Lungdon

by Edward Carey

  I take his plug out, I lie it on his chest.

  And as I do it that great mound above and to the sides shifts a bit and stops its moving.

  ‘Clod,’ I say. ‘Oh Clod, Clod, I think that thing of things is looking at me. I cannot see its face but there are so many bits of it pointed now in my direction. I don’t like it, Clod. Clod, however do you stop a Gathering? Oh Clod, Clod, it’s slowly falling, it’s shifting closer, it’s beginning to avalanche towards us. Clod! CLOD!’

  And that’s when I hit him. Hit him hard across the face just like I did when first I ever met the dolt, just like I did up in that attic room in Foulsham.

  ‘Clod bloody Clod BLOODY CLOD!’

  From Clod

  Hit me. Hard across the face. Such a jolt. Pulling me back, how that hurt hurtling back, the sudden wind in me, weather all about, and the pump my little pump, went bump again and bump again after, like it was remembering. And then I opened my eyes.

  Lucy.

  No.

  Lucy.

  No, no.

  Lucy. Lucy! Lucy, Lucy, Lucy!

  ‘Lucy?’

  ‘Clod! Bloody Clod!’

  ‘Lucy, oh Lucy. It’s you.’

  ‘Whoever else?’

  ‘You’re living!’

  ‘Yes! Yes! Are you?’

  ‘A little bit.’

  ‘Bloody hell, this ain’t no time to sleep!’

  ‘You hit me!’

  ‘How else would you know it’s me?’

  ‘You’re always hitting me.’

  ‘Look what I got you.’

  ‘James Henry Hayward.’

  ‘Oh plug, I hear you. How ever did you …’

  ‘Never mind now, that thing up there, I think it’s looking at us.’

  No time, leave us alone, leave us together a while. Can’t you? But no, no, something comes at once to break us apart.

  ‘It’s smelt your plug I think.’

  ‘It’s my plug.’

  ‘It wants it.’

  ‘Well then, in truth, it’s James Henry, not a plug after all, but, yes, I do believe it wants it.’

  It creeps forward now, dropping little bits over us as it comes, small screws and pins and nibs, a rain of little things, coins, rivets, which then hop back to the big massing. I think it will land on us, on the whole, don’t you? It’ll drown us. Arms of it stretch forward to snatch from us, ten arms and more, all creeping to us, one rushes out and grabs the candleholder, dear Eleanor Cranwell, and steals it back inside its bulk.

  ‘Oh let us alone!’ I cry.

  ‘Clod,’ Lucy says, all that red, such a face, oh that dear face. ‘I’m right glad to have known you!’

  And she kisses me hard on the lips, and then takes my plug from me. And goes. And I’m alone again without her.

  Lucy, one last time

  I’ve took it, took his bloody plug, I must take it away to stop that heap crushing down on him. To save him.

  ‘This is what you’re after!’ I cry at all that mass of bits. ‘Over here!’

  It cracks and spits, there’s great screeching from the inside of it. All those many things, cracking and smashing towards me, but away from Clod, that’s the main point of it. Away from him.

  ‘Help! Help! The fire! We’re in here!’ How they do caw, the Queen and her company. I’ve got other worries.

  ‘Come ’ere, you great bully!’ I call.

  It shrieks and roars, it smashes bits of itself, spools and needles and pins and nails and tacks and screws and bolts and scissors, there’s a great crashing and thumping and scraping and then it just stays there, a great wave paused at its height right over me. And then like rain it begins to spit at me, little drops of that great wave do plip and plop over me, only thing is, those drops of that great heavy wave, they hurt when they fall and how they do cut into me.

  It sends glass shards into me.

  It sends small screws, bits of saws, needles that bleed me, nails that cut at my face. I’m a pin cushion now, it’s playing with me, dotting me, such new freckles, writing over me in my own blood, sending bigger things now, sending books hurled with such force, sending whole plates, sending bookcases and chamber pots, sending saucepans to break me, sending a hammer’s head, and more and more, a bedhead clattering before me, a whole chimney stack smacks into my side, but I’m still holding it, that plug, I still have it, but I look up.

  Oh then it’s coming now. That wave. It comes.

  From Inspector Harbin

  Now I might, now I must shoot the red-haired child, whilst there is still a chance. One brief chance; now do I aim. Steady. Steady.

  Umbitt

  Now might I. Now shall I. That thing of things is all looking at her now and now I shall do it.

  ‘Be a button, be a clay button!’

  I flick my fingers, her mouth makes an astonished O and her whole body falls down into the shape of that mouth’s O. A button again.

  Then a shot, fired into the mass.

  A moment later the great thing is upon her and there is nothing more to see. The plug and the button quite consumed.

  From ill-faced Georgie on Speaker’s Green

  The strange man hops about, like a frog, screaming at people.

  ‘Rippit! RIPPIT!’

  And whoever he screams at, bursts into flames.

  Umbitt Exiting

  From Umbitt

  How hot it grows, how hot! I sweat so, my fingers are wet with blood and sweat. It’s regrouping again after that last tumble, whither shall it head now I wonder?

  Clod is fumbling to his feet, pulling himself up. Calling for his button. Wailing and weeping.

  The Great Gathering is smashing against the wall, hurling and breaking.

  Nothing can stop it now, I think, nothing can ever stop it.

  ‘Now, Clod, call all your things, pull Lungdon down, drown it in the Thames!’

  But he just screams for his button, his Lucy he calls it, while the great thing comes on.

  ‘Stand back!’ I call. ‘Stand back I do command you! I am Umbitt!’

  It stands up, it makes a noise as if in mockery of me, it repeats my name in clinks and scrapes.

  ‘Ummbeeeettt. Umbeeeeeeettt.’

  I see it now, so clear, I see it in all its voices, as it speaks to me in its many noises, as if I can hear as Idwid did and Clod. Here are all the dead, all the turned of Foulsham and Lungdon, all Iremonger birth objects here collected, all the ghosts assembled. All my murdered, oh so many hundreds of them. I did all to protect the family. I had to, it must be done. It is not like any Gathering I have ever known, all gatherings before had but one object spinning in its centre, maddening the rest of it, calling to action, one heart that thumped, but this, this Gathering has thousands of hearts and all do point their fury towards me.

  ‘Him!’ I cry. ‘Get him, get Clod! Leave me alone!’

  It groans and smashes.

  I face it, and it, all the girth and weight of it, doth face me.

  From deep inside it spits something out. That thing comes rolling towards me, it is a small, spinning thing. What is it? I cannot say, it spins and spins so. It slows now, it slows and stops in midair.

  It is a cog, a small, rusting cog, an insignificant thing. It’s calling to my cuspidor. It’s inviting it to come in.

  ‘No!’ I say. ‘No, never. You shall not have it.’

  I hold it up, I hold it high, as high as I can above me.

  ‘No, this is mine, mine, I say.’

  But I feel the tug of it, I feel the pull of it.

  The Gathering is coming towards me now, the cog has darted back in, the great massing is sloping down, it is about my feet now, all about my feet, and now it begins to rise higher.

  ‘Mine! Mine, all mine!’ I cry.

  At my ankles, at my knees and rising higher.

  ‘Get back, get back, I command things!’

  They fall in about me, rising higher, more and more and more.

  ‘It is my one thing,’ I
cry. ‘Have mercy, leave me my own one thing.’

  It is at my hips now and rising about me, how it squashes me, how it crams against my body, cutting, smashing, pressing, breaking, trying to rob me of breath and birth object.

  ‘My own cuspidor, that my own father gave me.’

  How it rises, at my chest now, I am in the very centre of the Gathering and it climbs and climbs to get my cuspidor. I am drowning, drowning in things!

  How they crush me, crush me, they push hard against me, I feel them pushing at my ribs, up to my neck now, I shall burst with all this weight about me.

  At my head.

  How it pounds and smashes against my skull.

  Only my hand, only my outstretched hand now is above the huge clot of Gathering, only that is unmolested. As I hold, whilst I may, my own cuspidor above the mass. But then oh then, my fingers so slippery with blood, only then the thing, my thing, my very dear cuspidor, moves in my fingers, I cannot keep hold of it and it dances in my fingers, it will not keep still, and then it stops and then, then of its own will, it jumps in, into the Gathering and makes no great cry as it lands, merely the smallest clink.

  And then all great objects do pound against me.

  And I burst.

  Bringing the House Down

  Victoria Regina

  Not as quiet as a clam, not any more. I weep, a Queen weeps in fear, in terror of what most unnatural events I have espied, and of the heat and of my own approaching death. I have seen such things, such things this morning, and never shall I see another afternoon, of that I am certain. I, Victoria, have seen objects bully and dance of their own accord, I have seen rats spin into people, I have seen ugly magic.

  The fire is coming through at the windows. I shall be a roast Queen any moment, like any goose or turkey, like a guinea fowl, like a pheasant, like mutton. Such royal meat.

  It’s crushed the old man, the Iremonger patriarch. I cannot say I am sorry for that, but there are so few of us left now, some MPs and Lords, the princesses at my side. It shall come for us, I do feel it. The Duchess of Teck has been turned into a common boot scraper. I shall be brave. I’ve made up my mind to be brave.

  For now the great big thing is still. A massive mound, a heap in the centre of the Chamber of the House of Lords.

  It has stopped, the great thing, and points every sharpness towards the one remaining Iremonger. It is the boy, the frail boy, blood down his side, tears on his face, so pale, such a little life left in that one. It makes me think of Albert again, I should perhaps even like to care for this poor child. He stands as tall as he can and walks a step, two, up to the great conglomeration. It is David and Goliath, but I fear for the ending so. I cannot bear to look, and yet I must for the sake of this stalwart child, one must. More than the unhappy Light Brigade is he to me at this moment, more than Wellington and all his swagger. I’ll pass over Lord Cardigan and Lord Raglan, lose Gough, Cathcart, Canning and Burgoyne in favour of this single child, standing before a poised army.

  It has begun spitting at him, throwing out the sharp objects. I know this behaviour now, it seems to do this before it pounces; the horrid thing to play with him so, he is cut on his face, in his ripped clothes, blood down his side, but he still stands, he even moves a step forward, and another. He stands as tall as he can, perhaps he seems a little older now.

  He is speaking to it. Whoever is this child?

  Clod and Plug

  ‘I am Clod. Clod the fool. Clod the simpleton. You are all in there, I do hear you all. Please don’t spit so, it hurts, you see. I do hear you, I do hear you all. Oh the great agony of objects. I’m coming forward now, another step.’

  It spits some more, an awl drills into my hand, an iron tumbles to my thigh, but I go forward another step.

  ‘I must earn my trousers,’ I say.

  A pocket knife is launched from inside it and rips my ear.

  ‘Hallo, Lucy, you’re in there somewhere I know, and I love you.’

  I go forward another step. What windows have remained shatter now, and burst inwards because of the fire that so, so wants to come in to us. But I must focus now, I must be more focused and thinking and feeling than ever I was before. Another step.

  A chair kicks me, some chests spit their drawers at me but I manage to push them down. Another step. I am so close to it now, it is but a few inches ahead of me and may collapse upon me and suffocate me as it did to Grandfather, but not yet, it has not yet. I lift my hand up towards it, it backs away a little and shrieks and whirls and clatters inside.

  I have a bullet within me, put there by my cousin. Such fury in him, because I was the one who turned his toastrack. Yes, I do understand now, it was I that did it. All along the answer was there, if I had only fathomed it. And if I did it once then perhaps I might again. I do begin to comprehend, I must have done it in my upset in the first London, yes London, it is called London, yes in that first London house, to that bullying red-haired servant’s birth object. And so why not again? Why not a hundred times, a hundred thousand? Again and again.

  I put my hand closer.

  I touch it. It recoils but does not fall. I put my hand in it, deep, deeper, up to my elbow, up to my shoulder, up to my chest, I feel about inside it and how it chatters and moans. I feel for it, I search for it, my hands so ripped and bleeding; where is it, where, where, come, come, do come now.

  I feel a chain. I pull on it, I pull and pull.

  My bloody hand is back out now and with both hands do I pull and pull and pull upon this chain, it is so long and rusted, made of so many different links. The Gathering goes wild and shifts and screams, and spins hurriedly about. Still I pull, I pull and pull and pull, it screams and spits as I pull now, now. We may all exist together, I think we can. Come back, come back. Let me feel you.

  ‘My plug, my plug,’ I say. ‘Give me back my plug! Surrender it, I do command you. For I am Clod, and I know things!’

  Still I pull, still it tugs back, it screeches and moans and loathes to give it up.

  But I have it now! The chain is coming to the end; I pull, pull, pull out my plug, I tug it out!

  And it comes!

  Falling through the great collection is not a small, universal bath plug made of finest India rubber, but it is hair I have hold of, human hair, and out comes a child, about ten years of age, and his name is –

  ‘James Henry Hayward, James Henry Hayward.’

  And with that boy on the ground now all the mound, as if in a horror of the sight, heaves upwards, it lurches and shrieks and cries shrilly, bits banging together, such clattering, such a knell, like all of London’s bells calling out at once – and then it stops and then, oh then, just then it stays still and it tumbles in a great smashing to the ground.

  Not one object now, not one heaving collection of things, but many separate things, each its own thing and these things on the ground, here and there thickly about, do spin and rattle of their own force and they do, oh they do one and all, grow up now, grow and suffer their change, and out of them, out of the massing: the people, the people come. Oh the people come back. All, all tumbled back into people. And all in their confused heaps do call, cry, whisper, shout, mutter, murmur, weep, sob, talk out their own names,

  James Henry Hayward. Eleanor Cranwell. Perdita Braithwaite. Gloria Emma Utting. Percy Hotchkiss … Emma Jenkins, Sybil Booth, Lester Ritts, Mary Ann Stark, Giles Bickleswaite, Theobald Villiers, Elsie Bullard, Leona Rice, Lloyd Walters, Elliot Murney, Dorothea Towndell, Matthew Stokes … Valerie Turner. Augusta Ingrid Ernesta Hoffmann. Little Lil. Lieutenant Simpson. Polly. Mr Gurney … Alice Higgs. Mark Seedly. Amy Aiken. Geraldine Whitehead.

  And

  ‘Lucy Pennant. Lucy Pennant.’

  As if in answer to the flaming of her own dear hair, the flames fall into the Chamber. The flames seize the wooden panels and lap them up, burn the benches, lick the carpet, swarm one and all, all over.

  ‘Oh dear,’ I say, ‘it’s fearful hot.’

  And then on top o
f that a terrible, thick awful suffocating stench, not of burning, of burnt things, but a stronger, all-encompassing reek of filth and excrement, of all foul things, and then a great explosion of dirt comes over us, filth, swamped with filth, and the hiss of the fire going out.

  ‘Lucy Pennant, swidge, Lucy,’ says Lucy.

  The Queen as witness to the source of the smell

  The Chamber of Lords is covered in effluent. Every inch of it, and my person too. There is a strange new giant come into the room, he seems the filthiest creature that ever can be conceived, like some dirt scraped up from the very bottom of hell.

  ‘Bin,’ he cries and indeed he has emptied a bin, a bin no doubt the size of all London over us, but it has saved us, I do feel.

  ‘Late. Am I?’

  Lucy trying to speak

  ‘Lucy Pennant! Lucy Pennant! Binadit!’

  ‘Benedict please to call.’

  ‘Lucy. Benedict.’

  ‘Botton?’

  All around every one of us is covered in dirt, in rubbish and foul muck. The Queen has horse dung about her. The very Queen.

  But beneath all the dirt and grit the Queen is clapping. And they are all clapping now, like we were in the theatre and the curtain’s just come down.

  But Clod, he falls back then, Clod, he hits the floor, poor sack of Clod, bleeding so. It was all too much, too much for his punctured frame.

  The Queen’s speech to Parliament

  ‘Help! Help! Someone help him!’

  CURTAIN DOWN

  A New Home

  Statement of a Londoner, concluding the narrative