Lungdon

by Edward Carey

  ‘And do you know where that person is? Have you the address?’

  ‘No,’ I admitted. ‘I don’t.’

  ‘It’s big innit, London, no half-cocked slum town like Foulsham.’

  ‘I shan’t find him sat in there making candles.’

  ‘I could help you. I might help you.’

  ‘I’ve had enough of your help, thanks very much.’

  ‘We link boys of London, we all know each other and whisper through to each other, like it’s a huge living newspaper, but made of words, from mouth to mouth, stretching over all the city. If you need us. We have a call, here let me show you, like this.’

  He clasped his hands together, like he was concealing something within them, made a slight hole between the thumbs and somehow, by blowing through this, summoned the exact sound of a pigeon.

  ‘Now you try.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Try it. Go on. Do it!’

  ‘It’s nonsense.’

  ‘Just do it.’

  What a mess I made of it. He cupped my hands for me, showed me how to blow; still I just made the noise of my own air sounding hopeless through my hands. But we went on again, on he tutored me, and I had it at last or something like, only my pigeon sounded a bit sad, wounded maybe.

  ‘That will have to do,’ he said. ‘Thing is, you see, common pigeons are everywhere about, so no one notices a few more pigeon calls, unless you’re listening out for it.’

  I didn’t believe in it, this call of children, but he did and that made him seem so innocent of a sudden, just a child. So then in my turn I felt I needed to give him something, some little hope. ‘Listen Tommy, there’s only one person I know that can get any sense out of objects, that can make them move at his command, and I don’t know if he’s dead or not.’

  ‘What’s his name then? We’ll put the word out.’

  ‘He is called Clod Iremonger.’

  ‘Clod Iremonger, don’t like the sound of that one at all – he sounds lethal.’

  ‘No,’ I laughed, ‘he’d not hurt a fly. He’s an ill-looking boy with a big head, sixteen years old.’

  ‘Put like that, he doesn’t sound very much after all.’

  ‘If he’s still alive, he can do things, things that no one else can.’

  ‘I’d never have believed any of this a little while back, would have called it wild stories, but I believe in them well enough now. All right then, Lucy Pennant, shove off. I’ll not tell the Rector. Scat before he sees you.’

  I was out of the court fast as I could, hurting now from the tumbling. I did see the Rector coming along, a little round man with glasses and a weak chin, taller men in long coats beside him carrying lanterns, marching down Bishopsgate. I hurried away.

  I was happy to be around people well enough to begin with. Like docile animals we were padding through the dark streets, no room here but for barging against one another, threadbare populace, clinging to their rags. Harder to get things off people who don’t have much. I needed new clothes and some food, that was the first business.

  I followed the greater number of stomping humans and a few streets later – bigger, richer, busier streets – I found a queue quite flooded out from a dirty courtyard. There were people snaking out into the street, out onto Drury Lane, the place was called. I joined the queue, even though I didn’t know at first what it was for, maybe it was a soup kitchen, maybe I’d have me some food first, that seemed like a wonderful thing. I had myself thinking what the food should be on the other end, when I at last would reach the front. It moved slowly this queue but I was in no great hurry, it was nice just to be around people, nice not to be running for your life, to feel the cold wind gently brushing through my hair. I got to studying my new company; they were a fairly varied bunch, some in tatters but some in good enough clothing, and one or two I’d say even nicely decked out. I noticed how hunched over many of them were, it wasn’t because they were ill or old, it was because they were each holding something, and they were bent over their things, because either their things were heavy, or they were protecting them. All these new things that had come to them suddenly. One had a pickaxe head, one an abacus, another held a saddle, one had a kite, one woman held a embroidered cushion to her, one had a porcelain dog, a thin man was holding very nervously onto a pair of cymbals, one old woman had a cutlass.

  My, but London’s got a great new pox on it, I thought. I knew all about it – my father became a soup pot and my mother a pair of candle scissors. We’re one and all in the same bad place. As we edged forward in the queue I came to the knowledge of why they were all here. The shop was dirty enough, but I saw the sign.

  Three red balls hung on a wire frame.

  Unmistakable. It was the same in Foulsham, only in Foulsham they all had the Iremonger bay leaf painted on them.

  The pawn shop.

  The pawn brokers.

  These people had all come to get a few pennies from the things they carried. They had come to pass over their things, get them inspected, assessed a value.

  I could see a sign well enough now:

  MONEY ADVANCED ON PLATE, JEWELS,

  WEARING APPAREL, AND EVERY

  DESCRIPTION OF PROPERTY

  This was the old sign, dirty and smudged by time and neglect, but beside it on new cardboard had been carefully inscribed:

  OF PARTICULAR NOTE AND VALUE:

  YOUR NEW OBJECTS!

  MOST RECENT TO

  YOUR POSSESSION!!

  BEST PRICES ON NEW THINGS!!!

  And so they had come, all of them, to pawn their loved ones.

  They didn’t know it perhaps, but they were flogging off, to get a few pennies, maybe a quid or two, what was left of their children, or parents, grandparents, friends, husbands, wives, lovers, darlings, the best of their lives. How could they do it? So quietly they went about it!

  There were policemen walking up and down, watching the line, and I hid around the other people, I hunched over a bit, I tried very hard to look bored. One policeman walked right past me, even looked into my face, and I looked at his, such a strange blank face he had, no expression there at all. Right into my eyes he looked and he saw nothing in me that he was interested in at all, just went on up and down the line. Then another bobby comes by, and he too looked at me, and me thinking, I’ll give it a go, shan’t I, so I looked hard at him, and again that same uninterested stare. It was a different policeman but the face was very similar, as if they’d all come from the same family.

  The dumbness of all these people with their objects; I was angry at them for not knowing what in the world they were doing. Someone, I thought, someone should bloody tell them. I would, I would do it, and afterwards watch them running home. Well then. So then: how to?

  There was an old girl come to flog off her husband most likely. Her husband was a rocking chair and she was pushing the poor old man (turned chair) through the dirty courtyard towards the pawn shop, and given the way the old chair scraped, the old man (now a chair) seemed most reluctant. I had to tell them. Who else would?

  ‘Oy,’ I said to the old girl. ‘Come on now, let me borrow that a second, I’ll be careful.’ I stood on the chair, wobbled a bit, but got my balance, quick enough.

  ‘Hello,’ I said. ‘Hello, can you all hear me?’

  No sound, all looking earthwards or into their armfuls, save the old woman, who stared at me, wide-eyed, looking like she wanted to scream but had forgotten how. Such an appalled look about her, like I’d just done the worst thing.

  ‘I need to tell you something,’ I said. ‘The things you’re holding, every one of you, that stuff you are all carrying, you shouldn’t sell it. I know this doesn’t sound right, but they’re not things … not really … they’re your missing people. They’ve turned. They’ve been objectified. They’ve got the illness, haven’t they, poor things. My mam had it, and my dad, don’t know how it happened. Heap Fever, they used to call it, common enough in certain places, this is a bad bout of it no doubting, but
it does generally stop after a time. So, to be certain, those things you carry, those are your people. I want you to know that you’re selling off your own people. Well I ask you: is it right? And why, I ask you, do the pawn brokers take such an especial interest in these objects? Take them home. Look after them! Go on then, go home, go home.’

  No one moved, no one ran, no one screamed. All stayed just as docile as ever.

  There were more policemen now than before, they were grouping further down the court, maybe five or six of them. Time to can it, Lucy, I told myself.

  ‘Well then: now you know, don’t you?’ I concluded. ‘Can’t say I didn’t warn you.’

  ‘Shut it.’

  ‘Mind your own.’

  ‘She doesn’t know what she’s talking about.’

  ‘She’s asking for it.’

  ‘Maybe she should be shut up.’

  ‘Maybe I’ll make her.’

  ‘I’d like to see you try,’ I said.

  ‘My, my, Wilfred?’ the old woman whispered. She shook her fist at me. ‘My chair!’

  ‘Get off her chair.’

  ‘My, my, my chair!’

  ‘Oh all right!’ I said, coming down, and dusting the chair off. ‘Just trying to help that’s all. Just making sure you knew.’

  ‘My chair!’

  ‘Oh have your bloody chair!’

  I shut up then – a constable was coming round again, and I’m not that stupid. I kept me quiet. What a dumb lot, nothing to be done with them. I’d need new people, fresh recruits. To think I thought once about having some great army, me marching at the head of it. What a business.

  Someone nudged me. ‘Go on, will you, keep up.’

  ‘This woman is in front of me,’ I tried to explain, except the old woman wasn’t there any more, the chair was but the old girl was gone, nowhere to be seen. I looked down the queue, up it, left and right – she’d just gone, the old biddy. Only difference was more policemen now.

  ‘Hey,’ I said, ‘where’s the old girl? She was just here. Can’t have run far, can she, not with her old pins. Anyone seen her? She was just here.’

  But no one had seen her, no one had noticed her go. I pushed the chair on myself then, got to keep the line going, no one cared for the old bird. Then I saw it, it was in the seat of the rocking chair. A cutthroat razor. I reached towards it.

  It was hot. I pulled my hand back, the old thing was steaming. The old woman had turned! She’d fallen like so many others. Poor old frightened bird-boned woman, poor love, all done now, all over with.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘I am, truly. Very sorry. Poor dear. I wish it weren’t so. Bless you. Bless you and thank you, forgive me, old lady turned razor, I’m going to have to pawn you now.’

  And I did.

  I came inside at last beyond the filthy windows, so begrimed you couldn’t see inside from outdoors. As if each of those abandoned objects were breathing inside and so fugging up the glass.

  All those things within, what a wealth of them. Dirty shirts, flat irons, blue poison bottles, teapots, smoking jackets, bonnets, single shoes, butter knives, apostle spoons, brass candlesticks, wooden saints, penholders, a mortarboard, bolt croppers, saws, children’s penknives, roof tiles, blankets, piano shawls, stained-glass windows, door knockers, well just about anything and everything you could think of. All the people, all the poor people on these shelves. How many London lives were there here in this one shop; maybe thousands in this one place alone.

  When I got to the counter, I handed the razor over and pushed the rocking chair through the gate at the desk. Nothing could be done for them now, poor orphans. And, Lord knows, I needed a hand up.

  There was something off about the people in the shop too; maybe I was losing my head or something, but they seemed to me to all have the same face, and all those faces seemed to me just like the policemen’s. The same moustache and sideburns, in different colours, one was fair and another dark, one ginger, one mousy, but all just the same. Come on, Lucy, don’t be daft. But they were all so very alike. Alike as two pins I’d say. And in the background heaving out the stuff I asked for, was a short woman in a tight-fitting dress and she had the same face too. Moustache and all, though fainter, as if it had been powdered over like she was trying to disguise it. When I spoke to her, she just looked at me with the same blank face, like she wasn’t seeing me at all.

  ‘When did these come into your possession?’

  ‘Oh, very sudden it were!’ I said, acting the story out.

  ‘When?’

  ‘This one yesterday, the other this morning. And I swear I’ve never seen them before in my life!’

  She had a thick ledger before her.

  ‘Name,’ she said.

  ‘Why do you need my name?’

  ‘Must have a name.’

  ‘Then … Florence Balcombe,’ I said. I’d never forget that name. Poor dear friend, turned a moustache cup and murdered in Heap House.

  ‘I’ll give you … seventeen pence.’

  ‘For these, these precious things?’

  ‘Couldn’t do more than that.’

  ‘That’s robbery!’ I cried.

  ‘Seventeen, no more.’

  ‘Listen,’ I said, ‘would you do some exchange? Some clothes, I’d like some clothes.’

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘A dress. Coat. Shoes. A bonnet.’

  ‘You could take from the stack there: abandoned things left for months, no one ever come to claim.’

  ‘Yes, then, I’ll do that.’

  ‘It’ll cost you your seventeen pence.’

  ‘Robbery! It’s pure robbery!’

  ‘Accept or not?’

  ‘Accept.’

  ‘Sign.’

  I signed the paper.

  ‘Excuse me,’ I said.

  ‘Next! Come along.’

  ‘You’ve a tash and a dress, that’s novel, isn’t it?’

  ‘Next.’

  I got a coat and a dress from them, some rough shoes and big bonnet, bit dented but beggars can’t be, you know. I changed in the shop, turned my back and got on with it. No one seemed to care, and God knows I didn’t; if they looked at me, Lord knows I stared back at them. Just a body, just another neglected body. A thought comes into me, giving me a shock: what if these clothes were people before now, people turned and pawned, and what if no one ever came back for them because the people leaving them had likely turned too and weren’t able? Made me think. Made me wonder about wearing them, but well then, whatever else could I do?

  I got rid of the old leather coat I’d taken from Foulsham, but best of all it was time to lose the sad old bits of cloth that was all that was left of my servant’s uniform. They could use that for rags, free of charge, and good luck to them.

  ‘Here, burn this, I would,’ I said to the woman, tossing it on the counter.

  The woman smoothed it out mechanically, and was about to shove it in a bin, when she came across the bay leaf symbol stitched into the dress. She stopped then. Looked up, looked about. She picked up a whistle from behind the counter and blew hard upon it. But no sound came out, not a thing. Though all those working in the shop seemed to have heard it; all rushed about now in excitement.

  I didn’t need to wait around after that. Shoved myself through the crowd of people in the shop, back out onto the street. I come out a lady in new togs. Lucy Pennant, London, London, London at your feet, now tread on.

  And that was when I saw her.

  The prize bitch.

  Right there in the queue.

  Just standing there! The Housekeeper of Heap House! The corset wearer, the object taker, the servant killer. Piggott, Claar bloody, Mrs bloody Piggott. Like a slap, it was, just the sight of her. I felt the blood rush to my cheeks. To think of the people who’ll never come out of Foulsham again and then to see her there, busy living and breathing, rude as flesh. She had prized treasures in her hands, silver it looked like.

  I must have been hovering there to
o long, staring. One of the policemen came up. Same face. Beginning to creep me out properly now. Same face again, I was certain it was.

  ‘Hullo, officer.’

  ‘Doing?’

  ‘Nothing, nothing, on my way.’

  ‘Name?’

  ‘Florence Balcombe,’ I said again.

  ‘Home?’

  Quick, quick, get a name out. ‘Belsize Park,’ I said, remembering one of the boys saying it from last night.

  ‘Go home,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, I was just going to.’

  ‘Go then.’

  ‘Yes, yes on my way.’

  He marched on. There were maybe as many as thirty police now, up and down. But I couldn’t just go, I couldn’t, not having seen her, not having glimpsed the housekeeper well dressed up in some widow’s weedings. Soon as the policeman had done his stomp and was turned in the other direction, I sallied forth, full of nerve.

  I came right to her; she didn’t look up.

  ‘Oh, hello,’ I said.

  And she says nothing and keeps her eyes down.

  ‘I know you,’ I says, conversationally.

  Eyes still down.

  ‘I’m talking to you, lady – let’s see your face shall we?’

  Eyes still down, but she spoke: ‘You mistake me for someone else, I’m quite new to this place.’

  ‘I know you are. Do you want to know how I know? I’m new here myself,’ and then I added, ‘Mrs Piggott.’

  That got her looking up, both a fury and a fear in her eyes at the naming of her name.

  ‘I don’t know you,’ she said, her voice rather wobbly.

  ‘I think you’ll find you do.’

  I untied my new bonnet and took it off, so all my great red thatch could be seen. She stepped back then, what a shock. She remembered, all right!

  ‘No,’ she cried, ‘it can’t be.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘it can be – what’s more, it is.’

  ‘You’re dead.’

  ‘Then you must be seeing a ghost, mustn’t you, Piggott.’

  ‘Mrs Piggott!’

  ‘No, Piggott is quite enough. Shall I even call you Claar?’

  ‘The brazen cheek!’

  ‘Iremonger housekeeper. Claar Piggott. Escaped.’

  ‘Please, please, you’ll have us both killed.’