by Edward Carey
Perhaps it wasn’t.
It wasn’t.
No, not a ghost. And if he wasn’t a ghost then he was surely one of the family. I’d struck an Upiremonger. There was just a drop of blood but this Upiremonger made a terrible fuss and I kept telling him how sorry I was and he kept holding his precious ear as if I’d chopped the damned thing off.
When he was a bit quieter I begged him not to tell anyone. ‘Don’t report me, promise me that.’
And he stood with his hands around his lug and said, ‘My name’s Clod. You’ve heard of me I expect; Ayris’s son.’
‘My name’s –’
‘I know your name,’ he said impatiently, ‘your name is Iremonger of course.’
‘My name is Lucy Pennant.’
‘Is it? Is it really? Are you sure? I wasn’t aware that there were names for the servants downstairs, except the butler and such.’
‘Well there are, and mine is Lucy Pennant, and don’t you forget it.’
‘You’re awfully sensitive about it, aren’t you.’
‘Yes I am!’
‘You needn’t be so cross.’
I thought it was clever of me at first to tell him my name, what a place to keep it, inside the head of one of the upstairs Iremongers. Then I wondered if it wasn’t actually incredibly stupid. What if he told Mrs Piggott that a maid called Lucy Pennant had not only talked to him which was expressly forbidden but had used her own outlawed name and had actually struck him with a coal scuttle?
‘There’s something else that’s different about you, isn’t there?’ he asked.
‘I expect so,’ I said.
‘You’ve got a birth object.’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘yes I do, it’s –’
‘But servants don’t usually have birth objects.’
‘We all do, they’re kept downstairs, in Mrs Piggott’s room.’
‘Maybe it’s the scuttle then,’ he said, and a moment later, ‘no, it’s not the scuttle, not the bucket. Could it be your bonnet?’
He was frowning so, he somehow knew I had the door handle under my cap, but how could he know? It’s just as the old Iremonger had said, they’re deep.
‘How long, Lucy Pennant, have you been in Heap House, for you don’t seem to know the rules?’
‘Since yesterday evening.’
‘And before yester evening you were somewhere else then?’
‘I’ve got to be somewhere all the time, haven’t I?’
‘Well, yes.’
‘Everyone’s in one place or another aren’t they?’
‘Yes they are.’
‘You’re never not anywhere.’
‘Yes, yes, steady on. It’s not you that’s got a bleeding ear. And please to remember that you are a servant and I am not. But to return to the conversation, there are so many somewheres, aren’t there? So many places altogether, but I, you see, I’ve only ever been here.’
‘There’s a lot of here, masses of it.’
‘Yes, it is big, I suppose, but I was wondering, Lucy Pennant, of that place that you were just yesterday. What was it like?’
‘Smaller.’
‘Oh was it, that’s interesting, and was there anything else about it at all?’
‘What do you want to know?’
‘Everything.’
‘That’s a lot then, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, well,’ he said, ‘if you wouldn’t mind. You could start now.’
‘And what about me? What do I get out of it?’
‘I don’t know. My not telling anyone that I was struck by a servant?’
‘Show me the house, I’m new here, I get lost. Show it me.’
‘Were you in London?’
‘I was.’
‘Do you know London?’
‘Course.’
‘Could you tell me about it?’
‘An exchange is it then? You’ll show me the house, and I’ll tell you everything about London?’
‘Oh yes, all right. Let’s start straight away, this is the Masters’ common room.’
‘I know that already. Tell me something else.’
‘I will. There are seven floors, well, eight in places. Six main staircases. I’m not certain how many back ones. Four dining halls, three long galleries. Many treasures here and there, great collections.’
‘Show me.’
‘Tell me,’ he asked, ‘what’s your birth object?’
‘A box of matches. Show me a collection.’
‘What sort of a box, big, small, how many matches inside?’
‘I don’t know, I didn’t see, there was tape around it which said “sealed for your convenience”. It’s got nothing to do with me really.’
‘A sealed box of matches.’
A bell sounded underneath and I knew I must hurry.
‘I should go now. We’ve made a deal, haven’t we, come to terms agreeable to both parties?’
‘Yes, indeed.’
‘There we are then. But it’ll have to be another night. I must get on now.’
‘Tomorrow night?’
‘Tomorrow, yes, if you like.’
‘I’ll come and find you.’
‘Yes, well, all right.’
And I thought, what’s that on the chain he has going into his dressing gown pocket, what’s at the end of that?
‘Goodnight,’ I said to him.
And he said, ‘Goodnight.’ He said, ‘Goodnight, Lucy Pennant.’
Yes, that was the first time I met Clod Iremonger.
11
A Pair of Nose Tongs
Clod Iremonger’s narrative continued
Lucy Pennant is in My Head
She is called Lucy Pennant. She cleans the fireplaces in some of the rooms after we are horizontal in our bedpits. I had not spoken to many of the cleaning, spic and spanning, smelling soapy, polishing up, whitewashing and scrubbing scrubbers, bleaching or blacking, ironing-Iremongers, crisp and starching, un-fleaing family branch members that lived, by day, out of sight somewhere down beneath Heap House, with dustpan and with brush. They were nocturnal, I supposed. They did not like us to go downstairs into the service rooms, Uncle Timfy would blow his whistle so and Mr Sturridge would be most unencouraging. So I did not see them much, those people. And they had no sounds to them, no names called out when they went by, not generally. And months would probably pass by without me having given them so much as a thought, as if it were the rats themselves that tried to clean our uncleanables, polished our palace and took all the ash and dead skin away. But now I had seen one of them, caught one in the candlelight. A brilliant moth.
Back in my room, in my space, I whispered, ‘I saw Lucy Pennant tonight. She struck me with her scuttle. She comes from London. I heard her birth object, but couldn’t catch its name.’
What else? She had green eyes. Was a very little older than me. Bit taller. I might grow, I thought, it probably was not tremendously important. Pinalippy had asked me to grow, but I didn’t want to think about Pinalippy then. I wanted to think about Lucy Pennant. She thought I was a ghost; I frightened her. I didn’t think I had ever frightened anyone before. I must learn the name of her birth object; I knew a person so much better when I knew what their birth object was and what it called itself.
A Secret From Tummis
Cousin Tummis knocked on my door early next morning.
‘Tummis,’ I said, ‘Tummis and Hilary, come in and close the door. I’ve something enormous to tell you. Something very wonderful. Close the door.’
‘What is it, Clod?’
‘Hilary Evelyn Ward-Jackson.’
‘Your nose is dripping. Hello, Hilary.’
Tummis smeared his nose on the cuff of his shirt.
‘I think Wateringcan might come back tonight,’ he said, ‘I think he might, don’t you? I did try to look for him, I did go about a bit, but I found no traces, and I didn’t want to be caught by Moorcus, he was on duty last night. Tonight it’s Duvit so perhaps I’ll have more luck. But I do think Wateringcan will
come home, once he’s tired himself.’
‘I’m sure he shall,’ I said.
‘Clod, tell me your news, that’s what I’m eager about.’
‘Tummis,’ I said, ‘have you ever waited and waited, patiently scratching, itching yourself, wiping at your nose, looking at the door waiting for it to open and there in front of you to appear, an excellent story. Your very own story, mind, not someone else’s, not some minor role in some other body’s opera. But your own. Your own story. Have you ever wanted your own story in which you’re the leading part?’
‘How you come at me, Clod, so early in the day.’
‘Your own story, Tummis, think of it, your very own. What might it be?’
‘A Tummis story? How would that be?’
‘My story has come to me, Tummis. I think it has.’
‘Oh, Clod!’
‘Oh, Tummis!’
‘You must tell me everything. How is she? How was the Sitting? I know that she seems quite big and tough but she wasn’t after all then?’
‘Stop! Stop right there, Tummis Gurge Oillim Mirck Iremonger. Pinalippy isn’t my story. It’s not Pinalippy I’m talking about. My story is something else altogether.’
‘No it’s not.’
‘It certainly is, Tummis. (Your nose is dripping.)’
‘(Thank you.) What’s this story?’
‘Well,’ I said, then I hesitated, I didn’t want to ruin it. I suddenly thought it was such a delicate thing, very new and small, and I didn’t tell Tummis, not yet, though usually I would tell him everything. Suddenly I felt a great gap opening up between us as if he were growing far away, I felt that, but still I didn’t close the gap. I left it there. ‘I haven’t quite got all the parts right yet, I don’t want to smash it before I’m certain. But I can say, it has some red in it.’
‘Some red, does it?’
‘Some red and also some green.’
‘A muddy sort of colour then? Brownish?’
‘Not exactly.’
‘Well, what then?’
‘I can’t say exactly.’
Down below the train screamed for London.
‘Tell me, Clod, please tell me.’
‘Percy Hotchkiss.’
‘It’s Aliver,’ I whispered, ‘come for my check-up.’
‘Do tell me, Clod, quickly. Please do.’
There was a knock at the door.
‘Clod,’ came a voice, ‘may I step in a moment?’
‘Oh, flotsam,’ whispered Tummis nervously, ‘oh, flotsam and pokeum.’
The door opened; Uncle Aliver was before us.
‘I thought I heard voices,’ he said. ‘Tummis, are you supposed to be here?’
‘No, Uncle.’
‘You’ll wear him out, Tummis, he’s easily tired.’
‘I’m quite well today, Uncle,’ I said.
‘You are no more substantial, poor Clod, than a dandelion.’
‘What’s a dandelion?’ I asked.
‘It need not concern you. Some of us, Tummis, are not so robustly fashioned, unlike you, you great bell tower, great walking advertisement for upwards.’
‘Is he like the Monument, Uncle?’ I asked. ‘Is he like the statue built to commemorate the Great Fire of London, built in 1677, two hundred and two feet high, that stands upon the junction of Monument Street and Fish Street Hill?’
‘Indeed,’ he said, ‘very like. You have been reading, Clod.’
‘Yes, Uncle, many books on London.’
‘I’m sorry, Uncle,’ said Tummis, ‘it was his Sitting, you see, and I –’
‘Don’t let me catch you in here again.’
‘No, Uncle.’
‘Cut along then.’
And away went the dear stork, hurt and snotty.
An Uncle Called Aliver
My Uncle Aliver, deliverer of syrups and potions, of foul-tasting pills that looked like animal droppings and smelt as much, Uncle Aliver the doctor, the plumber of human innards, his thoughts all heading inwards, he who looking at every person could only ever see their underskin, their dripping and clotting, their blackening and blueing, he whose imagination was all boils and rashes, he who was companion to pain and swelling, joint-ache, colds and moulds, blisters and twisted testicles, tooth rot and foot rot and gut rot and stomach knot and ingrowing toenails and outgrowing skin flaps, his company, his sociability, his interaction, his hellos and howdoyoudos, his Iloveyous, were all and only with the unwell. Well people, young and sprightly and sleeping tightly every night, he could not comprehend at all. They were not interesting to him. Aliver could only recognise a person by his ailments. He was close friend and admirer of everything from colds to calluses to catarrhs to cataracts to cancers to carbuncles to cysts to catalepsy to cretinism and sat beside them and worried over them a great deal. With someone ill he was loving and tender and patient, with a well person he was rude and blind and baffling and horrible. When his patients recovered he turned his back upon them, hurt and miserable, already missing the disease which he, in his sadness, had helped to dismiss. He had been married, Uncle Aliver, to Aunt Jocklun (cake knife) and the marriage had not been a happy one until poor Aunt Jocklun picked up black lung and then he never left her until she left him for ever and for ever.
With me, Uncle Aliver was generally very attentive and excited, he spent a good deal of worry over me and was so very fond of my head, and I wished he were not so much. On the days he was quick with me and gruff I knew I was doing better. He was a first-rate medical man and knew everything about the stop and go of the human unit.
‘You appear very underslept,’ said Uncle Aliver to me that morning; he felt my head and listened to my heart. He laid out my pills for the week and there, save for a few brief questions, his visits would usually stop.
‘Poor Rosamud, Clod, she suffers so. Her hair is falling out. Her skin has darkened.’
‘Indeed, poor Aunt.’
‘The whole house is set off by her. How busy I have been. My brother Wrichid thought he saw his own pelmet sliding about his bedchamber, but I think it’s more likely the claret cup. Mr Groom has reported a sudden curdling of substances, from milk to marzipan, and a pig carcass hung up in the cold room has grown strange blue lines all over its pelt. Not to mention the birth of Cousin Lolly’s latest; she’s calling him Kannif after her own father, very frail indeed. And Great Aunt Ommaball Oliff, your venerable grandmother, foul-mooded without cease, presented the poor child with a single curved pencil shaving for a birth object, so it’s unlikely to last the night. And of course the heaps are up and that’s enough to make anyone tense. I haven’t known such distress since Rippit was lost to us. But you, Clod, at least you remain constant, constantly Clod.’
‘I have listened out for the door handle, but I haven’t heard it.’
‘And yet it must be somewhere. Clod, perhaps we might run you around a bit, up and down the house, see what you can hear. We’ll not make a parade of it, there’s no need for Timfy to know. Yes, perhaps we might. Worth a shot. Would you be up to that? It would get you out of school.’
‘Certainly, Uncle.’
‘And how was your Sitting anyway? I forgot to ask. Nice girl?’
‘It was all right, I suppose. And, Uncle, at the Sitting –’
‘A doily, I believe.’
‘A doily, yes. And, Uncle, there was something else. The sofa in the Sitting Room, it spoke, quite quietly, it said its name was Victoria Hollest.’
‘Victoria Hollest, did it?’ said Uncle perfunctorily.
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘and I shouldn’t mention anything about it especially except the fact it said something else, something other than its name, it was asking where someone called Margaret was. I’m pretty sure that’s what I heard, I could go and have another listen if you like.’
‘Clod, you clot!’ he said in a passion. ‘You should have told me right away. I’d better have a look at your birth object.’
This happened but once or twice a year and Uncle Alive
r made it very clear it was not something he enjoyed doing, there were other doctors for birth objects. I brought my plug out and placed it on top of his opened hand, the chain stretched out as far as it would go. He took a magnifying glass from a pocket and used it to observe my plug most fully, he put the magnifying glass away, he took out a pair of tweezers, he turned the plug over. ‘Breathe in,’ he said, I did, ‘Breathe out,’ he said and I did.
He tapped my plug lightly with his fingers, it made me very anxious.
‘Is anything the matter with my James Henry?’ I asked.
‘I don’t think so, but you may need to see someone else.’
He gave me back my plug.
‘How do you feel?’
‘Quite well, Uncle.’
‘I want to hear what you hear, Clod, about the house.’
The Talking House
Up marble stairs down iron ones we went. Into small cupboards, into great halls, turning here and there at random, trying to hear the door handle Alice Higgs calling out, somewhere those two words picked out from all the cacophony of the building. How to catch it amongst all those other rumblings? The house talked and gabbed, it whispered, it bellowed, it sang and warbled, croaked, cracked, spat, tittered, flapped, panted, tooted and groaned. Young voices, high and lively, old voices, cracked and shaking, women’s, men’s, so many, many voices and not a one of those from a person, but all from the things of the talking house, here and there a curtain rod, a bird cage, a paperweight, ink bottle, floorboard, banister, lampshade, bell pull, tea tray, hairbrush, door, nightstand, basin bowl, shaving brush, cigar clippers, darning mushroom, mat and carpet. I did come upon a talking doorknob but this one was of Whitby jet and opened the door into the Mourning Room – where dead Iremongers are cleaned and dressed after dying, a room originally part of a mortician’s house in Whitechapel – and that doorknob said Marjorie Clarke. We did visit Victoria Hollest, site of yesterday’s Pinalippy encounter, but the room was empty now save for the sofa which was indeed still wondering in whispers, ‘Where’s Margaret?’
‘Is that all?’ asked Aliver.
‘Yes, Uncle, and “Victoria Hollest”, those four words.’