Foulsham

by Edward Carey

  ‘I’ve been sifting! I’ve been sorting!

  I’ve been gone so very long,

  I’ve been sifting! I’ve been sorting!

  Come and harken to my song!’

  The singing stopped. Started again.

  ‘I’ve been sifting! I’ve been sorting!

  I am coming now to you,

  I’ve been sifting! I’ve been sorting!

  I am here now! Here now! Boo!’

  ‘Who’s there?’ the someone the other side of the door asked. ‘Whoever is it there? I do know there’s someone. I heard voices. I’ve not heard voices before, not until this day. Is it one of the new servants, don’t be afrit if it is. There’s nothing to be frit of. It’s only me, Rawling the porter. I’m going to open this door now; I’m a-coming in.’

  The doorhandle turned, the door was heaved open. There was a dark figure there, stumbling blindly in the half-light.

  ‘Who’s there?’ he called. ‘I’ll know you if you please.’

  I listened to him, listened for his inner voice, but there wasn’t one, nothing at all. He was absolutely silent. There was no noise, no sound, no mutter from within him, just an emptiness there, a hollowness, nothing, no one, no man.

  ‘Who’s there?’ he called once more, but his voice was breathless now, like he was frightened. ‘I know you’re in here. Come out will you? I’ll not be angry.’

  I heard the things of the attic creeping away, trying to get away from him.

  It was the opposite of the gathering that pursued me across the Forest of the Roof of Heap House, that thing made more noise almost than the heaps, but this thing was silence itself, no sound came out of it. I’d never heard such empty silence.

  ‘Come now, let’s be having you.’

  He was close to Lucy, edging in her direction. He had no right to do that, not this thing, not this no-noise, this quietness. I would not let him touch her, I would not let him.

  ‘You’re not anyone,’ I said.

  ‘Who said that?’ cried the man-thing Rawling, turning in my direction. ‘Come here now. I’ll have you now. I know where you are.’

  ‘You’re no one, are you?’ I said.

  ‘Papers, I’ll have papers.’

  ‘But what about your papers?’ I said. ‘Whatever name they have on them is a lie, you’re not real.’

  ‘I am,’ he said, offended, put out, as if I’d stung him. ‘I’ll show you how real I am. Come here, you varmint!’

  ‘You’re no one, Mr Rawling.’ This was from Lucy, in another part of the room, following on from what I was saying, playing my game. Rawling spun around. Lucy said, ‘You’re not anyone at all.’

  ‘There’s two on them!’

  ‘Here I am,’ I said.

  ‘Here I am,’ said Lucy.

  ‘Here I am,’ I said.

  ‘Here I am,’ said Lucy.

  He swung for Lucy and had hold of her by a wrist.

  ‘Well then, I got one of you, haven’t I?’

  I rushed over, I felt in the half-light for the buttons around Rawling’s thick suit. I found one, two, I pulled them open, ripped them off.

  ‘Here!’ he cried. ‘What’s happening? What are you doing?’

  He thrashed out, he struck me and I fell.

  ‘Lucy,’ I said, and I prayed I was right. ‘I’ve undone two of his jacket buttons. Listen to me, you must rip him open. He’s not real, he just seems it. He’s not an actual person; he’s just made of bits. Feel for the stitching.’

  The man Rawling snapped his jaw like a dog, snapped it closer and closer to Lucy’s face.

  I called then, to the broken bellows, the old picture frame, to the crib.

  ‘Now, I do beg you, Bentley Orford, Helen, Mrs Bailey, I do beg you now. I hear you over there, Tom Goldsmith. I do hear you. You’re a wicker chair, I know. I do beg you, come at him, come at it, or he’ll so pull the life out of everything.’

  Nothing, no movement, and Lucy struggling.

  ‘I do command thee!’ I cried.

  ‘Clod!’ cried Lucy.

  ‘Varmint!’ cried the porter.

  ‘NOW!’ I bellowed.

  And then they swooped, and then they came raining in.

  ‘Lucy, down, get down!’

  The chair came behind him and kicked him like a horse he fell into it, and it, dear Tom Goldsmith, lacking any wicker seating, caused the porter to sit down trapped. Then the old crib flew from the corner and smacked his head, so that it knocked right back, and should have stopped any true man, but the head swung back and the face, though horribly squashed, was still there and re-forming.

  ‘Here!’ he cried. ‘What are you doing? ’Tisn’t legal, is it?’

  Then swooping down like some albatross came Bentley Orford the split bellows and it dived into the trapped stomach of the porter and it punctured a good hole, and then up it climbed, flying round to come at him again.

  Once there was an opening the rest was easier, I ran forward then and pulled at it, made a great huge rent, such a tearing. It was as if someone had ripped a bit of the world.

  ‘What?’ he said, quite stunned. ‘What have you done to me?’

  I opened the curtain, let in the light. There was this man Rawling sat in the middle of the room, Lucy in shock, backing away from him. There was a great hole in his shirt, only it wasn’t a him, and pebbles and bits of old glass and sand were pouring out of it onto the floor.

  ‘You didn’t ought to do that,’ he said, as it tumbled out. He tried to stop it, he caught some in his hands, but the rest poured on.

  ‘You’re not anyone,’ I said to him, calmly as I could.

  ‘I’m Rawling,’ he said, but even as he said it his head was sinking in like a sack being emptied.

  ‘You’re not a person,’ I said. ‘You’re not. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Oh,’ he, it is more correct, it muttered.

  ‘Oh … oh … oh I didn’t know,’ it managed.

  The rest of it fell down just then, an old leather thing, tipping out. Out came the stench again and a small cloud of black air, fading on the attic ceiling. Not human, how ever had we thought it was? And then it had stopped, it was just a pile of emptied stuff, a burst something or other.

  ‘What was that?’ said Lucy.

  ‘It was just things put together and stitched up and given a little warmth,’ I said. ‘It didn’t have a noise within it, there was no sound. I couldn’t hear anything coming out of it, nothing at all. Just silence. Awful silence.’

  We looked down at the strange puddle that was Rawling, his leather skin all hollowed out.

  ‘How, Clod, how did you do that, move all those things about?’

  ‘Yes, Lucy, I had almost forgot. Go now, go quick, Tom and Bentley, Mrs Bailey and Helen, quick now, up the chimney and out of the attic, to newer homes. I do thank. I thank you.’

  Some tumbled down the stairs, the bellows smashed right through a window.

  ‘What a business,’ Lucy said. ‘To do that! Clod, little Clod, what a thing! What a person you are!’ she said, but she looked shocked at me, disturbed, I might say.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, after a moment, ‘I think it was well done.’

  ‘That took some doing, opening him up like that.’

  ‘Oh Lucy, he was so silent.’

  ‘Wouldn’t do to make a mistake, would it? To undo a man … who wasn’t made of muck.’

  ‘No, no indeed I do not think it should.’

  ‘Clod?’

  ‘Lucy?’

  ‘Clod?’

  ‘Lucy?’

  ‘Clod, I’m sorry, Clod. Oh Clod, it is you, whatever it is that you can do, still is after all only you. Oh Clod, listen, it was nothing, that bloody kiss. You should see the poor creature, he’s been in such trouble. And I don’t know where he is now, or if he’s safe. I think he must go back to the heaps. But only if he wants to, only then. He’s so helpless, though so big a fellow. Perhaps we could help him, you and me, we should. Then you’ll see him, you’ll und
erstand then.’

  ‘Lucy,’ I said, ‘I think for my part that I must go into Bayleaf House.’

  ‘We can help one another, can’t we? We’re all we’ve got, aren’t we?’

  ‘I’ve got to stop Grandfather.’

  ‘Well then, I shall come along too.’

  ‘It is Iremonger business.’

  ‘Is it? Oh, is it? And I’ve got a box of matches over there through those gates and I mean to have them. So we’ll be moving in the same direction I reckon.’

  ‘It’s a free world.’

  ‘Not much it isn’t.’

  ‘But it should be,’ I said, ‘and that’s the point.’

  ‘Perhaps I shall need your particular hearing, Clod, in the search of my matches, perhaps you’d oblige. Maybe you’d set a dinner service on them for me.’

  ‘I hear the undervoice, Lucy, inside everyone,’ I said. ‘I hear it getting louder when it’s going to turn, till it’s almost shrieking in my ear. The object sort of calls out, it’s not English, but I seem to hear it. It gets louder and stronger and then it sort of gallops in speed and then there’s no stopping it, then it flips the person. Past a certain point there’s no stopping it, I think.’

  ‘Do you hear it, Clod?’ she said, stepping towards me, ‘Do you hear it in me? It’s not shrieking now is it?’

  ‘No, no, it’s not, not now.’

  ‘What an awful queer fellow you are,’ she said, stepping closer.

  ‘I’m sorry for it.’

  ‘Not your fault I suppose.’

  ‘Very kind of you.’

  ‘Glad to see you.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘most awfully.’

  She opened her arms and I went to her, we held each other tight, so tight against everything that surrounded and threatened to bring us down.

  ‘What do you hear?’ she said.

  ‘“Clay button”,’ I said, ‘“clay button” to the rhythm of your heart.’

  20

  AN INSTRUCTION TO TERMINATE

  Being the official and final proclamation concerning the Borough of Forlichingham, London Highly Secret

  WESTMINSTER, LONDON

  ON THIS DAY, the 26th January in the year of our Lord 1876, it has been declared by unanimous vote that the borough district of the great city of London, Capital of the British Isles and of the British Empire, that is called by the name FORLICHINGHAM, is deemed a place of HIGH TOXICITY and is DANGEROUS UNTO THE HEALTH OF THE NATION.

  Daily reports of deaths by noxious gas escaping from that region and of a most gross and disturbing build up of FILTH has brought into danger the very existence of London. Two hundred and twelve (212) pensioners of the neighbouring borough of Lambeth have been found stiff and discoloured and dead in their homes. An increase of RICKETS has been noted in INFANCY throughout the CITY. BLACKLUNG is increasing. The infection VIBRIO CHOLERAE more commonly termed BLUE DISEASE, believed to have been tamed under the labour of JOSEPH WILLIAM BAZALGETTE, is once more in the INCREASE. Daily the winds shed POLLUTANTS from FORLICHINGHAM into the city, and that there is a general air of SWEET FOUL STENCH from the top of HIGHGATE unto the bottom of SHOREDITCH. That this FOUL AIR is POISONING and REDUCES LIFE, and that in the market of COVENT GARDEN it has been shown as PROOF that milk arrived in that place SPOILS WITHIN A HALF HOUR due to the PUTRIFYING STENCH of FORLICHINGHAM.

  THEREFORE, after great discussion and debate, having sought advice of the great officers of HYGIENE, and of those of understanding of the DISPOSAL OF REFUSE that the place FORLICHINGHAM, previously given license unto the family known as IREMONGER to take from LONDON all that LONDON discards, is a license that is now, under immediate notice, REVOKED PERPETUALLY. And that, this family IREMONGER, no longer to any satisfaction policing the EXPULSIONS of LONDON, that the region FORLICHINGHAM is a HORRID and DANGEROUS region, known for FILTH, VICE and MURDERINGS COMMON, that therefore it is deemed MOST necessary that the place FORLICHINGHAM be TAMED or REMOVED from LONDON. And that therefore, it is understood that there being no chance of BRINGING CLEAN and CALM such a POISONOUS and POISONING location, that the place FORLICHINGHAM be in a most thorough and complete way REMOVED, DESTROYED, BROUGHT DOWN, ERASED, from LONDON, and that LOSS OF LIFE therein of the inhabitants of the (FORMER) borough of FORLICHINGHAM, be deemed regrettable but ESSENTIAL for the SURVIVAL of the SOVEREIGN city LONDON.

  Therefore in SOLEMNITY do we the below signed agree this day, that the place FORLICHINGHAM be in a most SWIFT, THOROUGH, ABSOLUTE and TERRIBLE way, BURNT UNTO THE GROUND until the HEAT of FIRE has in COMPLETE STERILITY destroyed all GERMS that there abide.

  The actions (being all complete in readiness and preparedness in desperate advance of this bill) to ACHIEVE all the above NECESSITIES be carried out with due SPEED and DILIGENCE.

  And that as such, it shall become, in the name of Her Majesty, Victoria, by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, Queen, Defender of the Faith, Empress of India, immediate

  LAW

  21

  TO THE GATES

  Lucy Pennant’s narrative continued

  I called them all leathermen after that, after Porter Rawling had been unstitched and spilled all over the attic floor. That’s how we always knew them as after, those people, those things I should say, them leathermen.

  Clod told me there were hundreds of them all over Foulsham. I couldn’t say if it were true or not, but Rawling seemed so realistic that who’s to say, really, when you look about, who’s to say who’s real and who’s not? There are many people over the years I always thought may just have been filled with sawdust for all the sense you got out of them, and others too who had been so cruel and unkind that they may just as well have been sharp metal through and through, deaf to all bargaining and pleading. Well then, who’s to say who’s a person?

  He was. He had life in him; he could command things to move, however should a person do that. Who ever was Clod, that thing-mover? He looked iller, he shook rather with the weight of it all. I should never have told him about that kiss, should never, that was stupid. I just wanted him, of all people, to know everything about me. Clod with his big old head and his worried eyes, thinner, thinner. No plug about him. His white skin, so white like paper, I’d kiss that all over. Why him, I wondered. Why of all of them, him? Not so very much to look at. You might think that if you didn’t know him.

  Didn’t matter what he looked like, he was himself. He was fighting against it all, my Clod, my everyday Clod. Wouldn’t be without him now, not for anything, I’d keep him very close. Never felt that before. All of him. All of me. Can’t break something like that, can you? That’s strong isn’t it? How strong is it, I wondered. Others should try to cut it. Couldn’t let them.

  I prodded the Rawling pile with my foot.

  ‘Well, Clod, he doesn’t look very dangerous now, does he?’

  ‘No, no, Lucy, not one bit.’

  ‘He seemed not to know what he was.’

  ‘I don’t suppose they do. I don’t suppose any of them do. And there are hundreds of them, Rippit said, they’re everywhere about. All Grandfather’s dolls.’

  ‘What’s he want with them, an old man like that, with his toys?’

  ‘He’s building an army,’ said Clod. ‘That’s what the Tailor told me, a great army, to take on London itself.’

  Army. That word again. Gnawing at me.

  ‘We’ll get us an army and all,’ I said.

  ‘Lucy Pennant, how should we ever do that?’

  ‘Nothing will ever be right, will it,’ I said, ‘not if we don’t stand up for it. We live our lives cowering in an attic room until our days are spent. Everyone’s hiding in the shadows, being knocked down, one by one, being taken by Umbitt and all his kind. How many hundreds have just sat there and let it all happen to them, all the hunger, selling off their own children? It won’t do any more; we’ll stand up. We’ll not let it go on any longer. We’ll have an army of our own. We’ll go from street to street, from house to hou
se, and we’ll get them to come along with us. We’ll show them, and every time we stand up to the Iremongers, then that’s a victory, isn’t it, and if enough of us stand up and keep standing up then they’ll be done for, I reckon. There’s more of us than them, much more, if we all get up and say “No” and “Shan’t” then that’ll hurt them, that’ll crush them, shan’t it? We’ll bloody do it, we’ll show them!’ I cried. I’d worked myself up, like I was standing at a pulpit but there were only me and Clod, children in an attic room. I’d sort of forgotten that bit, that brung me down a little. ‘Well, that’s what I think.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said softly. ‘Yes, I think that too.’

  ‘You do?’

  ‘Yes, Lucy, I’m not afraid to die. I was, was very much in truth, when I was a coin, when I couldn’t do anything, only just be moved about by other people, that was frightening because I was lost then, but I’m me again now, and I know Grandfather and what he could do, and I’ll do anything to stop him.’

  ‘Then we don’t care if we die?’

  ‘No, we don’t care if we die.’

  ‘Let them kill us.’

  ‘It’d be just like them.’

  ‘Last time it was for you to show me about, Clod. Now we’re on my turf. This is my place isn’t it? It may not be as big or grand as yours, but it’s not stolen and before your family moved in it was filled with good people. Well it was filled with ordinary people at any rate. They weren’t doing anyone any harm, not for the most part. If there’s any in this house that still knows me, we’ll find them. And we’ll get my school fellows along too.’

  ‘Lucy, I do like your idea of an army. It sounds wonderful indeed, and I think of all the people I know you’d be the person to do it, but I think that it should take a time, shouldn’t it, and I think there may not be so very much time. Perhaps you may find your friends, will you, and meanwhile I shall go to those gates.’

  ‘Well,’ I said, terrified of parting from him, ‘well, I could come with you … ’