own mind how much of this was my fault, my actions or decisions and how much was circumstances beyond my control.

By way of background my own childhood was untoward; remote, towering family home set on hereditary estate 5 days ride from London. Remote, cold parents; my father distant and indifferent, my mother fragile and prone to melancholic fuges. Servants, a cruel drunken nanny and boarding school at eight years of age. The school was drafty and forbidding, blocks of icy granite set upon the lands-edge, whipped by winds that swept in from the persistent dark clouds on the horizon. In all a common, respectable and care-free upbringing.

On leaving University the Masonic allegiances of my father ensured that I was taken up into the Chancery court as an articled clerk; to be initiated into the closed world of law and finance. It didn't agree with me but, as little was expected of me - a task at which I excelled, it was a pleasant way to pass one's time until a more substantial means, an inheritance perhaps, made itself available to me.

The working day often involved traipsing the length of London on some matter or another, joining the throng of pedestrian traffic which conveyed so much of the business activity. Better outdoors than in - dark and cold. etc

There was only so long this idyll could last, let us dispense with the pleasantries and get to the meat. Our story opens on the following scene;

Damn, the rain was bitchin down, striking the coach windows like hardcore bass and drum, a strident beat, wind howling, steam rising from the broken backs of the team of horses. Our coachman, Mr Mulvaney, would go no further on account of the mud and treacherous conditions. A sullen man with a face like an overcooked pie topped with a generous lashing of whipped potato, he could be heard cursing and cussing in old Kentish ways, coaxing his horses in the traditional country manner.

My party and I were very much disturbed by the tempest as it had been some time since we last spied habitable comforts and the prospect of being abandoned by Mr Mulvaney filled one with trepidation. I cast an eye towards Lady Cumquat as the formidable dowager squinted at her crochet, and I recalled the long acquaintance with my parents that empowered her to seek my companionship on her journey. Mr Firefly, her eminent lawyer, was occupied with his papers and books, balanced as they were across his vast leather satchel. Descended from a long line of Fireflys who had made their various fortunes through their arcane knowledge of the dark arts in law, Septimus Firefly displayed the equanimous disposition of his ilk. His bearing belied his indifferent origins relying, as he did, on the quiffs, curls, ruffles and flamboyance of fine fashion to bespeak a man of means. However a smile or courteous nod may have conveyed these very same qualities without troubling the poor tailors of Luton Rise.

The storm raged on.

We had the weak half-light of the coachman's lamp to see by. The darkness closed in about us save for the flashes of virulent lightning.

Picture the scene dear reader; if you reside in the US you are most likely to picture the broad expanse of the mid-west, if reading in Europe then the rise and falls of your mountainous lands, those in the tropics will have to use their imagination and if in the antipodes then the wide open outback is your guide. For Ireland it is the vivid mossy green and crags of your open lands, for the English the quaint hedgerows and fieldlands. Pause, for a moment, the blue-ray of life to fill the minds eye with the image of choice.