by Edward Carey
Out in the heaps I had observed Tummis standing up to his shins, cooing at the seagulls and pretending to glide like them by moving his arms and flapping a little; often he brought the gulls crumbs and buns. But mostly, even above all those animals, even above his lost ostrich, it was Ormily who Tummis he loved.
Cousin Ormily was small and sweet and shy, she was quite quiet and unassuming, her hair was so blonde it was almost white and she had white eyebrows, and she was very fond of Tummis. It was all very odd, this Iremonger love match, no one knew what to do with it. Ormily’s birth object, Tummis told me, was a watering can. She had told him so herself, and what greater proof of her love could there be than that? Tummis had named his seagull after Ormily’s birth object, calling it Wateringcan.
‘Sometimes, I do think I shall die in corduroy shorts,’ he said, ‘and never be with her. I was going to see her, very quickly tonight, before Evensong. She was to wait for me in the chest of the Grand Grandfather. But now, how can I tell her that Wateringcan got out? She’ll think I don’t care.’
He was so miserable, something had to be done.
‘Tummis,’ I said, ‘go and see her. I’ll keep watch for you if you like.’
‘Really, Clod? You’d do that?’
‘You will not be disturbed.’
‘Oh, quick, then, and thank you, a million thanks.’
‘We’ll not let Moorcus ruin another thing.’
So we hurried down the marble staircase to the Grand Grandfather before the gong sounded, tiptoeing past Grandmother’s porter snoozing at his desk, he who admitted or refused entrance to Grandmother’s wing beyond. Towards the bottom, at the turn of the stairs, was the Grand Grandfather, a very considerable timepiece originally from a blacking factory in Tooting, with a huge face and a long body, and a door into its workings; a case large enough for two people to hide themselves inside and whisper. There waited Tummis within the clock, and I stood a little way away endlessly tying my shoelaces and doing what I could to appear innocent. A slight creak in the stair, a mumbled name from a covered object, and a light small personage appeared, saw me and was about to run away or else burst into a thousand pieces at the embarrassment of it all.
‘It’s all right, Ormily,’ I said, ‘go in, he’s waiting, I’m keeping watch.’
And in she went, her cheeks a red beacon, and the door shut behind her. I crouched and waited. They shouldn’t be more than a minute or two; very soon the staircase would be clacking under the weight of Iremongers all rushing for Evensong. I kept there, crouching, listening out for anyone coming, but hearing nothing at first except the small whispering of a gas lamp kept just beside the enormous tickage and this I heard at last to say in a very uncertain voice, ‘Ivy Orbuthnot? Ivy Orbuthnot?’
And seeking to cheer the gas lamp, I whispered to it, ‘Yes, that’s quite right, as you say, Ivy Orbuthnot.’
‘Ivy Orbuthnot?’
‘Ivy Orbuthnot, definitely.’
But soon there were other sounds to be heard beyond the lamp. These were coming from inside the clock. It took me a little while to catch the watering can’s name. I had heard it whispering on the rare occasions I had been by Ormily, but I could never catch what it was saying, it seemed such a shy thing. Now, crouching by the clock, I heard the following, ‘Hilary Evelyn Ward-Jackson.’
‘Perr . . . Br . . . ate.’
‘Hilary Evelyn Ward-Jackson.’
‘Perdita Braithwaite.’
‘Hilary Evelyn Ward-Jackson.’
Etcetera. Hilary etcetera Braithwaite. Onwards and onwards though so soon the Evensong gong must sound. A tap and a watering can in ballad together. To escape those private sounds I stepped down the last few steps of the marble staircase and into Marble Hall and there in the great hallway of Heap House, the absolute centre of the whole colossal edifice, was the enormous glass-fronted famous furniture, the Great Chest which stood on eight large carved feet shaped like a lion’s. Inside upon the numerous shelves were kept the various objects of the late Iremongers. Each object had a piece of string tied around it and a paper tag on which was written someone’s name, the name of the person who had once belonged to that object. Here were some of my ancestors, as seen through the thick glass of the great chest:
Idwon, inkpot
Agith, pillbox
Arfrah, washstand
Robitt-Fridick, penknife
Slibolla, fish kettle
Borrid, ewer
Naud, tweezers
When each Iremonger died their birth object was placed in the Great Chest in the hall, all of them never made a sound, I couldn’t hear them, they’d stopped talking. There on the fifth shelf were my mother’s and father’s.
Ayris, key to a pianoforte
Puntias, chalkboard rubber
I look a little like Mother I was told, and so my presence caused distress. When I was born my mother died. My grandmother found it particularly difficult to observe me and so I did not see her for months at a time. My mother had been the favourite of the house, she was my grandparents’ youngest child and their first daughter after twelve sons. I know very little about her. I know that she sang. Her voice, I have been told, was extraordinarily beautiful. Now, since my birth, there was no singing any more. Grandmother had forbidden it.
My father was not very much talked of at all. He was a quiet, peaceful man, born with a weak heart. Wrapped in cotton almost all his existence, carefully fed sugar cubes in muffled rooms, and brought out every now and then to visit my mother, for Grandfather had decided shortly after Mother was born that she should marry little Puntias, before it was discovered he had a weak pump. He had been kept carefully until he could marry Mother, he never went out into the heaps. Two weeks after I was born, in grief at Mother’s death and in joy at my birth, my father’s heart stopped.
I would often go to Marble Hall and think of Mother and Father, of their objects and of all those other ones besides theirs, of all those finished people.
Standing there admiring all the dead, I had quite forgotten Tummis and Ormily and only remembered them because of the rumbling in rooms above me, people were moving upstairs, they were coming this way. The gong, the gong should sound any moment. I ran back to the lumbering timepiece, tapped on the door.
‘Hilary Ward-Jackson.’
‘Perdita Braithwaite.’
‘It’s time,’ I said, ‘it’s time already!’
And indeed the stairs were hammering with the stirring of my relatives, jostling and crowding and swarming towards the great family chapel. They must come out, they must come out now, or they should be caught. Upstairs, just one flight above, I heard the clarion cry of Albert Powling.
‘Little Uncle.’ I knocked in warning. ‘Little Uncle!’
And just in time, for the stairs were yelling then, the door of Grand Grandfather opened and out fled Ormily and Perdita Braithwaite and they were down the stairs in a moment, and then followed Tummis and his Hilary, banging themselves against the door as they exited and only just in time. Yes, there was Tummis transported to a dreamland, all huge smile and a redness about his mouth and the declaration, none too quiet, ‘Oh, I love her!’
‘Oh, shut up,’ I said, ‘and act unloved, for God’s sake, here comes Moorcus.’
Moorcus tripped Tummis down the stairs, but he did not fall far, it was nothing very much, there was not far to fall, and all the little cousins laughed as they always did in Moorcus’s presence. Tummis picked himself up. He still had a smile upon his face, love his anaesthetic. All of us gathered to our pews, all aunts of us and uncles of us, all cousins by the tens and twenties, trousered ones and bedressed ones, and the shorts people towards the front, myself amongst them, boys on the west nave and on the east the girl cousins, Ormily somewhere about them. A great gathering of crows and jackdaws and ravens. Being in the swollen chapel was like having my head in a great dinning bell, it was upsetting and I always had a terrible head fever afterwards and would go and lie down, thankful that evensong is only
once a week. In such a noise I could not hear a thing.
The old Iremonger dirge, Old Broken, was sung out, and I mouthed the words along with the others,
In the spring’s early blue morning
At the beginning of my days
A perfect gold was adorning
My skin was alight, ablaze,
I was hopeful then and youthful,
On the shelf I was atop,
I was happy then and useful,
When you bought me from the shop.
In the summer’s lovely bright light,
I was for ever at your call
I was polished, I stood upright,
On the shelf in the front hall.
Ent’ring visitors would gasp then
At this piece you did call ‘mine’,
You would very quietly ask them,
Had they anything so fine?
In the autumn when the cold comes
And when the wind is wont to caw
Then a sudden urgent someone
Slammed so hard the old front door,
And I fell then and I tumbled
All the way unto the floor
I was broken then and humbled,
Never needed, never more.
It was mid-singing that I looked up a bit at my dark family mass all groaning along, and there I saw all those backs of head, all that Iremonger hair out and combed or else under bonnet, but one head was not pointed down at all, one was up and turned back and looking exactly at me. It was Cousin Pinalippy. There was not much love in that face as it stared and stared and found no approval. It turned at last but I remembered it as our family hymn persisted.
Watch me, keep me, please remember
I am not something to be lost,
In the howling dark December
In the winter’s rubble frost,
I am useful, I am needed,
Do but hear me now, I moan.
My entreaties are not headed
On the heap ground I’ve been thrown.
Now there’s nothing left to speak of,
Now there’s no one to say my name,
Do you hear the last small creak of
A thing only full of shame,
A nameless and faceless no one,
Lies out here upon the mound,
So smashed, so trodden, so undone,
Who shall ne’er again be found.
Then the family dispersed for the night to its own corners. I waited for all to flood away, shook Tummis’s hand, wished him goodnight, and at last retreated for the day, too shocked by the thought of Pinalippy and tomorrow’s event to mingle more.
7
A Tortoiseshell Shoehorn
Lucy Pennant’s narrative continued
The women servants took me along a passageway and into a different room with pegs and benches. I was given new clothes, the simple black dress and plain flat shoes and white cap that they all wore. The white mob cap had a red bay leaf stitched into it. They told me I should change now. There was a little stall they showed me to, there was no door to it but a small curtain. I changed. One woman folded my old clothes and took them away. I didn’t care, they belonged to the orphanage. Goodbye to that leather cap, I shall not miss you a jot. The remaining women, some of whom were girls of my age, patted me and brushed my hair, and nodded at me, purring almost, saying again and again, ‘It’s all right. It’s all right.’
‘Whoever said it wasn’t?’ I replied.
One of the older of the women whispered, ‘How lucky! A new relation! We’re all one family here. You are at home now, you’re where you’re supposed to be at last. No doubt you’ve been other places, never mind, you’re home now.’
I was told it was time for me to come and meet my family. I was ushered back into the kitchen and all the cooks and serving men and girls all came over and looked at me with considerable thoroughness, I was moved on, one after the other after the other.
‘Welcome home,’ each said to me.
‘Ah, welcome, here she is at last, home! Home!’
‘Home!’
‘Home!’
And they looked so pleased to see me, and many of them were tearful and kissed me as if I really was a very dear person to them, a beloved one at last returned, that I thought all right, I don’t mind a hug now and then, and soon I was hugging them back. One by one they all hugged me, young men came up and held me close to them, and some seemed to smell me. But then in all that warmth and kindness there was the sound of someone clearing his throat and all the Iremongers darted back to their various stations and I was left on my own before a very tall man with considerable eyebrows, in very smart dress clothes, black tie and tails, who ushered me towards him, and I went forward.
‘I,’ came a voice so low it was almost hard to make out, his noises like rumbles, ‘am Mr Sturridge, the butler. I sing the song of Heap House, it is a song of order and correctness, it is the noise of right and dignity. It is the noise of these halls, these many stories, it is the sound of every chamber in this great palace which is, though undeserving, our home too. We live amongst these pillar roots, underground beneath them that move above us and are above us and that is how it should be. Heap House sticks into the ground like a mighty flagpole, and thus a part of it must be buried from sight. Our part is for ever in the deep and its only light is candle and gas lamp. We are the roots, the great roots of the plant that grows above. We dwell beneath the earth where we belong, and here we labour, each at his station. I am the keep, I am the keep-it-in-place, I am brush and dustpan, I am polish and bite. How do you do?’
I bowed to the huge man.
‘Welcome. Tomorrow, Iremonger,’ he said, pausing a moment before announcing, ‘fireplaces.’ The serving Iremongers around me bristled at that word, and several patted my shoulders in approval, and said with great encouragement, ‘You work above ground, above ground!’
‘Now,’ said the butler.
A man stood out from behind him, I hadn’t seen him before. This I would learn was the underbutler, a very greasy-looking man, who nodded at me and then rang a bell.
We were all gathered into a dining hall, there were several long tables, and one raised on a dais where Mr Sturridge sat with Mrs Piggott. Upon the tables all ready and waiting was a bowl filled with some steaming food and also two spoons at each place, one empty, the other holding a small quantity of something brownish-grey. I saw the head cooks then, Mr and Mrs Groom, shortish and pale, very similar-looking as if they were brother and sister, not man and wife. But people often grow to look like one another, I had seen that before. They were of a shape, the Groom couple, hard to tell exactly one from the other, both had breasts, both had hips, both had big hands, and were dressed in the same white clothing that marked their employ.
No one sat down, they all stood before the bowls and spoons looking at them longingly. Another bell was rung and then everyone began to chant from memory a strange little poem, or grace, in low voices, some closed their eyes, some put their hands together in prayer,
In this house
Where we live
In the love
Which we give
In the time
Where are hid
All the secrets
Of our blood.
All our organs
And our bones
All our lungs
And liver
And blood,
Thick and thinner
Thank o thank
For this dinner.
Once more a bell was rung, and now all hurriedly went to their places and very carefully picked up their empty spoons, and all ate the soup. It was salty and thick and far better than the food at the orphanage which had small chips of bone in it and once a rusted nail. But no one touched the other, larger spoons, which were serving spoons. As soon as the bowls were empty they were taken away by other servants in coarse grey outfits but no one left their places, each sat only with the filled spoon before him, but not touching it. Then another bell
was rung and another grace chanted,
Our piping and our plumbing
Our right and our wronging
Take a spoonful of comfort
Sugar sweet and crunchful
To last us all the long nightfall.
Then they began, in so many different ways, to eat from the other spoon. All was very quiet and concentrated as this business was done, there were some noises of crunching, but very small sounds. Some opened their mouths as wide as they were able and pushed the whole spoon in, others hunched over their spoon, sniffing and then carefully lapping it up with their tongues, others went at it spoon-tip first and slowly and methodically worked their way over the bowl. I lifted my spoon, I could not exactly tell what it held. It was rather grey, something thick and grimy, and had a strong smell that I couldn’t quite name, but was not far from the great slap of stench I smelt when I arrived.
‘What is it?’ I whispered to my neighbour.
‘We have it every night. It’s so good,’ she said, a stout girl with a nose that was askew.
‘Yes, but I cannot tell what it is.’
‘If I told you, you might think strangely of it, perhaps you should eat it first and then I should tell you. I think there was a time when I thought it a little strange, I do seem to remember that, but actually it’s really quite something. Eat then, do eat.’
I raised the substance to my mouth, but my nose protested, I could not do it. ‘I’m not hungry,’ I said.
‘Then may I have it, may I?’
‘Help yourself,’ I said, but then, ‘if you tell me what it is.’
