by Edward Carey
‘No, no,’ I cried, ‘it’s all right, please.’
‘A Gathering! A Gathering!’ screamed Bug.
And then, frightened by the sudden people and their noise, Benedict started screaming too, and all three were at it, until I, screaming over the top of them to shut it quick, managed at last a little peace, but anyone in the house could have heard that, or anyone outside watching it.
‘He’s with me. He’s all right, I promise. He won’t hurt you. They won’t hurt you, Benedict. Calm please, and quiet.’
‘Wherever did you find that?’ whispered Bug.
‘Him,’ I said. ‘He’s called Benedict.’
‘You call that Benedict? Odd name for it,’ said Bug.
‘I found him,’ I said, ‘or at least he found me, out in the heaps. I need to tidy him up. He might startle people as he is.’
‘Well, I never,’ said Bug. ‘I’m Bug, by the by, how do?’
He put his hand out for Benedict to shake and Benedict, opening his mouth, nearly bit it off.
‘No, Benedict, no!’
‘He nearly eat me, he was that bloody close!’
‘Now, Bug, don’t go on so,’ I said. ‘There are things he’s not used to. He’s to be schooled, he’s been neglected, but he’s all right. Though I do need to clean him up. That’s the first thing, and I need soap and a tub, and brushes, and scissors, I think, clippers. Can you help?’
Jenny said she would, Bug thought he might.
‘Hang on,’ said Jenny. ‘Have you papers? Has he?’
‘Well,’ I said, ‘no, not as such.’
‘You need papers to be in Foulsham, Lucy. Oh, where’ve you been? You can’t go anywhere without papers. They’re always asking for papers, anyone in the street, not just Iremongers either. Any neighbour may come to any neighbour’s house any time of day or night and ask for papers, it’s seen as a person’s duty. And Rawling, the porter, he’s a particular one for doing it, sits at his desk by the door and he sees people’s papers as they come in or out. What ever are you going to do?’
And I admit I felt a bit defeated then, and sat down to wonder a little. What was I after all, just Lucy Pennant, nothing more, Lucy Pennant with a strange giant for company. Both of us illegal, both of us apt to be picked up in a moment.
‘Well,’ I said, after a moment, just to keep going, just so something could be spoken, ‘well, what’s new, Jenny? What’s new in the house? Anything much? I see Mrs Walker’s rat’s gone bald.’
And Jenny, she sits beside me, and she tells me about those that had turned, about Rawling and his prowling. When I asked after my old friends Anne Dawson and Bess Whitler and even Tom Jackson and the cross-eyed Arthur Beckett, she told me that they had all been ticketed. That their parents had sold them off, every last one of them.
‘How ever could they? It’s disgusting!’ I said.
‘Wait a moment, Lucy, not so fast, don’t you go judging no one. Not until you know. They put the price of tickets up. It’s a lot of money you get for a ticket now, a whole lot, and for some families it’s the only choice they have. And besides, when you’re ticketed they say you’re looked after, you’re well fed and educated. And so it’s not so easy to argue with, not really. I may get ticketed. I may yet, Bug too, and sometimes I think I don’t mind the idea of it. No, I’ll tell you, sometimes I love the idea of it, for then I’ll be somewhere other than here. The days will be different, I’ll no longer have to go sorting, I’ll do things, I’ll have a uniform maybe, I’ll count, I’ll have meaning. It will be something at least, something other than day after day in this dreary boarding house, with precious little money and with no space. No, I think, after all, maybe it’s not so bad. I’d find Bess. I’d see Anne again.’
‘What a business,’ I said, and very quietly, because she’d quite broken my heart with her little speech. The house and all of Foulsham were quite going rotten. Poor Jenny was nearly lost to it all. I’d have to bring her back, reel her in, poor doll.
‘What about the man at the top?’ I said. ‘The one who never came out. Is he still there? Remember how we used to creep up and listen out for him, and look through his keyhole, remember that?’
‘Mam said it was just the house creaking,’ cackled Jenny. ‘That no one lived there. That we were just being silly. But no one goes up there, not any more. I shouldn’t, not likely. Mrs Walker’s rat hisses on the stairs but won’t go up. Porter Rawling won’t clean there, so it’s got worse and worse.’
‘Look at the fellow,’ Bug said, pointing at Benedict with admiration. ‘He’s got creepy-crawlies all over him.’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘they do tend to nest in him. About that soap … ’
Jenny and Bug went upstairs to their place and fetched some washing things, they said they’d have to take them back when they returned from school in case their parents should notice them gone.
‘I’m glad you’re back, Lucy,’ Jenny said before leaving. ‘I’d keep yourself quiet if I were you. Rawling’s always snooping and he has the key to this room, has keys to all of them, goes in and out of anywhere without bothering to knock. He’s got so rude of late. The tenants complain to Mrs Whiting all the time, but it don’t do no good. He’s an Iremonger man through and through. I think he may have been behind some of the ticketing if I’m honest. Were hardly any tickets in this house before he came, only the Hardings and they’re awful Iremonger in their doings too.’
‘Jenny, have you seen any of the children after they went into Bayleaf House, after they were ticketed?’
‘No, of course not, they never come out. They’ve no need to.’
‘And do you think, Jenny, that it’s a good life stuck inside those walls?’
‘Couldn’t say, could I? Reckon it is.’
‘But what if it isn’t?’
‘It must be, Lucy, it has to be. There’s got to be something for us other than the heaps. There has to be and it’s there, through them gates.’
‘But what if it isn’t?’
‘They say it is!’
‘But you’ve never seen anyone after, so how could you know?’
‘But then there’d be nothing for us, would there, nothing at all! We can’t go out into London. The London wall is guarded and they shoot anyone if he so much as peeps over it. The dirt carts are searched thorough, and all there is, is the heaps for us. So if it isn’t better being ticketed, then … ’ Her voice was so quiet now. ‘Then there’s nothing, is there … then it’s all hopeless.’
‘I know a boy out there in Heap House,’ I said, ‘one of their own. He believed in them at first, but he found things out, terrible things, and they tried to hunt him down, to shut him up.’
‘You met an Iremonger?’
‘Yes, I did.’
‘I don’t believe it.’
‘It’s true, and we got lost from each other, and I need to find him again.’
‘You need to find an Iremonger?’
‘He’s in trouble, I think, terrible trouble. They’ll crush him if they can, though he’s of their blood. Maybe they have already. ’Cause he knows things and he can help us. Listen, Jenny, will you do something for me?’
‘Depends, doesn’t it?’
‘Do you think you could get everyone together from school, could we meet somewhere and talk?’
‘It’s not allowed. There’d be trouble, sure to be.’
‘Everyone’s so frightened,’ I said. ‘If we could just somehow get everyone together and talk, we could make things seem clearer, if only we could do that, then maybe we’d start to fight them, to get our people back, to ask, Jenny, at least to ask to see all those children who’ve been ticketed. Only let us see them, let them come to the gates, then we’d know.’
‘They wouldn’t like that.’
‘No, no they bloody wouldn’t, but if no one ever stands up then we’ll slowly, one by one, be trampled under, miserable and quiet and broken forever!’
‘Well … ’
‘Just to talk,
Jenny. Let me talk … ’
‘All right, I’ll see,’ she said, then, ‘I’m frightened, to be honest, Lucy. I’m that frightened.’
‘Good. I’m glad you are because then you’re realising that they like to scare, don’t they? And why would they scare if they hadn’t something terrible to hide?’
‘All right, Luce,’ she whispered. ‘I’ll do me best.’
Bug and Jenny went off to the schoolhouse. Well, I thought, it’s a start. It’s got to start somewhere. I was even quite proud of myself. We’ll form an army, I shouldn’t wonder. What a thought! I turned to Benedict sitting on the floor.
‘Well then,’ I said. ‘Are you ready?’
‘Wot?’
‘Off with them … things.’
‘They’re mine, they live here.’
‘They’re evicted.’
No sign of that porter yet, so I risked treading out with a couple of buckets, out to the old well in the square. I had them purloined leathers over my old rags, so I looked the part: by which I mean I looked ordinary enough. I left Benedict in the rooms, told him to keep there and still and all, and not look out the window. So.
I pushed the front door open, wouldn’t come at first, that much stuff loaded around it, but I heaved the door to, and the stuff fell away. I kicked it and swung the buckets at it. It moved like it was only rubbish blown there, like I was making it all up in my head, only then why was all the rubbish at the boarding house door and none nowhere else? I shoved the door shut behind me, and ploughed over to the well.
I saw the watching man close up. He wasn’t looking at me, only at the houses around. He wasn’t alone, I noticed then, there were several of them, one at each corner, all looking up, one puffing on a pipe, one eating a Forlichingham bun, the dark treacle of it down his front, but you could tell they weren’t proper people, not our lot at all, you could tell by the sheen of them. There was something put on about them, something not of our Foulsham at all, something very Iremonger, I should say. I wondered then if our old boarding house wasn’t a deathtrap.
I marched along to the well looking so innocent, my steam coming out of my mouth in the cold morning air, and then I noticed their breath seemed to be coming out black, not white like mine, very queer that. Wasn’t natural, was it? What had happened here, since I’d been away?
I got the buckets home, heaved them back. Sure enough, all those things, all them heap bits had got back in front of the door while I wasn’t looking, covering over the steps, though I’d kicked them off not two minutes ago. I shoved them along again, though I hated even my old clogs to touch them. I shoved them along, Lord knows I’d scrub myself after touching that. I slammed the door behind me and was up the stairs, and there in Heighton’s rooms was Benedict, shaking.
‘Gone so long!’
‘I’m back now, don’t fuss!’
‘Worried!’
‘I can look after myself.’
I made a good fire and heated the water. I washed myself first for I certainly I had a need to, and so that seeing me wash, Benedict should know it was all right. I tugged my dress off, what was left of it, and threw it in the fire. I pulled my drawers off, threw them in too. Well then, there I was, naked as the day I was born.
Benedict was staring at me.
‘Hongry,’ he said. He picked a spider from his hair and nonchalantly chewed on it. ‘White and red, aren’t you. Not much to you. Not much meat.’
‘Will you stop your staring?’
‘Like to.’
Well, I got on and washed then, wasn’t going to spend any energy on being modest, gone well past that sort of sentiment. I needed to scrub him good and that meant getting him stripped so it seemed stupid to fuss over myself like some modest princess. We’re all of us only animals anyway, no good pretending we’re not. There’s a body under every suit and dress wandering the streets, no matter that they pretend there isn’t.
Even Victoria herself has a body under all that black bombazine; even queens got bodies, got blood and skin and all of it. Good to be naked, after the prisoning of clothing, after all. I’m not ashamed of me, not one little bit.
I pulled on one of Jenny’s dresses she had brought for me and felt much better, human even. I heated the other bucket, poured it in and then I turned to him.
‘Mr Tipp,’ I said, ‘now then, what are you under all that? Take it off, take it all off.’
But Mr Tipp didn’t like to, not one bit. The problem was working out what was him and what was … not. The water was black very quickly, and the longer he soaked the more things floated around him. Some bits of things sticking to him came off quite quickly, unglued by the water, but much of it was stuck firm and no amount of scrubbing seemed to help. I do not know how many insects I drowned that day, but there were many and as Benedict lay there splashing about, so splashed the creatures too, some managing to find their way to the bath’s edge and, clambering up, won their freedom.
It couldn’t be done in one go, he needed a fireman’s cannon I think, he needed a surgeon’s knife. I couldn’t bring him back human, not all at once. I should have to reclaim him very slowly. Bit by bit. Taking it all off in one go might kill the poor thing, be like flaying him. He’d grown into all that, stuff stuck to him and him into stuff, so that they were of a piece. Coaxing the person back had to be done carefully. I knew it wasn’t just about the outside of him either, I knew there was the inside too, and that was hurt and strange.
The best cause was to get at his face and hands, the parts of him that would be on display. I took up the scissors. What first I had assumed was his hair at the top of him was actually bits of old wicker mat, I also found about him an embroidered cushion, a lady’s hat (remains of), two paintbrushes, a book of Psalms, an advertisement for A NEW SERIAL ROMANCE ENTITLED NEVER FORGOTTEN BY THE AUTHOR OF BELLA DONNA, some of a bicycle, the blackened head of a puppet (Punch, I think), a darning mushroom, some wild garlic (actually growing on him), parts of two kites (maybe three), the remains of a cat, the bones of a rabbit, many layers of old newspaper, some of a horse, two crucifixes, a length of rubber tubing and part of a door knocker. There were many other things besides, but they had passed beyond recognition. Whatever they were they weren’t it any longer.
With each part pulled off, he was growing smaller.
‘How do you feel, Mr Tipp?’
‘Wrong,’ he said, then, ‘Wronged.’
I found, how strange the discovery, a patch of skin upon his forehead. I thought it was something else at first, a white tile, something stuck upon him, a bit of rubber. ‘Whatever is this?’ I asked. ‘It won’t give!’
‘Ow!’ he cried.
At last I saw I’d come to the bottom of him, that this was his head, it was not a foreign object. It was his skin, a little patch of it. I leant forward and kissed it. Poor old fellow.
From that patch I went further and scrubbed more, the circle of skin getting bigger. I pulled off a layer or two of old glued bill poster from his face and then some wallpaper (I think) from his nose, there was some stuck tar too, and something that once had teeth, and then it was as if his face was still huge but half the size and there was a person there, frowning back at me, the shock of it. It quite unsettled me, as if now he was wearing the mask, not before. This was someone new, I hadn’t known this one earlier.
‘Benedict, I think I’ve found you.’
‘Lucy Pennant, I’m lost.’
He leant his mug close to mine and his bruised lips touched mine. Shouldn’t call it a kiss exactly. Poor fellow, what ever was that for? He came close again.
‘Maybe we shall stop there for now,’ I said.
He came forward again, his mouth on mine. That was a kiss, that one. I gave it back a bit, then stopped.
‘Well,’ I said, confused and in a sudden panic. ‘Well, well.’
‘Lucy Pennant, Lucy Pennant, what am I?’
‘Why, what do you think, you’re a man.’
‘Am frit.’
‘And
that’s all right.’
‘Big frit.’
‘Well it’s nothing to boast of.’
I put him in some of Mr Heighton’s old things, grey trousers, collarless shirt, patched black jacket. There was a pipe in the pocket, that was sad. Poor old Heighton, he wasn’t a bad sort, all his poor orphaned objects were still everywhere about the rooms, though by now lacking some of their buttons that Benedict had sought fit to collect. There were boots too, which I struggled to get on him. When he was done he wandered around in the clothing, looking very miserable and only cheered himself up by placing some of the things that had come off him into the jacket pockets, with each added thing weighing him down he seemed a little calmer, a little quieter.
‘Well, Mr Tipp, I think it’s time we brought you out into society. We’re going calling,’ I said. ‘Mrs Whiting, she’s safe, safe as houses. I’ve known her that long.’
‘Don’t please not to.’
‘You needn’t speak much, just say hello and such. I’ll do the rest of it, now then, best foot forward.’
He shuffled about, his every footstep bringing noise from the house as it complained under his weight. No one on the stairs, on the landing, very well then and off we went, unto the public. Quite coming out in society.
Up the stairs we went to Mrs Whiting’s place. I had been taken on just such a journey as a child, with my parents beside me, exhibiting me to the woman that gave them their jobs. I’d know the place with my eyes out. It had been to me over my life a place of terror, of wonder, of strangeness and possibilities, so full of things as was to me a great delight and caution. Whatever it was I’d be glad enough to see it now. Whatever else it was ever the largest and proudest dwelling in all the house, it was to be found upon the third floor. She had lived there all her life, she had been born there, it was her home. In it she kept mementoes of every stage of her living. She had some of her late parents’ hair (carefully embroidered into a pattern and framed), she had her parents’ shoes and letters, all her parents’ objects. She never threw anything of theirs away.
She was a great respecter of things, Mrs Whiting. She was very proud of her collection. For Mrs Whiting, every object was proof of her living; here was her past all before her, things that confirmed she had been. All sorts of things. The floor of Mrs Whiting’s rooms bowed under their weight, indeed her sitting room was a sunken place. Rather than lose any of the weight of her rooms (she would never part with a single object, all was far too precious) she had the Mortons who lived in the flat below turned out and had great steel girders fill their old home to prop hers up.