by Edward Carey
‘It is a wall sconce, sir,’ said a city Iremonger.
‘That wall sconce, quiet at first, timid certainly, is talking now. I hear you, you are called Charlie White. I knew it! I knew there was something tickling at my ears, I knew I heard something! Wait, stop that! Charlie White, be quiet!’
The little blind man took some metal tool from his pocket and began to wave it in the direction of the sconce. ‘I will have silence, Charlie! I will!’ A city Iremonger stepped up to assist him.
‘Mister Idwid, sir, Guv’nor, may we help you at all?’
‘Yes, you may indeed. Kind of you. It’s Charlie White there! I’ve woken Charlie White and he’s that disturbed, I cannot catch me another thing to hear while Charlie White’s Charlie-ing and White-ing. And I know, I do so know it, there’s something other than Charlie White and my Geraldine in this chamber. Butler!’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Sturridge.
‘Someone’s just come in. Who is’t?’
‘It is,’ said the tall gent, exhaustion in his voice, ‘another Iremonger, sir.’
‘Without equipment, just in her own clothes?’
‘Exactly so, sir.’
‘Come here please, new Iremonger,’ he said, leaning himself forward, his head at an angle so that his left ear was entirely pointed in my direction, ‘there’s nothing to be afeard of. What’s that, now?’ he whispered, a huge smile coming to his fleshy lips. ‘Come here, I think I hear you!’
I tried to step back, but a city Iremonger pushed me a step or two forward, closer to the blind man’s ear, somehow, he seemed to know I was hiding something, though I cannot say how he knew.
‘Closer, please,’ he called, ‘step closer!’
I was pushed further towards the desk, but just as I came so very close, as I was up against the desk, and as the city Iremonger behind me began to push my head a little over the desk, the little man cried out.
‘Charlie White, I cannot hear with all your babbling. You, Dunnult!’
‘Guv’nor,’ said the city Iremonger beside him.
‘Take that sconce away.’
As the taking was going on the little moon-man sat back, muttering to himself, his hand now and then stretching out in the air before him, quite in my direction.
‘Something’s there! I hear you! Not you, Charlie, not you. Be calm, Charlie, be silent!’
It took them some time to pull the sconce from the wall, but at last it was out, much plaster coming with it, and just as the little man had taken his, very neat, fingers from his ears, someone else came running in.
‘There’s a Gathering, Guv’nor! A Gathering! Two brooms missing, a fire extinguisher vanished, chimney rods disappeared, three gunny lamps and a water pump handle! The Grooms have just handed in their report. In the cold room two hooks are unaccounted for. In the kitchens a ladle, a colander, a clove grater. In all it makes a path of disappearance, a map of missing!’
‘I’ll have no Gathering on my watch!’ replied the little man, the smile for a moment falling off his lips, though it was back again a moment later.
‘Upwards of thirty items, sir.’
‘Guide me, Dunnult, guide me now, my dear fellow, propel me forward instantly.’
Within a minute he was gone and all the city Iremongers with him and I was left with Mr Sturridge in his parlour.
‘Yet here, Iremonger?’ said the butler. ‘Proceed to your duties. The circus,’ he said distastefully, ‘is over!’
‘Yes, sir, thank you, sir.’ I was gone in a moment and soon at my day duties. I kept myself well mixed in with other Iremongers through the long day, and whenever I heard any talk of Idwid Iremonger, or Governor Iremonger, I was quick to be out of his way, he was close once only, in the bootroom, where I had a shift polishing, he came in there briefly, but backed out soon enough, complaining that there was too much noise in that place, though there was only me and two other Iremongers cleaning shoes at a trestle table. He never even looked in our direction.
‘Too loud, too loud in here by half!’ he cried. ‘Who was it who dispersed the domestics to their stations?’
‘Mr Sturridge, Guv’nor,’ came the one called Dunnult.
‘He doesn’t know his position, wait until Umbitt’s back, then he’ll know his position. Then –’ big smile – ‘he’ll be positioned!’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Guide me on, then, guide me!’
‘Yes, sir, certainly, Guv’nor. This way.’
‘A needle in a haystack! And no one can tell servant from servant. And forty-two objects unaccounted for.’
On he went, and, I suppose, up above stairs. I didn’t see him again, not that day anyway. Later I should.
The train came back, same as usual. We had our food, like every night. And I was ready at the same old time, my fellow firegrates anxious beside me. I was up the stairs and shifting as soon as the bell was sounded.
I’ll wait in the Sun Room, I thought, he’d be certain to look for me there. But then I wondered if the Masters’ common room might not be better. I made some half-hearted attempts at the firegrates but I couldn’t concentrate, I kept listening out. It seemed to me that there were far more noises that night, and as I was listening out at the fireplace in the Elephant Room, hearing some muttering coming down the flue, thinking I could just about make something out – some distant sound that may have been ‘Ach, Umbitt!’ – suddenly there he was right beside me.
‘I told you not to creep up!’ I said.
‘Oh, yes, sorry,’ he said, ‘I was in such a hurry. I mean, I was so worried, I mean, I’m so glad to see you. I’ve been waiting all day, I should have been to the cellars myself were it not that I knew he was down there and I didn’t want to draw attention. I’ve been that worried. I’m so glad to see you!’
‘Yes, all right,’ I said, ‘that’ll do. You needn’t stand so close.’
‘Ah! Sorry,’ he said, he was so nervous.
‘Truth is,’ I said, ‘I’m glad to see you and all.’
‘Are you? Are you?’
‘Don’t overdo it.’
‘I can’t help it.’ He stroked back the parting in his hair, stood up a little, tried a smile, gave it up, tried a sentence, gave it up, put his hand out towards my head, drew it back in, slumped a little, seemed to be putting off being brave till later. ‘I’ll show you some more of the house, if I may, come with me.’
I should have told him there and then about the blind man hearing me, I should have told him I was a thief, I should have told him about the Iremonger missing too, but I hesitated and let him draw me on, around and about the ugly palace.
‘Dear Lucy Pennant,’ he said, stopping at a room, it seemed to me quite at random, ‘this here is called the Clip Room.’
‘And what happens within, you are given your clips around the ear?’
‘No, it is in here the family has its nails cut.’
‘Fair enough. Something more. Show me more.’
Onwards we went but not far, Clod in the lead, listening out, it seemed to me, so very carefully, and then suddenly he pulled me behind a tall vase. I heard something coming, scratching and swooping; there was a high shriek, I nearly answered with one of my own, but Clod put his hand over my mouth, and then a seagull came into view. It was a big raucous bird, and came pattering along the floorboards, poking at this and that. It waddled very close to us, padding right up.
‘It’s only Wateringcan,’ Clod said. ‘Shoo, Wateringcan, shoo.’
‘Wateringcan?’
‘My cousin Tummis’s pet seagull, he’s a black-legged kittiwake,’ Clod explained, ‘he got out. Go home, Wateringcan, go home!’
But Wateringcan did not go home, instead he let out his wings and hopped from foot to foot as if he was doing a dance, and then made some unpleasant throaty caw as if he was singing a song.
‘He’s going to get us caught,’ I said. ‘Go away, bird, scat!’
Clod took something from his pocket.
‘It’s all I ha
ve, my last squashed-fly biscuit, I’m going to throw it as far as I can and then we’ll run in the other direction. Are you ready?’
‘Ready!’
He threw it, the bird hopped after it and we rushed away. Along another corridor, Clod stopped suddenly, and had us hide behind a fire screen.
‘What is it?’ I asked.
‘Ssssh!’ he said.
We sat there for a long time. I heard nothing at all and just as I was about to tell him there was nothing there, there was someone. Footsteps. And I could just see a tall boy with very bright fluffy hair in his dressing gown walking along. He stopped for a bit, wiped his nose on his cuff, and called out in a quiet voice, ‘Wateringcan? Are you there?’
Before rushing on again.
‘It’s Tummis,’ he said, ‘looking for his Wateringcan. He’s a fine fellow, shall we go and meet him? He’d be very surprised to see you. But he’ll be with Wateringcan by now and there’s certain to be a great deal of cacophony. We used very often to be out together, there was a time we’d be out night after night looking for an ostrich chick.’
‘An ostrich, here?’
‘In truth, there was never much hope for it, Cousin Moorcus is to blame. Another night you must meet Tummis. I should warn him first.’
I must tell him now, I thought, will he help, can he help? He is an upstairs Iremonger, that’s got to mean something. But what am I doing, hanging around with an Iremonger anyway, anyone in Filching would tell me that’s a terrible thing to do. You can’t trust an Iremonger, everyone knows that, you must keep them at a distance always. Spend too much time with an Iremonger and you’re sure to come to harm, stands to reason, anyone in Filching would have said so, and yet there I was, me and Clod.
‘Please come in, Lucy,’ he said, at another doorway. ‘This room here is called the Smoggery.’
‘And why is it called that?’
‘It is here in the Smoggery that the adult Iremongers come to smog.’
‘Smog?’
‘Yes, smog. Shall we smog, you and I, Lucy, in this room? It is what it is for after all. Shall we smog upon a leather sofa?’
‘I don’t know, generally I’m not asked like that, a boy comes at you, doesn’t he, and gets closer and then, well there it is, you either do or you don’t. And I’m not sure, Clod, I like you and that but . . .’
‘You sit down on one of these chairs, they’re very comfortable, a man comes and gives you a pipe and he lights it for you, and you smog, you make smog. Sometimes it’s been so smogged up in this room that you cannot see from one wall to the other, sometimes there’s so much smog the whole floor is obscured, it’s a very smoky, foggy, thick place. Fancy a smog?’
‘Yes, all right then, I’ll have a smog.’
He got a pipe from a rack and we shared it together, the clay pipe passed from my mouth to his.
‘I like this smogging,’ I said.
‘Me too,’ he said, ‘I do like a good smog.’
‘Excellent it is.’
‘And that’s the truth.’
‘Too right.’
‘Well then, Lucy, here we are, comfortable too. So then, can you tell me?’
‘What, tell you what?’
‘Well . . . well can you tell me . . . is there anything you’d like to tell me . . . from your own lips . . . about yourself, I should like to know, there’s still time, there’s still night left.’
I should have told him all about downstairs, but I couldn’t, not yet, and he sat so close to me, and I didn’t mind then, and we passed the pipe between us and it was so good for a bit, so good in particular that I didn’t want it to stop. What shall he do, I wondered, what shall he do when I tell him, he shan’t call out shall he? These Iremongers are so particular about property, but I don’t think he shall. I quite liked him then, sitting beside me, his head close, yes I liked him in a way, if things had been different, if it’d been at home say, in the boarding house, we might have done things together. And then I thought, why don’t we anyway? So I began to speak, passing the clay pipe between us, and I told him of everything but that which mattered most, as a start to get us going, building up to it, so to speak.
I told him of the orphanage and the other red-haired girl there, the bully, something of the house I lived in before, and the many families that dwelt there on different floors, and that I lived in the basement with Father and Mother, that Mother washed clothes and Father was the porter for the house. And then I told him that there had been a great illness and that objects seemed to get ill and then afterwards people did, and there was a great shutting off of doors and landings and that one particular day when I came home from school my mother and father had, I said, ‘Stopped, sort of,’ I hesitated there, ‘they’d been objectified, they were all stiff and weren’t themselves any more.’
‘No one told me anything about that!’ he said at last. ‘Not even rumours!’ We were silent a while, then he said quietly, ‘So you have no parents either, just like me.’
‘But you’ve got all those cousins and aunts and uncles.’
‘I could live without them, pretty much, save Tummis,’ he said. ‘Lucy, I know about London too, though I’ve never seen it.’
‘You think you know London, do you?’
‘The Monument. Elephant and Castle. Lincoln’s Inn Fields. Threadneedle Street! The Strand! High Holborn!’
‘But do you know what any of them look like?’
‘Seven Dials! Whitechapel! The Bloody Tower! Harley Street!’
‘What does that all prove?’
‘What I know. White sewing machines are got at 48 Holborn Viaduct. Horle’s ink powders at 11 Farringdon Road. W. Waller, theatrical costumier and wig maker, 84 and 86 Tabernacle Street, Finsbury Square. Liebig Company’s extract of beef, 9 Fenchurch Avenue. All that, that’s London.’
‘But they’re just words, said like that they don’t mean anything.’
‘Bird’s custard powder, no eggs required, sold everywhere!’
‘That’s enough.’
‘What else? There’s more, much more. Worth a guinea a box, Beecham’s pills for nervous and bilious disorders.’
‘All right, all right.’
We smogged on a while in silence.
‘Do you know anything, Lucy Pennant,’ he asked, ‘about my Aunt Rosamud?’
‘Never so much as a whisper,’ I said, reddening up.
‘Well you see, how to say, my Aunt Rosamud, well she was . . . no, that’s not it . . . I’m not very fond of Aunt Rosamud . . . yes, but how to go on from there . . . when we’re born, we Iremongers, born here in Heap House, we are given, each of us, something . . . something to hold onto . . . this isn’t quite the way to swing at it. I’ll start again. Lucy?’
‘Yes, what?’
‘Lucy!’
‘Yes?’
‘Be very quiet. Behind the sofa, quick!’
Again I heard nothing but Clod held his hands to ears and went terrible pale. And again he was right. Long, long before I heard it, he knew something was coming. Whatever it was seemed very large, there was a great rumbling before it was very close, the whole room seemed to shudder, it came closer and closer till everything was shaking, and there was a terrible stench of gas. Clod was in such a panic and about to call out that I held him close to me to keep him shushed. But it did go away again, the great clanking noise, it went quieter and quieter and then at last I released Clod, he looked up and was in such a terror.
‘What was that?’ I asked.
‘It was,’ he said in a weak voice, ‘it was someone carrying something very loud by the name of Robert Burrington.’
‘Who’s Robert Burrington?’
‘I don’t rightly know, I’ve never heard it before, I don’t know what it’s doing or who has it. But I don’t think we’d better stay here, it’s not safe now.’
He took my hand again and rushed me onwards out of the Smoggery and down some stairs, very silently past a man in uniform asleep at a desk, past a monster cloc
k, and into some new huge place I had never been before, nor knew existed.
‘This, dear Lucy.’
‘Dear Lucy?’
‘This is the Marble Hall of course.’
‘Very grand, isn’t it?’
‘Here is the Great Chest. In here are kept all the birth objects of the Iremongers that have died. I shall tell you about one or two if you like. See that blackboard rubber there on the third shelf? That was my father’s. Beside it is a small key which is to unlock a pianoforte, that was my mother’s.’
‘You’re showing me your parents?’
‘Yes.’
‘Thank you, Clod,’ I said, very sincerely, ‘honoured.’ I was.
‘I didn’t know them, either of them. But I often come here, to look at their objects, wondering about them, as if I’ll understand them more by studying these bits and pieces. All those old lives. That’s Great Grandfather Adwald’s swordstick up there.’
‘And what is that one?’
‘That’s Great-great Uncle Dockinn’s narwhal horn and next to it is his wife Osta’s nautilus shell. And there is the red coral that was Great Aunt Loopinda’s.’
‘Who got the little clock there?’
‘It is an ormolu clock, that was Emomual’s, he died over a hundred years ago. And there is his brother Oswild’s broadsword, they came from a time when birth objects were such beautiful things, not brushes and ink bottles, not blotting paper and plungers, but carved ivory olifants and gilded armillary spheres and clockwork birds and elephants’ feet. But not any more because Grandmother says we need everyday objects, because we live in a utilitarian age.’
‘The case is all locked up, is it?’
‘Oh yes, it’s always kept locked, and opened only when someone dies.’
‘A baby’s bootie, that’s sad.’
‘Not really, that was Great Uncle Fratz’s and he lived to be ninety-three. What’s sad though is that cloth cap there and that spinning top, that cigar clipper, all died very young, and the salt and pepper pots there, they are sad.’
‘Twins?’
‘Yes, that’s right. Typhus.’