Foulsham

by Edward Carey

  ‘Come, come,’ said the chemist, ‘have you ever seen such a coin? You may consider yourself rich. You could buy things, purchase new tools, put something by. We have such little to hold onto, we people of Foulsham. We must make do with what we have; we must grab at chances when they come our way. We are under Iremonger tenancy, all of us. What are we to do, Umbitt owns us. We are his property after all. We must only be cunning and fight for our crust of bread, and when help is offered, then we must take it, and be grateful of it. Now, tell me, how is business? Does it thrive?’

  ‘Indeed, I must say it does not.’

  ‘The truth, justly spoken. So then, my offer is a blessing on this house. Come now, what do you say?’

  ‘I say we should, Father,’ said Sarah Jane.

  ‘We must all be agreed on this,’ said the father. ‘Everyone must agree. We’d be hiding it. If it were found there’d be no mercy.’

  ‘Oh, Herbert Arthur, it might save us,’ said the wife. ‘We’ll keep it.’

  ‘It may also, my dear Agnes Nancy, be our death.’

  ‘Well, Pa,’ said the young man, ‘I think we should chance it. We’ve known Mr Griggs these many years. He shan’t rat on us, so to speak.’

  ‘No, indeed,’ said the chemist, Griggs by name as I now understood, ‘not I. You know me. Young William Henry speaks true.’

  It was then that I heard the undervoice of the chemist calling. It came up like a wind from deep within him, ‘Hairnet.’

  ‘There’s a reward for anyone who correctly informs on those who are shielding half sovereigns,’ said the father.

  ‘What’s that to me? Why should I do such a thing? The very mention of it is insulting. I need rats. Rats are necessary for my work. How often have I come to you for the buying of rats?’

  ‘In truth, not much of late.’

  ‘Come now, I came to do you a favour.’

  ‘Or to collect a reward.’

  ‘I am an honest professional. I’ll take the coin back and be gone!’

  ‘Wait!’ said the mother. ‘Not so fast, Mr Griggs. We’ll take your coin; we’ll give you the weight of varmint you require.’

  ‘At last some sense! I’ve half a mind to rescind the offer.’

  ‘Only first off,’ said the mother, ‘we’ll have you sign a piece of writing, something that says that we come by the coin from you and the date and the time.’

  ‘You don’t trust me!’

  ‘No,’ said the father, ‘that’s about the size of it.’

  ‘But I came out of kindness!’

  ‘So then, be kind. Be kind and sign.’

  ‘Hairnet.’

  ‘I cannot believe you people.’

  ‘Here we are then, Mr Griggs, please to sign.’

  ‘I’m not certain that I shall. What’s in it for me?’

  ‘Your rats, Mr Griggs. Didn’t you say you were in great need of rats?’

  Mr Griggs let out an almighty belch which coincided to my hearing a loud exclamation of ‘Hairnet!’

  ‘Are you quite well, Mr Griggs?’ asked Sarah Jane. ‘Can we get you something?’

  Again Mr Griggs exuded a mouthful of air, again with the sound ‘Hairnet! Hairnet!’

  ‘You look unwell, sir.’

  ‘Hairnet!’

  Mr Griggs was put in a chair.

  ‘Thankee, I feel powerfully gaseous. Some trapped air I think, please to excuse. Oh, my stomach, the sharpness!’

  ‘Hairnet!’

  Mr Griggs doubled over suddenly. He tossed about on the chair like he was some small black cloud of weather. He spun and circled like black wool in a tempest, out of that mass sometime a hand appeared like it was drowning in the sea, clutching for land, and then, finally, there was no more movement and the lank black stringy thing lay docile at last upon the chair. Inevitably, a hairnet.

  ‘I’m Jebediah Griggs. I’m not at my best, please to help.’

  ‘The disease!’ cried Sarah Jane. ‘The disease has come to this house!’

  ‘Quick, Herbert Arthur,’ cried the mother, ‘the tongs. In the fire with it.’

  The father picked up the hairnet with a pair of rusted firetongs and pushed it into the fire. All that was left of Mr Griggs, chemist of Foulsham, sizzled mournfully, sparked a little, and was quickly consumed. The last of him a dissipating cloud of black smoke, that, judging by the reaction of the family, stank something chronic.

  ‘What do we do now?’ asked the young man. ‘What do we do with the coin?’

  ‘We hide it,’ said Sarah Jane.

  ‘We throw it away,’ said the mother.

  ‘That coin is dirt,’ said the grandmother.

  ‘Fetch the crucible,’ said the father. ‘We must destroy it.’

  4

  MAN OF FILTH

  Beginning the narrative of Lucy Pennant, of no fixed abode

  ‘Lucy Pennant.’

  I was in a fight. I was trying to get out. I was with Clod. He couldn’t hear. There was this thing, huge it was, made of many things and an old man and a teacup that the old man danced upon it until it was crushed to dust. I called out for the teacup and the old man had me launched off the ground and spinning in the air. And then nothing. Nothing at all. Then suddenly back again.

  I was in the dark, very dark, huge stink. Couldn’t see anything, shut in with a pig, at first I thought. I’m in a piggery. I did not know how I got there, wherever I was. I didn’t know even if I was still alive at first. But I could talk. In fact I couldn’t stop talking. And all I could say over and over was,

  ‘Lucy Pennant. Lucy Pennant. Lucy Pennant.’

  Couldn’t stop myself, over and over.

  But then in the darkness, there was that something else. Something big and dark. The pig? And it, this thing, it said,

  ‘Binadit.’

  Whatever that meant.

  And I said,

  ‘Lucy Pennant.’

  And it said,

  ‘Binadit.’

  ‘Lucy Pennant.’

  ‘Binadit.’

  ‘Lucy Pennant.’

  I couldn’t see what was making the noise, only that it was huge and each time I said my name the thing in the dark responded ‘Binadit.’ It was quite close. I had no idea where I was or how I had come there.

  ‘Binadit!’

  It was getting angry, each ‘Binadit’ was louder than the one preceding. It was shifting in the darkness, getting closer. Well, I thought, I don’t know what you are or what you want but you don’t sound exactly contented, and if you shout at me then I shall shout back. No doubt you’re quite a thing, no doubt you are. Well good luck to you, I thought, because I’m quite a thing and all. I shan’t go without a good fight. I’ve seen too much already; there’s not much that frightens me any more. I have not come all this way to be dinner for a great pig. In truth, this thing before me was large and unpleasant and it did frighten me, but whatever is the use of being frightened? How will that get you anywhere? So then, when next it shouted,

  ‘Binadit!’

  I bellowed back,

  ‘Lucy Pennant!’

  ‘BINADIT!’

  ‘LUCY PENNANT!’

  And so we shouted back and forth, and when this big thing snapped his jaws and made loud grunts well then I did the same. And when the big thing spoke his noise quieter, well then I followed likewise. And so this was our first communication and we went on sounding each other out in the darkness until at last the big thing moved and he struck at something. I pushed myself backwards on all fours waiting for it to hit, but it didn’t touch me. It struck into a lamp of some kind, and the light it gave off was a great sharp pain in my eyes, I covered my face over. And when I took my hands away again, I began to see what it was in the darkness with me there. Well what can I say of it? How to picture that, that thing, that dark, looming, breathing creature before me? Never seen the like.

  It was such a thing of dirt. It was all got up in rubbish. Bits of things were stuck to it and grew upon it. The hair on top of
the great gross head was so matted and thick that it had become a kind of armour. Things, dark crawling insects, crawled about over it and the creature paid them no heed. Bits of different things were stuck upon it, sealed hard upon it as if a welder had smote them there. You couldn’t name the things, only that they created odd, jagged shapes so that the creature seemed made head to toe of rubbish and to fit into the landscape of his home so very exactly that if it didn’t move and make its sound so often, you’d think it just a mound of filth. It opened its mouth to say its word and I saw that great cavern and the rocks it kept inside it. Black and grey teeth, yellow and green. And when it opened its great head hole the outgoing stench was incredible.

  ‘Whatever are you?’ I asked.

  ‘Binadit,’ it said.

  ‘Some sort of enormous bear, I suppose, aren’t you? Some sort of beast, not one I’ve seen before. Something strange, grown up in filth. Whatever are you then?’

  ‘Binadit.’

  ‘Are you animal, vegetable or mineral? Or all three perhaps.’

  ‘Binadit.’

  ‘If they put you in a cage they could charge a tanner for you at Filching Fair.’

  At the mention of ‘cage’ it seemed to grow upset, it struck the dirt floor with its paw, it brought its face closer to mine and I winced at the stench of it.

  ‘Binadit!’ it growled.

  ‘I’m going to have to be careful with you, whatever you are. Good boy, sit you down.’

  ‘Binadit. Binadit.’

  ‘Is that your name then? Binadit?’

  That stopped it. It looked at me most strangely then. It seemed to shake its head from side to side, some itch or pain had bothered it for certain. It must have so many pains about it.

  ‘Binadit!’

  ‘Binadit?’ I asked. ‘What are you saying? Binadit? Benedict! You’re saying Benedict, are you? Oh my sweet lord, you’re one of us, aren’t you, all along? You’re a person too!

  ‘Who did this to you?’ I asked. ‘How long have you been here? Where are we, Benedict? Where?’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Yes, where, that’s it, what is all this place?’

  ‘Under. Binadit.’

  ‘Under, Benedict? Under what?’

  ‘Under.’ He twisted his jaw trying to make it work, to move in old, forgotten ways, it was, he was, trying to remember. ‘Under … heap.’

  ‘The heaps? Under the heaps? Buried. The heaps! How, how did we get here? How do we get out?’

  ‘I found it. I found it and so it is mine.’

  ‘Found what? Make sense!’

  ‘Botton. My botton.’

  ‘What botton? Do you mean button? What are you talking about?’

  ‘You!’ he shouted. ‘You were a botton before now. I found you up top. I brought you down here, to my home, to here, my place. Deepdownside. You were a botton. But now you’re not a botton. Now you’re a person thing. Better a botton. Like bottons. Have bottons, box of. Want to see? My bottons? Be a botton again will you? Go on. Please. Put you in my tin I will.’

  ‘I am not a button, Benedict. I’m Lucy Pennant. Lucy Pennant, do you hear?’

  ‘Be a botton, please to be a botton again.’

  ‘No, I won’t. I shan’t!’

  ‘Binadit!’ he snapped, a warning.

  ‘Lucy Pennant!’

  ‘No room for you. Not now, not like this. No tin big enough. No box that large. Don’t collect what you are, no collection of … of girls.’

  ‘I am not part of your collection.’

  ‘I found you!’

  ‘I do not belong to you!’

  ‘But I found you!’

  ‘I am a person!’

  ‘Be a botton.’

  ‘I will not!’

  ‘You were a nice botton.’

  ‘I need to get out of here. I need to find Clod.’

  ‘A nice botton, but a nasty girl.’

  ‘I’m going now. If you’ll tell me how.’

  ‘Nasty girl. Taking up all my place. Not invited! Binadit!’

  ‘I’ll go happily enough and then all will be as it was.’

  ‘No, won’t! You owe me my botton. I found it!’

  ‘Please, Benedict, please, I’ll find you buttons. I promise, hundreds of them. Just show me out of here, get me to Filching, then I’ll –’

  ‘Not leaving. I found you. You’re mine.’

  ‘No, no, I’m not.’

  ‘Binadit! Binadit!’

  ‘What do you want with me?’

  ‘Hongry. I’m hongry.’

  ‘You won’t eat me.’

  ‘Won’t I? You’re fresh. Why wouldn’t I?’

  ‘I’m a person!’

  ‘You were a botton!’

  ‘You are a person, Benedict. People don’t eat people.’

  ‘Rats eats rats.’

  ‘And they are vermin. We are human, we talk.’

  ‘Rats make noise when I eat them, I used to talking food.’

  ‘But you don’t talk rat.’

  ‘Do talk rat. Talk rat well.’

  And he made a noise then, very like a rat it was.

  ‘Benedict, talk sense, be sensible. I’ll find you wonderful food. You wouldn’t want to eat me, you wouldn’t. I’d taste terrible … I’m poisonous.’

  ‘Then I’ll sick up. I don’t mind.’

  ‘Now, I’ve had just about … ’

  But I stopped then, there was a sudden sharp pain in my stomach, as if all my insides were being compressed. I thought I was being turned inside out, a strange violent spasm. And then it was gone again.

  ‘What was that?’ I said. ‘I felt something. It hurt!’

  ‘Was what?’

  And then there it was again.

  ‘A pain in me, a tugging, a tearing. There it is again. Help, help me, Benedict. What’s happening? Help. Help! HELP!’

  5

  PUBLIC NOTICE!!!

  STOLEN:

  1 HALF SOVEREIGN

  All half sovereigns are to be handed over to Iremonger Officers without delay.

  Any half sovereigns found in the personal possession of individuals or businesses beyond 14:00 hrs this day January 12th 1876 to be considered an act of law breaking and subject to the severest penalty.

  By Order Umbitt Iremonger, owner

  In service thereof Unry Iremonger, the faceless.

  In service thereof Otta Iremonger, the shifter.

  Unry

  I, Unry Iremonger, secreted about the people. I, Unry, the one they do not know that from young age was sent out into Filching-Foulsham to be a general spy unto them all. I, Unry, person-shifter, person of little face, born in sweat and agony with a malady most peculiar. I lost my features. I was born bald like so many but my hair never grew, not a wisp of it. When I was but five my nose came off when I was a-blowing it. It dropped clean off. Likewise my ears were gone from me by ten. First the left, then the right. I keep my eyes, which I’m uncommonly grateful for. My face is a blank. It is a canvas waiting to be drawn upon, so that faces, any faces, may be set upon mine own and that I may be, as is my choosing, any number of people.

  I have noses!

  I have ears for any occasion.

  Wigs!

  I can be anyone.

  I, Unry, he in the crowd, the man sitting next to you, your old workmate, the old man coughing in the coffee house, the young boy playing with the hoop. I, Unry, am set a new task. I am on the sniff for half sovereigns and all that carry them. I’m the one to do the labour. I play all roles, and have none of mine own. I’m family; I’m Iremonger every drop. But who of my family knows me? So few, so few.

  They’ve lost something from Bayleaf and I’m to find it. They’ve had Governor Idwid, blind and brilliant, move his clever ears all around. They propel him through the streets in a wheelbarrow, ordering all to be silent as they rush through, and he listens. He hangs his ears out. But he does not hear it, not yet. They move him into rooms all over the borough, shoving him in here and there at
random, they say,

  ‘Quiet! Silence! Let the Governor listen! There’s something lost, something lost that must be found.’

  If they have half sovereigns, these people, they’ve hidden them long before the hearing blindman appears. They are cunning, the people of Foulsham, cunning and numerous as rats. But I, Unry, have laid in their sweat manys the night. I know their stench; I stink of them in truth. I’ll find it out; I’ll have them. Unry’s the one to do it.

  And sure enough I, I was the one that found him.

  And sure enough, and sure enough, I, Unry, I was the one that caught him up.

  Plump boy in the street, crumbs down his front.

  Had to be him didn’t it? We don’t do plump here. Maybe in Bayleaf House but not here. Here the children have ribs. So I came up to him with one of my kindest noses on, and a most pleasant set of ears and such a wig of generosity to match, some welcoming, and I says,

  ‘Well, son, what’s the trouble? I’m a friend, you look as if you need one.’

  ‘Can you help me, please, may you?’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ I says. ‘Surely I can. Tell me your troubling.’

  ‘I’ve … I’ve … I’ve –’ what a stammering he gives – ‘I’ve lost my sov.’

  ‘Poor chap,’ I says. ‘What a thing.’

  ‘I spent it in the pieshop and they won’t let me have it back. But I must have it; it’s mine you see.’

  ‘Of course it is,’ I say. ‘Come along a me.’

  And he follows, the sad thing, like I was a magnet. No argument, no protest, meek I’d say, and I wander him round the corner, and there at the end of the road is the Policing Station just where it should be.

  ‘What’s that?’ he says.

  ‘It’s a place,’ I says. ‘Keep up, lad.’

  ‘I don’t like the look of it.’

  ‘A fine place,’ I say. ‘They have everything there, what are you after? Are you hungry?’

  ‘No, no I’m not. I don’t ever want to eat again.’

  ‘Thirsty then?’

  ‘All I want, all I need is my sov, and that is in the pieshop. Then after I have it, then I’ll look for my mum and dad. Have you seen them?’