Lungdon

by Edward Carey

‘Iremonger through and through and through.’

  They made me so livid. ‘Doors!’ I cried. ‘Doors: make noise. All you house doors. Slam! Slam! Slam, I call you! Slam for all you’re worth, let them know my fury!’

  The doors slammed all over the new house, slammed and crashed and kept on at it, because I, Clod, clot of black Iremonger blood, bleeding in heart and broken inside, in my little engine, my heart, my busted heart.

  ‘He’ll have us discovered!’

  ‘He’ll bring the constabulary upon us!’

  ‘Something must be done!’

  ‘To rein in the monster child!’

  ‘Before he pulls off the roof!’

  ‘And all Lungdon sees us inside!’

  Then Rippit ran up and began to swing the chain of James Henry, to smash it against the wall, pelting it there, over and over.

  ‘James Henry Hayward! James Henry Hayward!’

  ‘Stop, Rippit!’ I cried. ‘You must not do that. It is against family rules.’

  He put my plug in his mouth and bit down, and then did I stop the slamming of all the doors, and then did Rippit with a great ugly grin remove poor James Henry from his mouth, a line of spittle still attached to it stretched out a while before snapping. Then with his own power he carefully closed all the doors about us. And then the doors moved no more.

  ‘Rippit,’ said he, with finality.

  A Dried Pea, a Brass Medal

  I sat at breakfast in the stolen dining room in my dressing gown and slippers, the table so crowded with Iremonger mastication, the noise of them crunching and slurping, of so many tongues licking spoons, lips smacking, moist lips together and apart. Oh how epiglottises of ire wobble so, and beneath all the noises of their juices mixing, of the internal weather of their digestion, of their little gases being formed and creeping out into the world, to cause a small child somewhere to sneeze, an old woman to hiccup, a pregnant woman to gag.

  I had me some fun, well why not? I do not regret my actions, not in the slightest. This is what I did.

  I turned the food, I quite spoiled it. I dirtied and fouled it, I made it old and stale, I made it smell and bubble, I grew it some hairs and mould. Just by thinking it and staring hard upon it. And in response:

  ‘Good heavens, Pomular, look at the tucker!’

  It belched of its own accord and spat maggots. There, I thought, eat that!

  Aunt Pomular leant forward and stuck a finger in, prodded the greasy mass, scooped some out. She looked at it from different angles, a gollop landed upon the floor, and then, her head reaching ever closer to her loaded finger, she fed the remainder of it to herself.

  ‘Pomular!’

  ‘Don’t eat!’

  ‘It’s poison, I say.’

  ‘Most repelling.’

  ‘The terror of digestion.’

  ‘Oh God!’ said Pomular, gasping.

  ‘She’s suffocating!’

  ‘She’s suppurating.’

  ‘She’s spontaneously combusting!’

  ‘Oh God!’ cried Pomular once more.

  ‘What?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘What is it, Pomular?’

  Pomular cleared her throat. ‘It’s really rather good.’

  Other hands dipped in then, other swallows.

  ‘It is!’

  ‘It really is!’

  ‘Delish!’

  ‘Reminds me of home so.’

  ‘Come, come, Rosamud, not to be maudlin. Have another bowl.’

  ‘I will, I will, don’t mind if I do.’

  ‘I can’t help but remember the last time I ate seagull.’

  ‘Oh stop! You’ll have us all in tears!’

  ‘I’d kill for a good fat rat.’

  ‘Well honestly, Ugifer, who wouldn’t?’

  ‘I won’t be civilised,’ cried Rosamud.

  ‘No, Muddy, course you shan’t.’

  ‘I don’t like Lungdon, I cannot help it.’

  ‘It’s so clean.’

  ‘It doesn’t smell right.’

  ‘It’s bad for my health.’

  ‘I’m losing weight!’

  ‘But this, this at least, does taste good. A little like home. Thank you, Clod, so thoughtful.’

  ‘You’re a good fellow, Clod.’

  Dear sweet Ormily, who would have married Tummis if the world had been better, there she was sipping at a glass filled with liquid the colour of mud. She smiled at me shyly.

  ‘I’m so glad to see you, Clod, up and about again. I am really,’ she said.

  Dear sweet Ormily. I never minded her. We spoke the same language of loss.

  ‘Hullo Ormily,’ I said. ‘How I wish everything was different.’

  But then Rosamud was in between us and, lifting up her brass doorhandle (Alice Higgs), she brought it down with a horrible thumping knock first upon my head and then, unforgivably, upon Ormily’s.

  ‘Young. Do. Not. Talk. At. Table,’ she said, and looked very pleased with herself for saying it.

  ‘Oh Rosamud!’ cried one of the aunts. ‘There you are quite yourself again. Good girl! Well done!’

  ‘Thank you, Ribotta, I am a mother now, and must help the young in any way I can.’

  ‘How is your boy, Rosamud?’

  ‘Binadit, I caution you, Cuffrinn, Binadit please to call him. He is … well he is rather large. They keep him in the cellar, in a metal box there. He is not really to see anyone, but I do pop down, when I can, I knock upon sides of his box and he bangs back at me.’

  ‘There’s love!’

  ‘There’s devotion!’

  ‘I do see my lost Milcrumb in his face, in his knocks even. It is a strain, you know, becoming a mother beyond the fortieth year.’

  Oh Aunt Rosamud and her Binadit. Binadit in the basement, Binadit who knew Lucy, who had kissed Lucy once. I did not know whether to embrace the fellow for knowing her or to throw all things at him for kissing those lips, those lips gone quite cold now. I had not visited him, even were I to have been allowed, I could not bear to look upon that face. That big beast of a fellow. What should I do to such a creature who, I believe, in some way or another, Lucy had loved. He was down there in the cellar keeping her in his thoughts, having her play in his memories, little bits of Lucy that were his and not mine. I hated him then, him and his mother, that busy aunt with her doorhandle.

  There were tears in Ormily’s eyes from Rosamud’s knock, she was very cowed and hurt, looking down into her watering can (Perdita Braithwaite) upon her lap. I could not stand it. Some switch went off in me, some firework lit, and looking at Rosamud blabbing on drove me in a fury, and thinking of her kissing son in a room beneath us and considering Rippit had broken the rules with my James Henry, shouldn’t I do likewise to these loathsome ladies, yes I was driven on and on. I silenced the trout, good and fast. Full of armoured thoughts I had poor Alice Higgs fly from her hands in an instant and sail through the thick black skin of a ruined custard where it floated miserable like the old HMS Temeraire going up the Thames before being broken up.

  ‘My doorhandle!’ she cried. ‘He moved it, he MOVED it!’

  Silence.

  ‘MY DOORHANDLE!’ Rosamud screamed.

  Then the others offered up their chorus.

  ‘It’s expressly against the rules to do such a thing!’

  ‘He’ll murder all civilisation!’

  With a smile then I held my breath and shattered every glass in the room.

  ‘Disgraceful child! Call Idwid, call Ommaball, call Umbitt!’

  Timfy had his whistle (Albert Powling) in his lips, and that was when I did it. Grinning widely at Ormily, I tugged at the whistle with my thoughts, I pulled hard on that chain of his.

  ‘My whistle!’ he shrieked. ‘My ever whistle! Oh Clod, I’ll drown you in tar water, I’ll boil you in rat fat. You! You spit, you gob of soap. Let go my whistle! I know you, I’ve yet to cut you for the burns you caused me on the dread night of the gathering in Heap House, when you sent a prehistoric
fowl upon me.’

  ‘It was an ostrich!’ I cried. ‘It was Tummis’s beautiful ostrich, lost in the house.’

  ‘How it kicked and bit my person!’

  ‘I am glad, I am right glad!’

  ‘The one blessing,’ spat Timfy, ‘is that the dread beast fell out into the heaps and died there horribly, just like its dripping master!’

  ‘My Tummis!’ said Ormily, louder than I’d ever heard her.

  Thinking hard then, oh wrapping my thoughts as hard as I may, I thought very small and round of the dried pea in the centre of Timfy’s pig-nose whistle, small and round, small and round, and I felt my thoughts about it, I felt my thoughts take hold of it and clench it in its thought-fists and I ground it and cracked it and made it into powder dust.

  ‘My whistle! My whistle, my whistle …’ stammered Uncle Timfy, like a small child with a broken toy, his voice very high now in his shock. ‘My whistle, my whistle, my whistle, my whistle, my whistle, my whistle, my whistle … won’t whistle!’ shrieked Timfy, the tears tumbling down Timfy cheeks.

  Then Moorcus stood up, his chair crashing to the ground. ‘Right then, you maggot, now you’re for it!’

  Taking up a candlestick, he came rushing for me and I with what quickness I could I plucked with my wishing his shining medal from his breast, it leapt in the air, he tried to catch it. It hovered around above our heads a moment. With a click of my fingers I set the ribbon alight and let it flame beyond Moorcus’s reach, until it had all burnt out and just the metal disk FOR VALOUR spun helplessly in the air.

  ‘You are the maggot, Moorcus!’ I cried.

  There was the sound of clapping from behind. I thought at first it was one of the servants but it wasn’t. It was Rowland Collis, in the shadows amongst the serving crowd. Rowland Collis who had once been Moorcus’s toastrack birth object, but had turned back human again somehow, some magnificent somehow. Who could tell how he had done it? Rowland Collis had no idea and refused to return to toastrackness no matter how Moorcus begged him. Rowland Collis himself, Moorcus’s dirty secret.

  ‘Hi! Hi there, Rowland,’ I called. ‘Rowland Collis. However are you?’

  ‘Oh! Oh! Coming on I should say!’ cheered Rowland. ‘Enjoying the scenery! Partial to the drama!’

  ‘Toastrack!’ squealed Moorcus. ‘You will be silent!’

  The unribboned medal still spun in the air; I let it drop now and it landed with a thunk in a tureen of puddled aspic.

  ‘That,’ I said, pointing at Rowland, ‘that there is Moorcus’s real birth object. There! Turned into the young man beside you!’

  How they all gasped, my family. How Moorcus, his face so red with embarrassment.

  ‘No, no, it is not true. It isn’t!’

  ‘Oh yes!’ I bellowed. ‘That Rowland there was once a toastrack!’

  And suddenly in all the glory of it, at the peak of my victory, I was shut up.

  ‘RIPPIT!’

  I felt an itching on the nape of my neck, a sudden sharpness there, a tugging, a rising intense heat. My hair, my hair was alight! Rippit was setting my hair aflame – he had done this as a child back at home before he disappeared, it was his particular parlour trick. With the stench of my hair burning, I slapped the flames out, I grabbed a napkin, wetted it and applied it to my head. Else I’d have been burnt to a crisp.

  I was sent to bed. Rippit took me by a fistful of my unburnt hair and hauled me upwards.

  ‘It isn’t, it isn’t true!’ insisted Moorcus. But all the family were backing away from him. Shocked and disgusted.

  Grandmother Steps

  Granny came in to see me. Rippit sat at the window seat, chewing at his fingernails and licking his fingers and then applying the dampness to the parting of his greasy hair, to lay it flat upon his huge forehead, as was his wont.

  Grandmother, shivering slightly, sat beside me in my broken room.

  ‘I like to travel, Clodius,’ she said. ‘I’ve quite the taste for it. I’ve been up to the attics and down to the cellars. I am out in the world. How large it is, the world.’

  ‘May I step out, Granny, may I? Into London?’

  ‘Into Lungdon, you mean. No, Clod, you might find yourself lost in a little instant, you might run away from all those that love you, we’ll keep you in pyjamas yet. Sit up, will you? I’ll have no Iremonger slouching before me. No, not you, Rippit, stay as you are. I know very well you are sitting as upright as you may. Clodius, Clodius you are an Iremonger! Whatever has befallen you to make you weep so, swallow it and let it shape you, and be the better for it. What has happened, Clod, has happened and you must chalk it down to experience. Now then, you can move things, you can, Clod, can’t you, child?’

  ‘I shall move out, I’ll move away, I’ll move far and far away.’

  ‘You, grandchild, if you’ve a mind to it, shall move mountains, whole cities even!’

  ‘I’ll do nothing for you, nothing good at least.’

  ‘Stuff and nonsense. You shall do as you’re told and be happy to do so.’

  ‘No. I won’t.’

  ‘I’ve never heard such cheek!’

  ‘You’d best get used to it for I shall not be turned.’

  ‘This is your grandmother talking!’

  ‘Yes and don’t I know it.’

  ‘I have been very excited! I have been moved, and it is never a good idea to move ancient monuments, architects never do advise it. The slightest thing may make them crumble. You, Clodius, you, Ayris’s only child, you shall not be the cause of my death, shall you?’

  ‘I, Granny?’

  ‘Be an Iremonger, Clod.’

  ‘Oh to hell with all Iremongers!’

  ‘You shame the memory of your mother.’

  ‘I spit on her memory, she means as nothing to me.’

  Grandmother looked like all the blood had just fallen out of her. She trembled in her ancientness, she looked hurt and bent and I did not care, nor was I frightened of her any more, not of her disapproval, nor even of her Brussels sprout smell.

  ‘Monster child! There’s no love left in you!’

  ‘At last you understand!’ I said.

  ‘He is very ill, Rippit.’

  ‘Rippit,’ said Rippit.

  ‘Send for the pin.’

  ‘The pin, Granny?’ I asked.

  ‘Rippit,’ said Rippit.

  ‘In times of distress, what a blessing is blood.’

  ‘You’ll bleed me?’ I asked.

  ‘Rippit!’ said Rippit. ‘Rippit!’

  ‘You’ve gone too far, Clod,’ said Granny. ‘Signalling to Lungdon people, breaking the furniture, hurting sacred Iremonger property, insulting your cousin and spilling secrets that were not yours to spill and now, on top of all, growing rude to your own grandmother, so, so you must take your medicine.’

  ‘What will you do to me?’

  ‘Why, Clod, as I said, we shall Pin you!’

  ‘RIPPIT! RIPPIT!’

  ‘Oh, murder me then, Granny, prick me with pins and pull all the blooding out of me, please do it! Hurry along!’

  Granny cleared her throat, she called down the hallway, ‘Mrs Piggott!’

  A thumping on the stairs and the housekeeper was within.

  ‘Yes, my lady?’

  ‘I want this floor of the house cleared of all family and servants.’

  ‘It shall cause a great deal of crowding elsewhere about the premises, my lady.’

  ‘What do I care of that?’

  ‘Nothing, my lady.’

  ‘Don’t get ideas, Piggott, you’re nothing but a servant.’

  ‘Yes, my lady.’

  ‘You make me ill.’

  ‘Yes, my lady, I am sorry for that.’

  ‘Don’t make me ill, Piggott, just do as I say.’

  ‘Right away, my lady.’

  ‘Only Rippit may remain.’

  ‘Yes, my lady.’

  ‘No disturbance under any circumstance.’

  ‘Yes, my lady.’

&nb
sp; ‘Nothing to upset such a delicate operation.’

  ‘Yes, my lady, I quite understand.’

  ‘Then bring up Miss Pinalippy, and be prompt about it.’

  Binadit Iremonger Boxed

  7

  BOTTON?

  The narrative of Binadit Iremonger, bastard

  Bin. A. Dit.

  It.

  Ben. E. Dict.

  So much have I been called. These my names. The first given me by my own mother, scratched on a piece of tin. The second by Foulsham people – It, they said. It of the Heaps. Third by her. Benedict, that she called me. Is a lovely name, no doubting. Only one person calls me that name, many other people say or sing and shout ‘It’ at me often enough. And now, day to day, am Binadit known. All call me that, Binadit, and have me say it too, like I’m learning at school, ‘Binadit, Binadit,’ but should rather, should much more like the hearing of ‘Benedict’ by that single voice of hers.

  I like bottons.

  She was a botton. And I found her.

  And lost her when they found me, my family, them Binadit-sayers.

  I have family now. Big family. Big love. I am fussed and pinched. They coo at me, they kiss, they stroke, they comb, they brush, they mutter, they purr, they pluck, they punch, they bite, they bump and hold on hard and do not let go. What a lot of loving there is. All for me. They lined up to look at me, one by one, to peer in, to touch and gasp, or bite or shout a bit, but not, not really, to hit upon. I keep waiting for them to leave me behind like they done before, but they don’t, no they don’t they keep me with them all and all, day and night, I’m their Binadit.

  Mother she comes, she comes most often. Can hardly get peace with all her comings and her comings, her botherings and clottings, her weepings, her touchings, she will touch me so and so and so, on my head, on my cheeks in particular. She calls me more than Binadit, baby she calls me, my baby boy. But I’ve not been baby these many years since, and last I was a baby, when I was a new thing, a very fresh Binadit indeed, she gone and left me in the heaps. She did herself. Left a little token, a scratch on scrap tin. BINADIT read the wobbly hand. She named me, then she left me.

  ‘You gone and left me in the heaps,’ I say. True enough.

  ‘My baby, my baby Bin …’ she returns, and is not to deny it. Rosamud her name.