Observatory Mansions: A Novel

by Edward Carey

  They smashed the door down, it moaned and cracked and finally yielded. Then we saw what had happened: someone had shoved putty into the keyhole and nailed plasterboard over our door, and even wallpapered over the plasterboard so that it looked as if flat six didn’t exist at all, that it was simply a wall. Our saviours must only have been able to find our door because the wallpaper over it was conspicuously cleaner than anywhere else. The Porter, the Porter had blocked us in.

  We saw our saviours. They were four men. Identically dressed in white boiler suits. They wore plastic helmets which each had a sticker above the visor: Demolition Experts. They looked at us, puzzled. We looked at them, puzzled.

  Will you come downstairs?

  Why? Mother asked.

  I think you’d better.

  Then we’ll come.

  They took us down the stairs, out through the entrance hall. Tapes marked with DANGER KEEP AWAY and signs saying DEMOLITION IN PROGRESS were all around Observatory Mansions. Iron barricades had been lined up along the surrounding streets, wooden boards had been hammered over the windows of the neighbouring houses. There was no traffic at all.

  People stood behind the barricades, crowds of people forming a circle around the island of Observatory Mansions: the city had come out to watch. When the other people saw us they cheered. We were embarrassed: so much noise, all for us. The crowds even pushed and shoved so that they could get a look at us. People with television cameras and microphones ran across the empty road. They asked us questions. We did not answer the questions, we were so shocked by the cheering that we had temporarily forgotten how to speak, but we smiled for the cameras. A man in a brown suit with a clipboard came towards us. We recognized him immediately as one of the senior demolition experts who we had seen talking to the Porter. He told us that our home had been thoroughly searched, that no one had been found. Where had we been hiding? We said we hadn’t been hiding, but that the Porter had wanted us hidden. He said that we couldn’t possibly go back into Observatory Mansions, we could never go back in there again. He couldn’t change the schedule, the police had been called in, the traffic had been stopped, diverted about the city – Do you know how much organizing that takes? he asked us. Everything must continue according to the schedule. We were sure to be compensated, he said, even though his company was not to blame. But the schedule must not be altered, not at all.

  Where was the Porter? Nobody knew. He had been seen earlier that morning, he was even helping plant wires in the cellar, he wouldn’t leave the workers alone. Mother asked:

  What are you going to do?

  We’ll remove the vertical supports, madam. Gravity should do the rest.

  I don’t understand.

  We’ll destroy the basement columns, madam, then, of course, the structure’s weight will tear itself apart. It’s a fairly simple procedure and shouldn’t take long. Go and join the crowd now, stand behind the barrier like everyone else.

  But I couldn’t just leave it like that. How could I leave it like that? I knew that something must be done.

  Quickly, before it was too late.

  I moved through the crowds, pushing my way from Tearsham Park Gardens towards Tearsham Church and as I left I heard someone who sounded like Anna Tap calling, Francis? Francis? FRANCIS!

  Incidents in the cellar.

  How could I just leave the exhibition, with the weight of all the Ormes threatening to fall upon it, just leave it, like an unwanted child, to such an ending? I could not. Nor would I be able to live with myself afterwards, the failed guardian of all that love. Nor could I be sure that I would remain Francis Orme after every significant moment of my life recorded there had been destroyed. And what would my life mean once its only purpose had been removed? It would mean nothing, it would be a dull nothing.

  I unlocked the Orme chapel, removed the lid of the false tomb, climbed down into the tunnel, sliding the lid back behind me. Striking matches to light my way, firing off wild, dancing shadows, I progressed along the narrow passageway – I saw the city retreating through history as I rushed along, I saw myself growing younger, all my mistakes, all my victories. I ran past Anna still with working eyes, past the death of Father, past Peter Bugg’s tie, past the beginning of Observatory Mansions, past the end of Tearsham Park – losing years of life in my strides – past my schooling, past Emma, until finally, out of breath, I reached lot 1, a till receipt. There would be time, if I was quick, there must still be time to collect it all. All time was there, in that tunnel, neatly documented, could I not leave behind a year – leave behind those objects that indicated a year’s existence – trade them in for a few kind minutes to help me move my magnificent collection?

  As I crouched by the love-worn till receipt, I heard a male voice from within the cellar, someone was still inside. He was calling out – Anna, Anna! I dropped the receipt. Anna was in the cellar? She must leave. She must have heard: they’ve decided to remove Observatory Mansions today. She must get out. I tried to open the tunnel door, but it was locked from the other side. I was shut in, kept in by my own padlock. I called to her, kicking the tunnel door – Anna! Anna!

  And my calls to her were met with the echoing calls of that other voice in the cellar, just the other side of my tunnel door.

  Anna! Anna! the voice called.

  Anna! Anna! came my reply.

  I banged on the tunnel door, smashing my elbows and shoulders against it. Anna! Anna! came the call again. I began ramming the tunnel door with my shoulder, again and again, fiercer and fiercer, until the wood of the door, rotten with woodworm, broke free.

  I was in the grey cellar of Observatory Mansions, there were wires all along the ground. There were holes bored into the pillars and in those holes the wires ended, or began, with a harmless-looking cylinder of grey putty. There was even a pile of rubble where a practice demolition had removed a pillar. The sound of its collapse had been vaguely heard by us the day before, up in our prison in flat six. Anna! Anna! – came the wailing again. These corridors had known butlers come to collect wine, had known laundry maids come to stoke the boiler, had known pantry boys come to pick up firewood. And in my confusion I thought I saw them all again, as busy and as panicked as I was, hurtling along; our different shoes beating out the times of different years on the same cold brick floor – each of the servants shocked into life by some scent of danger, or as if those holes in the pillars had opened up time and let the past come bleeding out. I imagined, at that moment, upstairs in the drawing room lamp boys must be struggling to light lamps, housekeepers must be rushing about looking for dust, ladies’ maids must be running baths, praying for the water to move faster. And also I imagined my ancestors running from room to room or sitting up in beds around the house, ringing the bells, trying to understand what it was that had suddenly made them feel so unsure. And with them also, caught in the upheaval of the moment, dodging between servants and masters, would be all the pale faces, with grey-blue circles under their eyes and with frightened, anxious looks, of the shadows of the old residents of Observatory Mansions: the piano player disturbed in his practice; the dying mother with her two grown-up daughters, each come to their neighbouring doors with the same frightened instinct; the bachelor suddenly disturbed in his afternoon’s lovemaking, not by a noise but by a feeling; the young mother hearing the car shrieking just beyond the wall of Observatory Mansions as it thuds into her little daughter; Alec Magnitt stepping into the lift. They were all suddenly awake, wondering, what has called us, what has called us? And – What’s going to happen, what’s going to happen?

  I reached the place where the calls originated, I stood in front of the three-roomed cage of undiluted tidiness. The Porter was in his flat, dressed in his now dirty porter’s uniform, still with a brass button missing. He was sitting on his padlocked metal trunk by his bed – the trunk that was presumed to contain all his personal effects and memories. Anna Tap was lying in his bed, lying still, not panicking, nor even showing any awareness that I had just ent
ered the room. She lay under the bedcovers, with only her neck and head visible. The Porter was brushing her hair, with Claire Higg’s hairbrush, and calling out the single word Anna. She looked so ill, her face had somehow shrunk, the skin was dull and lifeless. Why was she keeping so still?

  Anna, get up!

  The Porter took hold of Anna’s hair, scrunched it up in his fist, and making one prolonged wail of effort he pulled it, heaving Anna from the bed. And Anna’s head came off. He held it up to me! What had he done? Anna! I screamed and as I screamed the Porter began to laugh, shrieking with pleasure. And then I saw that Anna had no eyes at all, that there were huge scars across her face and that her body was cut off so neatly just beneath the shoulders. Her body had been made of pillows. The Porter was holding up the wax bust of Anna Tap.

  The Porter hissed and very quietly spoke:

  Who let you out, Francis Orme?

  They’re blowing the place up.

  You’re not supposed to come down here …

  We have to leave.

  But we’ll make an exception, won’t we, Anna?

  There’s no time left.

  Anna wants you to sit down. Do come in and sit down.

  You must leave now, there’s no time.

  There’s always time for friends. Come in, Francis, do. You know Anna already, don’t you?

  You can’t stay.

  I’ve mislaid a button. Have you seen it?

  You’ve got to get out.

  Shall I close the door, so we won’t be disturbed?

  I’m going. I’ve told you, now I’m going.

  The Porter hissed.

  Get inside! Close the door.

  Get out of here!

  I rushed back towards the tunnel. My footsteps were soon joined by another set of footsteps, rushed steps, hammering in my ears. And a voice, calling out – Where’s my button? Has anyone seen my button?

  And as I moved, I thought to myself: I think you can go faster, don’t you, Francis? And even a little more fast, if you please, Francis. Can you manage that? I’ll certainly try. Yes, this is quicker, but I think that’s the limit. No, that won’t do. You’ll have to go a bit quicker still. How about this? And some more, please. This? More, please. I’ll try, but it can’t be guaranteed. Any better? Yes, but more, Francis, more. Still more? I’ll try, of course, but—

  And then I stopped completely, just a metre away from the broken tunnel door. The Porter was with me, he had hold of my hair and banged my head against the wall.

  A blast from the other end of the cellar made him let go. The blast had a wind all of its own which rushed through the cellar and made the Porter’s cheeks wobble. And then in a moment the dust settled and I saw my white cotton hands, dead, dirty, ugly.

  Look what you’ve done! You did this. You did it.

  The Porter spat in my face and said:

  Goodbye, Francis.

  And smiled.

  Another blast, louder, much louder. And this time the wind came with plaster and pieces of brick, all over the spot where the Porter and I sat in the cellar of that building called Observatory Mansions and above us came the sound of the whole world creaking and beginning to give way.

  A moment outside of time.

  The Porter didn’t move. I didn’t really see him, not all of him, or even most of him. Just a part of him. His right hand. Dusty. Freckled. Peeping out of rubble.

  I looked around the cellar, one half of it was filled with dust and rubble, the other half still retained its columns and vaulted ceiling, pretending that nothing had happened. I stood up and brushed myself down with my forearms, taking care over my appearance, keeping calm, trying not to worry. I had heard that people behaved in this manner when faced with approaching peril, they take solace in the most banal activities; I had once been told of a man who knew he was shortly to die, who began insisting that he have reading glasses, since he was afraid of ruining his eyes. Similarly, I brushed all the dust from me and then, with slow deliberate steps, calmly, to hide my mounting fear, I moved inside the tunnel. I began to collect my exhibition, to bring it back out with me, scooping each exhibit up by a corner of its polythene bag, not willing to lose a single exhibit but leaving the cardboard slips with the lot numbers behind. I could re-catalogue later. But this was so difficult, I could no longer use my hands, and was forced to scoop up the exhibition with my wrists. I kept dropping precious objects. Shall I go back for that? What was it? Lot 9, an empty vinegar bottle. Oh yes, I remember that, lot 9’s good. You’d better pick that up. Oh, and something else has gone. What is it? Lot 6, a pencil stub. Leave lot 6 here? Never. Pick it up. But now lot 18’s gone. The empty small brown cardboard box? Pick it up immediately. Stop fumbling, Francis. Now’s not the time for fumbling. And with each dropped object the panic began to return.

  I had hardly begun to retrieve the exhibition when the third and largest blast went off and threw me to the tunnel floor.

  Incidents inside a tunnel.

  When I opened my eyes again I could see nothing. The light from the cellar, that had barely lit the tunnel before, was gone. Something pressed down on my legs, stopping me moving. Some of the old wooden beams that supported the tunnel’s ceiling and walls had collapsed, bringing part of the tunnel down with it, covering my legs. As I moved my head up slightly it touched a beam: the way ahead was blocked too. I was wedged in, in both directions. I did not dare to feel about with my hands, I tried not to think about them at all. What state had they been reduced to now? How dirty could they be, dead gloves, dead hands, paralysed with filth?

  I gradually became aware of the rest of my body. I was lying on top of my exhibition. My chin was resting on a tobacco tin. There were objects piled in front of me, I could feel their polythene bags against my cheeks: the beginnings of my exhibition, lying where I had dropped them in my fall.

  I knew that I should probably try to get up, that that would be the best thing, heave my legs away from all that rubble, try to carry on along the tunnel, try to find the church. That’s what I should have done, but I was frightened to move my legs in case they hurt, I didn’t want to feel any pain. There was dust in my lungs and the taste of blood in my mouth and my head felt thick and alien. Run, Francis, run, I thought, that’s what you ought to do, but instead I just closed my eyes and drifted into a sleep.

  When I woke, I woke because of the pain in my legs. I tried to move the rubble; I tried to roll over, but was unable to. I felt my hands throbbing, insulted, I pressed them to my mouth, kissed them. That beautiful white was ruined for ever, one of my fingers had burst out of the cotton.

  I took some deep breaths and tried only to concentrate on my feet and ankles and legs, tried to remember how they were connected to me, what they felt like, how they moved. And the moment I pictured them, I felt their pain drilling through my body. I tried to roll a little, to feel my legs moving. But the more I shifted, the more it hurt. But I wriggled on with tiny, controlled movements, and slowly I began to creep forwards, eventually, advancing inch by inch, the rubble was left behind and I sat as best I could, crouched beneath the wooden beam, hugging my wounded knees.

  It would be good to light a match, I thought. It would be good to see something, no matter how bleak it was, something to take away this thick blackness, if only for a moment. I was scared of the dark, like a child. How, I wondered, did Anna feel, trapped in perpetual night. But though there were still matches in my pocket I would be unable to strike one without the use of my hands. But I tried, I shifted the box out of my trouser pocket using an elbow, and even clamped it still on the floor between my feet, but I could not open it. Then I tried holding the matchbox between my wrists and sliding it open with my tongue. But I had hold of the box the wrong way round, and as I stuck my tongue out and pushed the cardboard drawer away from me, all the matchsticks fell to the floor. Howling in frustration, I ground the matchsticks up under my shoes, cursing them. I was alone in the dark. I had lost my one chance of light, tipped it out on the floor of the tu
nnel.

  Then I began to frighten myself, muttering, if you don’t get out you will die. If I stayed here, I thought, I would become one with the famous fat and thin Cavalier. My ghost might wander up and down and spook anyone who came to look for me; and those intruders would never return to the light again, even if they screamed out at eighty decibels, for no one would come searching in the tunnel for them because that is where the phantom of the white gloves lives with the fat and thin Cavalier, and no one wants to disturb those two. But I could not move the rubble in front of me, that was impossible, the Law of White Gloves forbade it:

  Rule 7. Dead gloves cannot function. The hands underneath them will never be able to pick up, touch or move at all. They are dead.

  I would scream for help. How convenient it would be for me if people came to save me. They would do all the work of shifting the rubble, while I just sat here kissing my fingers, ordering the people to hurry up. Yes, that’s what would happen. I needed only open my mouth and with one brave effort, call out. What remained of the tunnel walls would surely echo and duplicate the sound until someone heard it, then everyone would immediately start moving rubble and set about the business of rescuing me. I felt considerably better. But when I opened my mouth to scream, I could not make any noise. My throat was too dry, all I was able to hear was a thin whispering sound, which faded as soon as it was uttered.

  I was like a Pharaoh buried amongst his life’s objects. But I was unable yet to let go of life. I began to aim my elbows at the rubble in front of me, scraping away in ugly, desperate gestures, trying to dislodge it. But it did not move. I thumped the rubble with my wrists. But it did not move. I kicked at the rubble. And it did not move.

  Perhaps if I used my hands … but that was not permissible. Rule seven was firm about that. I would just sit here then, cramped against the jagged tunnel wall, and try to sleep the end out, try to keep quiet, try to achieve a little of that inner stillness which I had so enjoyed and loved when extinction wasn’t threatened. But, in my state of fear, I was unable to achieve inner stillness, so I attempted a prolonged session of outer stillness to calm me down. But I was incapable even of that. I fidgeted, my bleeding legs kept shaking, my hands throbbed, my brain pictured the words of the seventh rule of the Law of White Gloves and began to reduce the print size until it couldn’t be read any more, until it was out of sight. No! I could not break the law! If I broke the law what would that lead to? The end, surely. I might become one of those other people, I might take up talking, I might even stop collecting and leave that most welcome of plinths in the centre of the city empty, I might take a movement job, and in that movement job my superior would be bound to say: Take off those gloves, Francis, and sit down, there’s a good man. And I might even become a good man and take off those gloves and what then? No, I was a glove wearer, it was understood. Glove people are a magical people, wearing gloves, monitoring everything you touched, was like floating above the world, watching everybody in it, watching all the suffering, always observing it, but never touching it. It was best not to think about breaking the Law of White Gloves, it was better just to die quietly down here in the miserable darkness.