Lungdon

by Edward Carey

  One of us dressed as a peer leans forward from his bench – looks such a noble Lord – stretches out his hands and takes up the shoe, then looking left and right he quickly puts it in his mouth, swallows down the piping inside. Grows a bit.

  Bang! Bang! How they cry to come in! The many more of us, police never understood us, let us grow so big, let us, did the Police Inspector Harbin.

  There’s another Gathering, a larger Gathering just outside, it shall break down the door! How it bangs upon it!

  The Last Cry of a Grandmother

  From the Iremonger matriarch, Ommaball of great blood and age

  ‘Stand proud, stand firm, Umbitt. Do not waver. Turn them, turn them all! And let us be rats again and gone!’

  How frail Umbitt is, how frail but still he must do it. Those people! I hate them so, trample on them all, change them every last one and let us dance on their pieces let us break them into crumbs, let us lose and destroy them. But quick, we must be quick about it. We have sealed the chamber and trapped ourselves in. And there lies Clod, in his blood, our lost hope, and the traitor Moorcus grey with death.

  What’s that about my feet? Rats! Rats! Iremongers changed to rats!

  ‘Cowards! Cowards! This is Ommaball Oliff that calls you – be human once more. Stand proud! Be Iremongers!’

  But they are not, the traitors, they are rats.

  Step on them! I shall step on them!

  ‘Piggott!’

  ‘Yes, my lady.’

  ‘Piggott, step on those rats. Step on them.’

  ‘They are Iremongers, my lady.’

  ‘They are not worth my spit. Step on them I say, dance your heavy boots upon them, crush and crush!’

  ‘Yes, my lady.’

  Good, good, she’ll do it, Piggott will, she has spirit.

  ‘My lady, look! Look behind you!’

  But … what?

  ‘Piggott! Piggott! Piggott’s gone rat on me too! Come back Piggott, come back, I shall crush you now.’

  But look, now, look, look at the people on the benches, they’re moving, they’re shifting, they’re sitting closer and closer together and then they are melding into one, yes! They are coming into one, how can that be? Faces fall off! Not faces, masks, masks on the floor! All the clothings are pulled off and it stands tall. All those spinning, shifting things inside.

  ‘A Gathering!’ I scream. ‘A Gathering is within! Umbitt, Umbitt!’

  But Umbitt stands there, his hands dripping, more and more things falling from him. As one Lord stands up from his bench and another and another and, dropping his wig, dissolves into the main Gathering, which grows, it grows and grows!

  I stand back, I cannot go any further, there’s nowhere further to go, rats about me, I do not blame them now. Gathering coming on, closer and closer.

  ‘Do something, Clod, do something, earn your trousers!’

  I am backed into my own marble fireplace, I feel it, I feel it … moving. My own birth object! Being moved from the other side!

  ‘Clod, Clod,’ I cry, ‘do something, this is your granny here, demanding it!’

  ‘Clod! Help!’ Idwid is calling in the darkness, ‘I hear nothing, the Gathering is too loud! My ears are bleeding! Iffull, love!’

  ‘Idwid, love! I come with extra night!’ cries the Iremonger of many lungs. ‘Get up, Clod! Get up and be useful! Oh, look out, Ommaball Oliff! It falls!’

  Such fuss they make, but what about me?

  ‘Help me!’ I cry. ‘Help me, oh my children!’

  It moves, it is falling now.

  ‘Oh! My own birth object!’

  It comes!

  ‘Um—!’

  The Gathering Collects

  From Inspector Harbin, coming in

  The whole Parliament building suffers such terrible damage, Saint Stephen’s tower is terribly broken, the clock quite shattered. Into this ruined palace have we rushed in desperate haste. I have made allies with a giant made of things, a mass, a colossus, which has broken the oaken door of the Lords’ Chamber, and in we come at last. Some of my men besides me, just behind the giant. And there are boys about me again, boys all over, I could not stop them. They came rushing in when the Smith with all his faces of Albert burst through into Parliament. They will not go back, these boys with their lights, they come for their Queen I do think. They have lit our path. That’s it, lads, you’re patriots one and all, shine your lights, shine on, and let us make sense of this terrible darkness, put the darkness out, I say. I wave at the boys, my pistol in my hand, to let them on, so that all may see.

  ‘Light! Light ho! Light, make some sense of the world!’

  It’s then that I see her, then, as more light comes in. The girl with the flaming hair. The one we’ve been seeking, the dangerous one, smashed a policeman, there! Right there! Right before me, the very girl! She must be stopped. You must stop her, Harbin, I tell myself, even if you have to kill her.

  From Lucy Pennant, coming in

  A Gathering, a Gathering larger than any Gathering that I ever saw. Larger yet than the one that nearly pulled down Heap House. But … I don’t know how or why, or what it means, this Gathering seems to be helping, helping the police. I hate these police, these murderers of a little girl called Molly Porter, they shall answer for that one day, I do swear it, but not now, now is not the time, now is Clod’s time and so we do run with a Gathering. It has broken down the doors, what a great crash as they slam to the ground and now the Gathering pours in afterwards, it laps and bursts against the walls of the chamber within. And me and the link boys, we follow after, with our lights, come to see what’s what, as all those broken bits of Gathering do gather themselves up again, do try to form one big, heaving mass.

  Where? Where is he?

  ‘Clod. Clod? CLOD!’

  I can’t see him, I can barely see anything. And all the noise is the rushing and clattering of the Gathering as it swerves around and tries to come together, smashing into object and person alike.

  ‘Some light, light now!’ a policeman calls.

  The boys are about, I just see them small pools of white, but then as soon as they’re lit they’re out again in a moment and I can just hear a strange hissing sound, like gas coming out of a pipe, extinguishing the lights. Something else is in here.

  ‘Clod, Clod, where are you?’

  The hissing sound, the blackness spreading everywhere, I feel it on my face, I feel it as I breathe in, I feel it coming down inside me.

  ‘Yes, yes, Ifful love, blot them out.’ A man’s voice in the dark – that’s Idwid Iremonger, I know him.

  There are other people around, there are many others in all the darkness, mostly they are keeping quiet I think because of the Gathering hammering around them, they are seeking some shelter, they are trying to hide. I hear people crying, calling out. There’s a woman’s voice in the distance, I hear it muttering the same sentence over and over, ‘Calm as a clam, calm as a clam.’

  The Gathering has stopped now, it’s all gone very quiet. Nobody moves. There is something very close to me, something huge, clicking and creaking. It is the Gathering. The new Gathering, as tall as the chamber itself, it is right beside me. I hear the noises of it, small instruments sounding inside it, wind through tubes, it’s clicking to itself, the hollow tin rumblings of its many stomachs. It is feeling about with its hands made of many different fingers of metal, porcelain, rubber, glass, wood, cloth, stone, it’s feeling about on the floor, it’s searching, it’s trying to find something.

  It’s feeding.

  I hear it, it’s looking for food. It’s eating, it’s stuffing things into its many mouths, this great beast of objects, it’s picking things from the floor.

  From the voice of the Gathering

  So big are we! Such size! Come together! More, more yet! Here they are and here and here, all these bits fallen all over the floor, all these that were Members of Parliament and Peers of the Realm, how good they taste, but most of all the best morsels are still wi
th the old man. We want to eat those Iremonger pieces, eat them all, every last one and then there’ll be no Iremonger left to bully and to break us. How they caught us and trapped us and kept us prisoner, no more ever again, we’ll eat every last Iremonger thing and then they shall all tumble, one and all. Here, here’s a thing on the floor, something else the old man has dropped, he can’t keep hold of things now, how he litters! What a thing is this? Want it, do we want it? It’s a something called Geraldine Whitehead, nose-hair pincers. What a thing, we shall eat it!

  The Last Dance of Idwid Iremonger

  From Idwid Iremonger

  ‘Geraldine? Geraldine!’ I, Idwid, cry, my ears, a cram of voices, but I heard her, my Geraldine calling out. No! No! I had a Geraldine!

  ‘Idwid, my darling lugs! Why do you cry so?’

  ‘Oh Ifful, Ifful, it has eaten my Geraldine, oh, oh!’

  ‘Oh Idwid, my heart! Come to me, come to me.’

  ‘I’ll rat to you, Ifful, I’ll turn rat and run to you, keep me, keep me safe!’

  I turn and slip and unfold, and shrink skeletons until I am rat once more, and now must to my Ifful. But I cannot see, and all the noise echoes inside my hairy ears. Where to go, where to go?

  From the Gathering

  There’s a rat running and running in circles, between our hundred feet … indeed what feet we have – great boots, iron clods, wooden feet, women’s shoes, children’s, old people’s slippers, high-top button boots, Oxfords, Cromwells, sandals, work slippers of Berlin wool, brogues, ankle boots, beaded, punch-worked, flat-sole shoes, kid leather, straight-soled, square-nosed, quarter-tipped, all footwear from so many here and there, shifting in the darkness, and between all our many feet runs a blind rat in and out of us, we shall stamp on it, we shall stamp!

  Stamp!

  Stamp!

  From Lucy

  The whole Chamber is reverberating, shaking, smashing, as the Gathering tries to squash something under its many feet, and still I cannot see Clod, where are the link boys and their light? Each time a flame is lit up the same hissing comes again and more darkness descends.

  Stamp!

  Stamp!

  Please, please stop, it shall break through the floor in a moment.

  Stamp!

  Squeal!

  The stamping has stopped now.

  From Ifful Iremonger, widow

  ‘Idwid, love, Idwid? IDWID!’

  So dark, it will always be dark now. I shall darken the world and keep it dark, I’ll put out all lights, I shall end every lamp in this city, I shall swallow up all matchsticks, candlesticks, tallows, flints. There’ll never come any more warmth; now and forever all is cold and loveless.

  They put out my sun when Idwid died. And now I shall hiss and hiss.

  I’ll so darken any day away.

  Lungdon shall never see light again.

  What?

  What’s that?

  Now some other boy with his little lantern dripping weak heat, no, no, it’s something else, something bigger, can’t see to put it down quite, though I vomit and vomit and out comes black, still some more lighting does come.

  What is that which defies me, what is that?

  Is it?

  Can it be?

  Rippit?

  Fire? Fire!

  I can’t put it out!

  I spit at it and it spits back.

  I’m light! My hair! I AM SO BRIGHT!

  From the Gathering

  Dead rat. Dead blind rat. Now what, what now?

  Where’s the old man? Where is he, there’s good pickings with him.

  Feel him, feel for him, touch him and rip him with all your thousand, thousand scrapers. Old man, old man, we come!

  Umbitt, running out

  Here I hide, Umbitt, that once was great, here now in my sad moment, my empire forgot, my family dispersed and ruined, my own wife, loving Ommaball, crushed to death by her own marble mantelpiece. How big the Gathering is, so strong, so strong. And I am old and ill, the engine of my body trembles now and shudders. This, can even this be my end?

  I was Iremonger.

  I was.

  It comes, the Great Gathering, it smashes in its search, it lifts benches, it feels underneath, it whirls and screeches, the noise, the hunting noise it makes, how it cuts into me. It is looking for me, I know it is. What have I left? Only me now, only me and my own cuspidor given to me by my own loving father.

  It’s stopped now, the beast has, it’s silent, not a clink from it, not the slightest creak, I must too keep very still, not move, not an inch, it’s ready to pounce, I do feel it.

  ‘Calm as a clam, calm as a clam.’

  That voice again, a woman in distress. Not just any woman, the Queen herself. That’s it, that’s it, do go to her.

  ‘Clam.’

  ‘Clam.’

  My leathers, dear leathers, moving forward.

  ‘Clam!’

  ‘Clam?’

  ‘CLAM!’

  It’s found them, the Gathering, it’s killing the leathers, ripping them open, the stench of the rubbish comes out from their leather bodies, but it does not eat them, it merely rips open, ruins and moves on.

  ‘Clod? Clod?’ A young voice, female.

  That’s the horrible red-haired child, the scum from Foulsham, I made her into a clay button once before and I shall do it readily again. I had her thrown out into the heaps by that same dead child that lies there, shot by his own birth object. Oh this is the end of days. But that child I hate, the red-haired one; without her the Iremongers should have stayed true, without her Clod should have smashed all; it is her doing. Now I think, now I shall clay button her once more, I do think I shall. It should be my pleasure, but how, how to do it without giving my hiding away?

  Smoke. Smoke!

  Reports of a Fire

  From Inspector Harbin

  Smoke everywhere now! There’s fire, there’s fire!

  ‘Fire!’ I cry. ‘Fire! Great fire in the House!’

  From Tommy Cronin, Mill Bank Link Boy, fleeing Parliament

  Church candles don’t burn bright enough, but that’s no matter, there’s enough fire all around now to make everything seen. However shall we get out of this? However did it start? I seen policemen and soldiers suddenly call out, tug off their helmets, their hair all in flames, running out in a panic, and the walls suddenly whoosh with fire and we must retreat, we must fall back and even as we run we’re being set light to, our hair does fire up like any match! We go back, all fall back whilst we can!

  From ill-faced Georgie, Mill Bank Link Boy, outside Parliament

  I seen such a strangeness, such a queer fellow. Who is that man, whoever is he? He’s so squat and flat, like something very heavy has sat on him. Whatever is he doing? Why, he’s dancing, he’s running around and around, this strange man on Speaker’s Green, dancing around a little dance to himself and as he dances he whips himself up into a frenzy and fire, somehow, fire comes out of windows!

  Anyone comes close to him suddenly bursts into flame!

  I think he means to burn all London down and destroy all things, all people, and only be ashes left.

  From Rippit, dancing upon Speaker’s Green

  RIPPIT! RIPPIT! RIPPIT!

  A Button, a Sovereign

  From Lucy

  There’s some light now, coming through thick smoke, light from outside, flames through the window, the whole Parliament surrounded by the flaming, and heat coming on, pressing on. But in the dancing light how the Great Gathering does pull itself up, does seem to gasp, to stretch away from the floor to shoot upwards in many strands and columns to try to flee from the fire, it is hammering now, in so many thick knots of fists, hammering upon the roof, trying to burst through.

  But there is new light, light all around, there – and there he is! Clod lying on the floor and blood all about him.

  ‘Clod? Clod! Clod!’

  From Clod on the floor

  Clod, here I am, Clod. So many voices, so ma
ny names, they do crush down on me so, I cannot make sense of them all, just a roaring, a great roaring. I am going now, falling out, oh what an ending … there shall be no more Iremongers now after all, never and never, no home, we’re breathing out now, slow and slower.

  Moorcus, it would have to have been Moorcus all along.

  ‘Eleanor Cranwell.’

  Bye then, Eleanor, dropped on the ground. Thank you. I close my eyes and fall asleep.

  Someone’s shaking me. Someone’s tugging at me.

  Leave off, shan’t you, I’m slipping away.

  Still shaking me, grabbing at me.

  Go away, I’m dead.

  Yet still I am bothered, not left alone to die, to drift off in Aunt Ifful’s dirty inkness. Leave alone. Just leave alone.

  But whoever it is, keeps heaving at me, pulling me back.

  Go away, go away, I’m sleeping.

  Still I am shook so.

  Leave off, shall you, I’m dead.

  But the great bully won’t go, but keeps shaking and prodding at me, and I seem to hear some distant words above the roaring, someone’s calling my name. Let them, let them, this knocking shall not be answered. The door is closed, and won’t be opened again. Give in, shan’t you, give a tired chap his little peace. Is it so much to ask?

  There now, good. Whoever it is has stopped.

  There now, at last, my own corner of quiet.

  I am alone. There now, there, old Clod, off you go.

  It doesn’t hurt.

  From Lucy

  ‘Clod, Clod you bloody dare!’ I shake him and shake him and he won’t wake. Wake, wake Clod, oh Clod you bloody fool. I can’t have it, I can’t have it. ‘Clod! Damn you! Breathe! Can’t you?’

  He is so still. I can see no movement, none at all.

  ‘Oh Clod! Please, please.’

  Not a thing.

  ‘Oh Clod, what am I to do after all?’ There’s a Gathering as great as a mountain, a heap on its own, taking up full half a room, and a Queen in the corner with tears down her face and men all around her in suits and red dresses, all sweating and dishevelled. That’s about the picture of it. There’s some few policemen left, panic all over them, stopped and useless in their terror. There’s your miserable grandfather hiding behind the benches, watching us, looking up at the thing and then down to us. There are rats all about, running and screeching, and dirt and bits in piles here and there, and here am I, your own bloody Lucy, all hemmed in. That’s about the size of it. Well then, what’s to be done? And you lying there on the floor, all dead on me.