Lungdon

by Edward Carey

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Yes, please, come along. She’ll carry it and more besides.’

  It was done. To see that huge hound with a weight of pig upon its back! And then the business exhausted and the purchase made, off they went into the darkness, like it was the normalest thing in the world to walk your dog in such a fashion.

  Well and that was strange, surely it was, but London is the great hold-all of many a strange person, always has been, always will be. So what if a person has a dog that takes home his shopping for him, that’s not so telling if you balance it that way. Only then, with us turning back around to our business, then came the strange part. The meat, all the meat, all the meat of all of Smithfield had changed in those few moments. It had all spoiled. It was all stale and old and rotting, all gone off I tell you. In a sudden moment. All spoiled, quite spoiled, and then such a buzzing of flies and such a standing by. Where before all had been whites and reds and pinks, now was all darkest browns and muddy yellows and dirty greens. Wrong colours, wrong smells, wrong meat. All spent like from some rotting rubbish heap.

  Smithfield had no new meat that day. If you wanted meat you had to go fetch it from Newgate Market or Leadenhall, which is generally the best for poultry, dead or alive.

  From the Master of the Household, the Right Honourable Lord Steward, Marquis of Breddalbane, Buckingham Palace

  A terrestrial globe in one of state rooms – a gift to the family from the collection of Catherine the Great – has begun to discolour and grow weeping blisters. Many countries have become quite illegible. Gibraltar is now no more than a swollen lump. India is taken over by a large, very sore-looking rash. Just yesterday the abused crust or scab that was once St Helena dislodged itself and fell to the floor.

  As if all the Empire were under threat.

  5

  THE HOUSE ACROSS THE STREET

  Concluding the narrative of Eleanor Cranwell,

  23 Connaught Place,

  London W

  6th February 1876

  Our house was so quiet as I left it. No one came to stop me. There was a slight disappointment in that, as if I’d secretly been hoping they would. It was a little past midnight when I stepped out. It couldn’t have been easier leaving really, the floorboards did not creak, the door made no sound when I opened it. I’d thought about going out by way of the servants’ entrance, but I’d more likely come upon someone there. I slid back the bolts, which obliged me very easily, and I stepped out. I left the door slightly ajar so I could easily get back in.

  So then.

  The streetlamps were lit but they barely penetrated the dark, there was just a slightly lighter darkness around them. They looked as if they were drowning. No one in the street. All the houses shut up. Nothing to observe me as I went. Not a pigeon, no cat. All alone.

  I crossed the street. Rubbish on the ground, a bit boggy in places. Our street is getting dirtier and dirtier and no one ever comes to clear it up any more.

  I reached the steps of the house. Steeped in rubbish. I disturbed a great cloud of flies. Rubbish like it’d been dumped there for ages, so that you’d think there was no one living inside, that the whole place was deserted. That wasn’t true, I knew they were in there. It felt so cold suddenly, like there was some new cold eating at me. I felt that something, that everything, was terribly wrong, that all was unnatural. That everything had been spoiled, tampered with. The closer I stepped to the house, the worse I felt, as if I was at the place where some terrible crime had happened. As if something had been very badly mistreated.

  Buck up, I told myself. Stop thinking like that.

  Go to the door.

  I looked through the keyhole, and saw nothing. It was all far too dark. Too dark out here, too dark in there. There was a brass knocker, so I knocked. How that doleful metallic sound bounced around the street, as if I’d hurt the door by rapping upon it and it was calling out in complaint. Wrong of me to do that, the knocker seemed to be saying, most wrong indeed. Shouldn’t have done that. You’ll regret it, of a certainty.

  I stepped up close to the door again, I was about to give the knocker another loud rap when instead I pushed the door with my shaking hands. It opened. It just opened, I hadn’t even touched with any particular force, but it opened all the way.

  I could not see anyone inside, just a small portion of the front hallway. It was just like ours but very thick with dirt and filth as if to tell me once more than no one had been here all along, that I was mistaken.

  ‘Hello,’ I whispered, and it was a very faint whisper. I barely managed to get any sound out, my throat was so tight.

  There was no answer. No answer at all.

  ‘Excuse me,’ I said, a little louder this time. ‘I say, is anyone there at all?’

  ‘At all, at all, at all.’

  Echoes down the dark hallway, which beyond a few paces from where I stood was all deep, inky blackness. A blackness that seemed to me, in my high excitement, thick with dark life.

  ‘I think there are people here,’ I said.

  Nothing in reply.

  ‘I’d be most awfully glad to meet you. I’ve been calling out. Did you hear me? My name’s Eleanor Cranwell. We’re neighbours, I live just across the road. I say, I knew there were people living here. Hello? How do you do?’

  Nothing.

  ‘Since I know that you are here, you might at least admit it.’

  Nothing.

  ‘I have seen you,’ I said. ‘I’ve seen the young man upstairs, I’ve seen the fellow in the brass helmet. One of the servants said she saw a dog.’

  Nothing.

  ‘Come out, please, come along out, won’t you?’

  Upstairs, or somewhere deep within the body of the house, something, some heavy object, fell.

  ‘I heard that! Who’s there?’ I called.

  And nothing again.

  I had a candle in my dressing-gown pocket and strove to light it then, calling out into the darkness, ‘I have a candle with me now, I’m going to light it that we may see each other better.’

  There was a strange breathing sound then, as of many mouths taking a quick breath of air in shock. I struck the matchbox and lit the candle. It didn’t do much to help my investigation further, the candle flame merely jerked the shadows into dancing around and forming a very unhappy and menacing impression of life. Then, suddenly, some sort of wind brushed past me, and for the slightest moment I felt something hairy, some thing with sharp hairs rush past me, there was a sudden very stale smell and then it was gone again. I hadn’t seen it, quite; only, somehow, sensed it.

  ‘Hello,’ I said. ‘Come out, don’t be frightened.’

  Quiet.

  ‘Are there many of you here?’ I tried again. ‘I think there must be.’

  Again nothing, though upstairs, far upstairs, I thought I heard something shift a little on the landing. Looking towards the stairs that went up floor after floor after floor, I thought there must be several eyes upon me then, waiting to see what I should do.

  ‘Are you frightened?’ I asked.

  Something creaked.

  ‘Are you?’

  Something, I thought, breathed.

  ‘Are you hurt perhaps? Are you in any pain? Can I help you?’

  From somewhere up in the house, something was dropped or fell, something was gathering pace and came hurtling down the well of the stairs from the upper floors. It bounced down the stairs nearest me and landed at my feet in a sudden crash. I could see clearly enough that it was a saucer, a porcelain saucer, totally smashed now and in ruins.

  ‘You’ve broken it,’ I called up.

  Nothing.

  ‘That wasn’t very clever now, was it?’

  Nothing.

  I brought my candle down towards the broken crockery. It was all in rather a neat pile – strange that it should have landed so. As I brought my candle up to it, I saw that the pieces were still moving. The pieces were clicking against each other, falling over each other, and the close
r I came to them with the light the further they scattered apart. Soon there was not a piece to be seen, but all had fled into the safety of the dark. How on earth had that happened? How could it be possible?

  ‘Are you hurt?’ I called, for above all I wished to try to make some sense of this nonsense, and bring all back to normal. ‘Please may I help you, please will you come out now? Please, please do.’

  Something else came smashing down the stairs, then more and more things – plates and cups and saucers and tea pots – so much falling porcelain all smashing by my feet, hurtling down now like a terrible loud crashing storm of crockery. Never quite hitting me but coming so close.

  ‘Stop it!’ I cried. ‘Stop throwing that.’

  I started backing away towards the door. It seemed there were no rules in this house, all was turned on its head there, things, things in this place, had lives, just as if they were any mouse or an insect or a person.

  There was a chair in the passageway. I hadn’t seen it before, perhaps it had just arrived. As I approached, it ran away, horse-like, into another room, the door slamming behind it. The front door was still open then and I ran towards it, but in an instant the other doors behind me opened and let forth a great rush of objects, a pelting of things. And then there was suddenly someone right next to me, I felt the heat of him, and then that someone opened his mouth and blew out my candle.

  Darkness. Silence at first, then scraping sounds of broken china. The fragments were scratching my shins now. I tried to kick them off. I put my hand in my pocket for my matches and, trembling, took them out. The first fell to the ground before I was quite able to strike it. But in that act, all the things seemed to know what I was about and began to prick me here and there and to pull upon my dress. I do not know what might have happened to me if I had not at last been able to strike the next match and so rekindle the candle.

  And then in the darkness, just for a moment, I saw them. I saw them all. There were hundreds of them: people everywhere, lurking in the darkness, their heads peeping out to stare at me, hissing people, shifting in the yellow gloom, stepping over each other, like a great swarm of beetles and all in dark greasy clothing and all with strange shifted faces; faces and heads that resembled human ones but were somehow wrong, too long, or too squashed, and all with yellow eyes and all in a sudden terror at seeing me.

  Now I saw them all swarming, coming down the hallways towards me, hurling objects at me. There was an old woman, a horrible shrunken old woman, and she glared a moment before pelting a shoe at me. As I ducked from it, my candle went out. I heard the old woman call in distress,

  ‘Get it out! Get it out of our house!’

  Scuttles and movements behind, getting closer, voices, and noises, scratches and scrapes, coming closer and closer.

  ‘Dirty!’ cried the old woman. ‘I shall not have such filth in here. Catch it, catch it quick! Step hard upon it! Squash it!’

  So much movement, so much noise behind me as I dashed along the hallway and was at the front door again. Pushing it, tugging it open as glass and crockery and cutlery and nails were hurled at me, and then I was out on the street again, in the road, and gasping, gasping.

  There was something else on the steps, something that hadn’t been there before. I found myself shrinking back from it. It hissed at me. A fox. A dirty great grey city fox.

  ‘Go on! Get away from me!’

  But the thing did not budge, just bared its needle-sharp teeth.

  I screamed all the way home.

  I screamed up the steps and I screamed as I pushed the front door wide open. I screamed for help as I ran into the house. I wanted to wake everyone up. ‘Help! Help!’ I called. I didn’t care that I be chided for it. I must see someone.

  ‘Mother! Father! Please! Help me!’

  But no answer came, no noise from anywhere in our house, not a sound.

  ‘Someone, please! Help me!’

  Nothing. No one. All was silence. I ran up to my parents’ rooms. I opened their bedroom door, fiddled for the gas switch and set it alight, a slight hissing in the air as the coal gas was ignited and the familiar smell followed as usual and that was comforting, but then I realised that though the bed was rumpled I could see neither Mother nor Father. There was something in the bed, something that did not belong there. I tugged back the sheets. There were two tall clocks in the bed, grandfather clocks, one taller than the other, neither with a face, neither ticking, just the empty wooden cases. Who had gone and done that, who had put them there, and where were Mother and Father?

  ‘This has to stop!’ I cried. ‘Has to stop right now! THIS IS RIDICULOUS!’

  No sounds, no sounds anywhere in the house. I ran upstairs to the attic, to the servants’ rooms, I banged on all the doors, screaming for them to ‘Wake up! Wake up!’

  No sounds, no sounds but the sounds I made.

  I opened the doors, and all the beds, every one, held a strange object, but in none of them was a person. Instead, in the places where people should have been, there was a chess board, a bell pull, a slipper bath, a mousetrap, a carpet, a vase.

  ‘Wake up, wake up!’

  I said this to myself: that I must be in a dream now, and if only I found my way back to my bedroom then surely it should all be over with and I could wake up and everything would be quite how it was before.

  So back here I am, and I think I am awake. I’ve written it all down should anyone find this.

  When will the day ever come again?

  I see over the road that the door of the house is closed shut now.

  I turn then, all of a sudden, to my own bedroom door.

  That’s when I see it.

  Inside my room is the fire extinguisher and it has grown again.

  Part Two

  Inside Looking Out

  Clod Iremonger Nightshirted

  6

  AN IREMONGER IN LONDON

  Beginning the narrative of Clod Iremonger, formerly of Heap House, Foulsham, briefly lost, now amongst his family in London

  To be an Iremonger

  ‘Lucy, Lucy, Lucy. Lucy! Lucy! LUCY!’

  ‘Wake up!’

  ‘LUCY!’

  ‘Shut up!’

  ‘LUCY! LUCY!’

  ‘Rippit!’

  I’d been at it again, they said, calling out in my sleep. Waking everyone up. Wasn’t right to do that. Wasn’t proper. Wasn’t London. We’re in London now, and must behave London-like. So then. Shut up in your sleep.

  But whenever I was in sleep, I was looking for Lucy all over Foulsham, calling out for her but never finding her. And waking up in London, Foulsham seemed so far away and Lucy even further.

  London. In London.

  All my life I had wanted to be in London. And now, finally that I was here, in a London street, in a London house, I could summon no comfort from it. I was Clod Iremonger, London lingerer. London in my lungs. London in my eyes. Here was London, oh my ever-longed-for London.

  I used to have a map of London in my old bedroom in Heap House. I should trace the streets with my fingers, never daring to hope I may one day live there. But I saw of it oh so little then, just a great smudge in the distance. But now, there I was, a Londoner. A Londoner perhaps, though not so much of it spilled into my ill head, but I caught it through windows whenever I could, though they said I must keep the curtains closed, still I stole small glimpses from this London address. I shall know you yet, I shall be a London one, shall I?

  There is nowhere else for me to go. I cannot go back home.

  Our home, old home, old place, disgraced and thrown over, blackened, cracked, forlorn, forgot, death place, dead home, death knell, pell mell, gone and gone and never ever to return. They pulled it down. And never will it up again.

  Home of my people: no, nowhere.

  I am most awfully without home.

  How many died, my Lucy, my ever Lucy Pennant? She that I loved and loved me back. Scrap of a servant girl, my own everything. Gone and gone and gone. How many b
uried, burnt, smothered, put out, snuffed out, out of the game, gone under, killed, murdered, butchered, bled? How many bones, sacred bones, left? I’d pick up that dust. I’d look after it so.

  Put me with the cinders. I’d be better left there.

  How many that once were, are only silent now?

  We’re off the map. Mapless, landless people. Extinct. First the dodo, then the great auk, then the piebald Forlichingham Terrier, then Foulsham itself. And yet I breathe still. Shouldn’t. Most highly improper that I do. So wish that I didn’t. Some rats always find a way. You demolish a slum, the slum pushes up somewhere else. If ever there was a family that should shake off death, that should ignore it and grin at it, it is mine.

  For I am, and ever shall be whilst I breathe, an Iremonger.

  Far rather I should not be and rip myself in two.

  Should much rather be dead.

  But am not.

  I’d even extinguish myself. And they know, my family, and so they watch me, they watch me always. How I am looked at and watched over in my nightshirt that may as well be my prison uniform. What’s to live for, after all, in this Lucy-less world? No Lucy today or tomorrow, no Lucy next week, no Lucy next month, next year no no Lucy. No red any more ever again, not the exact right red that I long for with such an ache. My fingers in her hair. No freckles that I care for. As if each freckle were a full stop. And there are only full stops. I can’t be whole any longer. Oh, Lucy gone and dead on me. What’s a fellow to do?