Observatory Mansions: A Novel

by Edward Carey

  Mostly the residents ignored Mother after her first visit, but some let her inside again. In this manner Mother made her friends. She was happy. She enjoyed giving, it occupied her days.

  Tearsham Park.

  Father is in unoccupied flat four. Father: Here, where I am standing there should be a red leather sofa. Over there should be one of two red leather armchairs. The other armchair should be just here by the shelves where the History of the Ormes are kept. This chair, I know for a fact, has been maliciously moved to my wife’s dressing room.

  Imagine that chair back here and place me, with the help of your thoughts, in it. I am reading. I am studying the History of the Ormes. Years have passed since the death of my eldest son. We have almost succeeded in forgetting him. The few possessions that he had accumulated in his short life, including his birth and death certificates, have been packed away inside a box. The box is in a locked trunk, out of sight in one of the attic rooms. All the photographs we ever took of him have been destroyed. All but one, that is. I kept one, I hide it from my wife inside a volume of the History of the Ormes, I use it as a bookmark. A little boy with a swollen face holding a mouthless teddy bear.

  We have remembered to call our second son Francis now and not Thomas. Francis, Thomas but not Thomas, has not been told about his deceased brother. He is a slow child, who would never have learnt to talk were it not for the efforts of a woman from the village. And, more recently, his tutor Peter Bugg left the house, refusing to return.

  Since the tutor left, Francis spends most of his days sitting on the bench by the war memorial in the centre of Tearsham Village. Francis sits on that bench staring into the school playground, watching children his own age. Two weeks ago, to stop this display of public loneliness, I bought him two mice. Pets to be his friends. My son named them Peter and Emma. I took a photograph of him holding the mice. He seemed very happy. All went well for a few days but then my son returned to his habit of observing the children in the playground. I asked him if he was no longer happy with his mice. He told me he was. Extremely happy, he said and went back to the bench by the war memorial. Whilst he was away I went in to the nursery, I could not at first find the mice anywhere. Their cage door was open and the cage was empty. I presumed that he had accidentally let the little creatures escape, but then I found them hidden away under papers in the nursery desk. They had been nailed to two neatly sawn blocks of wood. Underneath each unfortunate creature was written in ink, in extremely neat handwriting on a piece of white card, the names of the deceased. Peter. Emma.

  Observatory Mansions.

  Mother: Today my son has been missing all afternoon and some of the evening. The Porter told me that he had gone out many hours ago. I am standing in our flat, which is flat six, just by the dining table. My son has returned, he is sitting at the dining table. He says to us, to me and to the man who used to be his father who is sitting pathetically in his chair in the corner, that he has some wonderful news. My son tells us that he has found a job. I am pleased for him; I did not ever think that my child was employable. He is smiling an unusually large smile. I ask him what the job is. He tells me that he is going to work in a museum in the city centre, a waxwork hall of fame. He is to be employed to stand still and pretend to be made of wax. My son has surely been taken on to be laughed at: some hideous little employer thinks Francis will attract comments, be a talking point because of his white gloves. My son will be displayed surely as a curiosity, a freak. He sees that I am disappointed. He looks to the man who used to be my husband. Francis says that his father is smiling. I reply that that is of no consequence, the man often smiles and it means precisely nothing. I say to Francis that I will not allow him to take up this degrading employment. To my surprise he says, Yes, Mother, if that is what you wish. We do not talk of it for the rest of the day. The next morning Francis will go out early and begin his work at the wax house. When I see him in the evening I reprimand him and he says – Try and stop me.

  I do not. I keep his employment secret from all the other residents. I am ashamed of it and of my son. Now I spend the days completely alone in flat six. I decide I need to make some friends. I decide to buy many gifts.

  Tearsham Park.

  Father, in flat four: A volume of the Orme history has been stolen. The volume that I was reading. The volume with the photograph inside it. It was stolen in the night. I ask the servants about it. They shake their heads in ignorance. I ask Francis. Francis says he does not know. I begin searching all over the house.

  Observatory Mansions.

  My mother, in the entrance hall: I am greeting the residents of Observatory Mansions. They come with luggage, with vans full of luggage. They are making new homes for themselves so close to mine. I am very happy. I shake hands with every one of them. I say, Welcome. Welcome to Observatory Mansions. Francis is standing behind me. He looks very serious, he spends more time regarding the new residents’ possessions than the new residents themselves. He does not shake hands with them.

  Tearsham Park.

  Father, in flat twenty-four: These are the attic rooms, for some reason they have been tidied. They were always as dusty as this but before they were crammed with objects. I have come here to look, unsuccessfully, for the missing book with the photograph inside it. I have found instead that something else is missing. This is what I see: this empty corner. There was a wooden box here, in it were kept various objects that no longer have a use in Tearsham Park. Among the objects was a teddy bear without a mouth.

  Observatory Mansions.

  In the largest room of flat six, my mother speaks: Today my husband was sitting in the park when he had a stroke. The doctor says he might recover, he can stay here or he can be put in a hospital. We must decide. My husband does not speak, he looks vaguely ahead. There is no expression on his face. Oh, why didn’t he die?

  I say yes to the doctor, take him away, put him in a hospital, get him out of my sight. Francis says no, absolutely not. Francis says: I shall look after Father. I say: Suit yourself, but don’t expect me to help.

  I consider my husband dead and myself a widow. I wear black. Sometimes I catch myself crying – I don’t feel any sorrow, why should I be crying? I dry my eyes and scold myself.

  Tearsham Park.

  Father, in my mother’s bedroom in flat six: The priest has been to visit us. Something dreadful has happened, something unspeakable; something unmentionable has been stolen. Not the toys, not the last volume of Orme history, not the photograph or the teddy bear, something else. Francis denies all knowledge but I know that he is guilty. We have searched the house and we have searched the grounds. We have not found what we are looking for. I have horsewhipped the child. He asks me: Don’t you love me, Father? I tell him later, when I am a little calmed: I shall always love you, but never, I fear, shall I like you again.

  What have I done to create such a monster of a child? How could he do such a thing? What made him steal such a thing? I try not to think about it. I daren’t look at the child for fear I shall start thrashing him again. I daren’t look at him, he disgusts me.

  When we told my wife of Francis’s crime she vomited. We took her up to her bed. But now she never leaves her room. She has stopped speaking altogether. She lies in her bed and does not move.

  A short conversation between Anna Tap

  and myself.

  Usually on our adventures with my parents, Anna Tap and I would freely be taken along by them, never questioning their stories and rarely discussing them afterwards. In truth, this was mainly because I stopped Anna whenever she started to talk, but on this one occasion, so shocked by my father’s performance, at seeing him in tears, she continued to question me, even after I had begged her to be quiet.

  What was stolen, Francis?

  I don’t know.

  What did you steal?

  Can you steal what no one wants?

  Why were your mother and father so upset? What happened?

  They are very nervous people, my pare
nts.

  Francis, what did you do?

  I seem to have forgotten.

  Francis.

  I think I’d better go now, Mother’s calling.

  Observatory Mansions.

  Mother, walking around the landings and in and out of flats: Tomorrow the painters will have finished their work. Look at the skirting boards, look at the window sills. Look at the new ceilings. Come with me into flat two, it used to be the drawing room, so much wasted space. Look up there: the ceiling’s so smooth and white. There used to be hideous roses and leaves up there sculpted in plaster, they’ve all gone now. Isn’t that better? Clean and white, ready and new, waiting for life.

  Tearsham Park.

  Father, in Mother’s bedroom in flat six: The puppy arrived today. The puppy was my idea, she was bought on my initiative for my wife’s recovery. The doctor thought her a good idea. I can see, in the near future, my wife walking her, feeding her, cuddling her. I see a new life for my wife inspired by the jolly waggling of a canine’s tail.

  As an idea it was one of my best. I hoped it would work. I hoped my wife would soon quit her bed and return to life. And so I have called the dog Hope. A collar was bought, the collar had Hope inscribed on to it. Hope wore Hope round her little neck and went into my wife’s chamber and licked my wife’s hand. But my wife did not stir, did not look down at the creature, ignored its yapping.

  I have shut Hope in with her.

  Observatory Mansions.

  Mother, up and down Observatory Mansions stairs: The builders promise me that their work will be finished in two days’ time. All the flats have doors and electricity and gas. It’s so exciting! Tomorrow, the locksmiths are coming. They’ll put locks on every flat door, ours as well. It’s really happening! People are going to come here. Really. Really.

  Tearsham Park.

  The dog has become savage with unfulfilment. It has grown wild, it no longer trusts humans. Left, shut in, not alone but at the same time in complete solitude, it has become terrified. It has defecated all over the bedroom, clawed at the door, chewed the edges of my wife’s sheets, ceased barking and even refused food. At the sight of an alert human it will either baulk with fear or approach and bite.

  Today the creature was found gnawing at my wife’s hands.

  I have put the dog out, it will never return to my wife’s bedroom.

  Observatory Mansions.

  Mother, up and down the landings: The electricians are everywhere planting wires of life. The plumbers are putting in radiators and connecting taps. Look, here’s the lift shaft! And there’s the lift! I just press this button and listen: it’s alive!

  The history of the dog Hope.

  Father, back in his library, flat four: For a long time the dog was forgotten. But one day Hope returned to us, thin with the wild, matted hair of a tramp. She no longer bit, she no longer ran away, she sniffed and padded off uninterested. She seemed to be searching for something, but could not remember what. Everything she came across was rejected. She refused all the food we put out for her. She was trying to remember something, the effort of this search was killing her.

  I thought at first that she was looking for my wife but later, after her death, I believed it was an abstract happiness that eluded her. She was in pursuit of a life that she had meant to have, the life of a dog loved by a family, walked, fed, protected and enjoyed. Hope was now an ugly dog, not in looks but in another way. An internal ugliness. Francis combed her, washed her, cut her thick, taut hairs but there always remained the unattractive and unmistakable pressure of desperate and all-embracing loneliness. We did not and could not love the dog Hope, the very idea of it sickened us.

  After months of longing she finally gave up her search. She tried to die. She lay in remote parts of the park, slept, like my wife, and tried never to wake up. But somehow she would be found by Francis and force-fed in time and would grimly, listlessly continue her being. Until one day she began the last terrible stage of her appalling suffering.

  Hope the dog scratched herself to death. It began with her collar. Hope’s collar hung loose around her neck. She chewed it. The collar made of stiff leather had serrated edges which cut into her hair. The cuts, the worst being just behind her ears, were detected and the collar was taken off to allow the wounds to heal. But Hope could not stop her scratching once it had begun. With each new scrape from the sharp nails of her forepaws her injuries grew until the poor creature had no hair either side of her face, just vulnerably pink flesh. Her hind legs duplicated the actions of the front legs and introduced many new glistening lesions across her ribs. Soon the entire being, dog Hope, was involved solely in the business of self-destruction in which every hedge, every coarse brick, every corrugated tree bark was called upon for help. It seems this unhappiness was infectious since somewhere during Hope’s inexhaustible preoccupation with self-laceration my son Francis began to itch. For a short while this imitation, performed in private, went unnoticed until he handed in for washing a grubby white shirt which had a large brown dried bloodstain around its collar. The doctor was informed and Francis’s neck was bandaged. But his scab was inspected every night and we discovered that the bandage had been removed during the course of the day and the wound irritated. Francis began to itch in other places too, but his bath times were observed by our house maid, and the decline in the child’s skin was reported. Francis was taken to the doctor, the dog Hope was taken to a vet. The doctor prescribed plenty of air and a white cream to be rubbed on the infections thrice daily, the vet prescribed for Hope no bandages, since air was a great healer, and a white cream to be rubbed on her wounds three times a day. Every night Francis would come downstairs in his pyjamas to bid me good-night. Francis would be made to strip so that his recovery could be inspected. But he was not getting any better. He particularly attacked any mole, birthmark or natural blemish on his skin, as if he were attempting to remove his own identity. The dog continued to scrape herself apart, Francis copied her with energetic reverence.

  The vet prescribed antibiotics: a bottle of white pills which were to be pushed into a piece of cheese and deviously fed to the unsuspecting Hope. The doctor prescribed steroids for Francis. The steroids made Francis sleepy, he spent the majority of days in bed, but after pulling back the bedcovers, the sheets were discovered to be speckled with blood. Hope was given a lampshade collar that stretched from her shoulders like a funnel. The collar frightened and panicked her but did not stop her scratching. The doctor gave Francis a pair of white cotton gloves. For a while, Francis, he said, everything you touch will be monitored, everything you touch will leave a trace on those gloves, so that we will know what you have been up to. He was instructed to wear them all day and all night, that they were to remain white, that if there was even a hint of blood on them, no matter what the excuse, he would be beaten. To prevent him from simply taking these gloves off, irritating his sores and then replacing them, two lengths of string were tied around his gloved wrists so tightly and with such an array of complicated knots that he could not possibly undo them. Together the dog, with her preposterous collar, and Francis, with his immaculate gloves, walked pathetically, in complete frustration, around the garden, always on the same route stipulated by me that circled the house but was not so wide as to stretch up to the numerous outhouses and stable buildings where the unfortunate duo could perambulate unseen. But once these hours were ended by the sounding of a handbell, Francis dismissed himself from Hope and ventured to the upper landings of the house where he could, in all privacy, scrape himself against the back of a chair, the corner of a bookcase or with the aid of a stiff hairbrush.

  On the day of his thirteenth birthday all scratching ceased entirely. Just as Francis was leaning on tiptoes over his birthday cake to blow out the candles the servants’ bell rang. Standing in the pantry corridor was a farmhand holding a newspaper parcel in which lay the wretched and bloody dog Hope. She had somehow wandered into one of the chicken runs to scratch herself against the wire fencing
and the chickens, excited by the sight and smell of blood, had pecked her quite to death.

  Francis, complete with a cortège consisting of maids, cook, the housekeeper and myself, buried her by the kitchen garden. Francis took the old, chewed collar and the new lampshade collar and kept them in the nursery. Without his inspiration he stopped his itching. The string was cut off and he was invited to remove his gloves. He refused. He said that the white gloves had taught him too much about life for that. He said Hope’s death had been ugly and messy, he said the gloves had taught him to keep his distance from suffering. And also, he believed the gloves made him look smart. He found the clean white cotton comforting. He said he liked to monitor everything he touched, it would make him more cautious in the future.

  In this way my son began his habit of wearing gloves. I found the following article in the nursery:

  The Law of White Gloves.