Observatory Mansions: A Novel

by Edward Carey

A child’s toy, rescued from the park’s floor, found a home in my pocket. A small metal Concorde aeroplane, with teeth marks around its cockpit, flaking off the paint, with one of its plastic wheels missing. Where would it fly to? Where was the hangar? There was a little space, more than enough to land in (never to take off again). A plot. Labelled lot number nine hundred and eighty-six.

  I didn’t go picking up every abandoned object, that has to be clear. Requirements must be met. The teeth marks around the cockpit, the missing wheel had given the object some history. Showed that it was loved. Marked it out as relevant.

  So I rushed across the park, dodged the traffic and returned to the building signed:

  OBSERVATORY MANSIONS

  Spacious Apartments of Quality Design

  Stepping into Observatory Mansions, cramped apartments of inferior design, I met a person.

  A sphincter muscle named Porter.

  The man with many keys. The stoic. The Porter, busy about his cleaning business, busy trying to kill all dust, busy breaking his heart. He saw me but made no greeting. Not even a hiss. As I passed him he turned his back to me, walked out to where I came in and re-entered the building, crawling forward with his dustpan and brush, rubbing out my footsteps. The keys jangled. The teeth of his brush scrubbed the grey, faded carpet that was once blue. The dirt and dust of the city had added its own colour, but first the Porter scrubbed out the blue, cleaned it away, swept it up. In this manner he tidied away all colours. He broke everything down to a ubiquitous grey. He would have preferred white. But white was not possible. White does not last. White, he wondered – probably – are you a myth?

  I held the colour white in my hands, my gloves, but the Porter thought: Whiteness has gone from the city. He thought, it packed its bags years ago, leaving behind one, sad, orphaned boy, orphaned by cleanliness, who climbed the stairs every day, Sisyphus like, with his dustpan and brush, leaving a trail of only slightly cleaner carpet behind him, like the antithesis of a snail. Be not like the slimy snail and leave behind a litter trail – those were the first words he said to me.

  But for a long time I had not heard the Porter speak – the last time he broke out of his word-fast was during his attempt to expel Twenty from twenty. Two years before. She paid no rent. She bit him.

  The Porter lived below us. In the centre of the dirt, in the basement. Amidst the dust and dirt was an oasis, amidst the dust and dirt was a three-roomed cage of undiluted tidiness. I saw it once. I came down to inform him that the Mansions had again been burgled. I came to inform him that this time the burglars had not got so very far. As far as the entrance hall, as far as the cupboard in the entrance hall. The cleaning cupboard where the vacuum cleaner was kept. It’s gone, I said. Stolen. No one can afford to replace it, I said. With a smile.

  The Porter used to help me clean Father once a week. But once, the last time, while we were lifting Father from his red leather chair on to a neighbouring pine chair, a single drop of spittle fell from Father’s mouth and found temporary lodging on the Porter’s right cheek. The Porter dropped Father. Father fell on the floor. The Porter scrubbed his cheek. He never cleaned Father again. He never vacuumed again. I took the vacuum cleaner. No fingerprints were to be found on it. I wore gloves. White cotton gloves.

  The vacuum cleaner has gone – I said. Stolen – I said. Translation: Your best friend … is deceased (lot 802). And then, in that moment of vulnerability, I saw what no one else had ever seen before: the Porter’s flat. As the Porter rushed up to the entrance hall, leaving his flat door open, I went inside and found …

  The three-roomed cage of undiluted tidiness that had declared enforced exile on cockroaches, slugs, flies, spiders, moths, silverfish, ants, bats, mice, rats and intimate ephemera. Though, under the bed, away from light and vision, was a trunk. The trunk was secured by four latches and two large padlocks. What was entombed inside it? I made a guess: nonregulation togs, untyped dispatches, extra-curricular manuals and photographic portraits – in short, collections from an average human life. Of the Porter before he became a porter, of a man who once had a name before he became a job. The trunk had a dual purpose: first for suffocating fragments of biography, the second for providing extra firmness to the already hard mattress above.

  There was a bathroom. I do not suppose the bath had ever been used. That is not to say that the Porter did not ever wash himself. The clue is in the shower head that leered authoritatively down at the hot and cold taps as if they were filthy children. The bath, I imagine, was considered by the Porter an instrument of sloppiness and relaxation. Washing of a vigorous nature could never be accomplished in such a construction. In a bath one lies in one’s own dirt. The shower, on the other hand, positively rips grime off and sends it promptly through the plughole into oblivion.

  Directly above the lavatory tank was, curiously, a mirror where the Porter must have watched his face while he urinated, or perhaps porters call the action micturition. Through the mirror the Porter saw his face. And in that face he must have seen a time before porterdom, he must have seen a childhood, perhaps toys. Perhaps even some happiness. On that face were marks. Marks that stepped over each other. Marks all over. Pinpricks of imperfection.

  The Porter had ginger freckles.

  They obscured his face completely. Untidy groups distorted the precision of his nose, his cheekbones, his eyelids. He had been scrubbing for over fifty years and still they hadn’t come off. They made him look childish. It was as if his body insisted on retaining the semblance of a child until he stopped being a porter and became one final, happy day a person. A porterless person. A person person.

  Porter was his name: porter, beside being the name given to gatekeepers or doorkeepers or caretakers, is also the title of the pyloric opening in the stomach. The pylorus is terminated by the porter, a strong sphincter muscle, which connects the stomach to the duodenum, safely allowing the journey of food to progress down the alimentary canal. This ring of muscle decides when to allow the passage of food to progress or when to constrict its access completely. A condition known as pyloric stenosis occurs when the muscle tightens and refuses to allow anything to pass. This causes repeated vomiting, sometimes of food eaten twenty-four hours previously, and generates alkalosis – when there is too great a quantity of alkalines in the body. If this muscle refuses to relax surgery, known as a pyloromyotomy, is necessary to unbolt the gate by force.

  The Porter, muscle not man, may refuse to open, thereby stopping the breakdown, expulsion and digestion of food, and hold the entire body in check to calamitous outcomes.

  The Porter, man not muscle, oversaw the expulsion of dirt that lay in the body of Observatory Mansions. We left our full dustbin bags outside our flat doors every night, the Porter removed them every morning. And the Porter expelled, with the exception of Twenty, any intruders who happened upon Observatory Mansions, particularly the adolescent boys who sometimes crept through the broken windows of the ground-floor flats to smoke cigarettes, drink cans of beer and examine magazines filled with naked women.

  If pyloric stenosis occurred, if the Porter ceased to clean, we would drown in dirt and rubbish.

  On my single visit to the Porter’s flat I gave myself a souvenir. The Porter’s duplicate uniform was hanging tidily, spotlessly in the Porter’s wardrobe. I took for myself a single brass button (lot 803). A while after taking this button the Porter confused me. I always saw him immaculately dressed in his uniform without a button missing. At first I presumed that he only wore one uniform. Then I presumed that he purchased a replacement button. Finally, I understood. Three buttons down, the thread was always a slightly different colour. I imagined the Porter settling himself down when the time came to change uniforms, with a needle and thread, transferring a single brass button from uniform jacket to uniform jacket.

  On that first day the new resident spent with us, the Porter, having finished removing proof of my entrance, went in search of other dirt. I descended to the cellar.

  The jou
rney to meaning.

  Down below where the carpet stopped, where nothing was on display for the residents and was out-of-bounds for all but the Porter, the dust lay heavily. It had blunted every corner and, resting on foundations built by spiders’ webs, it had created phantom ceilings and phantom walls. The cellar was the length and width of the floors above it, it had a vaulted brick ceiling, the same ribbed pattern all over it, with plain columns at every segment, like roots to an enormous tree. These multitudes of columns that supported the house were ideal to hide behind. Ideal, I remembered from my childhood, for tying fishing line around at ankle height and watching servants trip over. And there was also a tunnel which began in the cellar and ran all the way to the nearest church, some half mile away. This tunnel was all that remained of the sixteenth-century manor house that had burnt down.

  This is where I went. This is what I was searching for. Past the Porter’s flat, past the boiler rooms, past the sheets of plasterboards and rolls of blue and white striped wallpaper (remnants of the conversion of Tearsham Park to Observatory Mansions) was a door. I can see it now and as I see it I become vaguely tearful. A door marked DANGER – ENTRANCE FORBIDDEN. My door. Sealed with a heavy padlock to which I alone kept the key.

  Stretching out across the long passageway that led to the church, kept in existence by numerous wooden beams which supported the roof and walls, with just enough space remaining to provide a narrow walkway, were the nine hundred and eighty-five objects of my exhibition.

  It was possible to understand my history from this exhibition. Like layers in a rock face, the years and stages of my life were encoded there. The exhibition also revealed the life of the city, changes in taste, in fortune, in its people.

  Each exhibit was placed inside a polythene bag and sealed with tape to keep away damage from condensation. At the foot of each exhibit was a small sign written on cardboard in standard biro black: the exhibit’s number.

  I, the exhibition’s owner, archivist, attendant and public, wandered down the fringe enumerating: One, two, three … There they all were, all swaddled in polythene, all the dears, many years’ work. All my own.

  I began the collection, my pride and joy, way back when at fourteen years of age I found a till receipt that had been exhaled by the wind on to the driveway of Observatory Mansions, a time ago when the house was called Tearsham Park. I was outside, ordered under the sky by my mother for the purpose of taking some physical exercise. My white, lace-up footwear, designed for sportsmen (a fraternity that I have never belonged to), was enjoying the pursuit of kicking a pebble up and down, forwards and back. I missed the object, scarred the earth and brought the till receipt accidentally to the surface. Lot number one, by the entrance:

  Fine Quality Foods

  Thank you for your custom

  This seemingly dull piece of flotsam ensnared my inquisitiveness. I rescued the tear of paper. Who was at the shop? What did the person buy? Where did the person live? Male or female? Married or single? Ugly or pretty? Young or dying? Will I ever know you? All the questions were unanswerable, so I conceived people from my mind to fit the receipt. The receipt was wrapped in cling film and hidden under my bed and bothered daily for many a week and month until it was creased all over and became extremely fragile.

  Other articles supplanted the love I felt for the first. New histories were created. At first I collected unimpressive objects: empty boxes, plastic bags, empty bottles and cans, used envelopes, pencil stubs – in short, objects that had been rejected, that had either been spent or disregarded, objects that other people might have termed collectively rubbish. Then one day I set out a new rule. I bought a hard-bound notebook, hereafter called the exhibition catalogue, and wrote on its first page: IT IS REQUIRED OF ALL EXHIBITS, FROM NOW ON, THAT THEY ARE TO BE EXHIBITED SOLELY FOR THE REASON THAT THEY ARE LOVED; THAT THEIR FORMER OWNER PRIZED THEM ABOVE HIS OR HER OTHER POSSESSIONS, THAT THEY ARE ORIGINALS, THAT THEY ARE IRREPLACEABLE.

  In time the collection grew too abundant to keepin my bedroom and was relocated piece by piece to the cellar, a three-month programme of exodus. At first they were hidden in the wine cellar, which like many parts of the estate was out of bounds for children; this parental warning ensured that these forbidden corners quickly became my favourite hiding places.

  Time walked on.

  Then Francis Orme, not one day out of many, but not unsuddenly, was child no more. Then Francis Orme, white gloved, was declared past child age.

  Time walked on.

  Then it was announced that the park was changing its name to Observatory Mansions and building work began. The wine cellar was to be transformed into a basement flat. A three-roomed cage hidden amongst the dust and dirt.

  The fat and thin Cavalier.

  I had been told ghost stories of the corpulent courtly gentleman (also an Orme, also called Francis – every first-born male Orme was named Francis – though this Francis Orme was called Sir Francis Orme) who was too large to escape down the cellar passageway to the sanctuary of the church, which, by fault of design, narrowed as it progressed. I had been told how the Cavalier became stuck down there in the dark, wedged himself in so perfectly that he could neither advance nor retreat. And in the miserable darkness, his ribs crushed, unable to turn around, bleeding at head and broken at fingers, he died. His skeleton was discovered decades later collapsed on the floor, with his once tidy uniform rotting around him. Only after death had the Cavalier thinned enough to be set free. This legend had been told to my child self with the correct degree of drama and suspense that I swallowed it utterly and vowed never to wander along the church passageway where I would surely be trapped against a circle of wall and be unable to wriggle free. Nobody, I was told, would ever come looking for me if I got chocked up there, for that is where the Cavalier lives, and no one wants to meet the fat and thin Cavalier.

  So, armed with burning candle and box of matches, lest I should shiver the flame out, I moved the exhibition once more to that safest of places where my parents wouldn’t come searching if I screamed out at eighty decibels. No one must discover you. Never. Never, ever. It was such a perfect hiding place, even the Porter did not come to this part of the cellar. Too much dirt. Of course, I had to protect my gloves down there. Small concession. Whenever I went to the cellar I wore my father’s brown leather gloves over my white cotton ones. And for nineteen years I kept the exhibition a secret there. Until the new resident came.

  The Object.

  One object was always moving. This was my most precious possession. It was the inspiration for which the exhibition kept multiplying. It was the most delicate, intricate and clever object that I had ever known, the object above all other objects, which was always moved to the end of the exhibition. It must always seem to be the exhibition’s newest item, never supplanted in love by any other exhibit. It was the exhibition’s greatest glory and was called simply, with love and awe, The Object.

  And next to that sacred object I placed so tenderly object number nine hundred and eighty-six. A scratched toy Concorde. I did not need to conceive a history for this object. I had viewed enough by seeing the child’s tears as the plane and child parted company.

  As I concentrated I licked my bottom lip, as had been my habit for a long time when gripped with exhibition passion. And so, after a while, my lower lip became swollen.

  I spent an hour amongst my friends, walking up and down the narrow corridor, seeing that they were all safe, talking to them, sharing with them. Eventually, I returned, with regret, to the world above.

  On reaching the top of the stairs that led to the entrance hall, I heard a voice. The voice that belonged to the bespectacled blur I have already mentioned. The blur was now in focus. The voice said:

  What’s down there?

  It said:

  What’s down there?

  II

  MEETINGS

  Our first conversation.

  What’s down there?

  I was looking into the pale face of the n
ew resident. It was a round face with a tight chin, delicate, well-formed ears and a small nose which pointed slightly upwards. She had two freckles, neither big – both about the size of a pin head – one on the left cheek, the other on the tip of the nose. She had clean black hair, which had permission to grow to just above the nape of the neck, and thick black eyebrows. There was nothing else of immediate significance, save the two objects worn by her face. The first was a cigarette; the second, a pair of round, steel-rimmed spectacles, their powerful lenses magnifying the eyes behind them. The eyes, and this was difficult not to notice, were green and seemed extremely sore, somehow infected. Combining all the features together (though they may perhaps have been separately attractive) resulted in a slightly sickly, unenviable portrait. The new resident was not pretty.

  What’s down there?

  The new resident stood a little over five feet tall, she wore a plain, dark blue dress and flat-soled, black, lace-up shoes. Her hands were thin and bony. The right hand had a mole between the knuckles of its forefinger and thumb. Both hands were ugly, both were callused.

  What’s down there?

  Nothing.

  Is it the cellar?

  What are you doing here?

  Sorry. My name is—

  Don’t tell me your name. I’ve no need of it.

  Then what’s your name?

  You’ve no need of it. I shan’t tell you.

  Do you live here?

  I do. Get out.

  Good. Let me explain, I’m new. I live in flat eighteen.

  Why?

  It’s my home, I’ve bought it.

  Why?

  I liked it.

  What about it?

  I wanted to live in this part of the city.

  Why?

  That’s my business.

  When are you leaving?

  I’m not leaving.

  I want you out by the end of the week.