by Edward Carey
‘Is that all?’ asked Piggott.
The women nodded, and all looked very disappointed.
‘It’s not much, is it? A handkerchief, a pencil, a comb.’
‘I wasn’t allowed to collect my things,’ I said in defence of those few bits I’d helped myself to at the orphanage, ‘they never let me back home. Said they burnt everything.’
‘I shall take these now,’ said Mrs Piggott.
‘They’re mine,’ I said.
‘And they shall be looked after, my dear.’
‘That’s theft,’ I said.
‘Calm please. Now it is time for your medicine.’
‘My what?’
‘You shall be inoculated, child. Everyone out here has been inoculated, it is to keep you well. It is to stop you from catching any sickness, there are many maladies, you know, to be picked up from the heaps. Iremonger, if you will,’ said Mrs Piggott to one of the servants who came forward with some sort of metal tube with a point to it.
‘Roll up your sleeve,’ said Mrs Piggott.
‘Why should I?’
‘It is for your own good,’ she said, ‘everyone here must have it.’
‘What is that thing?’ I asked her. ‘Whatever shall you do with it?’
‘It is, child,’ she said, ‘a very advanced piece of business, a thing of great scholarship, very modern, it is a brass oil gun syringe with leather washer. Upstairs of course, theirs is of pewter and with a fruitwood handle. It shall pump some physic into your arm.’
‘I don’t like the look of it.’
‘Nor does anyone very much, but you should like the look of yourself even less with weeping sores and swollen limbs I dare say. Come now.’
‘I don’t think I will.’
‘Hold her,’ said Mrs Piggott very calmly, and two Iremongers took hold.
‘Let me go! I’ll take my chances with any sicknesses if it’s all the same to you. I never got ill like Mother and Father, I never . . .’ but before I could tell them Mrs Piggott had come at me with that brass thing and she’d pressed it against my skin, and something sharp had gone right into me. ‘Ow!’
‘What a fuss you make,’ said Mrs Piggott, returning the brass thing to the servant.
‘That hurt!’
‘It is all over,’ she said, dabbing at the drop of blood upon my arm with a bit of wadding.
‘I didn’t like that.’
‘Never mind now,’ she said, busy wiping the wadding on something upon her desk.
‘You stabbed at me!’
‘Now then, your birth object.’
‘My what?’
‘Your birth object, poor ignorant of new Iremongers, has been selected for you I have it here. There, you may hold it a moment.’
She took up a kidney-shaped dish from her desk, laying in it was a box of matches, it was an ordinary box of matches such as I’ve seen many times before. There was a band of paper glued around the box to keep the drawer sealed. Written on the paper were the words SEALED FOR YOUR CONVENIENCE. There was a smudge upon it, a reddish-brownish smear on the cardboard, and one of the corners, I noticed, was missing a little bit. It looked like it had been snipped off neatly with scissors, but not making enough hole to see into the box. I shook the box, the matches inside rattled, that hole was not big enough for any of them to fall out. I suddenly felt exhausted. Just then, all of a sudden. I thought I should faint.
‘I don’t feel so well.’
‘That is quite usual.’
‘I feel a bit sick.’
‘Not to worry, child, you are liable to feel a little strange for a day or two. Your arm might ache.’
‘Because of what you did to it,’ I said.
‘The aching is nothing to be concerned about, it means the medicine is working. Well then, enough, my dear?’ Mrs Piggott asked.
‘Enough what?’
‘I think that’s enough time spent together for now; you may see it again, if your behaviour is up to the mark, in a few days’ time and thereafter once a week.’
‘To see this matchbox?’
‘Yes, indeed. But only if you are very good.’
‘Why should I want to see it?’
‘You will, you will. That matchbox has been chosen particularly for you. It represents you perfectly.’
‘Who chose it?’
‘Upstairs chose it. My lady chose it. Ommaball Oliff Iremonger herself. It is just for you; we all have our birth objects. Each is perfectly selected to describe us exactly.’
‘Whoever chose it never met me,’ I said. ‘It’s all madness!’
‘How she strikes like a match. She is such a deep one, my lady is.’
‘It’s all nonsense,’ I said.
‘Now then, give it to me,’ said Mrs Piggott. ‘Hand it over please.’
‘Take it for all I care,’ I said and gave her the matchbox, dropping it back in the bowl.
‘And now,’ said Mrs Piggott, ‘it shall be sealed for your convenience. It’s going somewhere very safe. Mrs Smith!’
In came the strange sight that was Mrs Smith.
She was a big, flat-faced woman, with flushed cheeks. There were keys clanking and clinking all about her, around her large waist was a thick belt from which hung many rings from which hung many keys. At first impression it seemed she was wearing a skirt over her dress, a strange jangling metal skirt, but it was all the keys of Iremonger Park; she looked after them, every one. Keys hung from her hips and from a great necklace, and several smaller keys she kept in the loops of her earrings.
‘Mrs Smith,’ said Mrs Piggott to the clanking golem before her, ‘the new Iremonger here wishes her birth object to be locked away safely, if you please.’
Without pause, Mrs Smith drew out a particular key from one of the many key branches and walked to the back of Mrs Piggott’s office which was entirely made up of many drawers of varying sizes, each with a lock to it, and each with an identical brass knob and a small brass bell suspended by a stiff wire which sounded whenever the drawer was touched. And beside all these drawers, like a warder staring at convicts, loomed a metal safe as tall as the ceiling and as wide as Mrs Smith. Mrs Smith unlocked a drawer, its little bell rang, she pulled it open and took from inside it a small wooden toy train, which she handed without expression to Mrs Piggott.
‘Ah, yes,’ said Mrs Piggott, ‘that belonged to poor Iremonger, didn’t it? Well, unhappy thing, she shan’t be needing it now. Here, Mrs Smith.’
She handed the other woman the matchbox, it was put in the drawer and locked away, the bell of my drawer growing quiet very quick. Well, I thought, so what.
‘And thus, Iremonger, all is concluded. I bid you good luck. Welcome to Heap House.’
5
A Comb Cut Bit Key One and Five-Eighths of an Inch
A statement by Solly Smith, Lock Keeper, Forlichingham Park, London, discovered after her death, locked in a cellar strongroom inside a safebox, within an iron box, padlocked
Count of Myself
I Solly. Solly the lock.
Very private. All locked up. I don’t say nothing. I keep it in. Locked. Too many words. If you ask me. Far too many. Lock ’em up. Never tell no one. Solly don’t let a word out. All those secrets. Keeping them private. I locked myself up years ago, haven’t let myself out. Was unlocked once. That was nice, lovely yes, name of William Hobbin. Died soon after, dry cholera, locked away for ever from me, vault.
I did the locks with Father. Father did locks. Father got the poison at last, lead in his blood, locking him away from me too. Then not a word ever, all shut up. No words from me. I shut up. Then Piggott comes at last. She gives me the keys, she turns the movement in me, she makes the play with oil, gains the strike, she looks at my face as if to say, ‘A brass escutcheon, let’s polish that up.’ She gives me keys. Never to be locked out ever again. Nothing locked from me.
Upstairs. Infirmary. Objects. Locked up. I seen them! They’re alive, ain’t they? Moving they were. But locked up, locked alive.
I shan’t tell, keep it safe. But I’ll burst with it. Things, things are breathing! Won’t keep still. Won’t tell anyone. Master Moorcus needed five new steel rim locks. Mustn’t tell anyone, he says. Why so many? Why so much? And he wanted all the keys to them, none for me. But I keep extra, just in case. And when he was at his schooling. I looked, I gandered. Something in there, something in there I didn’t like! I heard it in Moorcus’s room. Heard it moving! Mustn’t tell, mustn’t tell. But must tell someone, must tell someone, must tell or burst. So I made a decision, decision to tell this paper, only this paper and then lock it up good. Lock it in Piggott room, in safe there, the tall one what says CHATWOOD’S DOUBLE PATENT BOLTON, lock it in there. The safe shall know the secret. Big safe. Bolton. Bolt. That safe looks at me. Knows, it does.
Lock it, lock it.
Safe.
Solly.
6
A Key to a Pianoforte and a Chalkboard Rubber
Clod Iremonger’s narrative continued
The Silent One
Cousin Moorcus had me by the ear.
‘I haven’t done anything, Moorcus; you should let me go.’
‘It’s Mr Moorcus to you, maggot.’
‘You’ve no right.’
‘I’ve every right. Keep your foul gob shut.’
‘I haven’t got the door handle.’
‘Whoever said you had? Straighten up, toerag,’ he said and as he said it he punched me in the stomach.
‘Straighten up, I said!’
When I tried to stand up he kicked me.
‘Can you not keep upright, Clod? Are you not capable?’
He kicked.
‘Why?’ I gasped.
‘For being Clod, what else? And that’s enough all on its own.’
I lay on the floor. Moorcus bent over me, he quickly put his hand in my waistcoat pocket, pulled something out.
‘James Henry Hayward.’
‘No, Moorcus, please!’
‘Get up,’ he said, ‘come on, you mutt, let us run!’
He had hold of James Henry, he pulled the chain.
‘No, Moorcus, it’s expressly against house rules!’
‘Don’t talk to me of rules, I’ll make the rules with you, dog, up, up! Get up!’
He pulled me by my plug and I ran along beside him, hurrying to keep up, lest some damage occur to my poor plug.
‘Come, mongrel pup, trot, trot!’
He marched faster so I should run beside him, fretting so. He took me back down the stairs and then into the prefects’ common room where the promoted Iremonger boys hung about. Stunly and Duvit were there, hair slicked back, smoking clay pipes, drinking sherry and putting on the usual show of adulthood and prosperity.
‘Look what I found,’ said Moorcus and only then did he let go of my plug, dropping it suddenly to the ground as if it were something repellent. I cupped James Henry quickly in my hands, and hid it away back in my pocket.
‘Oh God, Moorcus, must you really bring that thing in here?’ sighed Stunly. It was Stunly’s general condition to sound bored and weary.
‘No doubt he’ll start snivelling and hearing things and we shall have to listen to him spout nonsense,’ said Duvit, taking hold of me by an ear. ‘Admit it, Clod, you’re batty and broken. Why don’t you just get yourself lost in the heaps, do us all a favour and drown yourself out there, why not set off now? Clod, answer me once and for all, what’s the use of you?’
‘I’ve a task for the weird thing,’ said Moorcus, ‘it’s inspection tomorrow.’
‘Tomorrow,’ said Stunly, ‘when was that announced?’
‘The Little Uncle just declared it.’ He meant Uncle Timfy. ‘Part of the shake-up about Rosamud’s bloody door handle. So the weird thing here, this odd bit, can polish our objects for us, can’t you?’
‘Oh, no, please, Moorcus. Not that.’
‘Mr Moorcus.’
‘Please, Mr Moorcus. I’d rather do your shoes.’
‘I don’t care what you’d rather anything, Clod, get cleaning, and stop talking. We don’t wish to hear you.’
And so I was given their birth objects to clean for inspection. Touching someone else’s birth object is a very discomforting thing, it never seemed right, it’s all together too personal. I sat at a table and with varnish cleaned Duvit’s wooden doorstop which said to me in a croaked voice Muriel Binton and Stunly’s fine folding pocket rule (Julius John Middleton) and last of all Moorcus’s medal marked FOR VALOUR with its red and yellow striped ribbon which never said a word to me unlike the doorstop and the pocket rule, and despite its shine and swank it always seemed a very poor, characterless thing. It frightened me more than a little, this silent thing, I never wanted to be near it. It made no sound. It seemed to me utterly dead, as if I were touching a corpse. They kept me at it until the train came screaming back, and that, as always, got everyone nervous.
‘What do we think?’ asked Moorcus. ‘Shall we let the foul thing go?’
Duvit retrieved his doorstop and put it back into his inside jacket pocket where it usually lived. Stunly took his rule, and snapped it open and shut a few times,
‘Thank you, Clod,’ he said, ‘good work,’ and went back to his book.
‘Cut along then,’ said Moorcus, ‘before I change my mind. Say “thank you”.’
‘Thank you,’ I mumbled.
‘Thank you, Mr Moorcus,’ said Moorcus.
‘Oh God, Moorcus, give it a rest will you,’ said Stunly, and I blessed him a little for it. ‘Let the monstrosity go. Can we not have a little peace?’
‘One thing more, Clodfreak, there’s something else the Little Uncle told me, something for me to pass on,’ said Moorcus, grinning. ‘Just a small thing, barely worth the mention: it’s your Sitting tomorrow.’
‘My Sitting!’ I cried. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes, dishcloth, it is announced.’
‘You’re not just saying that to be cruel?’
‘Get out.’
‘Really, Moorcus, are you telling the truth?’
‘Get out.’
‘Run along, Clod,’ said Stunly, sighing, ‘and think of Pinalippy.’
‘No!’ I cried, because of the Sitting and because Moorcus had just kicked me hard in the rump.
‘I shall murder you one day, Clod,’ said Moorcus, ‘and I shall enjoy it. Yes, I really think I shall.’
Oh, Our Cousins on the Other Side
I ran from the common room as fast as I could, round the corner and far from the silent medal, spitting and cursing and wiping my hands on the wallpaper, on anything, not satisfied until I was at a sink and with a jug of water and scrubbing my hands until they hurt. But that shouldn’t wash the memory of it away. And worse even than that was the thought of my Sitting. Of the Iremonger cousin called Pinalippy.
Cousin Pinalippy was much taller than me. She had a little dark hair on her top lip. There was a voice that came out from Cousin Pinalippy’s pocket which said ‘Gloria Emma Smart’ but I had no idea what Gloria Emma looked like. Cousin Pinalippy could thump and pinch. She had a particular entertainment which was to go up to some young Iremonger and, opening his black jacket, seize a pinch-hold of shirt exactly where the nipple was, and twist it; this was uncommonly painful. It was this person, this tweaker of boys’ breasts, who I was to wed on the unhappy birthday when I moved from corduroy shorts to full-length black trousers. It was this same Pinalippy who I was to be shut up in a room with the next day, for my Sitting. It was family law that, some months before a marriage, sometime during the male Iremonger’s sixteenth year, the betrothed were to be left in a room together, no one else would be there, only him, only her. Me and my James Henry, Pinalippy and her Gloria Emma.
I did not know what Cousin Pinalippy’s birth object was because Iremonger boys and Iremonger girls were taught and lived separately. We did not dine in the same room, we saw each other only out in the heaps. We did not know each other’s birth objects but always there were attempts to discover them, to reve
al who the cousin really was. Sometimes it was obvious: poor Cousin Foy had been given a ten pound lead weight at birth (Sal), so she never moved very fast, for she must always carry her weight with her, and once Cousin Bornobby managed to tug out the hot-water bottle cover (Amy Aiken) from poor sickly Cousin Theeby to her absolute distress and shame. For ever afterwards she was always known, as if Bornobby had taken every bit of clothing from her, her privacy gone for ever. He was given such a thrashing for that. Afterwards, Cousin Pool, who was to marry Theeby – Pool had a foot pump (Mark Seedly) – felt that there was nothing for him to look forward to any more, that his life was in ruins, because Theeby had been so compromised.
On the day of the Sitting the betrothed are to show each other their birth objects. The thought of seeing Gloria Emma Utting filled me with certain dread. So to Tummis I went for a shoulder to lean on, but when I got there I discovered he needed comforting of his own. I found Tummis, moist about the nose and eyes, in his room. Moorcus had been there before me and all his beloved creatures were gone. Tummis had a roach in his lap.
‘They missed Lintel here,’ he said, ‘and that’s something.’
They had missed Lintel, but every other creature had been dispersed or smitten. There were a few telltale smearings on the floor, but most of all Wateringcan, Tummis’s precious seagull, a black-legged kittiwake to be specific, had escaped out of the room and was missing somewhere about the house.
‘Oh, my Wateringcan!’ Tummis groaned.
Poor Tummis did try to be more Iremonger, but he found it monstrous hard. Tummis could not stop himself, a dead rat was a dead friend to him. He preferred the company of animals to Iremongers, and loved the house very much, especially at night when he might observe the wildlife. He named all his cockroaches and petted them, and was very fond of his second family. Once, a few seasons ago, Tummis had acquired, after long saving his pocket money, an ostrich egg, an egg which he wrote for and had delivered in a special wooden crate from near London where a man kept such huge fauna. He treasured that egg, and tried very hard to hatch it, keeping it warm and safe. But one day, when Tummis was away from his room, it is supposed Moorcus came in there and smashed the egg. When Tummis returned there was nothing there but eggshell. Some of my relatives told stories that the ostrich egg had not been smashed by Moorcus, but that it had in fact hatched of its own accord and let itself out, thumping away into household myth. They said the noises in the night were made by Tummis’s errant ostrich. But I did not believe one animal could make all those sounds. For myself, I was certain that it was Moorcus who did for Tummis’s ostrich, and now Wateringcan was lost alongside it and should join the great list of Tummis’s missing.