by Edward Carey
The porter, now a colander, was on the floor. We slid back the bolts and ran into the night.
From Joseph Blake, Spitalfields Link Boy
It’s all happening tonight. I’ve never seen so many people turned in one night. Whole of the doss house on Dorset Street’s gone stiff and all, and the men and women coming in there are all being thrown out now, so many of them turned railway sleepers, and the foreman goes about them, picking out what he thinks will be useful, prodding over them with his foot. Like there’ll be no people left to London by morning. Strange objects all over the street from people just fell then and there in the middle of their way. I seen a perambulator with a mixing bowl in it, abandoned in the road. And all the buildings about us, making noises in the night, such creaks and groans as if the skin of London underneath was moving, was coming awake. I don’t trust anything any more, not the ground we walk on, not the shoes I’m wearing, nothing. The houses do make so much noise! And door bells clanging though no one is there to pull them. I seen a whole wall come tumbling down in the street and afterwards somehow gather itself back up. I seen a cart moving off without the horse. I seen a whole load of cutlery dancing about the way, rushing off together like they were fish in the sea, only they were floating in the rancid air of London. I seen such stuff. And all that was life, all living things that I knew that were wont to be about us common enough have all packed up and gone away, like as if there’s been enough of humans now and our turn is finished with.
I make the sign of the cross, like that’ll help.
I hear all the pigeon calls then, and do answer them. Joining pigeon whistle with pigeon whistle. Could do with some company. Thought there might just be me left. Me and a thousand shifting objects.
From Tommy Cronin, Mill Bank Link Boy
Couple of hundred of us, must have been, links from all over the city. Georgie’s come with so many candles, we’ll all have some light yet.
We’re all here on the edge of Hyde Park just by the bench where she lies still and don’t move for us, but is only just still there, breathing oh so shallow. I thought she could help us somehow. But she can’t do anything. The ones from Foulsham, they sit by her especially and do try and wake her up but she’s still and hard and cold.
All noises about the city tonight, like it’s being taken down, all chaos – glad we’re in the park, fires started up here and there. I wonder what the city’s like beyond here, I wonder what’s left of them all. We wait for the dawn to come.
And it doesn’t.
Look at her lying there.
‘Oh,’ I said, ‘do look at this, I think she’s turned already.’
‘How many turned tonight already, must be hundreds!’
‘She’s stirring!’ Was one of the kids from Foulsham cried that out, all gathered round her, she was so lit up by all the glowing of our church candles, how strange she looked thus illuminated. Beautiful, you might call it.
‘Speak? Can you speak?’
She just looked at us, looked all about us, such a strange expression to her face.
‘Can you speak?’
‘Are you turning?’
She coughed a bit then.
‘That’s a good sign, coughing is.’
‘It’s her insides trying to get themselves working. Trying to remember being human.’
She coughed, a bit of spit in her, that was a good sign, very good.
We gone and cheered a bit then, she looked such a sight. She tried to sit up, but was rather wobbly on the whole and had to be laid down again. She could speak after a time.
‘I thought I wasn’t,’ she said. ‘I saw her, the matchstick lady, my birth object, she was going up in flames, and despite all the flames I just felt so cold, colder and colder. She’s gone, my birth object, a wonder she’d been kept so long. The poor woman, poor frightened woman, wouldn’t have wished that on anyone. But I’m here now, and do breathe. I’ve flung her off, or rather she’s been ripped from me. I may go any moment. I shall be a button before long.’
‘You don’t know that,’ Jenny of Foulsham said.
‘Oh I do, I think. I’ll be a clay button. I’ve been it before, you see. It can’t be long, it only took Rosamud a few hours before she turned. I think the birth objects protect you but if they’re lost then you’re likely to turn double quick.’
‘There’s been so many gone tonight,’ said one of the links.
‘Esther?’ she said. ‘Where’s Esther Nelson? I don’t see her. What’s become of her?’
Jenny shook her head.
‘Oh Esther,’ she whispered, tears in her eyes, ‘I should never have left. What have I done? And Clod, is there any news of Clod?’
‘The square’s burnt out,’ said a Bayswater link boy. ‘I seen it myself, all gutted.’
‘Oh Clod!’ she wailed.
‘And then there was this strange thing,’ the Bayswater boy went on, ‘hard to say it really. But I saw it, with my own eyes, and if you don’t believe it then don’t believe it, that’s your business.’
‘Come on then, let’s hear it.’
‘Speak up, please,’ says Lucy.
‘In the flaming of Connaught Square there was one house that sort of rumbled in all the fire, made great cracks of complaint, huge bangs and screams, you might say, of masonry.’
‘That’ll be the fire, breaking it all up, bursting the glass.’
‘Maybe. Maybe. But then I saw the next bit, didn’t I? Great black shadow in the flames, coming forward, and all the screams of masonry alongside it, like the very bricks had found a voice. And then it keeps coming on, that great black oblong, through the flames, ever on and on. Closer to me, I saw it from my vantage point, coming so close, and then … going on, going on I say, out of the square and away from the fire and down Seymour Street, across the Edgware Road and on it goes, that great black block, on I say, still on, shrinking you might say, losing height no doubt, until it finally comes to a halt just shy of Portman Square.’
‘Well,’ asked one of the links, ‘whatever was it?’
‘Only a house! Only a bloody house!’
‘A house!’
‘A walking house.’
‘However could it, a house?’
‘How’s it possible?’
‘Clod,’ Lucy said, oh and she was crying, so much that was liquid still about her! Still a human then, after all. ‘Clod, he did it! I’d swear to it. He got out. He’s alive!’
‘Well, well! Who’d have such friends!’
‘What a night!’
‘The bridge!’ cried Lucy, sitting up.
‘Don’t excite yourself; take it easy, don’t be a button on us!’
‘The bridge! The bridge!’
‘What bridge? What are you bellyaching about?’
‘The bridge at Westminster! That’s where he’ll be, and all his family. They’ll all be there! The Iremongers! All of them. Piggott said so! On Westminster Bridge at eight o’clock, all to meet there! What time is it?’
‘Who can say since they’ve offended the sun.’
‘Sometime after six maybe, hard to know in the congruous black.’
‘I must go to the bridge.’
‘We’ll take you along. We were going that way anyway, since we’ll have a big day of it tomorrow – yes, since there’ll be so many to light on account of all the crowds come out for the Queen for the opening of Parliament.’
‘That’s why then,’ said Lucy, realising.
‘Why what?’
‘That’s why they’ll gather there, for the opening.’
‘That’s where all the things are rushing together too, piling up, hurrying all in the same direction. Towards Westminster!’
‘Yes! That’s true enough, they all stop around Westminster!’
‘There’ll be crowds all down The Mall, down Whitehall, people waving and cheering.’
‘The Queen will go to Parliament and declare it open!’
‘As if the objects know it too.’
&nb
sp; ‘I wonder,’ said Lucy, ‘if they’re being summoned. I think they might be, why else would they all come? And if they are summoned it’ll surely be the Iremongers that are doing it. Must be Umbitt, I should think, he’s the worst of them. And if they are all pulled there it’ll be for a reason and the reason will not be a nice one. I think there’ll be murder and all hell will break loose.’
‘But the Queen, the Queen herself shall be there!’
‘Victoria, no other!’
‘Our Queen.’
‘She may have gone absent on us, but she is our Queen, head of our country, and we are British men and true, aren’t we one and all?’
‘We are!’
‘We are!’
‘Too right we are!’
‘Shall we let our Queen be murdered?’
‘What, murder the Queen? No, not by our lives.’
‘That’s what’s happening here. Treason, treason and plot!’
‘Happened before!’
‘Happening again! Right now, in just a little time! We must run, gather all up, all the links of all London – there’s going to be murder. We’ve got to stop it! We have. We that are here. It’s up to us!’
‘Clod!’ called Lucy.
Oh such a whistling then, such a great whistling like the weather over London was pigeons.
29
A CRY THE NIGHT BEFORE A BATTLE
Continuing the narrative of Clod Iremonger
To London, from Clod
People of London, lying asleep, things are moving while you slumber, things are breathing, they’re coming out now, they’re coming up. Do you, Londoners, do you trust a pillow with your head? Well well, there’s a mistake. Do you allow sheets and blankets, eiderdowns and rugs to cover over all your body, do you surrender to them so? Well well, how innocent you are. Come, come now every object, wheresoe’er you are, strike off your chains, come find some life, be docile no longer. I call you, I call you in the night. Every door, every door I say, open. Open up!
Come tables. Come chairs, come beds, come books, come lanterns, come cupboards, come hooks, come hats, come gloves, come coats, come bonnets, come boots, come keys, come rings, come ropes, come strings, come yarn, come mops, come soap, come clocks, come scissors, come pincers, come measures, come doorknob, come keyhole, come doorstep, come doormat, come hatstand, come nightstand, come boot scrape, come tooth-mug, come toothbrush, come hairbrush, come clothes-brush, come carpets, come rugs, come caps, come mugs, come plates, come forks, come knives, come trousers, come shorts, come chairs, come corks: come, come you all from everywhere.
From Portman Square, from Portland Place, Portugal Street, Paternoster Row, Bromley-by-Bow, Grays Inn, Lincoln’s Inn, Inner Temple Gate, and Fleet Street and Greek Street, Sicilian Avenue, Guy’s Hospital and Highgate Cemetery, Blackheath, Blackwall, Blackfriars, Crouch End, Aldwich, Aldgate, Aldersgate, Elephant and Castle, Old Bailey, Old Brentford, Old London Bridge, Old Windsor, Old Palace Yard, Golden Square, Holborn Hill, Kilburn Road, Merton, Homerton, Hampton Wick, Hampton Court, Newgate, Highgate, St John’s Gate, Eastgate. Churches: Anne’s, Botolph’s, Bride’s, Clement’s. Dunstan’s, George’s, Giles’, James’s, John’s and Lawrence, Luke, Magnus, Martin, Margaret, Mark, Mary, Michael, Olave, Paul, Pancras, Peter, Saviour, Stephen, Swithin. All Souls!
Come, come, come one, come all! Come bits from Bermondsey and Bridewell and Battersea. Come commodities from Kentish Town and Kensington and Kennington, come goods from Great Russell Street and articles from Apsley House, come items from Islington, and devices from Devonshire House, come kindlings from Kingston-on-Thames and pickings of Paddington and pieces of Pentonville and matter of Marylebone.
Come, come to me now from Upper Holloway to Deptford Dockyard. Come rich and poor alike, things, come things to me, buttons of pearl from Grosvenor Square, false teeth of wood from Limehouse Basin. Come bricks and bricks and bricks and mortar of London come, come, come trappings, come, come trip trap, trip trap.
We used to walk on four legs, just like a table.
Come on then, do come along.
Come then, come along, I love you all. But come along.
On we go, on we go, every last one of you.
To Westminster, to Westminster, to cry a new home.
Come morning, come London, no, no, come Lungdon! Come, come, come you on!
Part Five
Upside Down
Buckingham Palace 06:00 8th February 1876
Houses of Parliament 07:00 8th February 1876
30
LONDON GAZETTE III
Voices from around Westminster
From the Honourable Horatio-Charlotte Stopford, Lady-in-Waiting, Buckingham Palace
We were up earlier than usual this morning; everything has been made ready. I have not seen Her Majesty thus far, but have had all the fires lit. Terrible bleak day outside, makes you wish they would postpone it but of course they cannot. I hope they have dressed her very warmly. I should not like to go out in that, it is like a sheet of black glass out there. Strangely quiet too. I’m certain there must be many hundreds of people beyond but you cannot quite see them from the windows, the weather being so dreadful.
The Music Room has been readied, as per tradition, for a Member of Parliament to be kept in general hostage until the monarch’s safe return (we call it that, for the gentleman is treated very nicely, and we all cannot help but smile at the poor fellow being kept under guard). It is merely custom.
Such a queer feeling I have today.
I have found a great amount of glass and pottery upon the floor. I’ve been very cross and have had it disposed of. But everywhere things are out of place. There’s a common tin mug on the carpet in the White Drawing Room. I found a domino on the floor, and rusted scissors, and nails, hundreds of nails, scattered around the palace. Where on earth have they come from?
From a Colonel of the Household Cavalry Mounted Regiment, Whitehall
Terrible morning for it, never known such a pea-souper, sleet coming down through it. Can’t be helped of course, no one to blame, but honestly you’d think the bloody weather would try a little harder, it is the State Opening of Parliament.
I had hoped the day would improve as it went on it but if anything it is worse now than at 0600hrs. I actually cannot see my hand in front of my face. Literally. No sun to speak of at all, jolly difficult to know what’s going on in this light. And a terrible littering of things all over the road, as if some strange shop had burst open and all its things spread out before us. The horses slip in all this mess.
There are crowds, of course there are crowds, many people have come out to see their Queen, even on a day like this. Of course they bloody have. The sides of The Mall quite crowded, and along Whitehall where I am situated. Odd thing is I can’t really see any of them, but I know they’re there, there’s a massing behind me, and I do hear the faint hubbub that’s typical of a crowd. They’re quite muted though, I must say. Sometimes I have heard the odd chink of china or glass but otherwise not much. And the other thing is, pigeons are bloody noisy this morning.
Her Majesty will be here before very long.
I do feel for her, absent from the public eye so long, so deep has her mourning been. But I must say I am very proud that she is among us again this day, such a little time still since she came out of her long distress. Shows great pluck. I did see the Prince Consort once, from a distance, for this very same ceremony. How she has grieved for him, as have we all. It is very fine that she has come out yet again for Parliament, we should indeed be most grateful. Rum thing is, I saw a police officer just this morning, spitting image of Albert he was, I do swear it.
I am quite conscious of my duty towards my Sovereign, how vulnerable she will be as she comes out of Buckingham Palace, and will continue to be as she progresses in the Irish State Coach along The Mall and down Whitehall, passing her people on either side of her. The truth is, no matter how many of our armed forces flank the way, it would not take very much for a vil
lainous fellow to rush through our ranks and, if he were quick and had good aim, to take a shot at Her Majesty as she passes along at the customary slow pace, which, given the weather, must be slower yet than usual.
I try not to think on this, there must be all of several hundred members of the armed forces positioned around for the ceremony and for the Sovereign’s protection, but I cannot help asking myself: is the chain of protection fully linked, is there any weakness in the chain?
Oh damn those pigeons!
From a Yeoman of the Guard, Westminster Palace
As is our custom since that year in 1605 when Guy Fawkes was discovered beneath the Houses of Parliament with all his gunpowder, so do we ever on this day search the cellars to make sure no new modern Fawkes is down here on unholy business. We have searched last night, early this morning, and shall go down once again before Her Majesty arrives to visit the rooms above us.
I am content to report that there are no barrels of gunpowder to be found, I should even state that the cellars have been searched high and low and that they are innocently empty, except for one odd thing. I have seen an accumulation of dirt in the cellars, an amassing of strange objects, little bits and pieces, that I am certain were not here last time I came down. I have berated several junior officers. The rubbish has been swept away. I saw to it personally.
All is exactly how it should be now at 0700hrs, eighth February 1876.
0745hrs: on subsequent inspection the objects have returned, all manner of things, each innocent in and of itself; a coat hanger for example, a child’s pinafore, an awl, tin cups and plates, some common forks and spoons, but such a mass of them, where they come from no one can say, but they lie all around the Houses. Strange thing is that whenever they are swept away and piled up, they do seem to creep back. There shall not be time to dispense with so much sudden litter.
