Foulsham

by Edward Carey

  ‘Thank you, thank you kindly.’

  ‘I’ll give you old Mr Heighton’s rooms. They need an airing but you’ll not grumble over that.’

  ‘Dear Mr Heighton, what happened to him?’

  ‘He turned to a brass fender last spring. Saw it coming.’

  ‘Poor Mr Heighton.’

  ‘Who’s to say? Better out of it, I think. There’s a new porter, pet, name of Rawling. No doubt you’ll see him in the morning. He went out drinking before the sun gave up and no doubt he can’t find his way home. He always does in the end though, comes back to me of a morning, bad tempered and sorrowful, and swears he’ll never be at it again, but he is of course after a week or two. Lucy, I am sorry about your parents, such a shock. Such good workers, such clean people too.’

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Whiting, that’s very kind of you.’

  ‘I said to my Mr Whiting, I said,’ she said, ‘never were ones for portering as those Pennants, never were such as them.’

  ‘That’s kind.’

  ‘Good people.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Who’s he then, under the cap? Don’t say much, do he?’

  ‘This is Mr … Mr Tipp,’ I said. ‘He’s very shy.’

  She turned the corner. ‘Well then, here we are.’

  ‘You’re very kind, Mrs Whiting. I’m glad to be back.’

  ‘Welcome home, Lucy Pennant. Welcome home, Mr Tipp. Perhaps we shall have some order in this place now you’re back inside it.’

  I closed the door. All Mr Heighton’s things were still in the room and all very dusty. We both had the same worry, and both looked a little through the faded curtains. A gathering had amassed outside, that thing of things was swirling on the street beneath us. For a moment it seemed to me to take the shape and look of Benedict, as if in its misery it were imitating him, showing him beating his fists in agony against his head and then no sooner had it assumed its vague human shape than, with a sorrowful groan, it spat apart as if detonating, making a terrible crashing sound all along the street.

  ‘Go to sleep!’ cried Mrs Whiting out into the night. ‘It isn’t decent!’

  14

  BEFORE THE SUN RISES

  Continuing the narrative of Clod Iremonger

  The Last Post

  ‘Come, Clod Iremonger, come,’ the Tailor called. ‘They shall be upon us in a moment!’

  I went with the Tailor then, back out through the lane, people running, officers there.

  Lights behind and more whistles blowing and calls of, ‘Stop! Murderer! Stop! Stop or I shoot!’

  Behind us guns now, guns at us exploding. Chips and dust coming off the wall from where the bullets hit. They’ll murder us this night, they shall do it.

  He knew his way, the great length of Tailor, and how I must rush to keep up with his long strides.

  ‘Hurry! Hurry! If we can but reach the house, come, Clod!’

  But as we ran along through obscure ways, stepping over sleeping bodies, even into grim buildings with families huddled by a small fire, or holding in their filthy arms some object that had once been a loved one of theirs, I became more and more certain that it was not I that needed to hurry up, but the Tailor who was beginning to slow.

  Ever since we were on the chase my cousin’s voice had grown stronger and louder and was calling out now, as if to give us away, ‘Rippit Iremonger! Rippit Iremonger! Rippit Iremonger!’

  And beneath the tall man, rattling through his ribs as he panted on, came, as if in unhappy answer, ‘Letter opener, Letter opener, Letter opener.’

  Those two voices in terrible conversation with each other.

  We were in a tenement house of some kind then, smashing by people who one and all screamed to see the Tailor. But always behind us the wails of Foulsham beggars and the calling of Moorcus and his officers on the hunt. There was a great tall cupboard before us that I heard moaning its name: ‘Sergeant Clark.’

  I stopped before it.

  ‘Please Sergeant, if you could, I should be ever most obliged if you could lay yourself flat and so block the way.’

  ‘Sir, do you bid me?’

  ‘I do, Sergeant, if you shall.’

  ‘Sir, I shall,’ came the instant response and when we had just cleared him he came crashing down the way, and now none might follow us on this route.

  We came out of the tenement through a back door and then a wide street. How naked we were, running across such a street and the day coming on, the sun beginning to strain through the dirty air of Foulsham, sending its yellow light down upon us like a massive torch pointing us out, saying here they are, get them, look how they progress up the hill!

  ‘Rippit Iremonger! Rippit Iremonger!’

  ‘Letter opener! Letter opener!’

  ‘Rippit Iremonger! RIPPIT IREMONGER!’

  ‘Rippit, Rippit!’ I cried. ‘Be quiet, I command you to be quiet.’

  But in response there was a louder wailing, ‘RIPPITIREMONGER!’

  Police whistles behind us calling out, police on their tramp, ‘Which way? Which way?’ they called and the people answered them with awful speed, ‘There they go! There! There!’

  Our shadows, our shadows such long shadows up the hill, up the wide street, climbing the high ground towards the factory. Alexander’s shadow so long and thin stretching almost the length of the hill as if it had arrived at the place already, so far before us, but that shadow was suddenly wavering now, growing weaker. Was it the sun on that shadow or was it Rippit biting at it?

  ‘See, Clod Iremonger, see far up there near the top, a tall white house at the back of the square? Do you see it?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Yes I do.’

  ‘There I live, there I hide, in the attic at the top.’

  ‘Come on, sir,’ I cried. ‘Do but come on, they are fast behind!’

  ‘I weary, I do weary now.’

  ‘RIPPITIREMONGER! RIPPITIREMONGER!’

  ‘Letter opener! Letter opener!’

  ‘Clod Iremonger, Clod fellow, run now. There is a hatch, it looks like a coal chute leading down the building, but it is not, it is a thin passageway between walls where you can climb up and come out unseen in the attic, my place, my hiding place these five years.’

  ‘I understand, sir, but please come on!’

  ‘I am out of breath!’

  ‘RIPPITIREMONGER! RIPPITIREMONGER!’

  From below in the town, the sun coming up, a great calling out, and then a terrible echoing of that inner noise, the same words spoken out, out in the open. Someone calling out to us in response,

  ‘Rippit! Rippit Iremonger! I hear Rippit calling!’

  ‘It’s Uncle Idwid!’ I cried. ‘He has heard Rippit!’

  ‘I am going, Clod, I am going now.’

  ‘No, sir, please, please do not leave me.’

  ‘Run now, run fast, find the place.’

  ‘Please sir!’

  ‘RIPPITIREMONGERRIPPITIREMONGER!’

  ‘You must stop them, Clod.’

  ‘Rippit Iremonger, I heard you now!’ came Idwid from down the way. ‘I am coming! I come to you!’

  ‘LETTEROPENER! LETTEROPENER!’

  ‘RIPPITIREMONGERRIPPITIREONGER!’

  ‘Run, Clod, for all your life. I am going back down the hill.’

  He turned then, the Tailor of Foulsham, and began his descent, his scissors out, raised before him. I ran on, I ran higher, tears down my face.

  Such noises, such calling out behind me, all the police running from the small streets all gathering up at him, snapping at his heels, and people at their windows screaming, all around him. All calling, all calling, all calling,

  ‘The Tailor! The Tailor! The Tailor! There he is! Get him! Bring him down!’

  One last look back. I saw the Tailor, tall amongst them all. His head went back, there was a terrible snapping sound, more snaps and cracks going off as if someone were breaking sticks, one after the other snapping his bones, and with each snap the lean man twisted and lur
ched and fell down so that he was ever smaller, ever less himself, the snapping creating a blur of tearing clothes and flesh, moving so fast that I could no longer see him, he was only fast, toppling weather, and when the weather had stopped, he was no longer there. He had clattered to the ground.

  And then, in all that shrieking and clamouring, one piercing cry of ‘Alexander Erkmann!’

  He had tumbled out of himself, he was a knife again. And out of that cry came a voice from a relative of mine, a small, wide man, strangely small and strangely wide, not a person you had ever seen the like of before, saying over,

  ‘Rippit Iremonger. Rippit Iremonger.’

  ‘Nephew!’ called Idwid. ‘My nephew! Back again!’

  I was at the top of the hill, along the square. The white house.

  MRS WHITING’S CLEAN HOUSE

  ROOMS TO LET

  So much filth and dirt all about it, I picked my way through. They’d be up, the Iremonger police in their hunt, up in a moment after me. I found it at last, the coal hatch. I was in then, inside, so black, so dark. I crawled through, there was a ladder just as he said, up I went, up and up, feeling the walls should give way and squash me any moment. But then the ladder stopped, I found the tunnelling and fell out into a fireplace, into an attic room.

  15

  HOME AGAIN, HOME AGAIN

  Continuing the narrative of Lucy Pennant

  It didn’t feel any more certain in the morning. I hadn’t supposed it would really. The day, when it came, was grey and windy. The house shook with the wind, the windows rattled. It rained and it rained. Only after a bit did I realise it wasn’t water that was knocking against the windows, not raindrops, it was heapbits. Old scraps of clothing, glass, nails, shattered bits clinked against the windows. All felt miserable and unwelcome. And familiar too, sounds from my childhood.

  I was home. Home at last and after such a journey. I lay on Mr Heighton’s bed and looked up at the ceiling, trying to find some meaning, some pattern in the cracks there. I hadn’t known idleness like this for so long. I thought that perhaps if I was really still, if I kept absolutely still then maybe none of it would ever have happened.

  Then maybe Mother and Father would come up the stairs and scold me for being in Mr Heighton’s room, then maybe Mr Heighton would come back too and no longer be a brass fender, then I should never have gone to the orphanage and Cusper Iremonger should never have picked me for a servant instead of Mary Staggs, that spiteful auburn creature, then I should never have gone serving out in that twisted mansion, then I should never have met Florence Balcombe, who was my friend, and likely she should have been better off without me, that there had never been a moustache cup, that there had never been a storm, such a terrible storm, that never poor Tummis should have drowned out there, sucked down into the deeps and smashed by them, that none of it had ever happened, that I had remained only and forever here, with my mother and my father and all was safe and ever as it had been and none of it, none of it, had ever happened.

  I wondered if that could ever be, if it might all be cancelled out, if only I kept very still. Perhaps if I lay still, then it might all go away again. Only if it did, if none of it was ever true, if objects weren’t people, if all was safe and true and trustful, then, oh then, oh, then, I should never, never have met him.

  ‘Clod!’ I cried, as if he was actually somewhere near, and then I fell out of bed.

  It had all happened. Every horror moment of it, ’course it had. I’d never have been with him otherwise. No going back, no scrabbling backwards for safety, only forwards from this black spot, from this bad space – there had been worse, I knew that, darker wheres than this one. I made this promise. Clod. Clod, we’ve tumbled into this together, and must venture to untangle ourselves from it.

  I must find him; I promised I would. My leg hurt, ached like it was dying. Painful to stand on it. So what, I thought, may that hurting be a reminder to you, keep you going, got to keep on going.

  ‘Ow!’ came a wild voice, quite shocking me.

  Oh. Yes. Certainly all true then. Every last bit of it was true, because there upon the floor was a mound of rubble rubbish, and that unhappy collection was alive, was breathing. Indeed I had just stepped upon it.

  ‘Ow!’

  ‘Mr Tipp, I presume,’ I said to him. ‘Morning to you.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Home,’ I said. ‘We’ve come home.’

  I looked out of the window onto the street, the people shuffling about in the early day one man, an official type, at the corner, looking up at the house as if he was watching it. I looked across up the hill, through the gates of Bayleaf House, at the great building there spewing black smoke, thick with its own weather. I looked down. There was stuff around the boarding house, more around it than any other building, twice as much maybe, like they were coming gradually, those heap bits, sneaking their way there. I looked back at Benedict. I’d need to disguise him better. Couldn’t do anything with him like that. I’d give him the best disguise possible: I’d clean him.

  ‘I mean to civilise you, Benedict.’

  ‘Not to do it.’

  ‘Oh yes, I mean to clip you and snip you and scrub you clean.’

  ‘Shall hurt?’

  ‘Yes, I believe it shall.’

  ‘I’ll eat you.’

  ‘We’ll see about that.’

  ‘I’m hongry.’

  ‘This is 1876, my man. Time to get modern.’

  A fat beetle perambulating upon Benedict’s person came to his attention, and he pinched the thing in his claws and proceeded to eat it. Not an auspicious beginning.

  ‘I shall need help,’ I said.

  I bade Benedict keep himself quiet in the back room and positioned myself at Mr Heighton’s door. I was waiting to see who I might spy upon the stairs, who else lived there, who was new and who was remembered. This was my turf. I knew it, every part of it, every corner, every flea almost, you could say.

  Sat there at the keyhole upon a stool, I saw old Mrs Walker with her pet rat Solomon passing by. God, how that thing had grown bald and shabby since I last saw it. Snappy little thing that rat was, been at my heels, hadn’t it. I could almost remember the feel of its teeth even now.

  She used to pay me in sugar cubes to take the thing out and walk it around the block. She did love it so, poor thing limping along. There’s many of the lonely people of Filching seek a pet for company, the cats of Filching are too dangerous to befriend, and the last Filching dog died its death before I was born, all of them eaten by the cats or the rats, or the people too, but the rats could be tamed up to a point, they were all right.

  Off she went, Mrs Walker and her rat, wheezing up the stairway, both of them sounding like they had the same wrecked lungs. Well they couldn’t help it, I’d leave them be. Good to see you, someone else from before. ‘Good morning,’ I whispered, so quiet that I should never be heard.

  Not long after I saw Mr and Mrs Harding on the stairs, all buckled up in their leathers they were, off to the morning shift, both of them coughing and looking grim. Never liked them much, they ticketed both their children. And thereafter everyone in the block blanked them. Others in leathers followed, all off sorting. Didn’t know them, new people, at least the ones with faces on show. Many were already hidden beneath buckled leather masks to keep them from getting cut. All must sort unless they had a pass. Children too most days, when there wasn’t school.

  Wouldn’t do to stop anyone if they were off sorting. Get reported for holding someone up, there was a heavy fine for that. No, no, leave them be. Soon enough the house would be emptied and only the old and the young would be left inside, the old women and men telling the young unlikely stories of old Filching, of bygone ogres and the like, of the Iremonger family and what they did to things in their dark properties.

  After a bit there were more lively feet on the stairs, and a girl about my own age came into view, tugging her younger brother behind her. It was Jenny Ryall and her little brother
Dick, who everyone always called Bug because he used to catch roaches and race them. Earned quite a bit doing that, used to collect bets from all of the boarding house, till it was stopped by a policing Iremonger after the new rule about no gatherings of people being allowed, no more than three persons together at a time. Still he was called Bug, even after, it had stuck.

  ‘Oy!’ I whispered through the keyhole. ‘Oy! Jen! Over here.’

  That stopped her, what a frown on her dear old face, and Bug’s too.

  ‘Who’s there?’ she asked.

  ‘Who do you think?’ I asked.

  ‘Wait a minute,’ she said. ‘It can’t be.’

  ‘What is it, Jen?’ said Bug. ‘You said we’d be late.’

  ‘There’s someone behind the door there,’ said Jen.

  ‘Is it Heighton’s ghost?’ asked Bug.

  ‘But it can’t be,’ said Jen.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘it bloody is.’

  ‘Who bloody is it?’ asked Bug.

  ‘It’s only bloody Lucy Pennant!’ said Jen.

  ‘Bloody Moory! I thought she’d been dead by now,’ said Bug.

  ‘Well, I’m not,’ I said. ‘Not yet any rate. Come in. Quickly!’

  In they rushed and the door closed after.

  ‘God, do you stink,’ said Bug.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘Nice to see you and all.’

  ‘What happened to you, Lucy?’ asked Jenny. ‘Your hair’s wilder than ever it used to be.’

  ‘That,’ I said, ‘is the very least of it.’

  ‘What happened to you? How did you get like that?’

  ‘Is quite a tale I admit.’

  ‘You haven’t run away, have you? They’ll come for you if you have. What are you wearing, that’s a maid’s dress isn’t it? What are you doing in that? Come along, spill it.’

  And I told her, well, some of it, but then Bug called out,

  ‘OH MY BLESSED HEAP! What ever is that?’

  Bug, snooping about, had found Benedict.

  ‘Who’s there?’ screamed Jenny. ‘Oh Bug! Come away, run!’