Heap House for Hotkeys

by Edward Carey

  ‘I should like to, why may I not? It isn’t usual.’

  ‘Clod, how many times must you be told?’

  ‘Just a nod then, on such an auspicious occasion.’

  ‘What occasion, Clod, what are you talking about?’

  ‘I’m talking trousers, Aunt Pomular.’

  ‘Trousers? Trousers? What have trousers to do with anything?’

  ‘Tummis is wearing trousers today, is he not? How does he scrub up? Nicely?’

  ‘Clod, oh Clod, Tummis is not wearing trousers.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘What then?’

  ‘Oh, Clod!’

  ‘What then, what?’

  ‘Tummis is lost, Clod.’

  ‘Tummis is lost, Aunt Pomular?’

  ‘Yes, dear Clod, I am afraid so.’

  ‘Then we had better find him, hadn’t we?’

  ‘Lost in the heaps, Clod, quite lost, in the storm. He went out on his own. They told him he was not to marry Ormily. Moorcus told him, though it wasn’t true. He heard you were in trousers. He went out. Smartly dressed. Singing even, I am told. And the heaps, the heaps, in such a turmoil, pulled him under.’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘no and no.’

  ‘Yes, Clod, I am afraid so.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I am afraid so.’

  ‘No, no, it isn’t true!’

  ‘Please, Clod, best leave him now to his close family. They’re going to place his tap – that at least was found, some serving Iremonger tried to help him – they have that and that is something. A comfort.’

  ‘Oh, Tummis,’ I whispered, ‘what a thing to do.’

  ‘It is a time for the closest family.’

  I saw then through the crowd of adult Iremongers Second Cousin Olish, Tummis’s mother, red-eyed and miserable, holding in her lap a tap, a tap which I knew without looking would be marked H for hot.

  ‘We’re going to Marble Hall now,’ said Aunt Pomular, ‘we’re going to go with Icktor and Olish, to put Tummis on his shelf.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘my poor own Tummis.’

  ‘Best, Clod, if you make yourself scarce. It would only upset Iktor and Olish all the more to have you there, and in trousers too.’

  ‘I think I shall quite murder Moorcus.’

  ‘No you shan’t, Clod, don’t talk like that.’

  ‘What punishment shall they give him?’

  ‘Clod,’ said Pomular, ‘what punishment do they ever give him? Besides, it wasn’t entirely Moorcus’s fault that he went out in the storm. Tummis chose to go. He let himself out. It is not Great Chest we are processing towards, it’s Little Cupboard.’

  ‘Oh Tummis, how could you?’

  ‘Please, Clod, go home, go home.’

  ‘Wait!’ I said. ‘One moment! Aunt Olish, Uncle Iktor, please, for a moment, may I hold his tap?’

  Aunt Olish held the tap very particularly to her breast; she looked most offended by my question, as well she might, it was a terrible thing to ask. You must always leave a grieving Iremonger alone with the birth object of their deceased, it is particular etiquette, and yet, I must hear it, I had to hear it.

  ‘Clod!’ screamed Pomular. ‘Whatever do you mean by it!’

  ‘Please, Aunt, just a moment. I fear it may turn into a person any moment. Or . . . or otherwise . . . no, it’s better if it turns . . . far better.’

  ‘How dare you!’ cried Uncle Iktor.

  But I had seized the tap out of Olish’s hands and I listened to it, I listened out for it. Come on, come on. Speak up. Let me hear you. But it didn’t say anything.

  ‘You can talk,’ I said, ‘I know you can. Hilary Evelyn Ward-Jackson, that’s what you say, come on. I’ve heard you often enough.’

  ‘Clod Iremonger, give it back this instant!’ wailed Aunt Olish.

  It didn’t say anything.

  ‘Oh, be careful with that!’ she cried. ‘Give it back!’

  It didn’t say anything at all.

  ‘Oh, Aunt Olish,’ I whispered as she snatched it from me, ‘it’s just a tap now.’

  ‘It’s our Tummis’s birth object!’

  ‘Aunt Olish, Uncle Iktor,’ I said, ‘Tummis is dead.’

  And I ran away.

  An Engine Inside Me

  The house was full of storm, and something else beside that. Mourn, mourn, you Iremongers. The house was full of guilt. Everyone was white and shivering; it was always like this when an Iremonger went missing in the heaps. But this missing of all missings was my missing. Tummis. Tummis gone. And with him the person that was once Hilary Evelyn Ward-Jackson.

  I never wanted to hear the objects’ names. I never asked for that. I so hated it then, all those muttering pieces, I so despised that I could hear them, all those locked things. How I longed just to be like anyone else, just to hear what everyone else heard, not the names of all those lost people. I didn’t want to know that Tummis was dead, I wanted there to be hope that he might yet be found. I wanted him to come back. But I knew that he shouldn’t.

  I knew that he couldn’t.

  To make things worse the storm was so loud it got into my head; it sat and swirled with my thoughts, played with them, took them over, scratched inside me. I could still hear the movement of objects out in the heaps, those murderous heaps. Some objects made it over the walls and hammered against the shutters, as if they were mocking the loss of Tummis.

  Maybe I’d kill Moorcus. Maybe I should. What should I do?

  I went home.

  Doors all over the house were closing. I moved around my small chambers. Everything was wrong, everything itched. All offended. I’d rip my own heart out. I must govern myself, I thought. I must think of my trousers. Truth is, I couldn’t bear myself, I hated my trousers. The storm droned on, it wouldn’t let you forget, not for a moment, but must mock, mock, mock all the time, knocking on your head, wrapping upon you. I thought about smashing a window and letting it all come in. Oh, Tummis, Tummis. I’m sorry, so very sorry. He was my Tummis, wasn’t he, mine and poor Ormily’s. How was poor Ormily that night? What to do? What’s ever to be done now? Whoever should I ever be without Tummis to tell me? I remembered Grandmother’s mirror then. I took it out. SO THAT I MAY ALWAYS KNOW WHO I AM.

  Thank you, Granny.

  I remember now. I hadn’t for a moment. There’s an engine somewhere, firing up. Steam. There’s steam coming out of me.

  20

  Moorcus’s Thing

  Lucy Pennant’s narrative continued

  I ran. That great clanking monster turned them all around and I ran. I couldn’t see where I was going, on account of the leathers, and that helmet still atop of me. I crashed into things, was nearly impaled once or twice, fell down stairs, down and down, bruises all over me. But I was still there and breathing and couldn’t hear anyone else about. So I stopped then, I didn’t know how far I had fallen, I didn’t know where I was, but wherever I was it was certain I wasn’t going to get anywhere in leathers and in that helmet. I crawled under a table, a little shelter, and I tugged the damned thing from me. The leathers were cut in a few places and from those cuts I managed to make tears until at last there was a hole and that hole with effort became bigger and bigger and then I could crawl through and I was out of it. Deflated. Nothing inside it any more.

  I was in the kitchen, great pans on hooks, so many knives hanging there. I thought of Mrs Groom and her knife then, she’d skin me, that’s what she’d said. Got to get out, I thought, got to keep going out of here, otherwise might just as well lie me down in a roasting pan and call out to them all: ‘Here I am! Tuck in!’ I left my leathers and helmet behind me, it felt somehow right to leave them there: choke on that, I thought, season that. I rushed and panicked on. I heard people coming closer, talking. And these words, ‘This way, Odith, I’d bet on it. Have you the cleaver?’

  ‘Look at the skin! The skin of it!’

  I found brief refuge in a pantry, quite penned in, so many jars upon shelves up and down, so many dif
ferent colours. I could imagine a demijohn labelled LUCY PENNANT and myself, murky, swimming inside. People ran past, but no one came in. There were great noises in the distance, back down the cellar lanes where no doubt that great thing – what was it? – was preoccupying them very much, and suddenly there was an enormous crash, so large and loud the whole house seemed to rumble from it. I thought I should be pelted by the jars, they jumped and clinked on their shelves so. A jar of piccalilli mustard danced towards the edge and before I could get to it, it smashed maliciously to the ground. That did it. I got out and found myself very shortly in the servants’ dining hall. No one else there, only benches and stools. I thought then that that clanking thing, whatever it was back there, it must have pulled the roof down. And sure enough I heard several people screaming for a while, screaming and not stopping screaming, from bloody hurt or from sheer shock I couldn’t say. Perhaps it was just at the sight of it, such a queer unnatural thing as it was. Lots of footsteps, so many people rushing about, I thought surely, surely someone will catch me any moment. I couldn’t think what to do. I fumbled and I panicked. I’ll get out of here. I’ll stay here. What to do? What to do? I found myself a cupboard. It was one of the store cupboards in the dining hall for tablecloths and such, all very dusty there and unloved and abandoned, that was the place, for a bit, for a moment. So I might think.

  The cupboard was deep and quite high. I put myself in there and just breathed, that was all. If they find you, I thought in that small space, if they find you they shall certainly tug you out and do their skinning, for they want you dead, Lucy Pennant, they’re coming after you. That noise was them probably seeing to that great thing, so now it’s you they’ll come hunting for, now it’s your turn. Strange to be so important suddenly.

  Think of it, I thought, like a game, like a game back in Filching, hide and seek. I always knew where to hide then in the old boarding house. Well then, there are many places to hide in this old palace, hundreds must be. You’ll be all right. Most of all, calm, calm yourself.

  I don’t know how long I stayed there, cramped in. Maybe only a half hour. I kept an eye out through the keyhole and that’s when I saw it. That’s when I saw them. Things. Things were coming in. Just a few old coins and nails at first, trickling in, bouncing along as if someone had tossed them, but then larger things smacking along and soon a great deal of stuff, an old tin bath even, things, things moving by themselves. I saw a tea cup coming spinning in, it had a strange lip to it. The cup! There, there was the moustache cup they made such a business over. Other things followed it, and once a huge mass was in they all grouped in a corner and an old kettle rushed over, closed the door, quite quietly, and then other things wedged it shut, clothes and planks and such. More noise and skittering and now the objects started to swirl around to be picked up in some sort of whirlpool of objects, all twisting and rushing around each other, round in circles, climbing higher – cups, saucers, old pans – and very shortly after it had assembled itself into one great thing, I saw two legs of it from my hiding place, legs made of this and that, but moving like actual legs. Feet, one with a ladle for the shoe end, the other with an old colander. I could see up to its mid-section, the legs were made of long thin things, poles and pipes and rods, but amongst them knives and forks, old busted pairs of glasses, pencils, pens, all shaped together, all got together like a person, the belly I could just make out was the bathtub. But this person of objects, now united, screeched and whined and made sorrowful noises as if it was very scared. There was a noise outside and the thing backed away towards a wall, flinching and shaking, making creaking, groaning sounds. The back wall was shelving, top to bottom, where plates and bowls, tin mugs and cutlery were kept, and other stuff of use in the dining room. The topmost shelves I remembered being quite twelve feet high, they were pretty much empty, to reach those you should need a stepladder. The object-man, that thing-person, stood by the shelves, quivering and whining, and then someone was at the door trying to get in, pushing hard at it. That thing, that being made of so much, let out a high whining noise, and then seem to somehow detonate itself, for all those consolidated bits were all apart again, and were spread out here and there, all over the shelves. It was hiding itself, separating itself and hiding. There was the moustache cup again, upon a shelf, the last to stop moving.

  The door was heaved open. I could see many Iremonger clogs now, rushing in, making a fuss. They didn’t notice all those new things on the back shelves, not even the bathtub which had managed to get itself under a serving table. Then I saw amongst all those clogs, new feet, two pairs, wearing scuffed boots, I heard them, whoever they were wearing the boots.

  ‘It’s escaped, the thing’s escaped.’

  ‘Where is it? Where could it have gone?’

  ‘Hiding somewhere but we’ll find it.’

  ‘Do you think, Odith, that it used the dumb waiter?’

  ‘Well it may I suppose, Orris, and if it has it’s uphouse now.’

  ‘I wanted you to have first cut of it, Odith. What meat there, eh? We’ll find it yet. We’ll hook it up in the cold room, let it drip a bit. Shall we hang it, Odith?’

  ‘They’d let us, wouldn’t they, a thing like that?’

  ‘Bound to.’

  ‘I’ll have the soup brought in.’

  ‘What an evening!’

  ‘The Gathering’s dispersed, at least there’s that.’

  There were sounds of soup being poured out and tables being laid, and then I heard the procession of so many Iremongers coming in for their supper, same as usual, as if nothing had happened. But the blessing this night was led by Mr Briggs and not by the butler and I heard no noise from Mrs Piggott at all.

  All those serving Iremongers muttering amongst themselves, talking about the dispersed Gathering, which, little they knew, was still about them, in that very room, a part of it, still there, ungathered at the moment, but lurking. They talked about poor Tummis too, lost outside. And that in turn got them talking about other Iremongers who had been lost in the heaps before him. When they tried to describe the lost serving Iremongers they could only mumble, ‘Short Iremonger,’ or ‘Iremonger with the limp,’ ‘Iremonger with the mole on her cheek,’ ‘Iremonger who had once worked on the laundry mangles.’ And all their words got out between slurps.

  ‘There’ll be some shovelling to do in the morning.’

  ‘The door’s fair dented already. It’ll hold, won’t it?’

  ‘It should, it should.’

  ‘Even if it doesn’t they’ll just block the passage off, let the rooms around the doors fill up with the heaps but we’ll be fine, we’ll be safe, it shan’t reach us.’

  ‘It’ll never break through the second doors.’

  ‘Never has.’

  ‘Nor will tonight, I’m certain.’

  After a bit, I could hear that the redhead from the orphanage was there, just a few feet away from me.

  ‘I’m to do firegrates, they say, is that good?’

  ‘Oh yes, very good, that’s a fine situation.’

  ‘We’re so glad you’re here.’

  ‘You’ve come home, ain’t you?’

  ‘Yes, you’re home now.’

  ‘I think I might just be,’ said the redhead. ‘I am an Iremonger. Cusper said so. Oh, and he’s for it. Not my problem. Brought it upon himself if you ask me. But I’m here at last. I do feel an Iremonger. I really do. I wonder if they’ve caught that little red rat yet. I wonder what they’ll do to her.’

  ‘She’s for it all right.’

  ‘I think they’ll do for her, won’t they?’

  ‘I shouldn’t wonder.’

  ‘Who could blame them. Asking for it.’

  ‘Trespassing like that.’

  ‘Disgusting I call it.’

  ‘To think I talked to her.’

  ‘To think she talked to me.’

  ‘As if she were one of us like everyone else.’

  ‘Made me want to take a good wash. I scrubbed myself when I
heard, I don’t mind telling you. I even ate a bit of soap.’

  ‘Quite right.’

  ‘Makes my skin itch just to think of her.’

  ‘Still, we have you now, and that’s a comfort.’

  ‘Will you tell us about yourself?’

  ‘What do you want to know?’

  ‘Everything.’

  ‘Oh, everything, everything.’

  ‘All about you.’

  So it went on like that, making me ill, until Briggs rang his bell, early I think. The spoons all eaten, and licked clean I supposed, the tables were cleared and at last the final footsteps died away and all was quiet again.

  I stayed put a while. The door was left open and once or twice some Iremonger came in for a moment, and put down plates, before wandering off again. But I couldn’t stay there for ever. I knew that. I had to get myself up the house. Those downstairs rooms were too dangerous for me. Better further up, further up there’d be a chance out. And Clod was upstairs. I’d find him in the Sitting Room just as we said we would, just as planned, before everything got ruined.

  I opened my cupboard door, slowly crept out.

  The other one was there before me.

  It had got itself together again. It had reassembled its bits. It had come together so quietly. It was much shorter now, like a child. A child of bits. And it grunted and scraped a little. It heard me, I don’t know how, but it turned to me and its face, which seemed to be made of a dented tea tray and with all sorts of nails and pins and bolts and screws and nuts and chips of glass and pottery, moved around in a great swirl, never keeping still, and for a moment I thought I could almost see a face fully there, eyes and nose and such, but it was only things, just things.

  ‘Don’t you hurt me,’ I said.

  It tilted its head.

  ‘They’re after me and all. They want me in pieces too.’

  It came forward a bit. It made sounds, there was an old rusted fork that was scraping against a small rusted pan lid, making scratches that were like talking, something like talking, as if it was trying to say something to me. There was the moustache cup again, in the centre of its chest, spinning round and round and round, faster than all the other objects.