Heap House for Hotkeys

by Edward Carey

  ‘Is there something wrong with James Henry?’ I asked.

  ‘Nothing in particular I shouldn’t think, but we shall keep an ear on him,’ said Idwid, grinning. ‘Tell me, young Clod, what have you been hearing? You’ve heard Victoria Hollest asking for Margaret? What else then. Tell me, please do.’

  ‘I do hear voices,’ I said. ‘I think I always have; objects calling out names, always names. I don’t know what it means exactly –’

  ‘It means you’re a very clever one.’

  ‘I just hear names, not everything has a name.’

  ‘To be sure.’

  ‘But some things do, some things whisper their names and some things shout their names, and many birth objects have names, but not all –’

  ‘Not all, you say? How interesting.’

  ‘And the fire bucket in the hall has a name, and a newel post to the marble stairs. All over the house different objects with different names.’

  ‘What a perfect joy you are!’ said Idwid, still holding my plug. ‘How lovely to have found you. I’m going to be here until all the objects have settled down, because you see,’ he said, leaning in very closely so that his shiny moon-face was close to mine, ‘the objects have grown a little jumpy. Nothing to be alarmed about, they do get ideas in their heads from time to time and then they need to be reminded gently what they are. I can do that for them. Clod, my little lugs, we shall hear much of one another, very much, and it shall all be splendid. Now, Clod, it seems, according to your Uncle Aliver here, that the unrest amongst certain objects began with the loss of a doorknob called –’

  ‘Alice Higgs!’ I cried, having suddenly worked something out. Not Alec. Not Alec at all! I had been so stupid!

  ‘Alice Higgs? And what do you know of Alice Higgs the doorknob?’

  ‘That she was Aunt Rosamud’s and she lost it.’

  ‘Nothing more?’ he asked.

  ‘Nothing,’ I said, though I was shaking. I mustn’t tell him, but I wanted to tell him. There was something about him that made you want to please him very, very much. I so nearly told him everything. But though I liked him so, I must keep the whereabouts of Alice Higgs a secret, just for now.

  ‘Well, well, we shall find this Alice Higgs, wherever it may be. It’s hiding, but we’ll find it. There’s no place that a doorknob called Alice Higgs can hide from me. I, Idwid Percible Iremonger, find all things, whether they want to be found or not. Whenever something’s lost they often send for me.’

  I didn’t like him so much then. He handed me back my plug.

  ‘Thank you so much,’ he said.

  ‘James Henry Hayward,’ it whispered.

  ‘Goodbye, James Henry Hayward, I will hear you again shortly. And goodbye, dear Clod. We shall speak, more, you and I, of so many things. We that hear so much have so much to tell one another. Lead me on, please,’ he quietly whispered and Uncle Aliver stood him up and then the shining little man, a smile upon his face, was gone and I was left in my room to my own thoughts, thoughts of Lucy Pennant, who I understood only now in my foolishness was keeping Alice Higgs in her bonnet. I must get it from her before Uncle Idwid finds it, because if Idwid heard Alice Higgs first there was no knowing what might be done to Lucy.

  12

  A Pewter Jelly Mould and a Pair of Cast Iron Sugar Cutters

  Extract from the menu book of Mr Orris and Mrs Odith Groom, head cooks of Forlichingham Park, Forlichingham, London

  Entry for 12th November 1875

  LIST OF LOSS: Thief in the kitchen. The large brass five and a half gallon fire extinguisher. Palette knife. Two pastry jiggers. Four Iremonger spoons (twelve ounces). Thirteen icing tubes of best nickel silver missing. Thief among us. Don’t know who. Will find out. Knives sharpened, keeping on our own persons. Odith a cleaver, Orris his block carver.

  LIST OF SPOILED: Twelve haddock even though curried. Hung pigs stained and maggoty, one turned bright turquoise. Seven brace of pheasant as solid as porcelain, can’t be thawed. Mushrooms, shattered. Carrots, elasticated. Apples, gone black and hollow. Cured bacon, puddled. Porridge oats, not oats but moths, all suffocated in their jar. So little left to send up the house by the dumb waiter.

  Upstairs lunch: pickled pig feet, pickled cabbage, salted lettuce.

  Downstairs lunch: chitterling sausage, rescued tripe, snail and spoon.

  Upstairs dinner: roast of cormorants, black skimmers and osprey, boiled turnip.

  Downstairs lunch: dredged rodent and spoon.

  NOTES: Today we saw a cup move of its own volition, actually witnessed it. Is the world coming to an end? There’s nothing, nothing to be trusted. Only Orris. Only Odith.

  13

  A Moustache Cup

  Lucy Pennant’s narrative continued

  When I woke the next morning, after horrible dreams of my matchbox sparking alight and setting fire to me, I found everyone in the dormitory in a tizzy. The Iremongers were huddled in corners, whispering, but none of them gone to work.

  ‘What’s happening?’ I asked.

  ‘What’s happening?’ came back. ‘Where’ve you been?’

  ‘Upstairs firegrates. In my bed, trying to get some sleep. The usual.’

  ‘There are new people, come from the city. We’re all to be questioned, they came last night with Umbitt.’

  ‘Something’s up!’ one said.

  ‘Something terrible,’ shrieked another. And then they all sounded off like a bunch of shrieking poultry, squawking and nipping, and making lots of movements with their hands and faces.

  ‘I saw one of the city Iremongers shouting at Mr Sturridge,’ yelped one.

  ‘And what did Sturridge say?’ I asked. ‘He wouldn’t have stood for that.’

  ‘Wouldn’t he though? He did nothing! He bowed his head.’

  ‘And Piggott’s in a fury! One Iremonger saw her weeping!’

  ‘Mrs Piggott! Why? What has happened?’

  ‘Things!’ they chorused. ‘Oh, things!’

  ‘What things?’ I asked.

  ‘Last night, Lorky Pignut,’ said an Iremonger, smoothing her dress down and standing forward, appointing herself mouthpiece, very important now, chest forward, ‘you must have been doing the firegrates, it was after the bell had rung. It happened down the corridor to the ashrooms. There came a terrible screaming, just one Iremonger screaming at first but then afterwards more screaming from other Iremongers, so we all went running, in our nightgowns, just enough time to slip on our clogs, and we rushed down the corridor, serving Iremongers from every room, body Iremongers too, the lot, so many white faces, and pushing through a little, I managed at last to see what is was all about. And then, oh yes, I certainly saw it, with my own eyes! And I screamed too!’

  ‘Oh, the terror!’ called the Iremongers around her, ruffling their feathers.

  ‘What?’ I asked. ‘What was it?’

  ‘It was,’ said the Iremonger, and very slowly, her face quite white, her hands shaking, ‘it was a moustache cup!’

  ‘A moustache cup?’ I asked. ‘What on earth is that?’

  ‘To be honest, we didn’t know at first. Never seen the like. But a moustache cup has a special lip over the rim of it so that a gentleman –’

  ‘A distinguished gentleman very like,’ added another.

  ‘Yes, a distinguished gentleman,’ continued the first, reclaiming her position, ‘may not disturb his well waxed and shaped moustache when he is a-drinking his tea. That’s a moustache cup for your information. And there was one last night! On the corridor. A cup with a strange shelf over its rim, white porcelain, no markings. No one knew where it came from, no one had ever seen it before.’

  ‘But what,’ I asked, ‘is so terrifying in that?’

  ‘Because, Looky Pineknot, if you want to know, it was moving!’

  ‘Moving?’ I asked.

  ‘Moving of its own accord, I saw it, I should not have believed it otherwise, but it was rolling along on its bottom, around and around in circles. Sometimes it stoppe
d for a while and then hopped a little forward like a robin or a sparrow or some small bird. Sometimes it rolled itself almost to the feet of some Iremongers and then there was such a screaming or a scrambling to get away from it. One Iremonger threatened it with a poker and it did scuttle away a bit then.’

  ‘There must have been some creature inside it, a mouse, perhaps, or a shrew,’ I said, ‘a large bug even.’

  ‘No! No!’ she said, ‘there was just a cup, only a cup, nothing more, and that cup was wild and clinking here and there. Until Mrs Piggott came a-roaring, ‘What are you all doing?’ and then in that parting of the Iremongers to let her through, the cup took its chance and rolled and clinked and slammed itself along the way, had a direct hit with the fire extinguisher there, and clattered away from it out of the corridor towards the kitchens. And then Mrs Piggott was so white! And then the screaming, “Catch it! Catch it!’’ ’

  ‘You should have seen all the rushing about,’ chimed in another. ‘Some Iremongers on chairs and tables screaming, as the cup rushed hither and thither in a terrible state, until at last Mr Groom the cook, holding a copper saucepan upside down, managed to trap the thing beneath it. And Groom sat there then, on top of the pan, but you could still hear the cup beneath clanking against the sides making a terrible din. Desperate to get out.’

  The train drowned her out a moment, off to London.

  ‘Where it is now?’ I asked.

  ‘Still just there, under the saucepan, only Mr Groom’s moved now and in his place has been put a great kitchen weight.’

  ‘Twelve pounds!’ added another Iremonger with considerable excitement, stepping forward and then stepping back again.

  ‘And there it stays, clinking now and then, but much quieter than before, almost, you might say, sorrowfully.’

  ‘I should very much like to see it,’ I said.

  ‘It’s being guarded, round the clock, there’s always at least four of Groom’s kitchen lads there, and each armed with something blunt and heavy – a rolling pin, a thick wooden paddle, a spit pan – just in case the cup gets free again.’

  ‘I’d like to see that all right,’ I said.

  ‘Well you can’t, Iremonger!’ said Mrs Piggott, standing in the doorway. ‘Line up everyone! At the foot of your beds. General inspection!’

  Mrs Piggott was gripping a tea strainer. It was my friend’s tea strainer, the Iremonger who had scratched and lost her name, I felt certain of it. And her bed was empty, she wasn’t in the dormitory. Where was she?

  We were to stand before our beds, and wait to be called. It was happening in all the dormitories downstairs, there was such a flap on, a general inspection, all the servants were going to be questioned. One by one we should be summoned into Mr Sturridge’s office where the interviews took place. The roll call was taken, numbers of servants reported and added up and marked down in the register.

  We were asked where my missing friend was, who had last seen her, and one of the Iremongers said that she’d been worming in the ashrooms, that she had bits to haul there after being out in the heaps. More official men came in, city Iremongers with their dark suits and hats and all wearing the golden bay leaf upon their collars. They’d come from Bay Leaf House. They directed some serving boys to take her bed away, her stool, her spare clothes, all of it. As to where it went we heard clearly enough, ‘Incinerator.’ Shortly afterwards, another Iremonger came in and she had a mop and bucket and she scrubbed the floor where the Iremonger’s bed had been.

  ‘What’s going on?’ I whispered to the scrubber. ‘Where is she, do you know?’

  ‘Don’t know. Shut up. Not to talk.’

  A little later an Iremonger boy came with some whitewashing and scrubbed the wall.

  ‘Do you know what’s going on?’ I asked him.

  ‘Not allowed to speak. Particular instructions not to.’

  After he had gone a further Iremonger entered with a big metal tank on his back and a spray pump.

  ‘Close eyes!’ he bellowed.

  He sprayed some liquid into the air, all over us and our beds, like it was raining in the room, and when we called out in protest, a city Iremonger swung around some hand crank, a klaxon, an enormous hideous sound, and commanded, ‘No talking! Silence! Silence during cleaning!’

  And so we were sprayed. And stood there dripping, not just us and our clothes but our beds and the walls, everything sodden.

  ‘Now, ladies, it is no matter,’ said the city Iremonger, ‘all this spraying, no matter at all. Just precaution. No alarm please. For your safety. Please now, to stand and slowly to dry by air, all is well. And please, a favour to ask of you. Please to shuffle the beds together and fill in this gap here. It looks, don’t you think, somehow out of place.’ He had us move the beds so that very soon it was as if it had never been there at all. ‘So good! So good! Breathe in!’

  ‘Excuse me, sir,’ I said.

  ‘What?’ said the Iremonger. ‘What is your point?’

  ‘I clean the firegrates, sir, upstairs in the night.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘The Iremonger,’ I said, ‘who used to sleep here, where is she?’

  ‘Why, why care?’ He looked so interested now, he took a notebook from a pocket, muttered ‘firegrates.’

  Look out, I told myself, these men in their black suits will surely do whatever they want with a person, throw them into the heaps without so much as thinking about it.

  ‘She . . . she,’ I said, ‘took a handkerchief from me, borrowed one. I should like it back.’

  ‘Can’t!’ he said. ‘Handkerchief’s gone.’

  ‘Is she well?’

  ‘She is missing, suspected lost in heaps.’

  ‘But she was in the ashrooms. She was worming. She’d come in already. She can’t have been out in the heaps.’

  ‘What is your purpose?’

  ‘I clean the grates, upstairs, sir, as I said.’

  ‘Well then, not to worry, are you? Nothing to do with you, is it? You shall be reimbursed: one handkerchief. And now, all present, wait please, a while longer. In silence is best.’

  He left.

  ‘You wouldn’t ask about her,’ I whispered to those others in the dormitory. ‘She’s gone, and you didn’t lift a finger. You just stand there. You just do whatever you’re told.’

  ‘And how brave were you, Iremonger?’ said my neighbour.

  ‘Can’t recall you doing so very much,’ said another.

  ‘I asked, I did ask,’ I said.

  ‘Didn’t look like much from here.’

  ‘Didn’t look like much of anything.’

  ‘No, not very much,’ I admitted.

  ‘No, I should say not.’

  ‘But I will find her, I will find out what’s happened.’

  ‘Hark at the hero.’

  ‘I will,’ I said, ‘I will.’

  ‘You’ll clean the firegrates and shut up, that’s what you will.’

  ‘I won’t let her fade away. I have friends, upstairs.’

  That set them cackling.

  ‘I do! Just you wait!’

  More cackling.

  ‘What a fuss she makes!’ said one.

  ‘And is it worth it?’ wondered another.

  ‘All the fuss over a heap.’

  ‘Come on, Iremonger, what nonsense over nothing.’

  ‘You’re a firegrate, that’s something to hold onto,’ one said, and in a kinder voice, ‘and we do so like to hear your stories.’

  ‘Can you even remember her?’ another asked gently.

  ‘Of course I can.’

  ‘Can you tell us what she looked like?’

  ‘She wore a black dress and a white cap, and there were clogs on her feet,’ I said, doing my best.

  ‘And so have we all.’

  ‘She had a big nose, her eyes were brown.’

  ‘And tell us, will you, what was her name?’

  ‘Iremonger,’ I whispered.

  They had us wait there, by our beds, all
morning, drying out. At last, one by one, an Iremonger would be called and escorted out to be interviewed and would not come back afterwards, so that we who were left could only wonder at what was going on. Slowly, so slowly, the day ebbed on. Another Iremonger, a sink Iremonger, poked his head in to whisper that the moustache cup had managed to escape, that one of the kitchen boys, eager for a look-see, had lifted the pot, just a little, and the cup had rushed out, he’s out in the heaps now, the boy, and all are looking for the moustache cup. What a fuss, I thought, what a people. I hoped they’d never find that moustache cup. I thought of Clod then, who though a bit strange and creeping, though his head was large and his skin pale, though he was short and peculiar, showed some kindness. Perhaps Clod, perhaps odd Clod could help me find out what had happened to the Iremonger who had scratched her name. I’d find her, with his help. Together we would find her.

  ‘Iremonger!’

  I was called for, upstairs to Mr Sturridge’s parlour.

  Outside Mr Sturridge’s parlour many objects had been stacked. There was the ship’s lantern which was the butler’s own particular object, and beside it various other odd things, a glass paperweight, a large pencil sharpener with handle, a pen nib, a bookend, a length of skirting board, an unwrapped bar of carbolic soap, a belt buckle and a boot scraper. Other people’s birth objects I supposed, but quite why they were kept outside I had no notion.

  I was summoned within. Mr Sturridge was in a corner, his great height nearly at the ceiling so that he appeared a sort of pillar to the room and that should he walk away the parlour would collapse. He looked very unhappy, he looked very put out. Various city Iremongers stood around the butler’s desk, and behind the desk, raised high on pillows, sat some other type of Iremonger that I’d not seen before. This one was short and shiny and round-faced and in a very fine uniform with a gold bay leaf on its collar, he seemed a very happy man, with a big grin on his face. The eyes were the most peculiar thing about him, they were all white and milky, no dark in them at all. A blind man.

  ‘This room,’ he called, ‘still is so noisy, still so very talkative. There! What’s that?’ He sat upright, his head leaning now this side, now that. He raised his little hands up. ‘Silence everyone! Not a sound. I’ve located it, there, there! There!’ He pointed. ‘What’s there?’