by Edward Carey
‘You may touch it, if you like,’ she said.
‘Touch it?’
‘If you like.’
She put the doily in my lap, it had no weight to it, this whisper of an object. She in her turn sat now with my plug upon her lap, we sat silent for a long while, at last she muttered, looking at my plug, ‘Something toad-like.’
So we remained getting accustomed to each other’s James Henry and Gloria Emma, until at last Uncle Timfy’s whistle sounded outside, and then she took her doily from me, and I, my fingers briefly over her lap, brought James Henry back home. I was glad it was over, I do not think we were a very good match. But she whispered to me, ‘I think that went very well, don’t you?’
There were tears in her eyes. And then, for a moment, I thought it might be all right after all, but then I heard the sigh, ‘A bath plug.’
And I decided it probably wouldn’t. As I stood up I heard the sofa say something, it said, ‘Victoria Hollest.’
Well, I thought, so the sofa is called Victoria Hollest, there was nothing especially remarkable about that. There was a newel post downstairs called Victoria Amelia Broughton and I once heard a candlestick call itself Victoria Macleod and there was a croquet mallet in the games room called Vicky Morton. Very well, another Victoria, so be it. But then Victoria Hollest, the small red sofa, said, ‘Where’s Margaret?’
And that was something else wasn’t it? That was something very big. No object had ever spoken anything but a name to me before now. It was so strange and uncomforting, this new and sudden communication, that all my insides felt wrong and I thought I might be sick there and then on the sofa, or worse still upon Pinalippy and her Gloria Emma, but I kept it in. What was happening? What was happening to me? Was I going mad? Would my heart, like Father’s, suddenly stop? I staggered to the door. I promised myself that as soon as I could I would come and listen to Victoria Hollest again, but for now I must leave it alone, for Uncle Timfy was not famous for his patience.
My Head and a Coal Scuttle
We were supposed to position ourselves somewhere separately and think of our futures together for the rest of the day, Pinalippy and I. I was to go and sit in the Elephant Room, and Pinalippy was to sit in the White Room. Just sit, sit and think of our lives together, our cold lunches waiting for us on a tray. I should stay put for several hours. So I sat trying not to panic about the talking sofa and not to think of where or who Margaret might be, and so for a while I did think about Pinalippy and for some of the time I did try to concentrate on the feel of her doily, but that sofa kept calling to me in my head and so I wandered about the room, worrying, trying to distract myself. It was dusk when I heard Albert Powling coming and Timfy at last sent me packing.
‘Run along, Clod, and behave yourself; no time for your mishaps today, we’re all at hackles up.’
I ran back all the way to my room, avoiding the main corridors where Iremonger traffic was at its thickest. I did not wish to meet with jeers and whoops about me and my Sitting, any name calling and singing and all the clothes being pulled off, and being tossed up into the air, I should like to avoid all the business that often happens after a Sitting. I shouldn’t go to supper that night, I had a tin of squashed fly biscuits, that would do, and I wouldn’t come out till morning, when my Sitting would be less fresh and hopefully likewise their enthusiasm for it. I made it home just a short while before the train was back in from London.
My two rooms were not very large but they were all mine. Clod through and through and generally in a bit of a heap. Perhaps I was not the cleanest of all Iremongers. I had no parents to adjust me, to give me rules and see that I grow to their interpretation of how an Iremonger should grow, I had no sibling to steal or to be stolen from, to pry and talk and have in common. I am Clod and this was my kingdom. It was not very large perhaps and it was not so grand, but it was my sty and I wallowed in it nightly.
I should never have had my hair cut, never have clipped my nails, have eaten what I liked, got up late, slopped and slooped about in my mash, were it not that I had a body servant, who though only a serving Iremonger, and so not to be particularly thought about, came once a week and aired me out. Then I must make sure all was very well hidden, for he searched so well and was a terrible nose. I was steamed in that laundry day, I was scrubbed and snipped and rubbed and boiled and dipped in smells, my hair was bullied into obeisance and I was made white again and blank until the next week by which time I would have scribbled all over myself, creased me and blurred me and filthied myself in exactly the way I liked. Anything that I had not hidden well would not be there, nor would the body Iremonger mention it, he would just take it; it would go for ever and for ever. Sometimes to have a feeling of even greater independence and total me-ness, I might light a clay pipe or even puff on a cigarillo if I had found one, or then if not have rolled myself a quick cigarette of clippings and dried dust mites, only then should the body Iremonger remind me that such things were not permissible and then Briggs would come to me and, begging my pardon, should pinch my ear quite hard or rap my knuckles, then I should have to say twelve Hallo Moorries (Moorrie was a very good Iremonger who was a wonder at sifting and found many lost treasures, before perishing in a methane explosion, lighting up a fat cigar out on the heaps. NOT A BEANY (which is how Tummis and I say ‘nota bene’): NO SMOKING ON THE WASTEGROUND. HIGHLY FORBIDDEN.) But otherwise I was mostly left alone to my own stink.
That night, when the night bell was sounded, when all was quiet along the corridor – except for the noise from Cyril Pennington, a fire bucket, which was perpetual – I headed out in search of Victoria Hollest.
I was very nearly at the Sitting Room when I heard a new mumbling coming from the schoolmasters’ common room. Looking in I saw some serving Iremonger busy about her night-time tidying business and thought nothing of it to start off with, I have little enough time for the serving Iremongers but do prefer it when they are less conspicuous, and I was about to move on, but then I heard that there was something very wrong with this Iremonger. I thought serving Iremongers never made noises, yet this one did. This one definitely was saying something with its serving mouth shut. Why was this one making noises, what was it saying? As I listened out for the words, the serving Iremonger, who I saw now was young and had quite some red hair visible beneath her bonnet, came at me with maddened looks and struck me upon the head with a coal scuttle.
9
A Pair of Curved Forceps
From the medical journals of Doctor Aliver Iremonger, G.P.
Wednesday 9th November 1875
The patient Rosamud Poorler Iremonger, aged fifty-seven, is distressed. Yellowness to the eyes. No comfortable position can be obtained. The patient describes aching all over her corpus. She keeps reaching out to hold something, but whatever is placed in her hand is not a comfort. I have had other brass door handles brought before her but these have only quickened her terror. She believes that she shall become something other than she is now. There is no quietening her, save with physic.
Thursday 10th November 1875 – 10 a.m.
Great prostration of strength. She has not left her bed all day. She fears she shall be struck into something any moment. The patient wails about a return of the Old Disease. Her brother, she says, fell to it aged seven; he folded into a possing-stick for tub washing. Patient cannot be comforted. Surely, her fears are exaggerated. If she would but calm herself, but the patient has it in her mind that the terrible malady is returning and nothing shall persuade her otherwise.
Thursday 10th November 1875 – 11 p.m.
Features much altered. A coldness now about the surface of her body. Eyes sunken in sockets. Body is changing colour, a blue-blackness to it now not present before. She has not spoken these past five hours. Patient sleeps at last and is to be considered comfortable. Pulse imperceptible.
10
A Brass Doorknob
Lucy Pennant’s narrative continued
A surly Iremonger, middle-aged and heavy
, with many insect bites all over her legs, guided me, took me up from the underhouse, up all those stairs. At the turn of each staircase there was a hatch.
‘Why so many hatches?’ I asked.
‘In case it floods,’ the iremonger said. ‘In case the heaps pour in, to seal the house up, stop the flooding coming up any further.’
‘But what about those beneath the flooding?’
‘They’re flooded in, aren’t they, what do you think? Come along, come up.’
She shifted fast and it was hard for me to remember exactly the routes back down. Each set of stairs was different: one was stone, one was rusted metal, one was wooden and very chipped and broken, one was wooden but dusted and polished with a carpet runner all the way up and brass carpet rods.
‘It doesn’t make any sense,’ I said.
‘Not to you,’ said the Iremonger.
‘Why is it built like this?’ I asked.
‘It is how they like it, them that live here.’ The Iremonger wiped her nose with her wrist. ‘Many are sick the first few times they come up, it’s quite usual. Some are sick each time they come up no matter how often they’ve come up previous, no matter that they do it daily, still they will be sick. You’re holding a bucket, Iremonger, you can always use that.’
‘No, I don’t think I’m going to be sick,’ I said, ‘I should like to see more of it.’
‘Not to! Stay in the rooms I take you to, not for you to go about. Mustn’t. And if you get lost don’t head upwards, you keep heading upwards and you come to the attics, see, and in the attics are all the bats, and they are biting bats and dangerous. Don’t get lost. Mustn’t. Mrs Piggott!’
‘How much of it is there?’
‘Much.’
‘They must be very rich, the Iremongers. And are they also,’ I wondered, walking around so many empty places, ‘quite small in number?’
‘Mrs Piggott!’
‘And perhaps a little shy?’
‘Piggott!’ she snorted, stopping, turning around. ‘Have you ever seen one of the family, a proper one?’
‘I have,’ I said. ‘Cusper Iremonger.’
‘Ah, but he doesn’t live in, so he don’t count.’
‘Have you seen one that does?’
‘Not close to,’ she said. ‘I saw one once from a great distance coming forward, gave me a terrible turn. I managed to hide away behind a sofa, I was there several hours, until I was certain he had gone.’
‘Why, what would happen if you hadn’t hidden?’
‘I don’t like to think on it.’
‘Why not?’
‘They’re deep!’
‘Well, and what does that mean?’
‘And they’re fast!’
‘Well, so am I.’
‘And they’re wicked!’
‘Are they? What do they do?’
‘Take. They take.’
‘I should like to see one.’
‘Mrs Piggott!’
‘What happens if I come across one when I’m making a fire?’
‘You must hide yourself.’
‘And if there’s just one there before me and I haven’t had a chance to hide?’
‘Won’t happen.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because they’re sleeping now or we shouldn’t be allowed up,’ she said. ‘You mustn’t think about them, not for a moment. Just get your job done, quick as you can, and then back downstairs as fast as you like. And then you’ve done it, the night’s over. And if you see anything, if anything starts coming, then you hide, don’t you. As fast as you like. And you don’t get seen and you keep hold of your scuttle and if anything comes at you, you hit it, my girl, you hit it and hit it.’
‘But what would come at me?’
But she only said, ‘Mrs Piggott!’
I was left alone shortly after. I didn’t mind it at first, the space, the emptiness, just me there. But then of course it wasn’t just me there at all, there was the house as well.
I saw one of the withdrawing rooms and a morning room, the breakfast room, the Sitting Room with just one old red sofa in it, and what was called the Sun Room which was a room with more windows than most but which had a most dismal feel about it, all the glass panes thick with dirt. The other thing I had not properly understood with the old Iremonger beside me, giving directions, hurrying, panting, was that even though I was on my own in those rooms upstairs still it was far from quiet. The plumbing got very angry, and then there were all the noises of the animal life busy about the house, different things somewhere in the walls, chewing away, and I could see why I was instructed always to keep my coal shovel close by, but only to hit out if I was absolutely provoked, in genuine self-defence, but that if I killed a rat or seagull I must afterwards be sure to clean up the mess. And not to throw the bodies away for there was use in the body, they could be skinned and the skin contribute to a coat, or feathers for quills or for stuffing, their meat could be used, their carcasses could be boiled down for glue, nothing must be wasted.
Far worse than the animals were the other sounds, the noises of the Upiremongers asleep. Upiremonger, that’s what the servants called the family members who lived above ground. Their breathing came down through the flues and into my face. I was certain the house held many ghosts, I should not have been surprised if all the ghosts of London congregated there and made a great playroom of the mansion, I did try not to think of that. But when you work at a fireplace your back has to be turned to the room, and there is no escaping the feeling that someone is watching you. I kept my head low, the coal scuttle in my hand, I lit candles and in the light, I told myself, made little pockets of safety. I tried to remember the songs I used to know.
I found a little tuppence,
I kept it for myself,
It was a magic tuppence,
It ate up all my health.
But that didn’t help much.
Spit spat sputum,
Whither are you walkin’,
Forlichingham Mound
I am bound.
Crick crack sternum
You shall fall in.
Slip and trip and smack your head,
Filching Mound, that’s your bed.
And nor did that, so I kept myself pretty quiet after. Mrs Piggott, I said to myself, and somehow that made me feel better.
There were so many things upstairs, so many little bits and pieces that I didn’t know the name to. I liked to pick them up and hold them, odd objects on mantelpieces or side tables, things, just things, that fitted into the hand so nicely. Small portraits of unhappy-looking people, framed silhouettes of oddly grown men and women, with locks of hair tied up in black ribbons, twisted up in the back of the frames. Carved snuff boxes, miniature buildings made of toothpicks, silver compasses, an ivory baton, tiny books with gilt edges.
There were so many things of sadness and delight around the uphouse rooms. I felt miserable to leave them behind, once or twice I put them into my pocket just to know what they felt like, and they felt very good, the weight of them. They were such a comfort. Most of all, though, what I felt my hand longed for was something small and box-like, that rattled when you shook it, that I felt should be the perfect thing to hold.
I was in the Sun Room when it happened. I cannot get it exactly straight even now. I was by the fireplace, I don’t remember wobbling anything, or hammering on the floorboards especially, but somehow it must have come lose, I must have dislodged it someway or other, no explanation otherwise, because suddenly there it was. Something clanged upon the floor and rolled towards me. Gave me ever such a turn at first. Nearly called out, nearly struck at it. It stopped rolling right in front of me. As if it was aiming for me. As if it wanted me to find it.
A door handle it was, a brass one. A small one, with a rod. I knew that it must be the one they were looking for, that it belonged to someone called Rosamud. I thought she should be very pleased to have it back. But then I thought I might keep it a while, not for long, I’d give it
back soon enough, just let me keep it for a few days. It was something to hold onto. It was only a door handle, of course, just a door handle. It was something shiny, it was something to hold, and somehow life feels much better when you have something to hold onto. I’ll give it back soon, I thought, I certainly shall, but not just yet.
I did like it. There was something about it, something personal.
I went on, then, with the door handle, I wrapped it up in my thick hair, twisted my hair around it, then pinned it down, I quite covered it with hair like I had with those other things back in Filching, and put my bonnet over so it couldn’t be seen, not even really if you took my bonnet off. Perhaps my head was a just a little bit bumpier, just a bit. Just for a little while, I told myself, then I’ll give it back. So I went on, doing my labour, feeling better now that I had the door handle.
I was cleaning the fireplace of the schoolmasters’ common room, a very thick place indeed, when I had the sudden feeling that someone was watching me. I turned to the door and there was someone there, someone horrible.
It was a ghost.
A ghost of a short ill-faced boy. I was so certain he had come to haunt me. He stood there in the doorway, a horrible boy with a neat parting and great circles under his eyes, with a very wide mouth and a head that seemed a little big for his shoulders. And I thought, no, I’m not going to stand it, I’ve been so terrified all this time about seeing a ghost that actually seeing one isn’t so bad and I’m not going to have this unhappy creature skulking around me each time I come upstairs so I shall have to tell it to shove off, that I won’t stand for it. So I stood up then and took hold of the coal shovel and marched towards him, hands trembling, and I hit, just as I had been told to. I hit him with the shovel. And my shovel struck. It made contact. It found something, not the doorframe, no, it hit the boy around the ear. There was even a very little blood.
Perhaps this wasn’t a ghost.