Observatory Mansions: A Novel

by Edward Carey

One autumn day the demolition experts returned to us. My mother saw them through the park fencing, they were making notes in their files. When Mother came back from her walk (after having eaten her supper, visited her friend Claire Higg, watched some television with Claire Higg, returned to her own flat, dressed in her night attire) she said, with a yawn: I saw the demolition experts back again. Anna Tap, who was in flat six with us, asked who they were. We answered that we didn’t really know, that they never really seemed to do anything except make notes in their files every half year or so. They were quite peaceful people, these demolition experts, we had decided. But Anna Tap said:

  Has it never occurred to you to ask them what they are doing here?

  No. It had not.

  Father remembered – 1.

  We buried Father in the Orme chapel of Tearsham Church. The priest came and unlocked the chapel gate. Some days before, I had seen Mother up earlier than was usual for her and well dressed, walking out of Observatory Mansions clutching some silver: candlesticks, cutlery and a salver. These were from Tearsham Park, I remembered them from when I was a child. How was it that they hadn’t been sold in the auction? Where had they been kept all these years? I went into Mother’s bedroom, her bed was stripped and her mattress had been ripped open – Mother had used that most well known of hiding places to keep the silver away from me: she had lain on top of it for such a long time, in a place she knew I wouldn’t consider looking. With the money from the silver, with all that was left of Tearsham Park, Mother bought a much more beautiful box for Father than the one they had put Peter Bugg in.

  When we entered the Orme chapel I was frightened that the priest might have the wrong tomb lid lifted, that the tunnel passageway would suddenly be revealed, that my exhibition would be discovered. But the priest selected the right tomb for Father, which was also where his parents and grandparents were kept. There were other stone boxes of course, with all the other dead Ormes inside them, all containing quality goods.

  Mother, Anna Tap and I were present. No one, save the priest, spoke. Mother was wearing black again. Claire Higg had decided to stay at home, the journey to the church was too long for her, she said, I really am too busy. She was forgiven, she had never met Father, to her he was a preposterous fiction.

  As they pulled off the lid from the great, lead-lined stone bin to dispose of dead Father, I understood that God collects us all. As they lowered Father into the darkness, I realized that there is absolutely no other option, we have to die with God, we are all offered up to him in the end. Whether good or bad, whether hell or heaven bound, or just left there to rot, our heavy, lifeless bodies are pushed under the sign of the cross. It’s just another type of skip. God, refuse collector.

  Father remembered – 2.

  For weeks after Father died I kept seeing him from behind, walking along the city streets. But when I approached him – shouting, Father! Father! – it was not Father who turned around but some unfamiliar old man.

  I talked of Father. I talked of nothing else. My father and the stars. My father between blood cells. My father as tall as trees. My mother at the same time spoke nothing of Father, she talked only of the days of the week and of shifts in the weather, she watched television with Claire Higg; she busied her days with non-father-thinking devices.

  I took the red leather armchair from the largest room in flat six. I heaved it down the stairs. I dragged it outside on to the concrete enclosure. I bought a can of petrol, poured it over the chair and set light to it. The chair moaned and crackled and flattened itself out until no one could sit in it ever again.

  Father remembered – 3.

  For some time Father’s false teeth remained submerged in a glass of water on the kitchen table in flat six. We sometimes caught each other looking at those teeth, Anna Tap, Mother and I. When we ate we found it hard not to look at them, smiling at us in their glass of water. They robbed us of our appetites.

  In the end, at night whilst everyone else slept, I took them away (lot 994).

  Father remembered – 4.

  Without Father there, the world was suddenly unconfident; it could not understand what to do without Father’s inner strength to guide it. The world became brittle. After Father died we moved with caution, we felt it inconceivable that life would be allowed to carry on as if nothing had happened, we expected phenomena of nature – eclipses, hurricanes, earthquakes. We felt cheated when they didn’t come. We wanted the world to mark Father’s death with catastrophe. We were sure that something would match the sorrow of our bleeding hearts: the sun was bound to come tumbling down today or tomorrow. But nothing happened.

  Soon we realized what it was that Father’s death meant to us: it meant that death was possible. Once we had realized that we started shivering and we walked stooped over with short strides. Only Father’s death had taught us this, had taught us such profound sadness and anger and fear. All the deaths that had gone before, even way back to the first dead man, were only try-outs, dry runs for Father’s death. They seemed somehow effortless. Who cried for those dead people, after all?

  But Mother’s indifference to Father’s death soon helped me to realize that no one was suffering as much as I was, and that when I thought we I really meant I.

  Father remembered – 5.

  I visited the observatory at night. With Father there we had been able to conjure the glass back on the dome; we had looked through his field binoculars and imagined ourselves seated behind his giant telescope. But without him the observatory faded: the metal dome-shaped frame was rusty again, pigeons’ shit lay everywhere, there was a dead pigeon by the entrance.

  Up in the observatory with Anna Tap, I pointed out the stars and planets. Though Anna no longer had any duties to perform for my parents she would often come and smoke in flat six and we would go for short walks together. I think we were becoming friends. I talked to her all about Father business.

  One night she started to cry. Poor Anna had no Father, none that she knew of. But that was not why she was crying. Francis, she said, can you see me? Do you notice me at all? I could see her, I said, she was sitting with me, up in the observatory, looking at the stars. She said that that was not what she was talking about. My thoughts, I told her, were all Father full at the moment. She knew that, she said, because all I had talked about for weeks now was Father. Wouldn’t it be better if I made room for someone else, if I let someone else in. Perhaps there was someone who wanted to get in, Francis, she said. Consider who that might be, she said, and left.

  Father remembered – 6.

  When I returned that night to flat six I heard noises coming from my mother’s bedroom. The gnashing of teeth. My father’s teeth. I opened the door, excited, wondering if perhaps I might find Father inside Mother’s room, perhaps he hadn’t died after all. Mother was asleep. On her bedside table, next to the night lamp was a dictaphone playing the sounds of Father’s teeth.

  This became a habit of Mother’s. When she got into bed she turned on the dictaphone, only with the sound of Father’s teeth would she be able to sleep.

  Anna Days.

  Then came a brief and happy time called Anna Days. In Anna Days, all shining with autumn sun, I spent my time with Anna. I did not talk about Father. Anna said that I could, just not all the time. I thought it safer not to, at all. Anna seemed, I thought, very happy. She laughed at some of the things that I said (but only when I wasn’t trying too hard to make her laugh). Sometimes she would close her eyes and say – I can feel the sun on my face.

  That was Anna when she was with me that autumn. So, why, when I went alone to the park, did the bathroom scalesman always say:

  The girl is getting thinner.

  I was Anna’s friend. We did not speak of friendship in definite terms, but surely that was unnecessary. We walked into the centre of the city sometimes. On these walks she said: So much of the city is kept from us. We only know those parts where we live or have friends or go to work. We know our routes, our little paths, our certain
streets, but that is all we know. I haven’t been here before. If I hadn’t come on these walks with you, I would never have seen this or this or that. I would never have known it existed. It’s not part of my life. I don’t know anyone who lives or works here. But at least I have seen it, Francis.

  I visited the church with her and watched her stroke the eyes and face of Saint Lucy. She told me that when the pain begins in her eyes, when her eyes start to harden, then surely Saint Lucy’s eyes would become soft. All this time we spent together, so why, whenever I went alone to the park did the bathroom scalesman always say:

  The girl is getting thinner.

  She had long stopped going for walks with the Porter, considering my company preferable. And the Porter, I noticed, had begun to tidy more fiercely, and he would hiss at me whenever I came near.

  Anna would ask me to tell her everything about myself and when I refused she would look away. She would ask me what I kept in the cellar. I would not tell her, but she kept asking all the same, she would not let the subject drop. One day, furious with her repeated questions, I told her: Love, Anna, love is kept in the cellar, nine hundred and ninety-five objects of love all nicely wrapped up. Let me see them, Francis. No. No, I can’t do that.

  She asked me to take my gloves off. No, never, I can’t do that.

  Soon she stopped coming for walks but would still sit with us in the largest room of flat six. By then we did not talk, there was suddenly little left for us to say. I looked at my gloves or at the floor but she looked at me all the time. And whenever I went to the park on my own the bathroom scalesman always said:

  The girl is getting thinner.

  I knew what was happening to her but couldn’t see how to stop it: she was becoming sad like the rest of us.

  One afternoon while we sat together in flat six, Anna asked me:

  Will you hold my hand, Francis?

  But I didn’t hold hands, it was understood. Then she said: Would you like to kiss me, Francis?

  I had not been expecting that. And my heart bumped-bumped out of joy. So why was it, why, after I heard a question that made me jump inside, that made a little movement in my inner inner, why was it, why, when I so loved that question, why was it that I replied:

  I think I’d better go now.

  Autumn leads to winter.

  The winter months were approaching. I was known to love wintertime. People wore gloves in wintertime. Not white cotton gloves for sure. In wintertime the children wore bright colourful gloves with faces sewn on to each finger or they wore mittens. In wintertime the men and women put on woollen gloves: black, red, green, blue and pink. Or leather gloves with soft wool or silk on the insides. Yes, I loved this wintertime glove mania; it made me feel closer to humanity.

  The love dress of Anna Tap.

  The days became less like Anna days and more like Francis days until they were entirely Francis days and made up of those various well-known time-passers which have already been indicated. True, Anna did often visit us in flat six but she had grown timid in my company and often did not look at me when she spoke. Once she left a note, slipped under the door of my bedroom, which I was unable to comprehend, it said:

  If not now, then when?

  She would come and sit with us bringing with her one of her blue dresses, a needle and some black cotton. At first I thought she was mending some holes but gradually I began to understand that Anna was stitching words into the dress. The first word she wrote on it was Peter. The second word she wrote was loved. The third word she wrote was Claire. Anna was straining the light out of her eyes.

  As weeks passed she wrote other sentences with black cotton on her dress:

  Claire loved Alec.

  Alec loved Claire.

  The Porter loved Claire.

  Mrs Orme loved a bachelor.

  Mr Orme loved Mrs Orme.

  This is my love dress, Francis, she told me. I am writing out sentences of love, so that I shall never forget them. So that if I go blind I will be able to read the words by touch, even when I wear them.

  On Francis and lovers – 1.

  It is well known that lovers hold hands. It is well known that I wear gloves. It is well known that I never touch anything that could be dirty (human flesh being but one example). I could not then hold hands with my lover. Therefore I have no lover.

  Inside a cardboard box.

  One day a large cardboard box was delivered to Observatory Mansions by a courier. The box said: Property of Francis Orme. The Porter brought it up to flat six. Within minutes everybody in Observatory Mansions knew of its existence. Mother saw the Porter delivering it, she immediately rushed to tell Claire Higg and Anna Tap. But I took the box to my bedroom and closed the door behind me, away from everyone else. Claire, her thoughts clouded by the television she watched, thought it might be money inside the box or perhaps even a severed head, but was too busy to leave her flat to find out. Mother and Anna knocked on my bedroom door. Let us in, Francis, what’s in the box? Go away, Anna. Go away, Mother. Leave me alone.

  Inside the box were many chips of polystyrene for protection and, as my gloved hands felt cautiously for more, I discovered hair, and even a face, and a neck, and a pair of shoulders. A bust made of wax. And when I looked at the face for the first time its accuracy made me frightened. I stared at her, she didn’t frown or look away.

  There was a postcard in the box, a photograph of the wax model of Our Founder, on its reverse was written:

  Francis,

  Enclosed, the head of your choosing.

  I do not advise kissing wax,

  flesh is much softer.

  William

  It was such a good likeness. Save one thing. The eyes. The eyes were ordinary, healthy, beautiful green eyes. William had perfected Anna.

  I heard Anna, the real Anna, outside my room, talking to Mother in the kitchen, otherwise I would have been sure that I had her head in with me. It was difficult at first to believe that she could have two such similar heads and that one of them was entirely mine. I touched it. I touched the eyes, I felt the hair, I kissed the lips. I learnt the face. Here was Anna, I could touch her as I wanted to touch her. I could stroke her hair. Anna would never have let me touch her like that, and even if she did I might run the risk of dirtying my gloves. Now I could touch her and be sure that my gloves would remain unharmed.

  The bust never complained, I pretended it quite liked my attentions. I fooled myself that it was really Anna I touched, that my cotton fingers were really feeling her skin. But what was it that the wax head really meant? That I need never feel lonely again.

  I told Mother and Anna that the delivery was a new glove box. They seemed to believe me, though they could not understand why I spent so much more time in my bedroom than before.

  I found it hard to leave that head alone.

  Even for a moment.

  To save the exhibition.

  But I was unable to stop thinking of the real Anna. The wax bust only increased my thoughts of her. Whenever I was out of my room I would be with the genuine Anna Tap, and I would look at her lips or her ears or her hair and I would yearn to touch them, I would long to be back in my room with the wax bust.

  Francis, I said to myself, you must think quickly for the exhibition is suffering. Francis, I said to myself, with use of that bust you must think of Anna as a child’s toy or as a new object. And saving yourself all the pain of human contact, and having the object of love (the wax bust) without the irritating messiness of love (Anna Tap), love the object, ignore the person. Busy yourself with it for as long as it takes, soon you will become bored. Then you’ll no longer want it near you. And it slowly began to work: I began to convince myself that I was tiring of both the wax and the flesh Anna Tap.

  One night.

  One night Anna came in to us a little tearful and a little more needful of company than usual. She stood by the dining table waiting for Mother or me to ask her to sit down with us and offer her a coffee. Neither of us did. M
other had fallen asleep and I let Anna hover there, passing her weight from one foot to the other, looking more and more desperate. Until finally she spoke:

  I have been staring at the bottle marked dihydrocodeine tartrate. Today I felt some new pain in my eyes, when I held the bottle of pills I felt safer. I shouldn’t, I know. I should trust in Lucy. But when I put the bottle down I felt the pain coming back. It’s only Lucy testing me, it’s only Lucy wanting me to trust her, isn’t it?

  Isn’t it time you left Observatory Mansions?

  Francis?

  Hasn’t it gone on long enough? Don’t you feel we’ve grown tired of you now?

  I’m waiting for Saint Lucy’s day.

  Why? Nothing will happen.

  It will, you’ll see.

  I don’t think so. You’re going blind, you’ll be blind soon. Then what?

  I shan’t go blind.

  Don’t expect us to look after you. Oh no, we won’t have it. Perhaps you’d better leave here now, get into a home or something where you can be properly looked after.

  I shan’t go blind.

  I’m only thinking of you. You should leave. As soon as possible. I could call a taxi now. I could do that for you.

  You can pick up a leaf and point it to the sun. Then you see everything about that leaf, everything that’s going on inside, all the veins within, nothing is hidden. Anna looked a little like that after I had spoken to her that night. Her face showed such an anxious expression that I thought I could read by it everything that went on in her brain and in her body: I could see how ill she was, how easy to lift up or to throw away.

  On Francis and lovers – 2.

  Soon Anna stopped talking when she came to visit us and just sat with her love dress, she was stitching a new sentence on to the dress, on the place where her bottom would be when she wore it, on the backside of her dress: