Lungdon

by Edward Carey

  ‘Didn’t ought to have done that.’

  ‘… come back to me after all these years.’

  ‘Why did you do it, missus?’

  ‘Mother, you are to call me Mother.’

  ‘Why did you, missus?’

  ‘Such a big, brave boy.’

  ‘I always wondered.’

  ‘How you’ve all grown up.’

  ‘Why did you?’

  ‘Please Binadit, please my darling Bin, you break my heart.’

  ‘I might have deaded.’

  ‘Oh, Bin!’

  ‘I don’t understand. I want to understand.’

  ‘I cannot undo it, Bin, I cannot.’

  ‘I didn’t die.’

  ‘No, my darling, I am so glad of that.’

  ‘Heaps saved me, my heaps, my land of bits.’

  ‘It is the miracle, Bin.’

  ‘A bin’s a thing you rubbish put, is that why you called me that? I was your rubbish. You put all your rubbish in me and hoped heaps would lose it for you.’

  ‘Please, Binadit, no more, no more.’

  ‘I just thinking-wondering, missus.’

  ‘Mother, please to say Mother.’

  ‘I was rubbish to you.’

  ‘I was so unhappy, your father had just died.’

  ‘Father.’

  ‘Milcrumb was his name.’

  ‘How die?’

  ‘In the heaps.’

  ‘Drowned dead?’

  ‘Yes, my poor Milcrumb. Dear Milcrumb, such a gentle fellow. Even though he was one of the sons of Umbitt and Ommaball Oliff, even so he was never treated properly. And now they forget him, only I ever remember him, only I ever mention his name, otherwise he would be quite forgot. He was weak and pale and ever so kind, and they despised him for his weakness. He was not born tough like some of them, so they sent him out into the heaps to toughen him up. Poor frail man that he was, and I was marked to marry him, and we did become friendly before we were exactly supposed to, and then he died before we could marry. So it is that I am a token aunt to all those with their precious blood. And he, yes, he drowned out there in the heaps.’

  ‘E’en so I wonder why you did it.’

  She would have her hands about me, plucking away all the little objects that come and stick themselves to me. They can’t stop themselves, never could. The rubbish bits do always rush to me. Rubbish moves for me, it seeks me out. So I am to sit, as thingless as possible in empty rooms. Mother pulled them away from me. Every day, pulling, tearing. But they still come, they must. Whenever the door is opened, more things come to me. My bits and pieces. I never mind much. A sock. A spool of thread. Some of a newspaper. Old food wrappings. And such. But always the rubbish it looks for me, always has, ever since it kept me living out there in the great waste. I am a great trouble to my new family. We to remain hidden but wherever they hide me, still the bits do come for me. It is a worry for them I do see that. A great worry. The longer we keep a place, the more the bits come for me, and bits they are big number. So that it is true danger that the bits shall give my whole family away. And so I must be as thingless as is possible and so they keep me in a kitchen store cupboard, in a big ice chest that they found here. Is cold, and she comes, the missus, and she tries her little bit. She do groom me. One day she come at me with her arms wide open. Whatever was she about? Was great upset. All rubbish about in the house they told, lurched and wanted to come down into cellar.

  ‘Don’t do it, missus! Away! Get! Get!’

  ‘I’m so sorry, Binadit,’ she said.

  ‘Not to do that.’

  ‘I was trying to hug you.’

  ‘Not to,’ I told her.

  ‘Oh, Binadit.’

  ‘Mustn’t, things don’t like it. Upset things.’

  ‘Oh, Binadit.’

  ‘Things hurt me.’

  ‘I am most appallingly sorry.’

  ‘Not come so close. Get back.’

  ‘I think, perhaps, if you’d had a birth object.’

  ‘No, I never.’

  ‘No, Binadit, there was no birth object for you.’

  ‘No, missus, I don’t got none.’

  ‘If you did have a birth object I wonder what it should have been. Ommaball Oliff won’t give you one, you see. I have asked. She says there’s no such thing for Iremonger bastards, and if you’ve managed thus far you must not have need of one. But if, Bin, if you were to have one I wonder what it should be.’

  ‘A botton.’

  ‘A button?’

  ‘I like bottons.’

  She brings me bottons every day, the missus woman do. A new botton every day. But none of them yet is right botton.

  There is more things come down to stick upon me, no matter how hard they try to keep them off, each time the woman comes she brings with her more bits to stick upon me, all them new bottons and everything from out her pockets. I have thread and patches of leather and am getting taller and rounder, am putting on. If I don’t want them and she don’t want them, then no one does want them and they are rubbish become, and then they do stick on me. They get the idea in a moment. Like they were coming home to Binadit, the rubbish heap.

  They, my family upstairs, have been saying that I may give them all away, that they should never have taken me in. Well I never asked it of them, did I. They just took. And their loving is turned and spoiled now and not as it was, is gone off and starts to smell. They lost it, had it one day, fallen off somewhere, no place to be seen. Shouldn’t be afeard, I tell the woman Rosamud. Tell them not to be afeard. Heaps more like to find you if you have fear. That’s when they find you most, all those bits, when you are afearing. Must have been so for the Milcrumb fellow. Tell them not to, tell them.

  What shall happen then. If we were to move house.

  That is what I fear, for if we do move, then the most of things shall come after. They shall come in a great gushing and I cannot stop them.

  ‘You shall not leave me again shalt you, missus?’

  ‘Mother. No, no, Bin darling, of course not.’

  ‘Will you leave me?’

  ‘No, no Bin, I swear upon this doorknob I shall never leave you again.’

  She cried as she said it. It might be the fear that’s creeping all over them. Mustn’t fear. Things’ll be quick to find you that way.

  Milcrumb must have feared and so found his death, right quick!

  I think about the heaps, my heapland, gone and gone, and I do wonder about the missus I must call Mother but can’t seem to, and also, ever think about my botton I found and lost.

  Whatever did happen to that botton of mine?

  The Owner Umbitt Iremonger in Hiding

  The Owneress Ommaball Oliff Iremonger in Hiding Likewise

  8

  BLOOD

  Clod Iremonger’s narrative continued

  The Return of the Doily

  ‘Gloria Emma Utting.’

  I heard the doily before I saw its keeper. Pinalippy, my apparently still betrothed, my still obstinately betrothed, Pinalippy, pincher of nipples, taller than me still (though I think in all my adventures I have managed to grow a bit), with her faint moustache and strong arms.

  ‘Well, and aren’t you going to say hello or something?’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘hullo, Pinalippy.’

  ‘You know how to make a female feel wanted I must say.’

  ‘I thought I should be punctured with pins, I thought I should be drilled into and spiked, I thought I may be thoroughly pierced.’

  ‘Well as you see, it is merely me.’

  ‘Do you have any pins about you?’

  ‘Only the pin in my name, is that sharp enough for you? Do you need bleeding then, Clod?’

  ‘I need to be left alone.’

  ‘There’s affection, right there.’

  ‘I’ve no need for company. Now or ever.’

  Pinalippy didn’t respond to that, she merely came further in.

  ‘What a mess you’ve made of your room
, Clod.’

  ‘It’s not mine, it’s stolen from someone.’

  ‘Our home was stolen from us.’

  She moved around regarding this and that, I stared at the floor and did my absolute best not to engage her.

  ‘Cousin Rippit?’ she spoke to the squashed relative.

  ‘Rippit.’

  ‘Cousin Rippit, I should be most grateful if you’d leave us alone.’

  ‘Rippit?’

  ‘I am to be married to Clod, you know, I trust you will not be present on our first night together. It would hardly be encouraging.’

  ‘Rippit?’

  ‘So now off you toddle, I mean to talk with my man here, and I don’t need you rippiting throughout our intimate whispering.’

  ‘Rippit.’

  ‘Yes, exactly, just like that.’

  ‘Rippit.’

  ‘Go rippit elsewhere will you?’

  ‘Rippit?’

  ‘Goodbye, cousin, so touching to be in your company, but goodbye it must be.’

  She marshalled Rippit to the door, and closed it firmly the moment he was outside. I couldn’t help smiling at how she had managed that. But then we were in the room together, just Pinalippy and me. No one else. And that was a shock. Looking very directly at the carpet and not daring to observe anything other, I stayed very still and heard the eighteen-year-old coming closer. Closer. I could smell her then. She smelt of slightly burnt treacle. It was an Iremonger custom for Iremonger women to daub themselves with lightly torched treacle on special occasions to make them the more attractive to the male sex. The scent was known to drive some Iremonger men into palpitations. It did very little, I must confess, to stimulate me.

  Pinalippy was so very close now, she was almost on top of me, and then she did something very terrible. Pinalippy sat down, she sat down next to me on my bed. She sat down so close that her dress was touching my nightshirt.

  ‘Well then, Clod, here I am.’

  ‘Yes, Pinalippy, indeed you are here.’

  ‘This is your bed.’

  ‘It is, Pinalippy, I do admit it.’

  ‘This is where you sleep.’

  ‘It is a common enough function of a bed.’

  ‘You lie yourself down just here,’ she said, stroking the bed cover, ‘and stretch out, you are quiet yourself here, under the covers in your nightwear.’

  I leapt up then and marched with all distress towards the window.

  ‘I am very miserable!’ I sputtered out.

  ‘Yes, don’t I know it, the whole house knows it.’

  ‘I love someone else,’ I whispered.

  ‘I know you do, Clod, the skinny thing with all the moles and the uncombed russet hair. I’m most sensible of it. But, forgive me, dear, she’s dead, your someone, isn’t she?’

  ‘Yes,’ I whispered. ‘I must say yes.’

  ‘You know you must, we are the only survivors of Foulsham.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And we are hunted. They want to kill us, Clod.’

  ‘Yes, Pinalippy, I know.’

  ‘They’ll hunt us down, every last one of us, and they’ll murder us, Clod, murder us.’

  ‘So everyone says, and I cannot help that. I do not like being alive.’

  ‘Well I do. I like it very much. And I’ll tell you something else, Clod Iremonger, I mean to keep on living if I can. Now you, Clod, you can do things, move things. Things listen to you. You’ve only to think it and something goes flying, or shrivels up.’

  ‘I cannot help it.’

  ‘What a thing you did with Timfy’s whistle.’

  ‘I could help that. And perhaps now I regret it. A very little.’

  ‘If you could do that to an Iremonger birth object, think what you might do upon Lungdon people.’

  ‘I hardly know, do I? They don’t let me out.’

  ‘I am proud of you, Clod.’

  ‘Are you, Pinalippy? Why on earth?’

  ‘Well yes, Clod, what a fuss all the aunts and uncles make over you, how Grandfather even talks of you.’

  ‘I meant to steal his Jack Pike, his cuspidor, and destroy it.’

  ‘You see, right there, that’s what I like about you: you’ve gumption. Who else would have dreamt of such a thing? You’re an original.’

  ‘I am?’

  ‘You are, now come and sit by me.’

  ‘Must I?’

  ‘Oh do come along, Clod.’

  Reluctantly I sat back on the bed, a good distance from Pinalippy. She looked at me.

  ‘Closer,’ she said.

  I moved a very little closer.

  ‘Closer,’ she said.

  A little closer yet.

  ‘Closer.’

  ‘Is this not close enough, Cousin?’

  ‘Not by half.’

  I moved until I was beside her.

  ‘There then,’ she said.

  And we sat together in somebody’s stolen bedroom, on somebody’s stolen bed.

  ‘This is comfortable,’ she said after a while.

  I said nothing.

  ‘Isn’t it, Clod, comfortable?’

  I was shaking slightly, it may have been the treacle smell.

  ‘I do think we are making progress. I may visit you, Clod, mayn’t I?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘It is nearly time for my morning walk.’

  ‘You go out?’

  ‘Yes, of course I do. I go about here and there. I walk Lungdon a little, so that I may learn it. I watch the constables and make them nervous, they grow conjunctivitis just by looking at me. Truly, it is amazing how we Iremongers do stir the people of Lungdon.’

  ‘Do you, Pinalippy, do you perhaps exaggerate a little?’

  ‘Perhaps, but Clod, out in Lungdon, I do buy anything.’

  ‘Oh, Pinalippy, to walk in London!’

  ‘Lungdon we call it, Clod, do catch on. And yes, it is a thrill! But I must be careful. It is highly dangerous. And only for the bravest of the family. Do you know what I did when first I found myself out in that Lungdon?’

  ‘No, Pinalippy, I surely do not.’

  ‘You are so dull. Well, I shall tell you.’

  ‘I had a feeling you might.’

  ‘Move up, I mean to sit right next to you. Closer yet.’

  She pushed herself a little against me.

  ‘I have been shopping, Clod. I have been to a hardware store.’

  ‘Have you, Pinalippy, have you?’

  ‘Oh yes, I have, Clod, and I have purchased at the hardware store with ready money.’

  ‘Well, Pinalippy, you are coming along!’

  ‘Almost a Lungdoner!’

  ‘And what, Pinalippy, did you buy?’

  ‘Can you not guess?’

  ‘No, not in the slightest.’

  ‘Why, plugs, Clod, plugs.’

  ‘You purchase plugs?’

  ‘Yes, Clod. Can’t you believe it. If I’m to live with a plug, I may as well get used to it. So I did; I have bought any number of plugs, small and large, brass, tin, India rubber. I’m getting used to them. I lay them out on my bed, Clod. I touch them, I hold them to me.’

  ‘Heavens, do you truly, Pinalippy?’

  ‘Oh yes, Clod, I do. I like the feel of them on my skin. Sometimes I lie down and I lay them on top of me.’

  ‘Golly.’

  ‘I might love you, Clod Iremonger, I might very well love you, I have not yet decided.’

  ‘Oh, well, ah, thanks awfully, Pinalippy.’

  ‘Sometimes when I have a bath I put all the plugs in with me.’

  ‘Do you, Pinalippy?’

  ‘Can you picture that?’

  ‘Well …’ I said, in a panic, ‘well!’

  ‘Do you like women?’

  ‘Yes, yes of course.’

  ‘Well, there’s a relief, I was beginning to think you didn’t.’

  ‘I did love Lucy terribly.’

  ‘Think of me,’ she said quite sternly. ‘Think of me and all my plugs! In the wa
ter!’

  ‘I don’t see my plug any more. I am not allowed to keep it, my poor dear James Henry Hayward. I saw his family once, Pinalippy, back in Foulsham, they were rat catchers, good, honest people. Hold on to your Gloria Emma, Pinalippy, there’s a person there, hoping to get out.’

  ‘Poor old Clod.’

  ‘And now Rippit keeps my plug and he won’t let me have it.’

  ‘Really, Clod, Rippit’s got it? Rippit’s nothing to be afraid of.’

  ‘I find him terrifying,’ I admitted.

  ‘I don’t. Not for a moment. You see, the thing about Rippit is he’s terrified of us. Of women. How awkward and strange he is when we come near. He becomes so agitated, his hair grows more greasy. “Rippit! Rippit!” I pinched his breast two days ago and how he bellowed at that! Clod Iremonger, how should it be if I got your plug back for you, and gave him one of my own in return?’

  ‘A switch?’

  ‘What would you say to that?’

  ‘I should, well I should be most grateful. Indeed I would!’

  ‘You might also be more forthcoming?’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘You might, in some small way, show your feelings for me?’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘For the plug.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Well, for the plug, Pinalippy, I suppose … I suppose I should.’

  ‘Very good then, Clod, this has been fun! And we must do it again very soon,’ she said, bouncing a little upon the bed and then jumping up.

  ‘Well I must be off now.’

  ‘Into London?’

  ‘Yes, indeed! Into Lungdon!’

  ‘Well goodbye, Pinalippy, thank you.’

  ‘We’ll do such things, Clod! I know we shall. Oh, just a moment. I nearly forgot. These are for you.’

  She handed me various circles of white material. They all had holes in them.

  ‘They are doilies, Clod.’

  ‘So they are,’ I said.

  ‘For familiarity, Clod. For remembrance, Clod. For you. Clod.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Righto.’

  ‘Is that all?’

  ‘Thanks?’

  ‘Well done, Clod, we’re quite coming along, you and I.’

  I didn’t say anything.

  ‘Aren’t we?’

  ‘Er, yes?’ I whispered.

  ‘I think that went very well, don’t you?’