Heap House for Hotkeys

by Edward Carey

  Down-house-drown-house

  To have her beside me again. To feel her, warm and moving. Battered, yes, bruised and tattered, but here with a limp and some cuts, my heart. What a lucky thing, what a life I’m leading. I’m alive, I thought, I’m living now. We shan’t die, shall we? I wondered suddenly, not now surely, that would be too cruel. Not now she’s beside me again. We’ll get out and we’ll shout and dance and be ourselves. I’m fifteen and a half, and trousered what’s more.

  I thought we must go down to the bottom of Heap House, that we must get closer to the outside. I thought that there might be some way along the tunnel, to walk along that dark route, then at least we should not be here in Heap House; that was the first thing, not to be in this place that shook and wailed and protested at the weather. Heap House, our mansion, was built as I saw it finally not with bricks and mortar, but with cold and pain, with malice this palace was made, with black thoughts, with aches and cries and sweat and spit. Other people’s tears stuck the wallpaper on our walls. When our house cried it cried because someone else in the world remembered what we had done to them. How the house wept and screamed and howled that terrible night, how it pitched and groaned, how it cursed and blamed, how it hurt in that terrible storm, as the heaps hit it and hit it and hit it again. We must get out.

  Down below, we’d go down below where Lucy Pennant’s birth object was. We’d need that. Somehow we’d make it live again, and James Henry too. If Rowland Collis could, well then there must be hope.

  ‘We’ll go down, Lucy. We’ll find the tunnel.’

  ‘It’s probably flooded, Clod. It was pouring in when I was last there.’

  ‘But still the central part of the cellar was safe?’

  ‘It was a while ago.’

  ‘Then we’ll go down, Lucy. We’ll try it. And, most of all, please to remember, your birth object is still down there.’

  ‘A box of matches, I’m not going to drown for a box of matches.’

  ‘It’s not just a box of matches, you must believe me. My own plug, here, is a person, truly, a person trapped in the shape of a plug. And I don’t know what will happen to you if we don’t get your box of matches. You’ll get ill, I think, you won’t last long.’

  ‘I’ll take my chances if it’s all the same to you.’

  ‘I saw my own aunt turned into a bucket because she didn’t have hers.’

  ‘But the Grooms are down there, and Piggott, all of them! They know me down there.’

  ‘No, Lucy, no, they won’t be there any more, they will have come up, no one will stay down there, it isn’t safe.’

  ‘Then it can’t be safe for us either. I shan’t go back down.’

  ‘And, Lucy, there’s something else.’

  ‘I’m not going, you cannot persuade me.’

  ‘I think that Florence Balcombe is down there.’

  ‘Florence is?’

  ‘Only she’s not what she was, she’s only a cup now, and, you must believe me, a moustache cup I heard them saying, and I’ve heard her, I heard her calling. Her voice, among all the others, she is a part of the Gathering.’

  ‘But I was with her then! So close! I saw her!’

  ‘And she, Lucy, I do believe, is in the cellar.’

  ‘Well then, Clod,’ she said, taking a breath. ‘All right then. Come along.’

  She looked so bullied already, so beaten and scraped. As if they’d got to her, pulled some of the Lucy from her.

  ‘We’ll get out,’ I said, ‘and we’ll never come back.’

  ‘You’re coming with me?’

  ‘I shan’t leave you. We’ll smash our way out if we have to.’

  ‘What made you so tough of a sudden?’

  ‘You did, Lucy, you did.’

  ‘I’m not an Iremonger, Clod, not even a bit of one.’

  ‘I know, I know, and I love you for it.’

  ‘I’m a thief, I always have been I think, I stole those objects.’

  ‘I know it and I love you for it.’

  ‘I was out in the heaps, I saw Tummis going under. I tried to get him, I didn’t though, I didn’t manage it.’

  ‘Oh, Lucy, you tried, didn’t you, you tried your absolute best.’

  ‘I did, yes I did.’

  ‘And I do love you for it.’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘Albert Powling.’

  ‘Oh no.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Little Uncle.’

  On Our Way

  Little Uncle Timfy was before us, his face illuminated by a gunny lamp, making it shine like a little moon, a small planet of malice. His nostrils flaring in the pride of our discovery, so eager, so hungry to damage.

  ‘Stop, stop you right there, I’ve got you now. I’m the one to do it. Not Idwid. Me. I’m in charge here, not him. He’s been smashed about. How he bleeds! That wiped the smile from his face. Well, good, I say. I’m in charge of this house. I’ll be Governor some day. Why not! Stand straight now! Clod Iremonger, you ruin your own blood.’

  ‘Leave us be, Uncle Timfy.’

  ‘Not likely, never likely is it? Give her, give it, up.’

  ‘No, Uncle, step back.’

  ‘I mean to take it from you.’

  ‘I’ll hurt you, Uncle, I shall hurt you.’

  ‘You, Clod, you’re made of nothing but foul air. What hurt could you do?’

  ‘You will not touch her.’

  ‘I shall, I shall touch that. Watch me at it!’

  ‘Don’t kick me, Uncle, I’ll smash you, I swear I will.’

  ‘Do it then, you bit of nothing. You’re not worth my spit, Clod, you’ve no use at all. I’ll end this now.’

  He blew hard on his Albert Powling and in response there was a sudden crash further along the corridor.

  ‘What’s that?’ Lucy cried. ‘Who’s he brought?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said, ‘something large, or some army of servants. What on earth is it, Uncle? Who is that coming?’

  But Timfy didn’t seem to know either, there was terror in his face, but he blew on his Albert once more, and a great rumbling answered it immediately, the noise growing now, coming closer.

  ‘What is that? What is coming, Uncle Timfy?’

  ‘I . . . I . . . I don’t know. I cannot say.’

  Something was coming, something large running our way. No place to hide, all the doors were locked, and that running was getting louder and louder. We couldn’t see who it was, whether just one person or several, the corridor was so dark.

  ‘Help!’ called Timfy. ‘Help me.’

  ‘What is it? What could it be?’ Lucy cried.

  ‘Is it a Gathering? Who goes there?’ Timfy screamed.

  ‘Back,’ I called. ‘Stand back.’

  I pushed Lucy against the wall as the thumping came closer and closer, Uncle Timfy was still in the middle of the passageway, his face, in a horror mask, illuminated by his lamp.

  ‘Help! Help ho!’ Uncle screamed. ‘What devil are you?’

  A great stomping, a horrible screaming, a quick rush of raw, wrinkled pink skin, and with it a great mass of thick black and white feathers, huge claws on the ground, slamming to a halt, a creature, some monster. It smashed into Uncle Timfy, sending him flying and his light crashing against the wall and igniting some torn wallpaper, the flames spreading upwards, fire licking the ceiling, so that now with this great new light we could see suddenly everything. Timfy on the ground staring up with all horror at an impossible creature bent down before him, snapping at him with a huge angry beak. An ostrich! Tummis’s ostrich!

  ‘Murder!’ shrieked Timfy. ‘Oh, murder!’

  He stumbled up, dodging the flames, and rushed in his agony out of sight, deeper into the darkness, the ostrich screaming after him, both so terrified, both so terrifying. Tummis, after so much cruelty, was having his revenge.

  ‘To think it was with us all along! Tummis’s ostrich! Thank you, Tummis, a thousand thanks!’r />
  ‘The fire, Clod, the whole place will be alight in a moment.’

  ‘Then down we’ll go, down where it’s dampest.’

  We went along the landing. On we went, Lucy hobbling but keeping up. There was a service stairway just off the landing. A cold stairway, no carpets, no pictures there. It was the serving way down to the Marble Hall.

  ‘There’ll be people at the bottom,’ I said, ‘almost certain to be. We must try further along.’

  ‘As long as it’s not in the chimneys, I don’t think I could do that again.’

  ‘We’ll find another way.’

  ‘Is the dining room nearby?’

  ‘The Great Dining Hall is. Why?’

  ‘Does it have a dumb waiter? I heard the Grooms talking about one. Could we get down that way?’

  ‘Yes, Lucy, well done, we might, we might.’

  In the Great Dining Hall

  The Great Dining Hall, all flock wallpaper and cut glass, chandelier and shining light, polish and sparkle, but dark too, and deep, as if rather than being in a grand setting for the purpose of eating, you were already in the stomach of some leviathan. That’s where we tumbled, and, tumbling in saw suddenly that we were not alone.

  Birth objects all around, birth objects mumbling, hushed, in terror whispering. All the names were questions, every speaking object spoke with a question mark. My own plug was wondering too, very quietly, timidly, ‘James Henry Hayward?’ So many Iremongers had gathered themselves here in the Great Dining Hall. We had run straight into them. My relatives, the whole place thick with them. Iremongers all around.

  ‘Oh, Clod,’ whispered Lucy, ‘help me! What now?’

  And all I could say was, ‘Oh!’

  ‘Please, Clod, you must do something.’

  All around Iremonger eyes upon us, everyone looking up. How to explain? How to make right again?

  ‘Dreadful night,’ I said. ‘How do?’

  All the eyes kept upon us, they did not look away.

  ‘I’ve just seen an ostrich. True as life, running down the way. Tummis’s ostrich, as I live and breathe. There’s fire, there’re flames down the midway corridor. How you stare so.’

  They stared still.

  ‘How are you all, what’s new?’

  Still they stared.

  ‘What a night it is!’ I said, not able to stop talking, because when I stopped, I felt certain they’d come for her. ‘What a night when the Iremongers go dumb one and all. I’ve been about tonight, seen such weather. I’m sure you all have, same as me. Well then, it’s a terror to be certain. Do I sound excited? Well, I am excited. I came upon this creature here beside me, this rag person. You may not recognise it, but I’d call it human. Lo, people, it is a serving Iremonger. I found her lumped in a corridor, so many things heaped on top of her. Took a while to dig her out. Couldn’t say what it was at first, wouldn’t gamble upon it. But there then I found this dishrag, this sink thing, and I thought, well, I thought, I thought . . .’

  ‘Oh, do shut up, Clod!’ came the voice of Uncle Aliver over in a corner. ‘What a fuss you make. This hall has been made a makeshift hospital, the Infirmary is closed off by the storm. Look about you, everyone’s hurt. Be useful. Find some use.’

  I could understand then, the panic slipping slightly away, that these before me were not dining Iremongers, though Uncle Aliver had a knife in his hand and was at table, but he was standing, not sitting, and the knife was a scalpel. The other relatives were dressed in Aliver’s clothing, they wore bandages, they wore sheets of finest linen tablecloths, and these ripped coverings had about them here and there red blossoms spreading through the bandages. So many cut, so many purpling with bruises, so many weeping and groaning. So many sad white faces watched the chandelier of the Great Dining Room pitch and swing now, watching for it to come down upon them. The house, I thought, the house will go tonight. But no one, not a one of them, thought Lucy was the searched-for party, the object of the Iremonger manhunt; no one pulled her down, no one screamed murder. So I got a bit braver then (I’m fifteen and a half, I’m trousered), I stepped in a little bit, looking about me, and over there, in a far corner, sure enough, there was the hatch of the dumb waiter, but between that hatch and us were so many Iremongers, each one primed, each one, if they understood Lucy properly, liable to erupt and then with a clarion screech of, ‘It!’ blow us and our hopes to nothing.

  Step. Step carefully.

  ‘This way, Iremonger,’ I whispered to Lucy. ‘You may rest over by the wall there. Follow on.’

  There was such clinking from the chandeliers and such crashing heard from the outdoors danger and such moaning and begging for mercy from so many timber joists all around us, and, even more yet, such mumbles of help and mercy and God save us from so many buckled and hurting Iremongers (and such questioning, such whispering from those birth objects) that we had got about half the way to the hatch before someone called.

  ‘Stop! Stop right there!’

  And so we must.

  It was a matron from the Infirmary, full of bluster and business, big lady, big mouth, big lungs beneath them no doubt.

  ‘You there!’ she called. ‘You there, answer me!’

  ‘Me?’ I asked.

  ‘Not you, Master Clodius, excuse me. The other one, behind about, what’s your station?’

  ‘I work with oakum, miss, downstairs,’ said Lucy, thinking quickly, ‘been a wool carder in my time. Came up with the flooding.’

  ‘This Hall is for the blood, girl, not for servants, it’s not for you to come in here. You’re not to be in here at all, storm or no storm.’

  ‘Very sorry, miss, I’ll leave right away. Didn’t know.’

  ‘Wait a moment!’ said the matron again. ‘Oakum, you said, wool carding, well then you’ve got fingers haven’t you, you can bandage then can’t you? Come here and be useful. Here. To me.’

  Lucy followed the matron, her head down, trying not to be noticed. Wait a moment, Lucy, I thought, I’ll tug you back, tug you back and through the hatch. Give me a moment, then amongst all the moans of family and all the questioning of birth objects, I heard one that wondered familiarly, ‘Gloria Emma Utting?’

  Ignore it, walk on.

  ‘Clod, Clod, what’s happening?’

  Pinalippy was calling. She was huddled among other of her schoolgirl cousins, holding a napkin to her smacked head.

  ‘Clod, I’ve never seen anything like it. So many fallen down! I saw Cousin Horryit washed out into it, screaming as she went. Oh Clod, what’s to become of us?’

  ‘Hullo, Pinalippy. Poor Horryit, I can hardly believe it, she was never kind to me but I shouldn’t wish her dead. And Tummis, Pinalippy, Tummis has drowned.’

  ‘Grandfather’s not come back, has he? Have you seen him?’

  ‘No, Pinalippy, I have not.’

  ‘Grandfather should know what to do.’

  ‘He should indeed.’

  ‘Who was that with you, Clod? Who did you come in with?’

  ‘Just a serving Iremonger,’ I said, ‘some nothing from down below. I found her, caught under things, dug her out.’

  ‘You are good, Clod, to take such trouble over a servant. I’m not sure I would have done it. How like you.’

  ‘I wonder if I shouldn’t help Uncle Aliver.’

  ‘Will you sit with me, Clod? I should feel better for it.’

  ‘Well . . . yes, Pinalippy, of course I shall, but first I should probably see if –’

  ‘Let somebody else help. I need you.’

  ‘Do you, Pinalippy?’

  ‘Clod! Clod Iremonger!’

  ‘Yes, Pinalippy.’

  ‘You’re wearing trousers!’

  ‘Yes, indeed, Pinalippy . . . I’ve been trousered.’

  The discovery of this was, unfortunately, enough to get Pinalippy fully perpendicular, she stomped over to me, looked me up and down, shook her head in disbelief, and then, ah heavens, Pinalippy grasped me to her, and I was somewhat crushed by her af
fection. Lucy was further off then, I couldn’t see her among all those Iremongers.

  ‘I’m proud,’ said Pinalippy, ‘so proud.’

  ‘Thank you, Pinalippy, very much. I shall be back in a moment.’

  ‘I’ll think of you differently now, I shan’t take you for granted again.’

  ‘Pinalippy, I –’

  ‘Foy! Theeby! Come look, Clod’s been trousered!’

  ‘Please, please, Pinalippy!’

  But it was too late, other cousins were upon us in a moment and though some of them were scraped and bandaged all took time to look at me in my new clothes and to smile at me and give me much encouragement. I couldn’t see Lucy. I couldn’t see her anywhere.

  ‘He does look grand, doesn’t he?’ said Pinalippy.

  ‘Yes, Pin, what a fellow he is all togged up.’

  ‘You’ll be married soon, then, Pinny, any day now.’

  ‘If there is another day.’

  ‘Oh, Pinny, don’t be like that. You’ve got your man, and he’s been trousered!’

  ‘That’s something to hold onto, isn’t it, Pin?’

  ‘Pinny, I shouldn’t let go of that in a hurry.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘you’re right. I’ll hold on tight,’ and saying so she squeezed my hand till I thought it should be nothing but pulp. ‘He’s mine!’

  I couldn’t see Lucy.

  ‘How did it happen, Clod, so early? Was it a surprise, did you know all along?’

  ‘Grandfather,’ I stammered, ‘Grandfather gave them me.’

  ‘Grandfather!’ they cooed. ‘Grandfather himself!’

  ‘Yes,’ said Pinalippy, ‘very proud.’

  How, how I wondered, might I pull myself from this, and where had Lucy gone?

  ‘You’re a dark horse, my Clod Iremonger,’ said Pinalippy, stroking one of my trouser legs.

  There Lucy was! Not so far away either. Bandaging.

  ‘Uncle Aliver,’ I said, ‘I do believe that Uncle Aliver needs my help. He was waving to me just now. I’ll be back with you ladies, by and by.’

  ‘Ladies,’ said Theeby, ‘he calls us ladies.’

  ‘Clod,’ said Pinalippy, ‘you are to come right back as soon as you are done, is that clear?’