by Edward Carey
He stumbled a bit towards me, but then he fell. He was down in it. He was caught on something, his foot was trapped, he tried to wrestle it free.
‘I . . .’ he called, ‘a post office box has me,’ he said, ‘by the ankle. I can’t free myself.’
‘Tummis! Tummis! The wave!’
And then there was an almighty tug on the lead and I was dragged, pulled, heaved away from him, with only the metal thing in my hand. I was rolled over this way and that, smacked into things, but pulled and dragged on. And there he was further and further away and then a great shadow came over him and then a fearsome crashing. And that was it. I was turned over and could see nothing. When I could at last look back again he wasn’t there any more. He’d gone under.
I was still screaming when they hauled me in, by the time they got me safe to the wall. I was still holding onto that metal thing. It was a tap, a useless bloody tap. With an H on it, for hot I supposed. That was all that was left of him. Just that. A bloody tap. What was the use in that?
It had been several of the big anchors that hauled me in, they were in a panic over the storm and all were trying to scramble back in through the gates because the heaps now were getting up proper, and waves had begun to break against the house wall, it was much deeper there now than when I first came out.
‘In! In! In!’ they screamed. ‘We must get inside!’
The Captain was running around blowing his whistle, panic on his face.
‘It’s a big one, a really big one. Haven’t seen one as big as this in ages!’
‘There’s someone out there,’ I cried, ‘there’s someone still out there.’
They were carrying me in through the gate, they wouldn’t put me down.
‘Please!’ I cried. ‘We have to go back! We have to find him!’
‘No, no,’ said the Captain, ‘isn’t safe, far from it. Got to come in now. Not a day to be outside, not at all.’
‘But he’s still out there,’ I yelled, and then I thought of what they’d listen to. ‘A full-blood,’ I said, ‘a real proper Iremonger! Tummis Iremonger he’s called. He’s out there! Look, this is his! His birth object I think.’
‘Give me that!’ said the Captain. ‘Oh dear. Oh lord.’ But then he said, ‘Close the gates!’
‘You can’t do that!’
‘Must! Must do it! Or the walls will be breached. Got to. For the house!’
‘An Iremonger!’ I screamed. ‘Tummis Iremonger!’
‘Shut it, little miss,’ cried the Captain. ‘It’s too late. Nothing to be done.’
‘Tummis Iremonger’s out there! Listen, please!’
‘No, you brat,’ he said, ‘no, he isn’t, not any more. Anything that’s out there is dead, done with, ended. I’m sorry, I’m really sorry, but that’s it. Nothing can make it through that. Not when it’s up, not when it’s really up like this.’
‘Tummis!’ I wailed. ‘Tummis Iremonger!’
‘I wouldn’t go out there now for my own mother, not even for Umbitt Iremonger himself, not for the ruddy Queen if you want to know. Now get in, will you, and be reasonable. Who knows who else will get it in a storm like this. More than just one, I’d bet on that. There’ll be more dead before the day is out. We better hope the house stays up, it may not, some of it shall come down. I guarantee it. You just have to hope you’re not in that part, don’t you? Look out!’
At that moment some rubble came flying over the wall, landing in the courtyard. Glass shattered in front of us, and there lying where we had been just a moment before was a twisted and rusted iron bed.
‘In! In! And slam the door behind us! Slam it and bolt it!’
We were in then, all the heap Iremongers and all the anchors and me all still wearing our leathers and helmets, downstairs, beneath ground, filth all around us, dripping off us, on the Heap House service corridors.
‘We’ll have a mop down here,’ announced the Captain, ‘a mop this instant.’
But rather than a mop and Iremonger coming running, instead there was Piggott and there was Sturridge, and there was Idwid Iremonger, his ear facing outwards, tugging on his own lug, and just by him another little man just like him to look at, only this one had eyes that worked and his clothes were less smart and there was a whistle hanging from his neck, and there were other Iremongers in suits, official ones I did not know, all anxious, all trembling. Then, actually, after all, I did recognise one of the official Iremongers, one with a red bay leaf on his lapel. I’d seen him somewhere before. I knew I had. Yes I had! It was the one called Cusper Iremonger, the one that took me from the orphanage. Hullo, what’s he doing there?
‘There’s been a breach,’ said the butler.
‘No,’ said the Captain, ‘maybe later. Not yet. Begging to report, the gate bolted and the wall’s holding well. At the moment. But, regret to report, been a loss out there. Don’t know how he got out, a family member with no lifeguard, but out he went, so I’ve been told, and yet to confirm; I have this. But not, so it seems, the one that belonged to it.’
He held out the tap. Piggott snatched it.
‘That’s Master Tummis’s! How did this ever happen!’
‘Don’t know how, not for me to look after those ones. He must have slipped out. Very sorry, very sorry, not my department. But no breach, door fastened and holding! No, you see, no breach at all.’
‘Not the storm,’ snapped the one with the whistle, ‘not the weather, dumbmuck!’
‘Regret to say it, would rather not,’ said Cusper, ‘I let one in.’
‘Go on, you pissbucket!’ ordered the one with whistle. ‘Go on and tell them!’
‘That’s not the way, dear Timfy,’ said blind Idwid, ‘not helpful in the least. Tell them, Cusper, if anything can be heard above this storm, this constant shrieking in my ears.’
‘I shall have my say, brother!’ cried the one with the whistle.
‘Please, Cusper,’ prodded Idwid.
‘I think it may be with you, think it might, one of your number, Captain,’ continued Cusper, ‘under a helmet, between leather, one of . . . those there. Let in. My fault. Most awfully.’
‘What exactly?’ asked Idwid. ‘What did you let in? Tell the heap Captain. Oh, my ears!’
‘A . . . a . . . a non-person, a, well, a not one of us, a . . . erm . . . other.’
‘Spit it out, man,’ yapped the one with the whistle, ‘let’s get this done before Umbitt’s back. I shouldn’t want to stand in your shoes, not for love nor money; he’ll throw you from the building. He’ll cut you loose. I know I would. Yes, I would!’
‘Steady, Timfy,’ said Idwid, ‘steady now, baby brother. Oh, my ears!’
‘Baby, he says! He said “Baby”!’
‘I . . . you see,’ trembled Cusper, ‘I . . . took the wrong one. Was in a hurry. Shouldn’t have been. Wrong. Wrong. Oh, stupid. I . . . names . . . those ugly names . . . not good with . . . looking for a girl, I said, in the orphanage . . . with red hair . . .’
As he stammered his explanation, his head held low, sweat on brow, he gestured to someone behind him and then a girl stepped forward, one not in a serving Iremongers’ togs at all but in the old orphanage uniform with a leather cap upon her head. It was her, of course. I’d know her anywhere and instantly. The bully from the orphanage, the one I fought with, the one who said it wasn’t right that there were two redheads, the one I bit, the one that scratched, her, her, that one for whom I’d always have to look over my shoulders. That one. I never knew her name.
So it wasn’t supposed to be me all along, I’m not an Iremonger. I’m not Iremonger at all, never have been, never will. Not a drop. Mother wasn’t, she wasn’t at all. I shouldn’t have come. They made a mistake. The other redhead was an Iremonger. Well she would be, wouldn’t she, let’s face it. Iremonger through and through that one.
‘I’ll find her! I’ll point her out,’ she said. ‘Let me! Let me! I’m the one to do it.’
‘Be silent!’ shrieked Piggott. ‘It will be done,
and swiftly too. Minimum of fuss. Never been an un-Iremonger in Heap House, never meant to be one all the way out here, spreading disease. Family here. Family only. Intimate. Come now, deary, come now, my chick, step out. Come to Claar. Which one are you?’
I couldn’t go back, not back out there. The door was locked behind me. I couldn’t go forward. There were all those Iremongers waiting for me and some of them were keeping one hand behind their backs – what were they holding there? – whatever it was that they held wasn’t good, I was certain of that.
‘Take your helmets off!’ said Piggott.
‘Excuse me,’ said the Captain.
‘Do it now!’ called the one with the whistle.
‘Come on, girlie, come on now; step out, let’s see you.’
‘My ears!’ cried Idwid.
‘Please excuse me,’ said the Captain, ‘they cannot hear you. They cannot hear through the helmets. They don’t know what’s being asked.’
‘Then get their helmets from them, man! Now!’
‘The anchors will do it! The anchors are the swiftest. Each knows its leather so well. They’re all so different, you see, the helmets are, particular –’
‘I don’t want a lecture, I want the helmets off!’ bellowed the butler.
‘Come here, child, come to Claar, I’ll have you. I mean to have you.’
The cook’s wife, Mrs Groom, licking her lips, showed for an instant a long shining thing that must’ve been a knife.
‘I mean to skin you,’ she said. ‘I’ll bake you, boil you, poach you, pluck you! Gut you!’
‘Odith!’ snapped Piggott. ‘Not yet!’
‘My ears!’
I was on the floor, ducked down between the other leather ones who were now twisting and turning with their anchors and helmets all in a struggle to pull theirs off first. I’m not taking mine off, I thought, not if I can help it, even with the glass broken. Protection of some sort, that’s what it is. I saw my anchor beside me, the kitchen boy, staring at me, frowning. I shook my head, please, please don’t tell. He didn’t. He didn’t call out.
‘Mrs Groom!’ he whispered. ‘She will cook you! If she’s a mind to do it, she’ll do it!’
‘Help me.’
‘She’s a fishwife, she is. She’d gut her own baby.’
‘Help me.’
He didn’t help, but he didn’t tell. He might have perhaps, I can’t say, because he didn’t really have a chance, because then one of those heavy helmets put down on the ground didn’t stay on the ground, it started, all on its own, to skid along the floor, faster and faster, to rush down the corridor into something in one of the kitchen halls, onto a wall of the kitchen hall. All eyes followed it, all eyes saw it connect to something that was moving on the back wall. No, it wasn’t just something, it was the whole wall that was moving. Was it the storm? Could it be the storm breaking through? No, no, that wasn’t it because now I saw the little man with the whistle shriek because his whistle was trying to pull away from him and if he hadn’t had it on a string around his neck it would have been lost by now. Then another freed helmet rushed away and then a whole big heap Iremonger fell down and started slipping towards that back kitchen wall. That did it. That did it for all of them because then Idwid screamed, ‘A Gathering, a Gathering, quieter than the storm!’
And then they were all screaming, ‘A Gathering! A Gathering!’
And then I ran.
19
A Marble Mantelpiece
Clod Iremonger’s narrative continued
Grey Flannel
I sat in the Infirmary with James Henry in my lap, apologising to him, asking him who he was, promising to find his family, tapping him a little and then begging its, his I must say, begging his pardon.
‘I do beg your pardon, I truly do. I’ll get you home, somehow. I’ll get you back. Where are your people? What are they like, those Haywards of yours? If I get you there, shall I become an object? And what, James Henry, dear fellow, if I may, do you suppose I should be were I an object? Should I be something grand, like a lucifer, or something useful like a plunger? It speaks well of you, I think, that you’re a bath plug. It’s a fine thing to be a bath plug. Very pleasing, good to hold. Oh sorry, James Henry, I’m at it again, of course you’d rather not be a bath plug at all, would you? You’d rather be James Henry Hayward, himself in his own outfit, kitted out, at home with your own. I do so wonder what you look like. Do you have a round face, or do I only think of that because of the roundness of the plug? I am sorry, I’m so sorry, James Henry. I didn’t know before, but I do know now. And, by heavens, I wish it wasn’t so.’
‘James Henry Hayward.’
‘I know, I know.’
There I sat, taking it all in, head in a spin, wrung out, all those words of Grandfather’s and things of his and smell that’s his, still in the room somehow. Should get out, I thought. Should get out and far away, go somewhere. But where is there? And what to do with my plug? And all those other things up and down the house, the east of it and the west of it, the whole crammed prison of it, all those people stuck in objects, a fire bucket that’s a person, a sofa that’s a person, a tap that’s a person, a newel post, a barometer, a ruler, a whistle, a cuspidor, a box of matches, all people, all people! A box of matches! Lucy Pennant!
Lucy Pennant, they’re sending me away. I’m called to the city. I should have been proud of that. If Grandfather had only visited me a few days earlier I’d have gone with a hop and skip. But not now. Not any more. They were sending me the very next day. I should get on the train. That train that I’d heard so often screaming in and out, always wearing at me, always sending the house Iremongers into shock though they knew it would come. Oh, Lucy, Lucy Pennant.
I should have been up already. A matron had come in and told me to make myself smart. I was to go and see my grandmother. I was supposed to put on trousers. Grey flannel trousers. Goodbye, knees! Goodbye, shins and calves! I should have been happy before, I had so longed to touch my own grey flannel, to look hard at it and to say with manly pride: ‘Herringbone.’ I should have been a happy one to say: ‘Farewell, corduroy.’ Not now. Oh, my objects! But what, I thought, what if Grandfather was right, what if James Henry was a little villain, a bully in plug form, who, given the opportunity, should shove me in his pocket and pinch and bite me?
I was to be ready, to be dressed, combed, my hair parted, my teeth picked at, and to be up on the upright corridor. But I sat there, plug in lap, trousers folded beside me. I was to visit Grandmother, the old lady of the mantelpiece. And later, I thought, later on, I’d go to the Sitting Room and I’d sit on Victoria Hollest who no doubt would be wondering where Margaret was and so, a real person, both of them. I’m so sorry. And just for a while, I’d sit with Lucy; she’d be safe now, wouldn’t she, I’d tell her not to worry any more, now that Alice Higgs was a doorknob once again. (Oh, Alice Higgs, I am so sorry, what a thing to have done. What sort of person am I after all?) But to lose Lucy!
I picked up the trousers. What should happen, I wondered, when I put them on?
I supposed I should start growing whiskers very like, just after wearing my trousers, perhaps the moment grey flannel touched Clod-skin. That then I could do mutton chops and sideboards, that I could be bearded and hirsute in a suit, like so many of the city Iremongers that allow themselves to be so hairy that their faces look like a house overgrown with ivy. Shall I hairy me? Shall I grow so beardsome that my own furriness will be a fence between me and the world? Shall I be so long and thick of hair that for Lucy Pennant to kiss me again she, like the prince in Sleeping Beauty before her, should have to hack at me with a scythe because finding me in a room all she’d see at first was a forest of beard? There was but one way to find out.
I trousered me.
I pulled them on, like cutting off my own legs.
All the world, I thought, will be in grey flannel for you now. I had dragged it over, put out the nursery with it. How did I feel? Superior? Old? Wise? Heavier? Stronger
? Did I find myself upright and forthright and big of birthright, broad of chest, and much impressed?
No, I cannot say that I did.
Truth is, I felt much the same. Only difference was, a tiny bit warmer.
But, I thought then, give it a while. An hour or two, or a week; that grey flannel is upon me now, and means to enter me, to somehow drown my former corduroy self, so that my own skin shall grey and flannel. There’s worsted in my blood, threads of it sewing its way through me.
Soon there I was complete: brushed, cufflinked, hair parted (no beard yet), shod, waistcoated, jacketed, tied and strangled in all the usual ways, done up and beribboned, an Iremonger parcel. Poor James Henry in pocket.
Well then, I said to myself, delay no further, you must go to Granny now.
Blood and Marble
I left the Infirmary, the nursing Iremongers that saw me bowed to me, which they never had before. One, a little lippy to do such a thing, even clapped me in my new attire but was soon hushed by a matron. Now that I was trousered I was a big thing of terror and respect; before when I was in corduroy, well then I was only a little chap and could even have my chin pinched and my hair ruffled. No longer. I was a big man now, and I stepped out into the world fully grown and feeling morbid.
Out in the house corridors a few cousins here and there stopped and stared at me, most perplexed as if they’d never seen trousers before. That felt quite fine. I admit it. I went down the main stairs to Grandmother’s wing. I was expected, otherwise the porter Iremonger at the door should never have let me pass into Grandmother’s territory.
I was seeing her once more, my grandmother.
When Grandmother was born, back so far in history that people were surely very different to the modern people we are now, back then it was Great Grandfather Adwald who was head of the family. Adwald was a hard one. It was known right from the start that Grandmother, Ommaball Oliff Iremonger, should marry Grandfather, and Adwald wanted everything to be right and proper for his heir, he wanted no complication of wife, no womanly disturbances. So he put Grandmother where Grandfather would always find her. He proclaimed that her birth object, which I had always heard call itself Augusta Ingrid Ernesta Hoffman, would be a large marble mantelpiece. The mantelpiece was, to my knowledge, the largest birth object ever given out. It was such a large thing, this mantelpiece, that it had taken a small army of Iremonger muscles to shift it (and one of those it was rumoured even perished in the process, quite crushed underneath it). The mantelpiece shelf was supported by two caryatids, full of bosom they were. Beautiful maidens, a little sleepy, with thin dresses that were slipping off them, but never, not ever, actually achieving a fall. They were one and a half life-size those figures, oh big and beautiful ladies. That such pretty women should be locked in marble was not right, I always thought. I used to long for them, to dream of them waking up and stepping out, of finding me wherever I was in the house, of visiting my bedroom.
