by Edward Carey
1. White cotton gloves are your own skin, so treat them as you would your own. If they get torn it is as if you have been cut open.
2. The moment a glove, or a pair of gloves, are dirtied then it is as if they were a pair of hands that have been scarred for life. They can never be clean again.
3. The washing of gloves is not permissible.
4. The utmost care must be made never to dirty the gloves. However, we are quite prepared to accept that accidents do happen, but … (see 5)
5. The loss of a pair of gloves is a profound misdeed. When gloves are lost (loss = dirtied or scratched) the pain undergone in the loss is felt the same as if the careless wearer had chopped off his own hands (which is, in fact, exactly what he has done).
6. Dead gloves should then be put quietly to rest as a good, loyal friend who has excelled in service and has now earned his peace. It is forbidden to walk around with dirty gloves.
7. Dead gloves cannot function. The hands underneath them will never be able to pick up, touch or move at all. They are dead.
8. Dead gloves should immediately be changed for live, new ones.
9. When changing gloves it is not permissible to look at your own naked, former hands in their ugly state. Only when they are wearing, proudly, their new white skin is looking again permissible.
10. It is forbidden to let any person see your naked hands.
Observatory Mansions.
Mother, in the entrance hall: This used to have old oil portraits of dead Orme people all over it. Now look: a blue and white wallpapered wall. The chequered marble floor has been pulled up and sold, they’ve put in new floorboards and they’re going to place blue carpet over them. Newness is everywhere!
Tearsham Park.
Father, in Mother’s bedroom in flat six: Without fail, I told my wife my daily news as she sat absent from us, in her bed. Eyes closed. Lying still.
Today, though, I’m sitting by her bed and I tell her that I’ve had to sell some Orme land. Nothing else could be done. There are increasingly less farmhands. All the young are being encouraged to work in the city, where they are paid higher wages, they say there’s nothing in the country for them any more. They resent their parents and their old ways, they want to see more than fields and early mornings. The estate needs money, I don’t know how it could have got so bad. There’s so much repair work to be done, and our machinery is terribly out of date. And there are rumours I heard from one farmhand that it is all my fault, that I am incapable of running a farm. I do not know how it happened, but it has; somehow we are in debt.
I can’t bear to look at the portraits. The people who bought the land promised me that they would not build on it. But they did not sign on that issue. They said, We’ll call it a gentleman’s agreement. I feel ashamed. I sit by my wife holding her hand and say – Alice, my darling, I’ve had to sell some land.
When I finish speaking I see my wife’s eyes flick open as if my sentence were the key to her lock.
I never go into the hall any more, I cannot bear to look at the portraits. I always leave by one of the side doors, through the kitchen or the pantry.
Observatory Mansions.
Mother, in the ruined observatory: My husband has been sheltering from the builders in here. He complains about the perpetual noise of the workmen. He yells down at them to turn off their radios and they laugh at him and raise the volume. He whispers: I have known the feel and the scent of grass. He looks over the parapet muttering: Oak, sycamore, ash, beech.
Tearsham Park.
Father, in flat one, formerly one part of the drawing room: My wife spends her time reading books about foreign climates. Sell all the land, she tells me, sell everything, Francis, and we can start again. She says: I can’t live here! Everything is suffocating me! You. Our son. Everything looks so old! It’s making me old. Look at me, I’m wrinkling already! Sell everything before it turns me into an old hag. Send me on holiday. Divorce me. Murder me!
My wife finds my son, naked, playing with my mother’s porcelain dolls. She confiscates the dolls. Days later she talks to him, she orders him to take off his gloves. My son runs away and will not speak to her again for many months. When my son asks me to buy him new gloves, I look at him sadly and nod. I am a weak man. I send the housemaid into the city with him to buy them. I will do anything to get the boy away from me.
Today Francis has found a till receipt on the driveway. It is a warning from the city. It says: I am coming.
Observatory Mansions.
Mother, in the entrance hall: Today our porter arrived. He has settled into his basement flat and wears his uniform proudly. There are no residents here yet, save me, my husband and my son, but already he is prepared for his work. He holds a great bunch of keys. What is your name? I ask him. He says: Porter. Call me Porter.
Tearsham Park.
Father, looking through the window of flat three: Today our servants left. I watched them leave from this window. They walked away and did not look back. They blame me. I know they blame me. They would not even say goodbye.
My wife dismissed them all. She has had lawyers around and lawyers’ doctors too. She says I’m incapable of looking after anything. She says she should be allowed to take charge. The lawyers interviewed me. I started crying. The lawyers watched as my wife pulled me into the hall of Tearsham Park where the portraits are hung. I ran from the place. The lawyers called in their doctors. The doctors asked me such stupid questions that I refused to answer them and started crying. The doctors tugged me into the hall. I started screaming. The doctors went away. The lawyers went away. My wife has taken charge of my bank books.
Observatory Mansions.
Mother, restless in the entrance hall: The builders say their work will take them another six months. When I tell them about my bedroom, they say that they’ve been given orders not to change that room, that it’s to stay the same. The room remains a bedroom on their plans, they say, best to leave it as it is. But I want it changed, I scream! It has to be different. No, it’s not changing they say, it’s staying the same, exactly the same. Even this hideous crimson wallpaper is going to stay.
Mother and her wallpaper dance.
Here my mother began clawing at the wallpaper, making fresh wounds next to those old scars where she had ripped the wallpaper for exactly the same reason years ago. As before, only a little yielded and it cut into the skin beneath her nails. Then she spat at the walls and kicked them, but finally she slumped to the floor. I knew she would do this, I had seen it before, it surprised me then. But I was ready the second time, and when Mother had stopped moving I gave her a handkerchief, which I had taken out of my drawer for her exclusive use, and went in search of Father.
Tearsham Park.
Father, in flat four: I have grown into the habit of looking out of the window with a pair of field binoculars before my eyes. I am watching the trees: Oak, sycamore, ash, beech, poplar, fir, yew, lime.
Upstairs, from a window in the attic, I can see the city. It is closer now. Tearsham, just beyond the parkland, is more of a town than a village.
Observatory Mansions.
Mother rushed out of Observatory Mansions and returned with a plastic shopping bag full of boxes of teabags and jars of coffee. All afternoon Mother made mugs of tea and coffee for her imagined workmen and ran around the abandoned flats depositing them in front of plasterboard walls, by bricked-up fireplaces, in the basement by the new boiler, by the lift shaft. She took away all the mugs from our flat and all of Claire Higg’s too. She kept the kettle boiling all day. At night we fetched the mugs and emptied the cold, undrunk teas and coffees down the sink.
Mother, just before she went to sleep: They’ve put a door next to my old dressing room and labelled it six. But they still haven’t changed my bedroom, though I do keep reminding them.
Tearsham Park.
Father, looking out from a window of flat four: Oak, sycamore, ash, beech … the rest have gone.
Observatory Mansions.
Mother, in the entrance hall: I dance to the builders’ music from their radios, sometimes they dance with me. They smoke roll-up cigarettes. They have stored sheets and sheets of plasterboard and chipboard in the cellar. They say that they will divide up the rooms of Tearsham Park with them. They say ideally the divisions should be made with brick, but their orders were to use board, they say boards don’t last that long, they can be dislodged fairly easily, but they’re much cheaper.
They’ve pulled out my old round enamel bath and halved the room. Half will be a much smaller bathroom, the other half will be a small bedroom. They’re making my dressing room into a kitchen and sitting room. It’s all so new. They’ve only to change my bedroom now.
Tearsham Park.
Father, through a window of flat four: Oak.
Observatory Mansions.
Mother, in the entrance hall: My husband says he can hear the house screaming. I tell him that it’s the workmen sawing and drilling but he won’t believe me. They have begun knocking the outhouses and stable blocks down. How easily they fall, it’s as if that’s all they’ve ever been longing to do.
Tearsham Park.
Father, in the observatory: I am happy here. I have been allowed to spend much money and I am happy. My wife says that if we keep spending money, something ultimately will happen to us. I try not to think of it. Not up here, not here in the observatory. Not while I’m with my telescope. At night I watch the stars and the planets, in the day I sleep or consult my astrological charts. In this way I can keep sane. In this way I only look upwards. I dare not look down. Beneath me they are building on old Ormeland. Beneath me they are pouring asphalt on to the grass.
Observatory Mansions.
Mother, in the entrance hall: Here are the architectural surveyors. Proud and stout! I have arranged that we will stay in the house, the new house – how wonderful that sounds. We will live in that part that smells least of the Orme history, by which I mean, of course, that part which I have been living in, my apartment. A smaller bedroom will be made for little Francis. My husband asks me where he is to sleep. When I tell him that, of course, he will sleep with me, he looks horrified and even starts to cry.
Tearsham Park.
Father, in his observatory: Today when I came up here, I saw that they had taken my telescope away.
Father, descending the stairs: The rooms of Tearsham Park are bare. There are only two beds left in the house. All else is gone. They’ve gutted my house. All my family’s collections are out on the single strip of grassland left.
Father, sitting on a bench in Tearsham Park Gardens: All around are my family’s objects. I look about me. There is my telescope! There are oil paintings too: the portraits of my ancestors! They are crying! There is porcelain and pottery. There are mahogany chests and rosewood tables. There are books by the metre: the complete chronicles (lacking but one volume) of the Orme family. There are mirrors and tapestries. There are my mother’s dolls and my father’s shotguns. The marquetry tables and the dressers, the kitchen pots and saucepans, garden furniture, the sundial. Even my clothes are here. There are my pyjamas!
Everything here has a little tag tied on to it. They each say lot and then a number. Over there stands a man behind a desk. He has a wooden hammer. He calls out numbers. People nod at him. There are people everywhere. People and objects. The people are buying the objects.
I see my field binoculars on a table with the number 386 by it, I pick them up. When nobody is looking I slip them into my coat. Surely I cannot be arrested for stealing my own binoculars.
I sit in one of the red leather armchairs that have been pulled from the library. I rip its tag off. I cover the chair’s arms with my coat and jacket, so that no one can see it, so that no one will buy it.
It can’t all be true, I think, surely it’s not true. The man with the hammer keeps calling out, selling history. Sometimes I listen, sometimes I hum to myself so I won’t hear.
Lot 1945 An exceedingly grand pair of twenty-two-inch bronze vases.
Lot 1956 A family portrait in oils of a Cavalier, impeccably framed.
Lot 2432 A mahogany kneehole leather-top writing table with nine drawers and extra slope.
Lot 2978 A handsome set of ivory chessmen in a carved ebony box and two chessboards.
Lot 3671 A blue and white breakfast service, one hundred and four pieces.
Lot 4648 A patent steam bath with gas apparatus.
Lot 6043 Two paraffin lamps, an earthenware foot warmer, pair of lamp scissors and brushes.
Lot 6743 A very valuable astronomical clock by Pratt.
Lot 7021 A fine telescope fashioned by H. Muncie, six foot with five inch diameter.
Lot 7347 1. Lalandes’s catalogue of stars and total solar eclipses.
2. Philps’s Practical astronomy.
Lot 7986 A fine morocco-bound edition of The World of Comets by Guillemin.
Finally, they reach the last item:
Lot 8029 Eight cacti and one camellia.
The people begin to leave. Oh, what a long time they take about leaving, finally only hurried by the disappearing sun. I am suddenly aware of my wife leaning over me, she says: We were out of money, Francis, we have had to sell everything, the banks demanded it. We have just enough money for a few rooms somewhere. We shan’t be going so very far. I’ve sorted everything out. We will start afresh, Francis, we will begin again.
But I don’t want to begin again.
Everything is sold except for the red leather armchair I am sitting in and the field binoculars that I have hidden in my coat. Someone has bought my pyjamas. What am I going to wear tonight?
I am left alone sitting on my armchair in what remains of the parkland. The people have left their rubbish on the grass. My son comes up to me and says: Mother is dancing naked around the house.
Observatory Mansions.
Mother, standing outside Observatory Mansions: I am holding the hand of my husband. This is a very sacred moment. Before us, raised from the ground on two metal posts, is a large marble sign, at the moment covered by a sheet. I look at my husband. My husband does not understand. I triumphantly pull the sheet away and I see …
Tearsham Park becomes Observatory Mansions.
Father, walking out of the entrance hall: My wife is very excited, she is dragging me outside our empty house. Before us, raised from the ground on two metal posts, is some sort of sign that has been inexplicably planted outside the main door. My wife is looking at me. I do not understand. My wife pulls away the sheet covering it and I see …
OBSERVATORY MANSIONS
Spacious Apartments of Quality Design
My mother and father.
Standing before the polluted exterior of Observatory Mansions my old parents stared, together for once, at the name of our home badly chiselled on fake marble, chipped and very dirty. After they had looked at the sign, they looked at each other. Finally they spoke, raising their voices above the circling traffic:
You!
You?
Francis?
Alice?
Is that really you, Francis?
Alice? Alice!
I thought you were dead.
I lost sight of you.
My wife!
My husband!
Where have you been?
Observatory Mansions, flat six. First floor.
I didn’t know where to look for you.
And you, where have you been?
Inside Tearsham Park, of course.
No, Francis, that building doesn’t exist any more.
Where’s it gone, Alice?
It’s dead, Francis.
There was a long pause.
Is it really dead?
Quite dead, Francis.
I was born there, you know.
We must move on.
Another long pause. Father was trying to understand, trying to link up facts in his head.
Someone’s taken the telescope from the observatory.
D
on’t worry, no one’s touched the stars.
I am glad.
There was another long pause, though my mother’s last sentence cheered my father a little he still looked worried. He was mumbling to himself. At last he spoke again.
Alice?
Yes, Francis.
Alice? Alice! ALICE!
Sssh, Francis, what’s the matter?
Alice. Alice, if I haven’t been in Tearsham Park where have I been?
I seem to remember now that you were in the room next door to me. You were so quiet, I thought you were dead.
Yet another pause. My father looked for a long time at the shape of the exterior of Observatory Mansions. In puzzlement he read the graffiti – And even you can find love and, later on, Enjoy the taste – but when he stared at the columns of the entrance portico his face changed, and when he next spoke he seemed to hint at some knowledge which had before evaded him:
I have been very ill, haven’t I?
You’re well now, Francis.
I feel a little cold.
Then let’s step in, Francis.
Is it cold, Alice?
No, Francis, it’s summer. It’s hot in the summer.
Oh good, it’s just I can’t feel the temperature any more.
My mother slowly, carefully, gently took my father back up the stairs of Observatory Mansions, pausing every second or third step, into flat six. She took him into the largest room and sat him down in a capacious red leather armchair.
Have a little sleep, Francis. You’ll feel better.
Just a little nap, Alice. It’s been rather a tiring journey.
Father closed his eyes.
V
SAINT LUCY’S DAY
Demolition experts.