Chapter-1
My name is Philip, but I call myself Pip. Actually, my father’s name was Pirrip, and I always found difficulty in pronouncing both the names. All others, we knew, also got confused usually. So, Pip was easier for both me and the others.
I used to live with my sister and her husband. I lost my father and mother when I was too young. I always wanted to remember them but I was never able to do so. The only option I had to be close to my parents was their graves at the churchyard next to our village. I did not have a great deal of friends. Playing alongside the graves of my parents was the only source for me to get rid of my loneliness. The graves of my father and mother were accompanied by the graves of my five little brothers. So, I always assumed that my parents would never feel lonely even in my absence. It was I on the earth who was lonely and all alone.
I was always thankful to my sister for taking so much care of me. Although she used to scold me often yet she was loving. She was tall, bony and dark too.
It would have taken great deal for my sister to make Joe Gargery, her husband, marry her. Joe was a fair man with curls of flaxen hair on each side of his smooth face, and with eyes very pale blue. He was a good-natured, sweet-tempered person. He and I shared a relation of friends.
It was one of the December afternoons (a few days before Christmas) when I was playing at the graveyard as usual. It was cold and I was shivering. I sat alongside my father’s grave and started crying. I was feeling lonelier than ever.
“Shut up!” a noise came from behind my back. As I turned, a man approached me. He seized me by the chin and said, “Keep quiet, you devil; I’ll cut your throat into pieces.” The man was very tall, all in coarse grey, with iron rings on his legs. His shoes were torn and he had an old rag tied around his head. He was covered with mud and all wet. He was also shivering with cold.
“Please leave me,” I pleaded.
“What’s your name? Where do you live?” he asked in a frightening voice.
“P…P..PIP,” I answered trembling.
“Where do you live? Didn’t you hear me,” he held me more tightly this time after saying these words.
I pointed towards my village at once. My village was not far away from the graveyard. The graveyard being on a hill, my village was clearly visible from the graveyard.
Suddenly, the man turned me upside down and emptied all my pockets. A loaf of bread came out. He dropped me at once and grabbed the loaf and gulped it at once. He was now looking at me hungrily as if he wanted to eat me up.
“What are you doing here?” He grabbed me again asking this question.
“It’s my parent’s,” I said pointing towards the gravestone.
“Oh! Then who do you live with?” said the man gruffly.
“I live with my sister and her husband, Sir Joe Gargery; he is a blacksmith.”
Listening to my words, the tall stranger raised his eyebrows and looked at the iron rings on his leg. “Have you ever seen a file so that I may cut off these iron rings on my leg?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Listen, O kid I want you to bring me something to eat. Don’t forget to bring me a file as well. Bring them to me tomorrow morning. Come as soon as the sun rises. Remember, don’t tell anybody. Do you understand? Don’t tell anybody,” he repeated twice.
“I won’t, I won’t tell anybody,” I assured him.
“If you do, I’ll cut your throat and liver,” the man added.
“You can go home now,” said the man. Saying these words, he pushed me as if he wanted to throw me away.
I ran with the fastest speed I could and stopped once I entered home.
Joe was sitting near the fire. “Hey Pip,” he called me up, “Your sister has gone out looking for you and taken a cane with her.”
“Has it been long, Joe?” I always called him by his name as if we both were of equal age.
Before I could finish, my sister came back and shouted, “Where had you been for so long, O bad boy?”
I started crying and said, “At the churchyard.”
“If I had not been looking for you all these years, you would have been there good and proper,” said my sister angrily.
“Now, come fast and have your tea, Pip.”
While she was laying things on the table, I could listen her murmuring, “I work like a slave in this house and I demand for nothing. But this devil has made my life a misery. There is nothing but worry for me.”
Joe and I kept laughing silently as we took the slices of bread she gave us. As soon as I felt Joe and the sister were not looking, I slipped the bread-slice into the pocket of my trousers. I finished my tea and ran up to my bedroom to hide the bread-slice there.
It was evening when all three of us were sitting by the fire when a strange noise came suddenly.
“What is that, Joe?”
“That’s a gun-shot. They fire it when a convict escapes,” Joe replied.
“What’s a convict?” I asked
“A prisoner,” said my sister.
“But why is he in prison?”
My sister looked at me angrily. “This is the problem. Answer one of his questions and he’ll pose a couple more,” she said. She ordered me to go to bed but my question was still unanswered.
Although I went to bed yet I didn’t sleep. I had to wait for daylight. I still had to steal some food and a file for the strange man.
With the first light of morning I woke up.
I slowly went to the kitchen and stole some sweet mincemeat, some bread, cheese and some wine from the bottle. I emptied some wine in a glass and filled the bottle with water. I also took the pork pie from the refrigerator. Then, I went to Joe’s shop and took the file. I carried all the things in my bag.
It was chilly outside with dense fog. It was all grey around me. I could hardly see anything beyond a metre from me.
Still, I ran fast as I could towards the graveyard. As I approached the wall of the graveyard, I suddenly fell over a man sitting near the wall. The man was sitting in the corner with no movement. The man turned towards me but he was not the same person I met yesterday. The man quickly got up and ran away. This man too had an iron ring on his leg.
I quickly made my way towards my father’s grave where I could see the man, the right person for whom I had brought all the food and the wine. It was a chilled morning with snowy breeze flowing through. That man was feeling it and walking lamely like a pendulum. I did not expect him to die of cold in front of me. He was hungry and this could be read into his eyes. He wanted food badly. I handed over to him the file I had stolen from Joe’s shop. He was so hungry that he felt like eating the file even. He saw the bundle in my hand. I gave him the bundle and gave him everything I had brought but it was the wine which he soon pointed out.
He was having the mincemeat as if he had seen it for the first time in his life. Instead of chewing it, he was swallowing it as if it was not his stomach to which the food was going in but a dustbin where he was to dump everything. After some time he left off the food and started off with the wine, which he had to hold by his teeth as he was shivering a lot.
He was gulping down the mincemeat, bread and the rest of the food all at once as if this was the last chance of having such delicious food. While having the food, he was looking all around suspiciously. He often stopped to listen to some sounds in order to confirm that no other person seemed to approach him.
“Did you say anything?” he said suddenly.
“Yes,” I replied and expressed my pleasure of seeing him enjoy the food I had brought. After having all the stuff, he thanked me.
‘The man over whom I fell near the wall was hungry too,’ I murmured to myself.
The man suddenly stopped eating and looked at me “Which man are you talking of?” he asked.
I pointed towards the wall where I had met the other man and explained to him how I got confused him and the other man.
Hearing of my words, he became ferocious, seized me by the collar and ordered me to continue and give his details.
Now, I was shivering, not because of cold but because of fear
“He was deserted like you. He had a scratch on his face,” I replied.
Pointing out to his left cheek, he asked “Did he have a scratch on this cheek?”
“Yes,” I replied.
Having filled his pocket with the food, he asked the direction where the other strange man had gone.
I pointed out the direction. Afterwards, he went away and I came back home as soon as possible.
I had almost forgotten that it was Christmas Eve with celebrations all around. My sister had also invited close friends and relatives for lunch. I suddenly realized that the delicious food that I had stolen was meant for the guests. I quietly sat in the room watching things all around.
My sister was a wonderful house cleaner. Somehow, she was struggling with the dirt as loads of guests were entering one by one. The guests had already started coming in as the clock struck twelve in the afternoon. The last one to enter the house was Uncle Pumblechook. He was stout, showman with a mouth like that of a fish. He was Joe Gargery’s uncle. He was an officious bachelor and a corn merchant.
Every Christmas, Uncle Pumblechook used to come with two bottles of wine, one in each hand, which he presented to my sister. Every time, she said, “O Uncle, how kind of you!”
“I have brought you as compliments of the season a bottle each of Sherry wine and Port wine,” he said.
My sister asked uncle to sit down. She went into the kitchen to offer him some wine from the bottle that was already kept in the kitchen.
As soon as I saw my sister go into the kitchen, my heart sank and came in to my mouth. Everything went into flashback and I realized that uncle would find this brandy weak.
My sister would hold me up for all this. All these thoughts were running around my mind.
My Uncle took the glass in his hand and said, “It looks fine.” Then, he drank it. No sooner did he consume the brandy than he jumped off the table and rushed out. Everyone followed him. Uncle Pumblechook appeared to be ill when he returned. Joe made him relax on the chair. Making dire faces he kept repeating Tar! Tar!
Then I realized the mistake I committed. I had put Tar-water to complete the emptied wine bottle. It had made the wine terrible and uncle ill. My sister was still puzzled as how Tar-water could come into the wine bottle.
She kept asking this question to herself and then turned towards me. At the same moment, Uncle Pumblechook asked for some hot water and I was luckily saved.
My sister came back and asked Joe to bring some plates in order to serve pork pie to uncle and everybody else. My heart which had just got stable sank again.
I couldn’t bear it and wished it to be a dream, but it was not. I ran away and entered into a party of soldiers.
One amongst them was the sergeant, having handcuffs. He entered our house and asked for a blacksmith who could mend handcuffs.
Joe agreed but asked for two hours to repair the handcuffs. My sister asked the sergeant whether or not he was after some convicts.
The sergeant said, “I am looking for two convicts.”
My sister continued the conversation with the sergeant and had forgotten about the pie. Now, I was the happiest man alive on this planet.
After finishing his work Joe, I went with the sergeant seeking my sister’s consent.
We both bothered about the convicts and wished that the sergeant would never be able to find them.
It was raining by now when we reached the graveyard and saw two men fighting and shouting which was growing wilder and wilder. We ran behind the sergeant in the direction of the fight.
Reaching there, we found two men with bleeding faces and abusing each other. I could very well recognize my convict among the two.
“I give up to you,” said my convict to the sergeant.
“He tried to kill me, sergeant,” said the other man.
“If I had wished to do that, you wouldn’t have been alive today. So, I left you to be imprisoned again,” replied my convict.
The sergeant got irritated with the fight and ordered them to stop at once. He flashed the torches on the faces of the convicts.
Coming in light, my convict found me and I shook my head to indicate him that I did not tell anybody about him. I was terrified by now.
The sergeant ordered his soldiers to take the convicts away and put them back to the jail.
Joe and I started walking back home. During my way back home, I was feeling pity for my convict. Deep inside me, there ran a proud feeling of helping the poor convict.
