Foulsham

by Edward Carey

  ‘Still am I Agatha Peel, still with her.’

  And from the Untummis’s arm,

  ‘I am Barnaby Macmillan, oh let me free!’

  It wasn’t safe, Clod, it wasn’t at all safe there. It wasn’t right, no, no, it was very wrong. These two, Untummis and his dog, they were wrong, those two, wrong they were, very very wrong. Get out, Clod, get out of there as fast as you may, they’ll murder you those two, they mean to unclod Clod.

  ‘Hey!’ Untummis called. ‘Clod fellow, be a friend to me, won’t you?’

  I saw something else then, saw it clear, there was a line on Untummis’s nose, a growing line, a nose, a glue-on, stuck-on, a made-up moulded nose, a borrowed nose coming off, a pretend Tummis nose, his shape, yes by God it was, his very loving undripping stolen shape, but not his, no-no, never his, they lie these two, they lie and lie and would kill a fellow.

  ‘Why hang back so? Why do you tarry? Plug! My plug!’

  The dog’s tail was not wagging now, the dog’s hackles had gone up, it was growling now, it was barking, but the bark it let out wasn’t like any bark I’d ever heard, it was calling out a name, I heard it then, it was shouting-howling a name,

  ‘Unry! Unry!’

  ‘Otta!’ called Untummis in a very un-Tummis like voice. ‘Otta! Are we seen?’

  And then, my Tummis, that vision of my Tummis, fell off, all that was Tummis fell dead and stripped to the floor, like he’d been killed all over again, that thing, that Untummis, Wrongtummis, Strangetummis, Stolentummis was coming undone, there was a different someone there, someone I’d not known before, a far from Tummis person with holes in his face where his nose should be, and he, this featureless fellow, was screaming.

  ‘Get out! Get out, get away! Get gone!’

  And turning and screaming in reply I fled that horror scene. I tried to run along the landing there but a bat flew out, screaming and screeching and so I turned about and went down again, yet further down into the darkness of Bayleaf House.

  I was down and down stairs, down deep into the house, and no nearer to Grandfather than when first I entered. There was luggage all about now, so many things packed up and waiting to go, and above me, as if it was following me all through Bayleaf House, that black smoke dancing on the ceiling. Then I saw that there were two figures, beautiful women rising out of the gloom. Tall and lovely women coming out of the fog. I knew them, I knew those ladies well indeed. I’d known them all my life. They weren’t real, they were solid through and through, they were marble, always had been. They propped up a great mantel shelf as they always had, but they had moved, they were on a wooden train car, packed up ready to go.

  Augusta Ingrid Ernesta Hoffman.

  I knew they must come then, other words from another body.

  ‘Clodius,’ the voice said, ‘are you come?’

  And I replied,

  ‘Hullo, Granny.’

  24

  ONWARD FOULSHAM SOLDIERS

  Concluding Lucy Pennant’s narrative

  Jenny had me. Had me by the hair. My red hair, something that stuck out in the black, she pulled and pulled at it. She scrambled all around me and tugged me out. All smashed about, people all around screaming and the smoke and the soot rising from Foulsham, coming up this way. My home, my old home, was burning to bits. What’ll there be left of it all after today? Wasn’t about winning any more, not about taking them down, was just about survival, was just about staying alive these next minutes, keeping alive, and each minute still breathing in the smoking air well then that was good, that led on to another minute perhaps and if you could grab enough minutes, hold them to you and breathe then, then, then maybe you’d breathe another day.

  ‘She was that close,’ I cried, ‘that close in to me.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘We have to go in and I fear it so!’

  All the schoolchildren around her, all gathered about, around Jenny and Bug in the thickening smoke.

  ‘We’ve got to go on in!’ I said, coughing out the words. ‘All stick together, come on now! Come on in!’

  Harder to see anything, ever harder, stumbling along, all that calling out. Chaos really, just chaos everywhere, like the whole world was tilted and broken, like the sun should fall from the sky any minute, that anything that ever had any meaning was gone now, gone forever, that light and life should never come again.

  There were calls from everywhere, men and women marching forward in line, other men and women come to meet the first wave of Foulsham people running in, and when they met up with Foulsham people they struck at them, they brought them down.

  ‘Leathers!’ I cried. ‘They’re dummies, don’t go near them. Come around with me.’

  People being smashed down by those non-people, thumping them down, and no expression on their face, just blankness. We come around through the main office, I think, people calling about, the smoke following in behind us, people coughing all about, and black smoke coming from all those dummies too, black smoke joining the grey smoke from Foulsham, mixing in the air.

  On we ran, on and on, thirty of us or so, onward, trying to find better air, we followed the path, followed the pipes into a great hall and all was steam and metal and bangings and callings, and much activity, people rushing about, all in uniform, here was the factory! The factory itself! It was still working, still going on though it was all chaos elsewhere, people, all those people still, people making people. A great buzzing, burning, humming mill. The men running about at their stations, the women in wire cages working on some sort of wheeled machine, metal arms going up and going down, metal wheels running. Things, things being made in the huge Bayleaf House factory. What a place! What a view! Hundreds of workers, a thousand maybe, all in black uniform. Some faces all covered over in leather. Huge warehouse door at one end, must be where all the filth from the heaps were brought in, big enough for a whole ship to be dragged through. What a place it was! What an industry. To see all them small, small people going about making their business. Making things! But what things they were about, what was the purpose behind all this activity, I couldn’t rightly say, I could not tell. Bells going off, hammering, shouting, orders barked, a whole world it was. And no one told them to stop, to run for their lives, but on they went. And then I saw at the end were all them pipes clumped together like it was arms of an octopus, there were children there, twenty or so children, and they were being pushed towards the pipes, pushed towards them to breathe life into yet more dummies.

  ‘Children!’ I screamed. ‘Children there!’

  They strapped you down, that’s what they did. The end of the pipe with a rubber funnel attached was strapped to your face and then you had no choice but to breathe in, to breathe into them terrible things. And have them suck all out of you. All of them with me, those kids of Foulsham, oh they saw it all then sure enough. Everything they had hoped for, everything they had dreamed for, this was it, this cruelty was all there ever was. This was what happened when you were ticketed and what had happened to all their friends, and they needed little enough encouragement but we all screamed to a person and pulled and tugged and tried to get them straps off them, to free the poor things before they were all done for.

  Leathermen all about, trying to stop us, to smother us with their leather gloves. Anything sharp would do it, glass all over the floor, anything, cut into them dummies and see them leaking out. Smoke coming in there too, filling the factory up.

  I struck at one dummy with a fire extinguisher and his head exploded in a black ball of smoke like I’d just kicked a puff ball. You just had to get something sharp into them, pull them open, let all that rubbish out, but with each one cut down there was so much more black smoke coming off them, like they pulled night over everything. But we were at the children then, unstrapping them, tugging them along, and all, all at a scream. Now, now, come along, this air shall suffocate us. They looked to me, they looked to me for help. We were all together in a clump, and what then, and what now? Come on
, Lucy, lead them. Lead them, to safety, not to their own deaths. Downwards, ever down. And downwards. Must breathe, musn’t we. Down, away from the factory, down to breathe better.

  We ran through the corridor of the offices of Bayleaf House, looking for a place to hide, trying handles, hearing running, hearing the pounding of heavy boots beneath us, descending the metal stairs, such a clanking and a screaming, further downwards. Was there anywhere to breathe, any place at all? Clanking, screaming, choking, all choking.

  ‘Come on, come on!’ I called, through coughs. ‘We’re still breathing yet, aren’t we? Still breathing, keep at it then, keep coming down!’

  Such a noise then, a great tearing, falling, a great blackness, descending, coming on, coming on fast.

  25

  BLOOD

  Concluding the narrative of Clod Iremonger

  Oh My Family and All Their Things

  She was dressed in city clothes, she had on a great hat tied to her face by a silk scarf lest the wind – or the smoke in this case – should steal it from her. She had a stick with an ivory handle, and she looked very strange, very little and very odd to be out of her room, my grandmother – a turtle without its shell.

  ‘Clodius,’ said Granny, ‘well, here you are at last. The eleventh hour, it is true, but you are here at the least, dirty and bloodied. We should not paint your portrait looking like that, should we?’

  ‘No, Granny,’ I managed barely, ‘I don’t suppose we should.’

  ‘No indeed, that should never do. An Iremonger covered in such filth. Come closer, child, son of my Ayris, come to Granny, kiss me.’

  The smoke cleared a little. I saw where I was then. I’d reached the train station of Bayleaf House, and there upon the platform was all of my family. All the servants were there in their uniforms, there was Sturridge the butler, there was Piggott the housekeeper, all clearing in the mist, all those faces at the train station. There were Mr and Mrs Groom the cooks, there was shining Briggs, the underbutler, and all of them, all the servants were bowing to me. Don’t do that, I thought, it’s very wrong of you to do that, why would you be doing that?

  And there was Uncle Aliver, dear doctor, with his curved forceps, bowing and smiling at me, there was Aunt Rosamud with her brass doorhandle, not frowning at me but smiling, so I thought, even sweetly; she’s holding Alice Higgs, the poor child, there she is so locked in brass, little little mudlark, gagged child. There was Uncle Timfy, cruel house uncle, his pig-nose whistle at his lips, beside him his twin, the Governor of Birth Objects, grinning widely as always, Uncle Idwid, wicked Uncle Idwid, Geraldine Whitehead held close.

  I saw all those others too. I saw dear pale Ormily, holding fast to her watering can. Oh Ormily, I am glad that you did not see what I had just seen, that abhorration of our long and dripping friend. All of them, every cousin of mine, had their birth objects about them in all the upheaval, cleaving it to them, never to part. Of all of them, of all this sudden shock and crowding and great thick fug of my family, of all of them I was not unhappy to see poor, poor Ormily, Tummis’s Ormily.

  There was my cousin Bornobby too, his shoe birth object slung upon his shoulder, there was Cousin Pool and Cousin Theeby. I think they must have married since I last saw them. There was Cousin Foy with her great ten-pound weight. So many of them, so many I hadn’t thought of in all my dark adventuring. But there was one I saw now, there was one I had, certainly I had thought of, I had seen her in my dreams and they had not been happy, those dreams: there she stood, Cousin Pinalippy, my once betrothed. I could not imagine she could be betrothed to me any longer, not after all that had happened. Surely I had shunned off that dark lip for good and all, surely I’d never have to doily no more. But she waved at me a little. It seemed to me those unsought-for lips may even be blowing me some sort of a mangled kiss.

  My family shouldn’t do all this. They shouldn’t. They shouldn’t just be standing there. Why were they all looking at me, smiling, nodding and bowing so? They should run at me, trample me down, but they didn’t and then there was a sudden smacking sound. In a terror I wondered if a gun had gone off, if I’d been shot, if there was blood dripping out of me, I shouldn’t have been surprised of that, not in the least, but then the smacking sound continued and I saw what it came from. My family, the servants, they were clapping, every one of them, their claps resounding upon the ceiling, echoing down the long smoking chamber of the tunnel.

  Wrong! Quite wrong to do that.

  My turn to move my head at them, not to nod, to shake it, to shake.

  ‘Stop! Stop!’ I said. ‘You must not do that. I hate that you do that.’

  ‘Come, come,’ said Granny, ‘kiss me.’

  I had never been able to disobey Granny, never in my life. I felt myself tumbling, falling headlong back into my childhood, a place I would far rather not revisit. I stepped forward a little. I could not do otherwise. I leant forward and kissed the cobweb cheek of Granny and felt indeed that I was in a web trapped then, that the grey grey hairs of my grandmother, the mothlike, flylike, spiderlike hairs, were winding all around me and quite tying me up in horrible knots of family and love and bribery and guilt, such knots that might drown a soul.

  ‘Oh, what’s to be done?’ I whispered.

  ‘Good child,’ she said, ‘you are an Iremonger. You shall always be, Clodius, an Iremonger, you know.’

  ‘I suppose I will, Granny, though I think I am not much good at it.’

  ‘Nonsense! Stand straight! Breathe in! There now. Chest out! Better, better. You have done us great service, Clodius, you have been most useful. We never could have got the Tailor without your help, and we should never otherwise have had Rippit, restored to us.’

  ‘No!’ I cried. ‘No, I never … ’

  ‘Yes, yes, Clod, yes you did. That was very well done, very properly done indeed. Prettily done. We knew you should, otherwise we should never have let you out of our ever-loving and protecting arms, but we must let you go on your little wandering. We gave some length to your lead, and then when we declared it was time, and not a moment before, we gave that lead of yours, that invisible strong thread, we gave it a good tug, like plucking on your aorta, Clodius, pinching at the vessels that surround your own weak heart, and you came back, and here you are, a true Iremonger always comes back. Ayris’s son should always come back. There’s something of her there in your face. Ayris, Ayris my darling girl. This little you left us, Ayris. This brave shambling form.’

  ‘Granny. I think, Granny – no, I know, Granny – I am a bad Iremonger, the very worst. I think, Granny, all in all, I should be thrown out. Granny, I must be going now.’

  ‘Going, going, must you?’

  ‘Yes, indeed. Goodbye all, I am right glad to have seen you. But I cannot stay, I am not worthy –’

  ‘Where, Clod, where is it that you are going?’

  ‘Back up there,’ I said. ‘Foulsham.’

  Some laughter, small thin laughter, from my family thereabouts.

  ‘There is no Foulsham, Clod, not any more. Foulsham is done with.’

  ‘How can you say that, Granny, all those people up there?’

  ‘Heap House has fallen, Clod,’ she said. ‘It has quite come down. My room, room of my life, has fallen, it lies in the dust. We didn’t do it, it was them, it was London’s bidding. London has murdered Foulsham. And London shall repent it.’

  ‘All gone! All gone!’ I cried. ‘Has it truly? But, but all those people, they must be helped, some can yet be saved. My Lucy is up there!’

  ‘Typical of the child, no pluck, no spirit. Stand up, Clod, be upright, grow tall: understand and act upon it. We have been waiting for you and now we must on.’

  ‘Waiting,’ I stammered, ‘waiting for me?’

  ‘We knew you should come. You took your time, true enough, how like you that is. Never mind, you are here now, as we knew you should be. Everything in its place.’

  ‘Granny, I did not know I should be here, indeed I did not.’

/>   ‘That’s of little importance.’

  ‘I find I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be here at all.’

  ‘Don’t be weak, Clod, don’t be wet. We shall have no wetness. You’ve been herded here, Clod, moved along, encouraged to us. Pushed at corners, dragged in places, until you came upon us. We gather our own up, every one of us, without fail. We have even gathered our lost child Binadit, and that indeed was unexpected. Rosamud’s bastard son, who she lost out in the heaps so long ago after her own Milcrumb was drowned there. Come back now, hasn’t he, Rosamud, your own guilt.’

  ‘Yes, dear Ommaball, he has come to his mummy at last.’

  ‘And we keep him on his own, all alone in an empty lead-lined carriage, where nothing might find him out.’

  ‘Do you mean Benedict, do you mean Benedict Tipp?’

  ‘I mean Binadit Iremonger, lovechild, the bastard. We’ll take him, we acknowledge him, we’ll collect him up. So then, we are all complete.’

  ‘He’ll bring the heaps down.’

  ‘Very like, Clod. And so there’s nowhere else to go, is there then, dear boy, crumb of my lost lovely, only down that tunnel in the other direction.’

  ‘Into London?’

  ‘Yes, London. There to lay our traps, there to put down our poison, there to rise again another day. The tunnel’s been dug right through, right under them, into London. We’ll break our vow. Iremongers shall on London tread!’

  ‘But … but a tunnel, how?’

  ‘Umbitt’s men, they did it. Umbitt’s clever fools!’

  ‘My men,’ came a deep voice, ‘my dirty army.’

  ‘Grandfather!’

  And there along the platform, one figure moving against the direction of the crowd. Great long figure. Huge figure. Old and gloom itself. My grandfather. Now I might! Now! Now!

  ‘Jack Pike. Jack Pike.’