Heap House for Hotkeys

by Edward Carey

  Something clattered down the flue into the firegrate, I saw it as the ash settled, an old and filthy dress, someone’s old clothes. It lay in the grate and the old woman said, ‘Such a storm, blowing filth into my room, dirtying my fireplace, perhaps tomorrow I’ll have my Iremonger open the shutters and I’ll look out and see how the storm has moved everything, where the rubbish has piled up. Oh, it wasn’t someone come to visit us after all, fireplace, it was just the storm, only a storm.’

  I thought the storm had fooled the old bird then, but a moment later I heard a key in the lock. She’d locked me in with her.

  ‘All right you, you creature. I’ve locked the door and pulled the bell rope, there’ll be a dozen Iremongers here any instant. You filth! I shall have my carpets burnt. I shall have my seating thrown through the windows. You filthy dirty bitch! Come on, come here, come up, come out! Come out I say!’

  No escape. The old woman had got hold of a fire poker and was waving it about. Coming closer, banging the furniture. No way out. And then people at the door, banging on the door, calling, shouting, ‘My lady! My lady! My lady!’

  ‘It’s in here!’ she answered. ‘I’ve got it trapped. The foreign thing is in my room. I’ve caught it, I’ve found it. What you lost and could not find, I found! Here! In my room!’

  ‘The key’s in the lock, my lady. We can’t get in! Turn the key and we’ll be with you instantly, only hurry, my lady, hurry, do hurry, lest you be harmed!’

  ‘I harmed? Very unlike!’ she spat. ‘That it thing! Toss it out! I’m at the door now. See that it doesn’t try to run past you! I want it ripped apart in front of me, hell to the furnishings! Ready? One, two, three! Get it!’

  But while the old lady was at the door turning the key and giving instructions, I was at the marble fireplace and scrambling back up into the wretched black passages, leaving so many marks behind me, sooty hand and footprints upon her marble fireplace. No matter that it hurt, so what that it hurt, good that it hurt, I bloodied myself upwards back into darkness and dirt. For a moment, looking down, I saw a torch shining beneath me and heard cries of, ‘It! It! It!’

  And then, ‘Light a fire!’

  On, on, I scraped my way. But I smacked into something just a moment later, the flue was bending. I followed it along and then I must have lost my way somehow, got confused by the passages, because there were different openings now, different holes and somehow I slipped and went smashing down another black tunnel and landed all the way down in some other Iremonger’s firegrate. You should get out of this habit, Pennant, I told myself, or you shan’t thrive long. This time I fell hard and smacked my back bad, and when I tried to get up I couldn’t, I just couldn’t. I’d wedged myself somehow between the grate and the andirons and the fireplace, it was a small fireplace it was, and I was stuck in it.

  No one was coming. At least there was that. But I couldn’t shift. I couldn’t heave myself up. I kept trying. Before me on the floor were all the birth objects I’d picked that had all tumbled out of my pockets when I landed. Where was I? What room was this? Some sort of store room I thought at first. I could see a door and there were five different locks to it. Somewhere important then. All sorts of things here. Shelves full of different objects, but no logic to them, bits of ribbon, and yet silver things, a catapult, some stamps in a jar, a mouth organ, buttons, toy soldiers, pipes, but also cigarette cases, but then a wooden sword, a mousetrap, flypapers, ink bottles. Whose stuff was all this?

  I heard movement, someone coming. I tried to pull myself free. Couldn’t. Couldn’t do it. There was someone there then. Someone looking over me.

  It was a man, youngish, maybe eighteen. Dressed in black, grim-looking. His skin very yellow, a sour face. Didn’t like the look of him much. He had a slight moustache, a smudge of one, spots on his forehead. And then I saw around his ankle a metal cuff, and from it a length of chain. Some young man on a chain. Who chained him up?

  ‘Sir! Oh, sir,’ he called to his master, ‘you may as well know it. There’s something new in here. Something quite new.’

  A voice in a room further back replied, ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Toastrack, what is it now? I’ll beat you!’

  ‘And I’ll kick you back, you turnip.’

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘Words, I should think, so many words from my own hole.’

  ‘What did you say, Toastrack?’

  ‘Stuff, wasn’t it? Wouldn’t you like to know.’

  ‘You said you’d mind your manners.’

  ‘And you said you’d cut me free, but you didn’t, you chained me up. We’re all liars. Born to lie I shouldn’t wonder. Cretin. Come on in then, Sir Mucus, and have a gander at this. Look what the storm dragged in.’

  ‘I am trying to be nice to you, Toastrack.’

  ‘Don’t much see the point in that myself. Why bother?’

  ‘We must attempt to be civilised, to make the most of the situation.’

  ‘I hate you. You hate me. That’s about the picture of it.’

  ‘No, Toastrack, I don’t. I’m fond of you. You mean much to me.’

  ‘Well, I loathe you, sir!’

  ‘I will beat you, you know.’

  ‘No, no you shan’t. I’ll smack you back, just like I did last time.’

  ‘I broke your nose.’

  ‘I gave you a headache that lasted a month. Next, I’ll crack your skull.’

  ‘Please, please, can we try to be pleasant?’

  ‘You started it.’

  ‘Then I apologise.’

  ‘Big of you.’

  ‘Come, Toastrack, let us shake hands. I’ll find you something new and precious. Something for your collection.’

  ‘Already have that by the looks of things.’

  Another young man came into view, wearing a silk dressing gown, a medal pinned to his chest. This one, unlike the other, was handsome.

  ‘Well, well, what have we here?’

  ‘Tumblebum,’ said the one called Toastrack, ‘mine, I reckon.’

  ‘I’m stuck,’ I said, ‘help me out.’

  ‘What have we here and what shall we do with it?’ said the handsome one.

  ‘I said, help me out. I’m stuck!’ I cried.

  ‘Shouldn’t want to eat it,’ grunted the ugly one.

  ‘I’m stuck!’ I cried.

  ‘So it would appear,’ said handsome, ‘and then, my next question would be, do we want to unstick it? Would that be to our advantage?’

  ‘I’m hurting. This hurts, stuck like this! It bloody hurts!’

  ‘Couldn’t say,’ said Toastrack, ‘might be diverting.’

  ‘What’s that on the floor there,’ said his unchained companion. ‘An ashtray, not your ashtray, I’ve seen that before. And what’s that? It’s a tiepin, where did that come from, that’s familiar too. And what’s that? A shoe, a lady’s shoe! That’s not just any shoe, is it? I’d know that shoe anywhere on earth. That’s Bornobby’s that is. But how did it come to be here? Hang on a minute. You’re a thief, aren’t you? A little bloody thief. You’ve stolen all those birth objects. I see that now. Why would you do such a thing? Who are you? Hang on a minute, hang on a bloody minute, you came in here to steal mine too.’

  ‘No, no, I didn’t.’

  ‘You came down here to steal my own birth object.’

  ‘Well,’ said Toastrack, ‘here I am.’

  ‘Be calm, Toastrack, nobody’s going to take you.’

  ‘So grateful,’ he moaned, ‘my hero.’

  ‘He’s your birth object?’ I asked. ‘He is? But he’s a person.’

  ‘Oh, aren’t we observant?’ Toastrack said.

  ‘Yes, he’s a man, if you’d call him that,’ said handsome.

  ‘I’ll thump you!’ said Toastrack.

  ‘But he didn’t use to be. Did you, Toastrack? He used to be . . .’

  ‘A toast rack!’ I said.

  ‘Well, of course a toast rack! What else!’

  ‘A toast rack!’ I cried.
>
  ‘A silver toast rack,’ Toastrack said. ‘Silver, I was silver.’

  ‘But how did he, how was it, how did he become a . . . man?’

  ‘Never you mind.’

  ‘We don’t know,’ said Toastrack.

  ‘Shut it, Toastrack.’

  ‘Not Toastrack, is it?’ shouted Toastrack. ‘Not actually, not any more Toastrack. I’m Rowland Collis. That’s my name. Rowland Collis. But he’ll never say it. He’ll never call me Rowland. Never say Rowland Collis!’

  ‘You’re Toastrack, Toastrack. Learn your place.’

  ‘I shall break things! I’m going to do it! I’m in the mood. I need to break things!’

  ‘Be calm, calm yourself now.’

  ‘Can’t! Can’t!’

  ‘Here, have a little medicine. Have a draught of this.’

  The smart one handed over a bottle. Rowland Collis snatched it away and glugged deeply. I smelt it then, it was familiar enough. Gin.

  ‘Grandmother said he must be kept like this,’ said the one with the medal, ‘until it’s understood. He just stays here. My thing. No one knows. Only Granny, and now, it seems, you. Who are you anyway and what are you doing in my room and how did you get all these things?’

  ‘I fell.’

  ‘That much I can see.’

  ‘Can you help me?’ I asked. ‘Please help me out. I think I might have broken something.’

  He stood before me, puffing his pipe, shaking his head, then he stopped, then he looked at me closer, even reached out to tug a little on my hair.

  ‘Oh . . . my . . . lord!’

  ‘What?’ I said. ‘What? What?’

  ‘I’ve just worked out who you are.’

  ‘No, I’m not . . . whoever it is you’re thinking . . . I’m not what you think. I’m a servant, true, I’m a thief too. A servant and a thief.’

  ‘You don’t belong here, do you?’

  ‘No, no I don’t and I’m trying to get out of here. Can you help me? Please?’

  ‘No, no I couldn’t possibly. Toastrack, get my shoes!’

  ‘Should make my day, sir.’

  Rowland Collis seemed quite calmed by the gin now, and slouched off to return shortly after with a pair of polished gentleman’s lace-ups.

  ‘Put them on me.’

  Rowland Collis did so.

  ‘Where are you going?’ I asked.

  ‘Out, you foreign thing. I’m going out!’

  ‘Please help me! Please!’

  ‘Oh, I’ll fetch help soon enough. Toastrack, stand guard, when I come back in get into your place, not a sound. I’ll make it worth your while.’

  ‘Two bottles!’ said Rowland Collis.

  ‘Yes, at least.’

  The smart one went to the door, he took keys out and unlocked all the locks. He opened the door and the moment he did another foot from the other side wedged itself in so that the door must stay open now.

  ‘Who’s there?’ the handsome one called. ‘Who’s at my door? Stand back! I’ll have you whipped!’

  I recognised the shoe in the door, I knew it from earlier, from the Sitting Room, it was scuffed. I recognised the trousers too, and following the trousers up I saw at last the person that was inside them.

  Clod.

  ‘Clod!’ called the handsome one.

  ‘Clod!’ I shouted.

  ‘Rowland Collis,’ moaned Rowland Collis, ‘that’s who I am, if anyone cares.’

  And then Clod hit the one with the medal square in the head with a skillet, with my skillet.

  21

  A Pignose Whistle

  Clod Iremonger’s narrative continued

  I Make an Entrance

  I hit Moorcus, I hit him with hate, with hate and with Cousin Gustrid’s skillet (Mr Gurney) and he hurt and he fell down, holding his own pretty head. And it felt good. I admit it freely. And I was glad of it. And with that hit just a little of the hate came out from me.

  ‘That,’ I said, ‘is for Tummis and for Hilary Evelyn Ward-Jackson. And it’s not enough, there’ll never be enough denting of you, Moorcus, not all the smashing of all the world, not all the bullying from every country on the globe brought down upon you would be enough.’

  ‘Please,’ wailed Moorcus, ‘my head! I’m bleeding. You’ll murder me.’

  ‘I think I will indeed if you don’t shut up this instant.’

  ‘Clod! Clod!’ cried Lucy from the fireplace.

  I pulled Lucy free. What had they done to her? She’d been so scraped and bloodied and smeared with soot, what a sad sight she was, but it was her. Actually there before me. In truth. Lucy.

  ‘Lucy Pennant, at last! What a dance you’ve led me on.’

  ‘What, Clod, have I?’

  ‘In the Sitting Room, up and down the house, I should never have found you if you hadn’t found Granny, she made such a fuss even I heard it. All those servants to her and then you’d gone somehow, up the chimney, and I calculated what other chimneys should share that flue and figured Crosspin and Flippah, but I heard sleeping at that door, so I figured Moorcus, and what voices I heard here at this door. I heard Moorcus saying he was going out so I waited just close by until the door opened and then shoved my foot in and then the skillet, Mr Gurney, which I found, for some reason, in the Sitting Room. But so here I am, and there is Moorcus, and here are you, and there, somehow, is Bornobby’s Cecily Grant and Onjla’s Henrietta Nysmith, and Aunt Loussa’s Little Lil, all gathered here, collected somehow, but, then, who is he? I have never seen him before.’

  ‘Toastrack,’ snivelled Moorcus, ‘but please don’t tell anyone.’

  ‘He’s Rowland Collis, Clod,’ said Lucy.

  ‘I’m Rowland Collis, Clod,’ said the strange fellow.

  ‘He’s Moorcus’s birth object,’ said Lucy, ‘somehow made . . . flesh.’

  ‘Rowland Collis! But how can he be . . . how can they be . . . together! It doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘We don’t know,’ groaned Moorcus, ‘and how I wish it weren’t so, he was much nicer as a toast rack. How I wish he were again. He was such a good toast rack, but such an indifferent person. Granny said in time he should probably grow back into smart silver, but he hasn’t, he stays here day after day, plaguing me. There’s been doctors come in from Filching, special ones, but they’re useless, they can’t toast rack him. I’m to be trousered soon, very soon, and then to marry my Horryit, but whatever shall she say when she sees a toast rack like this one?’

  ‘But it’s wonderful!’ I cried. ‘The very best news!’

  ‘It’s terrible,’ said Moorcus, ‘the very worst.’

  ‘It means,’ I cried, ‘it means, James Henry Hayward, my very dear plug, and I might be about in the world at once. It means that there is some way of breaking the business of birth objects. How, Moorcus, how did you do it?’

  ‘I didn’t do anything,’ he said. ‘I went to bed, just as I always did, but then in the morning, where my toast rack usually was . . . my toast rack wasn’t, and that was there in its place, which was quite a shock I can tell you.’

  ‘But you must have done something different, think, Moorcus, think!’

  ‘I tell you there was nothing different.’

  ‘There must have been.’

  ‘Nothing at all.’

  ‘Think, Moorcus,’ I cried, ‘would it help if I used the skillet?’

  ‘Yes, use the skillet,’ said Rowland, ‘use it by all means. That’s sure to help.’

  ‘Please, please, Clod,’ begged Moorcus.

  ‘Rowland Collis, did you do anything else?’

  ‘Can’t remember and there’s the truth on it.’

  ‘Do you remember how it was, being a toast rack?’

  ‘Can’t remember. And there’s the truth on it.’

  ‘Do you remember who you were before you came to be a toast rack?’

  He paused a while and said sadly, ‘Can’t remember. Can’t. And there’s the truth on it.’

  ‘Perhaps it shall come back to you, Ro
wland, in time.’

  ‘Might I have a turn with the skillet?’ asked Rowland.

  ‘Don’t give it to him, Clod, please,’ pleaded Moorcus. ‘How fine you look in your trousers. What a figure you cut.’

  ‘Don’t you try it on with me, Moorcus,’ I said.

  ‘Clod,’ said Lucy, ‘we shouldn’t stay here. Surely we shouldn’t. Let us go, Clod. If they find me, Clod, and they mean to find me, they shall kill me, they’ve said as much.’

  ‘Kill you?’

  ‘Yes, she is right there,’ said Moorcus, ‘they will kill her. I heard Sturridge saying so.’

  ‘Help me, Clod, get me out.’

  ‘There is no way out,’ said Moorcus, ‘not from here. The only way out is by train, through the tunnel, but the train hasn’t come back yet and so the tunnel has probably collapsed. And that means that’s it. You’re stuck here. Everyone is. Until the storm’s done and the tunnel’s repaired.’

  ‘Is it true, Clod, is he right?’

  ‘There must be some other way,’ I said.

  ‘There isn’t,’ said Moorcus, ‘and you know it.’

  ‘Strike him! Strike him!’ called Rowland. ‘I can see you’re thinking about it.’

  ‘Rowland Collis,’ I said, ‘I’d like you to have this.’ I gave him the skillet.

  ‘Much obliged.’

  ‘Lucy, come along. Can you walk? Let me help you.’

  ‘They’ll find you,’ said Moorcus, ‘they’ll catch you, and when they do, they’ll do for her. And you, Clod, I don’t know what they’ll do to you, but I shouldn’t like it myself, it’s certain to smart.’

  ‘Is this the key to your chain, Rowland?’ I asked, pulling the key from Moorcus’s waistcoat pocket.

  ‘The very same, I suppose,’ said Rowland, ‘though I don’t see it much myself.’

  ‘No, Clod,’ cried Moorcus, ‘I warn you, give that back.’

  I gave Rowland the key.

  ‘Much obliged.’

  ‘No, Toastrack, no,’ said Moorcus. ‘I’ll have that please. At once. You are my toast rack!’

  ‘Rowland,’ I said, ‘if you please.’

  Moorcus yelped.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t mention,’ said Rowland.

  ‘Where are we going?’ asked Lucy.