Observatory Mansions: A Novel

by Edward Carey

  White gloves, a sea of white gloves, white gloves covered every bit of the floor of flat six of Observatory Mansions. I began to carefully pick the gloves up, petrified that I might step on one. I placed the gloves on surfaces higher than the floor, poor servants, poor skins. In Mother’s bedroom the night light’s rabbit was sheathed by a white glove. Mother’s head lay on a pillow stuffed with white gloves, on Mother’s chair sat a pair of Y-fronts filled with white gloves. In the bathroom there were white gloves taking a bath, there were discharged gloves in the lavatory bowl. Gloves had been tied on to the hot and cold taps of both the bath and the basin and were full of water; bloated hands, looking more like cows’ dugs than sensitive touchers. In the kitchen part of the largest room of flat six there were cold gloves in the refrigerator, there were frozen gloves in the deepfreeze, there were gloves boiling in water on the top of the cooker, there were burnt gloves inside the cooker. In the dining room section of the largest room of flat six, the dining table had been laid and on a plate in the centre of the table was an evil salad consisting only of white gloves sprinkled with olive oil, under the lid of a tureen there was white-glove soup, under the lid of a silver salver was a brace of white gloves with whole onions stuffed inside them.

  In the sitting room section of the largest room of flat sat Father: Father with gloves on his ears and fingerless gloves six on his hands and with fingers, that formerly belonged to the white gloves on his hands, placed on the toes of his feet. In my bedroom there were three empty glove diary boxes. On my desk there was a single glove. The glove was positioned with a pen in such a way that it looked as if the glove had been writing. At the tip of the pen was a piece of paper. On the paper was written the following:

  PLEASE RETURN:

  1. A mahogany ruler, known as Chiron.

  2. A passport photograph of Alec Magnitt, with declarations of love written on its reverse.

  3. A dog collar, with a name tag inscribed MAX.

  4. A pair of round, steel-rimmed glasses, containing powerful lenses.

  THANK YOU.

  We were deep within the Time of the Four Objects.

  On late night visitors.

  I had rescued my gloves, some were already back in the glove diary boxes, others were drying in the bathroom. I was busy at work sewing the fingers back on to the white gloves that my father had been wearing on his hands and toes, when the door to flat six was opened. The door was not knocked on, there was no please can I come in. It was unlocked and opened and people came into flat six without the word please being used once. And they didn’t stop there, they came straight into my bedroom.

  My room had never been so populated before. There stood Higg, Bugg, Twenty, and behind them the Porter holding the elbow of Anna Tap. How tiny Anna Tap’s eyes looked without glasses. Higg, I noted to my disgust, was wearing some of my white cotton gloves on her person. She had put on a bra and had stuffed the bra with gloves, compensating by use of my white cotton friends for her tiny breasts. There were fingertips poking out from the cups of her bra. My gloves were feeling Miss Higg’s breasts.

  The Porter spoke first:

  I have no cause for real complaint myself. I am here as Miss Tap’s guide, she cannot see.

  Get out.

  They want various items which they believe you have borrowed, Francis Orme.

  No. You’ve searched my home already and you haven’t found them. Doesn’t that make it obvious that I don’t have them, that I am entirely innocent and therefore completely wronged?

  You won’t return the items then?

  If I had them, I would not.

  You don’t have them?

  Who moved my gloves? Why don’t you ask that? It’ll take me weeks to re-catalogue the glove diary. And even then it’ll be incomplete. It’s a far more serious crime. Who was it? Who?

  Bugg giggled.

  Higg giggled.

  The Porter hissed (a giggle-like hiss).

  Claire Higg began to moan something about milk bottles, Twenty began to bark, Peter Bugg to remember, aloud this time, his father, and Anna Tap to rub her, blind, eyes.

  You will tell us, you will. Yes, you will.

  It was the Porter who said those words, then he instructed Bugg, crying and sweating and smelling of a hundred smells, to hold me down in my chair, while he took one of my white gloved hands and, grasping it by the wrist, held it palm upwards. Claire Higg revealed a fountain pen, recognized as belonging to Peter Bugg, and holding the nib a millimetre from the perfect white cotton of my trapped hand, uttered the monosyllable:

  Speak.

  I would, in fact, have spoken freely, perhaps even betrayed my exhibition at that moment had it not been for Twenty, who by causing me terrible pain actually saved me. Twenty followed Higg’s speak with a sharp doggish howl, which so shocked Miss Higg that her hand jogged, causing ink to spill on my white cotton hand.

  What a loss! What a loss! Far superior to the loss of a thousand, thousand rulers or spectacles or passport photographs or dog collars. I felt more pain than any cut could give: there was ink on my gloves!

  I showed Claire Higg and Peter Bugg, the Porter, Anna Tap and Twenty too.

  Look what you’ve done. This is bad, this is bad! This is so, so bad!

  I sat cross-legged on the floor with my hands resting, trembling on my knees. They were quivering as if they had been hideously burnt. I repeatedly closed my eyes and then opened them hoping, in vain, that in a magical second when I was not looking the ink would mysteriously vanish and my glove would return to its former beauty.

  For some time I sat there, rocking slightly backwards and forwards, nodding my head a little, humming quietly, comforting myself, whilst they limply, the murderers, stood, without a cent of pride, profoundly ashamed of themselves around me.

  I felt ill.

  My heart shrieked inside me, each time I closed my eyes I was sure I was going to faint. And my heart kept bashing against my ribcage, desperate to get out.

  I feel sick. I can’t calm down.

  I tried listing the sacred paper entitled the Law of White Gloves, but I couldn’t concentrate. I stood up. I had to keep moving. I walked around Twenty, around Claire Higg and Peter Bugg, around the Porter and Anna Tap. I couldn’t keep still and all the while my heart thrashed inside me, begging to be free.

  My heart wouldn’t slow down.

  I can’t slow down. I can’t slow my heart down. Why won’t it slow down, why won’t it slow down? What can I do to make it slow down? Am I going to die, is this what dying feels like?

  Calm down, Francis Orme.

  I CAN’T!

  Anna Tap tried to calm me.

  Sit down, Francis.

  I have to keep moving.

  No, you don’t, sit down and you’ll feel better. That’s it. Take deep breaths.

  I can’t calm down!

  Deep breaths.

  My heart!

  Count. Slowly.

  123456789101112 …

  Slower.

  1, 2, 3, 4 … I can’t!

  Yes, you can.

  What’s happening to me?

  It’s nothing. It’ll be gone soon. Sssh.

  Help me!

  Try lying down. Better?

  I can’t.

  You can.

  Better?

  A little.

  Deep breaths.

  I feel faint.

  No you don’t, you feel sleepy. Close your eyes. Deep breaths.

  I feel sleepy.

  Close your eyes.

  My heart!

  Close your eyes, breathe slowly.

  Eventually, I fell asleep.

  When I woke up they had all gone.

  Later that night (when I was wearing a new pair of gloves) I heard a knock at our door and smelt Bugg outside.

  Francis, I know what you’ve done is very wrong. But I will forgive you my part of the wrong if you would just let me talk to you for a little while. Everyone’s asleep and I must have someone to talk to. I can�
��t stop thinking, I can’t lose sight of the boy … He’s been smiling at me for a few days, but tonight he has begun to laugh. Francis, Alexander Mead’s come back to haunt me. Let me in. I don’t have a key to this lock. The Porter’s got it and he’s asleep. Let me in, don’t make me be alone tonight.

  I did not reply. Peter Bugg knocked a few more times, begged a little more (let him beg, that unforgiven Bugg) and then, weeping and smelling and sweating too, he went back to Alexander Mead.

  The altarpiece of Tearsham Church.

  The next day I was not visited. I spent the morning recovering a few more of my abused gloves. During the afternoon I heard the Porter and Anna Tap descend the stairs and listened to the following part of a conversation:

  To the eye hospital?

  No, to the church.

  I ran down to my exhibition, all the way to the narrowest end of that tunnel and out again the other side. I pushed the stone cover of the false tomb away, wearing Father’s old leather gloves over my white ones. I replaced the cover and stood up, a little out of breath, in Tearsham Church, in the private chapel of the Orme family, separated from the rest of the church by tall bars with spikes on their ends and by a lock, which only I and the priest had keys for.

  The church had become increasingly neglected for some time. Few people visited it now, I myself had not visited it for some months. The priest had four other churches to look after and considered the parish that was once called Tearsham his most insignificant. Services had not been held there for several years and the church had begun its slow deterioration. Some of the stained-glass windows had been smashed and were boarded up, but pigeons still managed to get in, through the bell tower perhaps, and once in, defecating everywhere, they were unable to find their way out. They died in corners, their corpses encouraging rats. Rubbish from the city had found its way inside: sweet wrappers, rusting cans, yellowing newspapers. All the, once numerous, church paintings and tapestries from the various side chapels, together with the altar, candlesticks, chalice and even the church bells, had been removed long ago. Now all that was left behind were the dust-covered pews, the broken, ancient pump organ and the church’s bulky and decayed, ugly altarpiece.

  The altarpiece consisted of eight slightly larger-than-life-size wooden figures. One Madonna. One Child. Six saints. The Madonna sat on a throne with the Christ Child in her lap and three saints either side of her. These wooden people had been dressed like dolls, they were wearing clothes: real clothes that were now in a state of advanced disintegration, moth-eaten and faded, and which had in places fallen off the bodies and collected in strange ugly piles beneath them on the church’s stone floor. The wooden arms, hands and faces of these heroes of old were once painted in flesh tints. Much of the paint, though, had begun to peel off, giving the impression that the martyrs were being martyred again, flayed alive in their various poses of beatitude. Many of the saints once had real human hair attached to their skulls, though much of it had been lost over time and the Virgin Mary looked among them particularly bald. The saints from right to left were as follows: Saint Catherine with a wheel, the instrument of her martyrdom; Saint Thomas Aquinas, clutching a book, the Summa theologicae; Saint Stephen Protomartyr, who had been stoned to death, holding large sharp stones; Saint Peter in the pope’s triple crowned mitre, holding a pair of keys; Francis, that wooden Francis, not me, had his hands clasped together and looked towards the sky, probably hallucinating some sparrow or chaffinch. Saint Francis had no objects, he despised possessions. This malnourished man had great blisters in the centre of his hands and feet – his stigmata (whenever I visited the church, after my glove days had begun, I longed to place a pair of white gloves over Francis’s scarred hands). And finally there was Saint Lucy who held a wooden plate on which were glued a pair of wooden eyes. Only Lucy among this group was in remotely good condition. She alone had a full head of hair running down her back; she alone had convincing, uncracked flesh; she alone was fully dressed and her clothes, extraordinarily, had retained their colours and even appeared clean and new. Anyone unfamiliar with the church, entering it for the first time, might initially assume that Lucy was a real person dressed in some bizarre costume. But when she didn’t move they would become suspicious, they would walk up to her and then they would see her neighbours. Her rotten, disfigured neighbours, with such severe woodworm that it resembled leprosy and with all their faded and filthy clothes, would look like monochromatic ghosts.

  The altarpiece was brought by my great-grandfather, a very different Francis Orme. He came across the wooden altarpiece (so runs the story in a volume of the History of the Ormes) when he was about his travels. With a considerable amount of difficulty, and an even more considerable amount of funds, he managed to purchase it on condition that it always be situated on Holy ground. My great-grandfather gave it to Tearsham Church. The Virgin, not bald then I presume, held, it is believed, an extraordinary resemblance to his dead wife. He used to sit, not, I imagine, thinking heavenly thoughts, in front of the wooden mother of God, confusing her with the mother of his son, yet another Francis Orme. One day my ancestor was found sitting naked on the Virgin Mother, and the Virgin Mother’s son was found on the floor of Tearsham Church, having been forcibly removed: my ancestor was attempting to make love to the wooden Virgin. He ended his days in a cell in a hospital.

  In time the Porter and Anna Tap arrived. Hidden behind the tomb of some dead Orme, I heard all.

  Sacred Monologue.

  What do you see?

  Wooden people. Who’s the one with the keys?

  Saint Peter, the gatekeeper of Heaven.

  Another porter?

  The Holy porter. Describe to me the last saint on the left.

  It is a young woman, Miss Tap.

  It is Saint Lucy. What is she holding?

  A plate.

  What is on the plate?

  A pair of eyes.

  I come here for those eyes. I have been looking after Saint Lucy for several months now. When I first saw her she was like the others, she was so ill and frayed, her paint was peeling everywhere, there were cracks and stains all over her. I was supposed to conserve the clothes and hair of all of them. It was a commission from the city council, to preserve our churches and the objects inside them, but before I had a chance it was announced that this church would cease being used and the funds were withdrawn. It was too late for me, though, I had already started to become fascinated by Saint Lucy. I dreamt of her sad face at night; I believed she was calling me. I went to the library and looked up her history; I discovered all I could about her.

  The disease in my eyes had already been troubling me for many years and I had been sent from optometrist to eye surgeon all around the city. They’d blown air in my eyes, squirted dye into them, injected them and even operated on them but my sight did not improve. My eyes, they predicted, would become hard, would become solid and cease to work. So it seemed to me that Saint Lucy had come to me for a reason. She is the patron saint of diseases of the eyes. She has two sets, one on the plate, one in her head, I thought she might lend me one. In her story an infidel fell in love with Lucy’s eyes, and begged her to marry him. Lucy refused and the man had her eyes pulled out, but miraculously another pair immediately grew in their place.

  I decided that I must repair Saint Lucy, return her to her former state, and so for months, after work had finished for the day, I remained in the workshop treating her clothes, buying new material when necessary. Her hair was so frail that it had to be removed entirely. I placed a small advert in the paper: DO YOU HAVE LONG FAIR HAIR? Would you be willing to sell it? Please contact … Many people responded, most of them inappropriate, but among them there was a girl with such long, beautiful, golden hair that I believed her almost the living Lucy, she was even wearing a small gold cross on a chain around her neck. I paid her well, she had her hair cut short. I collected it and sewed it, strand by strand, into Lucy’s scalp. I paid a painting conserver from the museum to make her eyes and s
kin live again, and then a letter came informing me that Lucy was the property of the church and that I must return her within four days or appropriate action would be taken. I ignored the letter and five days later the police came to the museum and took her away. Who wanted her, I screamed at the police, who else cared for her but me? That wasn’t the point, they said, it belonged to Tearsham Church. It! Her then, if it makes you feel better. And so I started coming here regularly, visiting her four or five times a week, praying to her always for my eyes. But soon that wasn’t enough, I had to see her more often, so I moved my home. She looks so beautiful next to the others, doesn’t she?

  Look at them all in their straight line. They don’t look at each other, they don’t communicate. The art always used to be like that, but then it changed, later the saints were painted speaking with each other and with the Virgin and Child. They even called that type of altarpiece sacra conversazione, holy conversation. And those pictures often included the altarpiece’s donor, its commissioner, kneeling down. So sometimes I think of these wooden saints talking to each other, not living in isolation, and then I think of myself as a kind of donor, with Lucy blessing me, and I am suddenly part of the altarpiece too. Saint Lucy’s day is the thirteenth of December, a day which used to be celebrated as the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year, the longest night. The blindest date in the calendar. Each thirteenth of December since I met Lucy I’ve laid candles in front of her and begged for her to return my sight, each year, more and more, I feel the light by its heat rather than by seeing it. She hasn’t helped me yet. But she will, she must. And it’ll be this year, this thirteenth of December, that she saves my eyes, because if it isn’t then it’ll be too late, I’ll be blind and my eyes will grow hard. Take me to her now, Porter, so I can touch her.

  She stayed with Lucy for a little over an hour and then the Porter took her back to Observatory Mansions. I left the company of Virgin and Child with six saints and went back to my exhibition.