Heap House for Hotkeys

by Edward Carey

  ‘But how,’ I said, ‘how did you . . . ? What have you . . . ?’

  ‘Things,’ said Grandfather, ‘are not what they seem.’

  ‘They move quite by themselves!’

  ‘This oblong,’ said Grandfather, ‘this same field of darkest slate, shall be our theatre, our stage, our scene. I shall show you a story of your family and its objects. Do you attend, boy?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Once upon an object,’ said Grandfather in his corner, ‘there was a folding pocket knife.’

  An object matching that description now came forward, it hauled itself like an old man dragging a leg, pitching its blade first and heaving its handle afterwards. So doing it quickly achieved the slate and stood there a moment before marching back and forth, scratching upon the surface as if the penknife were a man deep in thought marching backwards and forwards.

  ‘This object, first of all birth objects, for it was presented as a christening present, way back, belonged to your Great-great-great Grandfather Septimus Iremonger.’ At this instant the penknife appeared to bow towards me. ‘He was the first bailiff of our family, which before had been ragpickers of no estate. He took up the unpopular position and squeezed people and squeezed money and property from them. He was a genius for it.’ At this, many small objects – clay buttons, cloth buttons, very sorrowfullooking – jumped up from the floor and moved around the penknife, which harassed them, poked them, scratched them and sorted them in piles. ‘Where people failed, we, under Septimus’s guidance, rose higher; where they came undone we were done up nicely. We grew, they shrank, we bought up more space, they lived in less, we had more children that lived, they had more children that died. We were not loved for this. And we did not care. We bought up all the debts, any debts, every debt, we bought them, they became ours. People have wept at us, we are no stranger to tears, people have begged us, let them beg: it shall prosper them nothing, they have spat at us, they should be fined for that, they have cursed us, they have been fined for that, they have struck us, they have been imprisoned for that. And worse. It was Septimus that started it, so, so long ago, and great Septimus it was that found money in a dirtmound, deep in a London heap, searching about in the muck that others were too proud to touch, finding small things of value that others had tossed away; he cut himself with his knife and Iremonger blood mixed with the filth. And so it has ever since.’

  In reaction to Grandfather’s last line, a series of other penknives appeared upon the handkerchief, some large, some small, some rusted, some polished, each bowing before me and then all quitting the stage, so that the slate was completely empty once more.

  Do Not Trust a Thing

  ‘Under Septimus’s declaration, it was his dying wish, we bought up all the small dirtmounds of the city and had them moved here,’ said Grandfather, and as he spoke a small mound of dirt formed in the centre of the slate. ‘We took on all broken things. We, unwanted ourselves, the Iremongers, abandoned, despised family, took on all the equivalent in object terms.’ The dirtmound was the size of the slate now and spreading beyond its borders, covering much of the bed blankets and growing yet. ‘The disgusting and malodorous, the shattered and the cracked, the rusted, the overwound, the missing-parts, the stinking, the ugly, the poisonous, the useless and we loved them all, with what great love did we love. No greater love is there than the Iremonger love of spurned things. All that we own is brown and grey and yellowish, and tainted and dustful and malodorous. We are the kings of mildew. I do think actually that we own that: mildew. We are moguls of mould.’

  Now the dirtmound was over much of my bed, my legs already covered, and spreading yet, pouring over the sides of the bed and threatening to fill the whole room, I couldn’t see Grandfather any more but I could hear him.

  ‘We took up home here in the centre of the heaps,’ he said, ‘we made this mansion out of broken fortunes; as people shrank so we grew, as they threw away so we grew, as they begged, so we grew. Every time any person in London threw anything away, we profited it by it. Every chicken bone is ours, every spoiled paper, every unfinished meal, every broken thing. And they look at us, the people beyond, and they hate us, they find us vile and Iremongerish, ogreish and goblin-grubbing, foul of thought and small of love. They ban us from the rest of London, they passed an official law that no Iremonger is to leave the borough of Filching. So be it, in Filching we stay, within the borough walls, thick with our dirt. Do you know, Clod, what the Londoners say? They say that all London shall fall if the Iremongers leave Filching. In short, they hate us, in short, to their thinking, we stink of rot and death.’

  By now the dirtmound was so huge it was swarming all over the room and still it grew on and on, all the space either side of the bed was now thick with dirt, dirt bubbling up, and still it was rising, beyond the bed level and lapping around me.

  ‘And you smell of it too, Clod Iremonger, you stink.’

  ‘Grandfather, help! Stop it!’

  ‘Here we have grown up amongst foul things, here where the objects move in the shadows, where they creep like animal life.’

  The dirt was up to my chest now, all those filthy bits, all that scree, smashed rubble, broken shards, stinking old things, pressing hard against me, into me.

  ‘Grandfather!’

  ‘Here in Filching, the poorest, dirtiest, most mysterious of all boroughs, here in Heap Deep, Heap House, London, here we are and here you are.’

  It was up to my neck now, and still rising, still rising.

  ‘Grandfather, I shall drown!’

  To my chin and rising, still rising.

  ‘Grandfather!’

  ‘Here where things must go bump in the night!’

  And all at once all the dirt was gone and it was only Grandfather and me again, in an infirmary room.

  The Way of All Things

  ‘Clodius Iremonger, attend this last please, and with great concentration,’ said Grandfather, in a gentler voice, ‘it was not just the rubbish that came to Filching. Many of the poor were rounded up and brought to us here, the malnourished, the luckless, the criminal, the indebted, the foreign, such people, the very worst of people, tired and wretched, drunk and moaning, little people, who scrub about in the mounds for us, shifting and sorting and giving up. The poor, the unfortunate. There have always been poor and unfortunate.’

  In response to this speech, small unhappy pieces of rags knotted into shapes that vaguely resembled buckled human forms and came and huddled upon the slate.

  ‘Iremongers of wisdom, born before you or me, helped these people. They could earn money in the heaps, but such a little money to keep them heapbound. And these crouched ones had such a business with the objects, were so thick with them, breathing them in, cutting themselves upon them, mixing them with their blood, that something began to go wrong.’

  One of the small bundles now opened up and within a moment was nothing more than a dented brass button.

  ‘Sometimes they woke up to discover deep creases upon their faces which seemed on closer inspection to be cracks, and sometimes, later still, they just stopped working. People froze up, like pieces of rusted machinery, and no one knew why or what was happening, only that they were never well again. To begin with we put it about that these stopped people had just disappeared. We let loose rumours of murders and we lowered the price of gin. But then the stopped people did more than just stop, they turned, they grew, they morphed into things. Often enough a person should go to bed entirely well, his grimy spouse beside him, but when she awoke he would be gone, and there should be nothing in her bed beside her but a washing paddle. More people disappeared. A murderer is amongst us, we told them. But why then, some of the more inquisitive of Filching asked, why in those cases, if a proper inventory was done of the disappeared person’s possessions, why was there always to be found one thing extra, a pot, or a plate, a cup or an enamel bowl, a candlestick or a glove? How were we to answer that? There were waves of this disease, sometimes two people a mont
h might shift from being a person into an object. And then there might follow whole seasons when not a single disappearance – or transformation – occurred. But we knew it, we Iremongers, we knew it: people, Clod, ah, dear Clod, were turning into things.’

  Two more rags shifted now, they opened up like flower petals and became in one case a modest andiron and the other a joint stool, these larger objects moved off the slate and from my bed, padding about like domestic animals before disappearing beneath the bed.

  ‘To mollify the heap workers, to help them in their distress, for so many were struggling so, we became a sort of charity. Some desperate families, of which there have never been a shortage, had such an excess of family members, too many children, and, less often, too many old, for it is an exceptional heap worker that celebrates his fortieth birthday. They did not know what to do. There was such a crowding of people, such slums, such thickness of humans, that it was announced that swollen families might give up some of their number and should in return be rewarded for it. And so many children, and some old, and some infirm, were delivered to Bay Leaf House and the family was given money for them in return and a ticket. They were told to take especial care of the ticket, for should the ticket be lost they should not be permitted to redeem their person at a later date, whether they had the money or no.’

  ‘It is terrible, Grandfather.’

  ‘It is business, Grandson.’

  The remaining huddled rags now somehow shifted from disorderly lumps to crisp cardboard tickets. On each a name was written in neat ink and beneath it a signature and a number. I stretched forward to read one closely.

  RECEIVED: Thomas Knapp (aged 4)

  FOR THE SUM OF: £11 2s. 5d.

  RECUPERATION COST: £31

  SIGNATURE: Frederick Knapp (father)

  ‘Thomas Knapp!’ I said. ‘I know that name.’

  ‘Do you, boy? It is not impossible.’

  ‘Thomas Knapp is what underbutler Briggs’s shoehorn says! I’ve heard it calling.’

  ‘Have you indeed?’

  ‘I am certain of it, but why, Grandfather, why would it say that?’

  ‘Patience, child, we are proceeding there.’

  ‘Thomas Knapp, that’s what it says.’

  ‘Pawned people were taken from the slums, so that they might be put to great use. The first were taken up to Bay Leaf House and, after a time there, some skilled Iremongers working with these pawned ones (known often enough simply as “tickets”), feeding them scraps, discovered that there was a simple way of keeping people benumbed, useful and hard-working, but unthoughtful. A certain amount of London dirt ground up into a powder or paste can stop a person thinking too much, can unencumber him of memory. A mixture of castor oil, engine oil, ground London dirt, Thames water, oakum, saltpetre. This powder can be easily put in poor food, in bread, or simply, if sweetened slightly, just portioned out upon a spoon. This has been very advantageous for us. And yet.’

  ‘And yet, Grandfather?’

  ‘And yet. There have been complications, there is a great problem.’

  The tickets flew away now. The slate picked itself up and returned itself to Grandfather’s coat. The old man looked very troubled.

  ‘A leakage, a leakage that has lately started in our region but is spreading beyond. People taking in different air, drinking Thames water, inhaling certain dirts, people from Chelsea, from Kensington, from Knightsbridge and the city have fallen to heap illness. There has been great distress and many fingers have been pointed at the Iremonger family. And so we have had to tell them how to protect themselves. The disease, like any other, does not affect everyone. There is a way to safeguard against it. It has been discovered that the disease passes by a person who keeps close to them an objectified person. It will not turn them object as long as that person keeps that object beside them, or has it to hold now and then – to be in proximity is normally enough. There is a way of connecting a person of flesh and a person of object. A portion – a mere crumb shall suffice – of the object person must be dissolved into liquid form and then injected into the flesh person, and a drop of blood of the flesh person be absorbed into the object person. Thereafter, these two must be kept relatively close to each other, then the flesh person shall be safe from the foul illness, but only if he keeps his particular object about him.’

  ‘Our birth objects!’

  ‘Indeed, young Clod, our birth objects.’

  ‘And so that, oh heavens, is why it is Thomas Knapp that . . . but then . . . James Henry! Then he was a person! Who was James Henry?’

  ‘Someone, no one, it doesn’t matter. You matter, Clod, James Henry does not. Uncle Idwid is not young any more. And so we need you, a new Listener, to hear which objects have . . . had a history, shall we say. To separate the mere object from the talking object. To keep us safe.’

  ‘I wish very much to return James Henry Hayward to his family.’

  ‘Clod, Clod, you may not.’

  ‘No, Grandfather, I insist on returning him.’

  ‘Birth objects and their holders, Clod, over time, over generations, in this great family of Iremongers, have developed strangely together. As they have grown together it has been discovered that one or the other must remain an object. Should you return your plug to its family–’

  ‘His family.’

  ‘. . . you should very likely become an object yourself. Should you let your plug get the better of you, it might well be James Henry Hayward carrying a Clodius Iremonger in his waistcoat pocket.’

  ‘What am I to do?’

  ‘Look after him, perhaps. Treat him kindly.’

  ‘I feel sick.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said Grandfather, yawning, ‘I am sure you do. And I am sure you trust your plug, don’t you? But the truth is we cannot know who this James Henry Hayward is and how he may react if given the chance. How you may grapple with one another, which of you shall be dominant. Your own dear Cousin Rippit was stolen from us by his birth object, by a letter opener called Alexander Erkmann, he stole Rippit from us.’

  ‘But Rippit died in the heaps.’

  ‘That is what we told you, but no, he was stolen by his letter opener, which, in human shape, hid in our train and took Rippit, in what form we cannot know, away from us into London. It was his body servant, a mongrel creature, who quite from grief lost himself in the heaps. My poor Rippit has never been found, and all because he let his object get the wiser of him.’

  ‘Poor, poor lost Rippit.’

  ‘Thus, Clod, never trust a thing.’

  ‘And, Grandfather, if we are separated from our objects, what then, what shall happen?’

  ‘Why, death, Clod, only death. Death for both the person and his object. When one dies, both die. We are stuck with one another, only one may be about at a time. That is how it is.’

  ‘And so Aunt Rosamud is a bucket.’

  ‘No, Clod, no, Alice Higgs is a door handle once more, and your aunt is recovering, you returned the handle to her just in time; I was quite able to persuade Alice Higgs back into brass.’

  ‘Alice Higgs is a small girl.’

  ‘Alice Higgs is a brass door handle. There was time to put it right. But you must not let this alarm you. You would not know this but you have an uncle who is an inkwell upstairs, and my own brother Gubriel is a potato peeler. My mother, my own mother, a tooth mug. And my former teacher, so free with his punishments, is now no more than a length of bending cane. It is the way of things, Clod, nothing can be done about it.’

  ‘It’s horrible! It’s monstrous!’

  ‘It does seem so at first. And so, we keep it from our young, to a point, but then if a young Iremonger is deemed promising he is moved to the city, to Filching, only to Filching, no further, and he is informed and he becomes an important part of the great Iremonger machine.’

  ‘I want nothing to do with it!’

  ‘You are something to do with it. Your help shall protect our family.’

  ‘I shan’t do it.’


  ‘Oh, you shall, you shall do it. And you will learn to love it or you shall be crushed. How do you think my uncle, my brother, my teacher, my own mother became what they became. They did it with my help. I have an understanding with objects, I can smash them as you have seen. I have never yet met an object I could not smash. Nor yet a person, Clod, nor yet a person. People think they have volition, they do not.’

  ‘I’m frightened, Grandfather.’

  ‘And that, Clod,’ said Grandfather, rising, ‘is an excellent place to start. I shall leave you now, I am very late to take the train and business waits for no man. You must dress yourself, Clod, and you must visit your grandmother.’

  ‘I must see Granny? Are you quite sure?’

  ‘Dress yourself in your new clothes. Your grandmother wishes to see you. And tomorrow morning, without fail, you shall come with me to the city. In trousers.’

  ‘Tomorrow!’

  ‘I’m so glad we had this talk, Clod, so very glad. Do get dressed.’

  ‘Jack Pike.’

  ‘James Henry Hayward.’

  And he was gone.

  A half hour later the train screamed for London.

  17

  A Tin Watering Can

  A letter written by Tummis Gurge Oillim Mirck Iremonger, departing resident of Forlichingham Park, London

  To my dear family and friends, this letter list.

  To my mother and father, my drawings and paintings, my bird articulation.

  For my brother Gorrild, my opal cufflinks.

  For my sister Monnie, some feathers and the ribbons you so liked.

  For my brother Ugh, my books Robinson Crusoe by D. Defoe, The Pilgrim’s Progress by J. Bunyan, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by S.T. Coleridge.

  For my brother Flip, my lead soldiers, all but the Coldstream Guards.