by Edward Carey
‘Leave us be!’ they moaned.
‘Not for a moment,’ I shouted. ‘We must keep on, or be crushed! Move! MOVE! DON’T BE DEAD! COME ON! UP! GET UP!’
I heard a loud splashing, like something had fallen from high up into water, deep water, noises of thrashing about, there, there! While it can still be heard. Quick, don’t go silent on me!
I pulled them, grabbed and dragged them along, struck at them, and they were there crawling and then of a terrible sudden …
Huge plosh!
Where? Where? I felt around in the blackness, couldn’t feel them nowhere, couldn’t hear the splashing, where, where, lost her? Lost?
‘Jenny! Jenny!’ I couldn’t feel her, my oldest friend from childhood, my house companion, my best mate. Then:
‘Lucy, help! Lucy!’
‘Jen!’
I felt around, kept feeling about, in a panic, in a terror, for her to be alone down there in all of that and then suddenly there was nothing there, no ground beneath me at all and I was falling, falling, falling and then I hit the water and went under.
I came up at last, kicked myself up through God only knows what, so cold, trying to breathe in that wet coldness. A hand on me then, a hand pulling me on, pulling me closer.
‘Effra!’ I gasped. ‘It’s only the bloody Effra! The underground river! We’re saved! Come on, all of you, jump down, you must jump. Follow our voices. Down, down, we’ll help you. You must come! Must!’
Plop.
Splash!
Crash!
Down they come, one by one, those few left of Foulsham, into the hidden river, there to swim in dirt, to go on a little. Call out the names.
‘Lucy Pennant.’
‘Jenny Ryall. Bug? BUG!’
‘Bug Ryall.’
‘Thank God.’
‘Couldn’t get my breath.’
‘Who else?’
‘Arthur Oates.’
‘Tess Shanks.’
‘And Colin. Colin Shanks.’
‘Esther Nelson.’
‘Roger Cole.’
‘Bartholomew Lewis.’
‘And? And? Molly? Where’s Molly?’
‘Molly Porter, here, here I am!’
‘Good girl! Well done all of you!’
So then which way? That was simple, the only way we could. One way was blocked and full, I supposed all chocked up with what was once Foulsham. The other was free, and surely led London way.
We swam and were sick and swam, and swam about, and on we went a long time, but there in the end at last there was a ladder along the great pipes, up and up and up it went, we climbed it rung by sharp rung, and it led all the way back up to land, which land we couldn’t say but above ground somewhere, somewhere with space and air to breathe.
We clambered up.
The ladder came to an end.
Big metal cover.
Here goes.
I gave it a push and another, a twist, and a screech, and another shove and it shifted at last, and the air came stinging in, what air that was, like a first lungful. There was no one there, no one around. Early in the morning I think it must have been, no sun yet. Slid the thing back, awful din it made, but no one about, houses and a street and places where people lived, but no people that I could see. Colder up there, colder on the ground, London cold come about us and bit hard.
‘I think we’ve done it,’ Jenny said.
‘London? Is it, is it London after all?’ some kid asked – Roger Cole, panting and shaking in the cold.
‘London,’ I said. ‘London proper?’
‘London.’
‘London.’
‘London,’ I said.
‘Yes, this is London,’ came a deep adult voice from behind us, ‘and you are not welcome here.’
‘Scarper!’ I cried. ‘Flee, run for it!’
A whistle was blown, a policeman’s whistle.
‘Over here!’ yelled the policeman. ‘Over here! Rats! Dozens of them! Here!’ And he blew his whistle and ran at us. He had hold of some small boy, it was Bartholomew, little Bartholomew Lewis, he had him and shoved him under his arm like he was a chicken. I leapt at the policeman, just leapt at him, clawed my fingers into his face, like some desperate mad mother, as if the poor little brat was my own child. Then others had the idea of it too, and we were tumbling the man down and kicking into him until he let the boy go, he had to, or I think we might have pulled every bit of flesh off him and left him there all bones and nothing else, but he was there still breathing and bloody and full of his hatred. We hadn’t done the policeman over proper and that was our mistake, because then he was blowing his whistle again. I couldn’t believe it, he wouldn’t take a hint this bastard, so I marched back over and gave him a good Lucy Pennant welcome – I kicked him full in the face. What blood! Truth was, I was glad to see it. And that stopped the whistling, and then, yes, at once, we ran pell-mell into the night.
We run at last towards a bridge; I was ahead of them, just running and going on, Jen beside me. I thought they were all coming on, but we’d split already. Can’t say which way the others went, but we came along what I now understand to be Vauxhall Bridge, we must have come up above ground somewhere near Kennington. I know that now. I studied it on the map. Didn’t know then, then it was just a bridge. Just a place to flee along.
But by the time we were over the bridge we weren’t all there. Some had run off into different streets. Couldn’t keep them all with me, all in a tumble panic, all screaming. More whistles then from different places, and calling out and then, oh then, Christ then, of God then, bloody bloody then came a loud cracking sound, like some furious metal animal had just barked and I knew what that noise meant. Gunshot, wasn’t it. There were guns, we were being fired at. They’re murdering us. Dead if we go back underground, dead if we stay on the streets, and over yonder the other side of the river, more dead and dead and dead piled in burning heaps. Nothing but death, was there? How to keep alive in that, how to tiptoe around all that deading and keep alive somehow, find a little little corner to breathe in and prosper? That’s all we want, to keep living. Not so much to ask, is it?
Yes, it bloody was. Yes it always is. The biggest thing to ask.
How to live, how to keep living?
‘Run!’ I screamed. ‘Run for it!’
Irene Tintype
13
SECRETS OF A ROOM
Continuing the narrative of Clod Iremonger
Little Girl Locked
We were in the hallway of the house opposite, where the girl who waved at me lived, still in Connaught Place. There was someone upstairs, someone calling, ‘Help! Help me!’
‘Hullo,’ I whispered up the stairway. ‘Where are you?’
‘Lucy. Lucy,’ said Binadit, tears in his eyes.
Police whistles all up and down the street, sounds of people running. They were at the old place, they were inside it, blowing their whistles, calling out. There was a gunshot.
‘Hullo,’ I said. ‘Call again.’
‘Where have you led us?’ said Pinalippy. ‘To our deaths?’
‘Hullo!’ I called in my loudest whisper.
‘Help,’ at last came the response. ‘Help me! I’m up here!’
It was the girl, the girl that waved, crying somewhere upstairs. I went up the stairs, following the sound, I was at her door, it was locked. I thought hard on the lock, but though the lock itself withered and blackened and the handle spat out, still the door would not yield.
‘Open up!’ I called. ‘We’ll help you.’
‘Can’t open it,’ she cried. ‘It locked of its own accord. I can’t do anything. Please help. I can’t get it away from me, it won’t listen.’
‘What won’t?’ I asked. ‘Tell me what is troubling you.’
‘It is! Oh please make it go away.’
‘What is it?’ I asked.
‘The fire extinguisher!’ she said. ‘It doesn’t listen, it’s moving of its own accord, grown so tall, and the
bed and the carpet, everything, I think, is in league with it. They mean to crush me!’
‘Quick, Clod,’ said Pinalippy, ‘the police, finding nothing in that house, shall surely search all the others.’
‘It’s coming!’ the girl cried. ‘Oh go away! Go away!’
‘Don’t come up,’ I said to Pinalippy and Binadit. ‘It’s not the lock, it’s the door. It is growing and shifting shape, the whole room beyond, I do think, is quite thoroughly awake and full of life!’
This should take such special effort.
I put my hands on the door; it was hot, so hot!
‘It’s certainly the room!’ I said. ‘The whole room wants life. It’s all sealed up like any living thing, and to get inside it, like any surgeon, you must make a hole! However did a room get such an idea? A whole room, seeking life!’
Downstairs the doorbell rang.
‘The police! It must be the police!’ cried Pinalippy.
‘Please help me!’ called the girl in the nursery.
‘Lucy, Lucy,’ moaned Binadit as the contents of a wastepaper basket found its way all over him.
‘This house is possessed!’ said Pinalippy.
‘Pinalippy, quickly and quietly, look through the keyhole, see if it is the police. It may be the house itself, trying to talk. If it’s not the police you must quieten the bell, for I think if the whole house is coming to life it may start screaming any moment, just as we do when we are born!’
Pinalippy approached the door.
‘Dear room,’ I said, calling through the twisted keyhole. ‘Dear room, how do, how do ye do?’
A great creaking then from the other side of the door.
‘Oh! Oh!’ came the girl.
‘What is it?’ I called. ‘What is happening in there?’
‘The floorboards! They’re shifting underfoot! All my books! All the furniture!’
The doorbell rang again.
‘It must be the house!’ I told her. ‘It’s trying to come alive.’
All about the house now, the floorboards were creaking and groaning, the windows were rattling, doors opening and closing, objects darting about.
‘It’s not the house ringing,’ said Pinalippy at the front door.
‘Then the police?’ I asked.
‘It’s not the police either,’ said Pinalippy. ‘It’s a little girl.’
‘Perhaps,’ I said, ‘it is a friend of the one trapped inside. Whatever she wants, you’d best let her in and shut the door after her, or she’ll have all the police in with her in a moment. Binadit, go hide yourself in a room, for you are too much the spectacle.’
I heard Pinalippy open the door, the girl stepping in.
‘Hullo!’ said the girl in the hall. ‘Thanks awfully!’
‘Who are you?’ asked Pinalippy. ‘What do you want?’
I knew that girl, I’d heard her voice.
‘I’m Irene Tintype,’ she said.
‘She’s a leather!’ Pinalippy called.
‘Irene as in genie,’ the newcomer said, ‘not Irene as in queen.’
‘Lucy, Lucy!’ went Binadit from some chamber within.
‘Please, please get me out,’ cried the girl in the nursery.
‘Don’t let Binadit anywhere near Irene Tintype. There’ll be an explosion if you do.’
‘Help!’ called the girl trapped in her nursery.
‘I’m Irene Tintype.’
‘Oh Lucy, Clod, Lucy,’ groaned Binadit.
‘Help NOW!’ cried the girl.
I pressed my whole body against the door. How hot the room. The girl had become silent now, no human sounds from inside any more, but noise, great noise. It was coming to life, it was so close to living.
‘Be still room, old room,’ I said.
The room moaned, it screamed.
‘Be still, be quiet. Be asleep once more.’
A terrible cracking from inside, like all the floorboards were pulling up from their places, like the walls were breathing and bursting their slats, some were snapping in half, in terrible cracks – as if they were the room’s answer, ‘NO, NO, NO, NO!’ It wanted to live, whoever could blame a thing for wanting to live?
‘Knock, knock,’ I said.
Bang, bang, came the response of something very heavy, thumping on the floor.
‘Clod,’ I said. ‘It’s Clod here and I mean to come in.’
BANG. BANG.
Police whistles.
‘I’m coming in now.’
Crash!
The Last Rats of Foulsham Regarding the Burning of Their Home
14
BURIED IN FILTH
Continuing the narrative of Lucy Pennant
Maybe five with me. Running, running any way we could. There were calls behind, whistles blowing, I heard another shot of a gun, oh God, and then, oh God, oh God, screams after too, yet another shot and then silence. On we ran, we must, on and on, and turning what corners we may to keep the policemen from us. To escape their killing company. I had no notion where or what or anything, I was bloody and scraped and cut but we could not stop, must not stop or be taken.
Still the police whistles sounded, still we ran away from them, but they seemed to come from all directions, so that running away from one we seemed then to be running towards another. Which way? Which way? I could not see the way. Where, where to hide?
I hate you, London, I hate you already.
We came upon a long high wall – they are such familiar things to us of Foulsham, you see – and I thought for a moment I was back home, but this wall stood high and firm, unlike those others, unlike those former walls, those walls were gone, weren’t they, all of them come tumbling down. I slammed into that tall high wall, as if it might somehow save me.
‘Come on, we’re free yet, let’s stay so. Come on please, come with me!’
We ran along the side of the wall, the whistles behind us, so I thought then, our feet smacking on the cobbles, in the London filth, mud all over, thick with dirt, freezing and in a terror. Follow, follow, I thought, follow round the wall. We did come to the end of it then, and then, then, such sudden light, such brightness, we’d come around the side of the wall that gave upon the river, not the Effra, not an underground river, some other river, some other river, big and wide it was. I suddenly knew its name.
‘It’s only the bloody Thames,’ I said out loud, the shock of it flooding over me. ‘We’re only on the bloody bank of the Thames! Must’ve been what we crossed earlier.’
And then we saw the great flaming in the distance and how big was the smoke coming up from it, like a great torch over London, like someone had struck a match, only this match was a huge one. It was Foulsham over there, Foulsham burning and burning and going out, our home.
‘Oh.’
‘That’s Foulsham, is it?’
‘Yes, my lad, it’s Foulsham burning bright.’
‘Oh, where’s Mam? Where’s Dad?’
‘Where’s Bartholomew? He was here just now, wasn’t he?’
‘Hush now,’ I said. ‘We must keep quieter.’
‘But where are they?’
‘I lost my sister, I lost my Tess, she was with us a while back. Tess? Tess? Where are you now?’
‘Lucy Pennant,’ I said.
‘Jen.’
‘Bug.’
‘Colin Shanks.’
‘Esther Nelson.’
‘No more?’
No more. Just five. Half only remaining.
‘Molly?’ Jen called. ‘Molly?’
‘Please,’ I said. ‘We should keep quiet, we have to find somewhere to hide. They’re trying to find us, and if they find us it’ll all be up for us. For the sake of our families, we owe it to our families, we must keep running. Keep alive as long as we can, each breath we take is a fist in their face.’
‘I can’t! I can’t go another step!’ cried Colin.
‘Don’t then,’ I said, ‘and the whistles and bullets will find you all the faster.’
‘W
here then, if you’re so smart, where do we go?’ asked Esther.
‘You led us here, now what?’ said Bug.
‘I hardly know,’ I admitted.
‘What are we to do?’
Police whistle again, got me shifting. Marching footsteps, coming, coming on. Ever nearer, ever closer.
Hide, Lucy. Hide them, Lucy, I told myself. Keep them safe.
Closer.
Hide, hide them.
‘Hide,’ I said. ‘Anywhere, on the ground, in the mud, get in the mud! Cover yourself with it!’
Closer.
Now or never.
Closer.
We ducked down, between the wall and the river, we buckled us down by the wall by the river, in the thick mud against it there, so much filth raked high, and we slipped into it, like it was a part of us, like it was what we were made of one and all. We couldn’t jump over, the splosh should tell on us. We just muddied in the dirt, all the horse filth, all the muck, like we were all just rubbish, mounds of dirt. Filth.
Closer and then, of a sudden, right before us, policemen marching, and between them, my children, my young people of Foulsham, caught and trapped. Four there.
‘They shall be impounded,’ a sergeant was calling. ‘Be quiet about it, we’ve made more than enough noise for one night.’
They were herded in the dark. To have come so far only to be caught again. And behind us, lighting the night, was our home thick with flame and the terrible sweet smell of the heaps burning themselves to death. One girl from the police’s lot, Tess I think, seeing the flames and gasping at them, tried to pull away, tried to get away, to run free, screaming at all the horror of it all. But they had her down in a second, grabbed her by her hair. They dragged her back to the others. Blood down the face. Limping along. Better to have been crushed perhaps. Maybe I should have left us all there in the dark after all.
London. This is London. So much for London.
Hate it.
They came to the great gates of some place, just by us all along, but we’d been looking the wrong way, we’d been staring at all that was left of Foulsham. The gates clanged open.
‘How many here?’ come the call.
‘Four,’ the answer. ‘Children caught up the sewer pipe.’