Lungdon

by Edward Carey

  Now there is a sudden squealing of rats, of my fellows under benches around me, followed by a sudden rushing of people all in black, who divide the MPs, squeezing out those who cannot well fit in and pushing them rudely back down the Peers’ lobby, and now the doors to the Lords’ Chamber are slammed, and now those people in their black suits roll a large marble fireplace before the door, it is Grandmother’s fireplace, it is tugged from its castors and let fall with a heavy thud before the door, and so now it is firmly shut. And so all are crowded in and can not get out. In an instant those runners in black are gone again, sunken rat-like and squeezed through holes.

  ‘What is the meaning of this?’ someone cries. How I do hear him from my hiding place.

  ‘What?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘What?’ comes back from some of the Lords and MPs, for they are leathers posted here by Grandfather in all his cleverness. Cries of,

  ‘Help! Help ho! Treason!’

  And now a clack, clack, clack. And Aunt Ifful is there standing before the House of Lords.

  ‘Who are you, woman, what are you doing here?’ calls some gentleman, perhaps it is the Prime Minister.

  ‘I come to dim the lights,’ says my Aunt Ifful.

  And she opes her mouth and lets some of her night out, all to the general horror of the people, such frail humanity, in the chamber.

  ‘There then, that is better,’ says Aunt Ifful. ‘Your Majesty, my Lords, members of Parliament, visitors in the Royal Gallery, please meet my family.’

  And that is the signal for us all to come in, and so we, pinched and hairy, long-tailed and sniffing, rush then in a great tumbling through all the holes that lead into the Lords’ Chamber, or, like me, from under a bench. How many of us then, over a hundred I think, some of us have not been so lucky, some have been trampled underfoot by the Yeomen of the Guard as we waited in our furry clusters, our hearts moving so fast.

  We must be an extraordinary sight, all us rats appearing here on the carpet, crawling around all that ermine, making a general panic. But now comes the greater moment, for we have all amassed to the noise of their screaming in the centre of the Chamber and now from our ratform do we grow human again. How strange to stretch and shift so, quite like the feeling I had when Grandfather spun me into a sovereign. I don’t like to do it, the feeling is wretched, something like vomiting, only a hundred times the worse.

  ‘Rats!’ the Lords and MPs scream.

  ‘Rats!’

  ‘Get them off me!’

  ‘What in the name of heaven!’

  ‘Call the guards! Why do they not come!’

  ‘Help! Help, I say!’

  So we grow and we put away our tails and our whiskers and are soon enough got up like ordinary everyday men and women. We surround the MPs and force them forward in a knot towards the Queen’s throne. What a sight we are, all amassed beside the gentry. What a family!

  ‘Not rats … people. People!’

  ‘They were rats, just now!’

  ‘What magic is this?’

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘SILENCE!’ It is Idwid that calls out. ‘THERE WILL BE SILENCE! ORDURE! Well sir, Umbitt Owner, please, please, they are quiet now.’

  ‘Who are we, you ask?’ says Grandfather standing tall, all birth objects stuck about him, his pockets brimming, never did he look so grim and unbending, ‘We are a family, grown small in number, come to have words with you. Our name, Queen, is lost in fire and cruelty, but it may yet be heard whispering among any accumulation of debris. We were, once upon a time, the guardians of your filth. Since we have lost that title we have been forced to hide in dark cellars, forced to put away the sun, forced to limp and lick our wounds, we are … how may we be properly described? We are the bad smell caught in the wind, we are the strange tapping between the walls, we are the cup that fell down and broke on its own accord, we are all the lost keys, we are the floorboards that creak though no one is upon them, we are the shadows in your dreams, we are the bad feeling that can’t be shook, here we are, we alone, great Iremongers of darkest dirt.’

  Great panic in the house, calls for help, for arms.

  ‘Iremonger!’

  ‘Iremongers!’

  ‘I was in the belief,’ says the Queen, ‘that there were no more of these people remaining.’

  ‘Ordure! ORDURE!’ cries Idwid.

  ‘Eleanor Cranwell,’ says the candleholder in my hand. As if she is trying to tell me something, as if she is trying to talk to me.

  ‘Well then, revise your beliefs,’ says my own grandfather to the Queen and all Parliament, ‘and breathe us in while you may.’

  I step forward then, pushing my way through the crowding of uncles and aunts and cousins.

  ‘Excuse me, Grandfather,’ I say, ‘I need to speak.’ I do.

  ‘Eleanor Cranwell.’

  ‘Clod, be silent,’ Grandfather replies. ‘There is no time.’

  ‘I shall speak I think,’ I say. ‘I will be heard.’

  ‘Clod, stand down!’

  ‘Your Majesty, for certainly you were never my Majesty, for you mean little enough to me. I am Clodius Iremonger –’

  ‘Who should be silent,’ says Grandfather.

  ‘And I am an Iremonger of some talent and force. I must blow my own trumpet, you see, for I wish you to understand, and must be quick about my talking.’

  ‘Clod!’

  ‘I do hear things talking, I do comprehend the disease, I know which people have turned into what things. Even now, in this room, there are so many names sounding in my ears. That was the start of it, do you follow? When I was a child, a babe even, I had this particular hearing. And now, you see, that I am older, I can move any object by thinking it; I have set whole houses alive. Well it is a terrible thing, I’ve grown very powerful and strong. And, Your Majesty, Lords, MPs, proper people, whosoe’er you may be, I want you to understand we are such a people, a people who are very clever: we may hear things and move things and command things, we may shift from rat to person, we may bring forth the night. Yes! But, and yet, there’s ever less of us, you see. It seems you have been shooting us.’

  All the great men make a great play of straining to hear, to make sense of my speech, and in pausing they take this opportunity to scowl at me and no doubt find me young and foolish, and some try to speak but I will not let them and go on again.

  ‘Yes you have! It seems you have been murdering us. We had a home. Out there, a home which you destroyed. You murdered Foulsham. How could you, how could you ever do such a thing? Was it to keep you safe in your warm rooms, to sit by the fire with your particular possessions hard about you? Well if that’s the reason, then you have failed, have you not? For we are here, and the disease is spread thick about you. Let me tell you now, I came here to murder you.’

  ‘Eleanor Cranwell.’

  There is a little silence after I’d let that one sink in, but it is not followed by the cries of help and shock that I had anticipated – the result is rather a few smiles and then several deep laughs.

  ‘Child,’ says a man, and I believe this man to be the Prime Minister, Mr Disraeli, ‘you fail to terrify. It would be best for you and your people behind you to give yourselves up and cease this rash and foolish behaviour – no good shall ever come from it. The longer you persist the greater shall be the consequences. Put away your music-hall theatrics and leave this hallowed chamber, for you and your kin are not invited here.’

  ‘You speak to me as if I were just a child.’

  ‘Child, being school-age, I must.’

  ‘Hear, hear!’ comes a rotund peer.

  ‘I am Clod!’ I say.

  And there is more laughter at that.

  ‘I am Clod!’ I cry once more.

  Yet more laughter, from all around.

  ‘So you keep saying,’ one Lord calls out.

  ‘Eleanor Cranwell.’

  ‘You should listen to me, you know. You should not mock me. I am grown quite strong, you
see.’

  ‘Parliament will not be held to account by some child!’ a Lord bellows.

  ‘It will!’ I cry. ‘Oh I do swear it will. I may pull all Lungdon into the Thames if I have the will to do it.’

  Much laughter at this.

  ‘London,’ some bellow, ‘the place is called London, didn’t you know?’

  ‘Do it, Clod,’ says Umbitt my Grandfather. ‘Do it now!’

  ‘Eleanor Cranwell.’

  ‘Yes, Eleanor, I do hear you.’

  ‘Do it, Clod, move all!’ cries Grandfather. ‘Bring it all down!’

  ‘There have been so many deaths,’ I say, giving them a last chance at life, ‘can we now, do we now, allow a little living? This is but our demand and our need: a home. We want a home. We require one. A home, I say, please, a home.’

  ‘We do not negotiate with criminals,’ says Disraeli, growing impatient.

  ‘But you, you are the criminals!’ I cry.

  ‘No home, no home!’ say some MPs.

  ‘Do it, Clod, do it now,’ says Grandfather, come close beside me.

  ‘Yes, Grandfather, yes I shall.’

  I close my eyes, I move forward just a little, and the whole building begins to shake.

  Then the Lords, the MPs all about, stop their mocking and commence to gasp and to call out. And to think I’d merely moved the house one single step. Now they are listening.

  ‘We do not negotiate with criminals,’ says Grandfather, ‘Now, Clod.’

  With my eyes closed I raise my hands, I call in my thinking so many objects all about, I call them up into the air, lift them high into the air all around Parliament, and then very swiftly I bring my hands down.

  And then! What follows!

  It is as if Parliament is being gunned and cannoned and pelted and pocked and thumped and shot and pitted all over, as if now it is a body with black holes, riddled with a plague.

  What noises, what screams inside as all that outside smashes against it in a dreadful wave; windows shatter, pieces come flying through.

  I open my eyes. Everyone in the chamber is so frightened, they are in such a terror. I did that, I caused them such distress, people are weeping, some are bleeding. What a thing! What a business, as dear, lost Lucy would have said. Another barrage like that and I do believe I shall kill people, many people.

  ‘Again, Clod, do it again,’ says Grandfather. ‘Good, my boy.’

  I close my eyes, I lift up my hands.

  ‘Eleanor Cranwell.’

  The candleholder in my pocket is calling out to me. I made her a promise once, before she betrayed me, never to hurt anyone, and now I am about to bring forth another crashing wave, to hurt these who hurt us, these men who signed the paper that brought about the terrible burning of Foulsham, these people who killed Lucy. Now, now shall I be fully revenged.

  ‘Eleanor Cranwell.’

  Now I shall.

  ‘Eleanor Cranwell.’

  Now, now … and yet … I stall … and yet I cannot. I cannot do it. I have come so far, but now in the last moment, I am not able. I do not want them dead, I just want a home. I cannot do it, I lack the heart.

  Clod the fool, Clod the idiot. Coward Clod.

  I open my eyes and slowly lower my hands. Nothing stirs, all look at me. I cannot do it.

  ‘Now, Clod,’ says Grandfather.

  But I cannot.

  And so Grandfather raises his bloody fingers and with a wave of motion a great many of the MPs fall, collapsing into objects. There are mop handles and dustpan brushes, there are two ink bottles and one set of dentures, some mirrors, undergarments.

  ‘Where have they gone?’ one MP shrieks. ‘The MPs for Sussex and Cumberland, for Kent and Gloucestershire, just beside me now, have quite vanished!’

  ‘I demand you bring them back at once!’ One ruddy-faced MP steps forward and with a flick of Grandfather’s bloody fingers is reduced to a wing nut.

  ‘We have indeed not come to negotiate,’ Grandfather says.

  And as he speaks, Ifful beside him spews more night into the Chamber.

  ‘Then why, why for heavens’ sake have you come?’ It is Mr Gladstone who asks this, as I stand hopeless with my family, unable to go on.

  ‘To hurt. To do harm,’ says Grandmother.

  ‘Eleanor Cranwell!’

  A general movement from the populace all about.

  ‘Some people, please to understand,’ says Grandfather, ‘make better objects than people.’

  He walks around the Chamber and, flicking his bloodied fingers about, he turns a person here, a person there, at random, to show his cruelty. Twenty MPs and ten Lords fall down. He has their attention very well then, oh they are attending excellently well at last. He means to murder them all; what a family we are, what monsters. What have I done?

  Another person falls, and another. A wooden-handled drill, a bathing hat.

  ‘No, Grandfather,’ I say, ‘do not do it. It is enough already.’

  Noises from without: people are trying to smash the doors down.

  ‘Save the Queen!’

  ‘Save the Queen!’

  ‘I shall save the Queen … until last,’ Grandfather says. ‘Here shall be great hurting! Now Clod, come forward, wake yourself up, you may do your worst, pelt this house down, pull it into the very river! Earn your trousers!’

  ‘Eleanor Cranwell!’

  ‘Stop him!’ cries a Lord.

  ‘I shall, I’m the one to do it,’ that is Moorcus calling from somewhere in the ranks and he comes forward now with his shooter waving in front of him.

  ‘No, Moorcus,’ I say to my cousin, ‘do not do it.’

  ‘No Moorcus, do not,’ says Grandfather.

  ‘A gun!’ someone calls. ‘He has a gun!’

  ‘Gun!’

  ‘Gun!’

  ‘There’s a gun in the house!’

  ‘Yes, there is,’ says Moorcus and straight away he fires it.

  It isn’t a very loud crack. I barely hear it. I see a brief flame and then all goes slow for a little moment, and then, of a sudden, I’m knocked over. I’m on the ground. I see myself spilling out.

  A Revenger’s Tale

  From Moorcus Iremonger, murderer

  Yes! Yes! To see him fall! To see the bullet leap through the air and burrow and bite into Clod like it was born to do it. And down he goes and down and down! And that ridiculous top hat of his topples after.

  ‘You’re dead! You’re dead! I’m not!’ I sing.

  Like he’d lost the idea of life and living. What a puppet!

  And Grandfather, he cries out, ‘Fool! Cursed child! Murderer of Iremongers!’

  ‘No, Grandfather,’ I said, ‘he wasn’t one of us, not really.’

  ‘You, Moorcus,’ bellowed Grandfather, ‘you have killed us all!’

  There he lies now. Clod’s on the floor where he belongs and he swims in his own red river, and does flail in it, oh yes he’s pouring out. And my pistol is hot, as hot as a heart because it spat just now and done it proper!

  I! I! I am the Clod killer!

  Crack!

  What was that? Small sound after all those others. Like a stick being snapped. Whatever was it …? It sounded like. Didn’t it? Gunshot? Such a strange feeling, I look down at my chest … I … bleed … bleeding … I look up, what … Toastrack! Toastrack up there on the balcony with my own other gun. I mustn’t die, no, no, please not to. I am the hero of my life!

  Ah me!

  From Rowland Cullis, formerly a toastrack, now a murderer

  Toastrack I was. I ever hated your company, you splendid little toff, all those do thises and do thats, well then, have at that now, why don’t you, how does it feel? I was very lucky, such a fuss over two ladies being thrown out because of the Queen’s say-so, and all the boys with lanterns causing such a fuss, I slipped in then, suddenly no one was watching, up I went, up the stairs.

  Yes I’ve a shooter, Moorcus, and I’ve been longing to plug you with it and I meant to do i
t publicly so that all may see that I did it.

  ‘How are you then?’ I call. ‘How do you feel? However do you do, Moorcus? My name is Rowland Cullis.’

  He does not say a word.

  ‘Shut up,’ crows the blind one, the Governor Idwid, his head looking the wrong way. ‘Shut up!’

  ‘That the Queen there, is it?’ I call. ‘Hallo, Majesty, here I am at the Royal Gallery. With my shooter. My name is Rowland Cullis, I was a toastrack before now. I’m sorry about Clod, he was all right, he was. Are you still with us, Clod? You’re deathly pale. You too, Moorcus, you’re greyer; how you do leak – watch the carpet!’

  Bang, bang, the people outside trying to get in and others trying to get out, and I am grabbed now, there’s people in the gallery waking up from all the shock, they have a hold of me and pulling me down, my hands behind my back, my gun on the floor.

  I am guilty, guilty of the charge. I shot Moorcus, I did it.

  Objects are Hiding

  From the voice of a Gathering

  We are John Smith Un-Iremonger. Came long ago from Foulsham, the very first of us, a tiny cog, once a man but shifted horribly by cruel Umbitt, thrown over the wall into London. That was the start of it, so many years ago; how we’ve collected and grown since then. We are all of us here bits and pieces put into clothes, our hearts are spinning things, we are here in the Chamber, we are waiting, we are waiting. The old man has so many things, all his pieces, all birth objects, all that was once people and we are hungry for them, they are what we want to eat, to eat them all and then shall there be no more Iremongers, all shall fall like us but first must eat, must eat. We. We were Emma Jenkins, Sybil Booth, Lester Ritts, Mary Ann Stark, Giles Bickleswaite, Theobald Villiers, Elsie Bullard, Leona Rice, Lloyd Walters, Elliot Murney, Dorothea Towndell, Matthew Stokes, so many and many are our names now lost, now no more but stuff, here we are. We’re sharp and blunt and heavy and light, we are soft and hard. We’re here now inside and we’re coming in, more and more of us from outside this chamber, smashing upon the door. More gathering about to join us. Stuff dropping from the old man, he cannot hold them all any longer, he is ill, the things no longer cling to him. What’s that? That’s a lady’s shoe size ten, name of Cecily Grant, very good then.