Foulsham Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  1: Observations From A Nursery

  2: Deepdownside

  3: Odyssey Of A Half Sovereign

  4: Man Of Filth

  Chapter 5

  6: Have You Seen This Boy?

  7: The Heaps Are Knocking

  8: To Breathe Again

  9: The Effra And After

  10: The Tailor Of Foulsham

  11: In Foulsham Streets

  12: In Which A Promise Is Made And Something Comes Undone

  13: Beer And Bed

  14: Before The Sun Rises

  15: Home Again, Home Again

  16: It Shall Not Hold

  17: My Inheritance

  18: In A Cooker Locked

  19: Oh My Red

  20: An Instruction To Terminate

  21: To The Gates

  22: At The Gates

  23: Beyond The Gates

  24: Onward Foulsham Soldiers

  25: Blood

  26: Observations From A Nursery

  Acknowledgements

  Edward Carey

  Copyright

  For Gus

  1

  OBSERVATIONS FROM A NURSERY

  The narrative of James Henry Hayward, property of Bayleaf House Factory, Forlichingham, London

  They told me I was the only child in the whole great building, but I wasn’t. I knew I wasn’t. I heard them sometimes, the other children. I heard them calling out somewhere down below.

  I lived in a mean room with my governess. Ada Cruickshanks was her name. ‘Miss Cruickshanks’ I had to call her. She gave me physic very often from a tablespoon, it had a strange enough smell to it, but it felt very warming inside, as if it took away winter. I was given sweet things to eat, I had pound cake and tea cake, I had Forlichingham Pie too, which, in truth, was not my absolute favourite, the top of it being somewhat burnt according to tradition and the insides rather a swill bucket of left-overs all covered over in sweet black treacle to disguise the taste. Miss Cruickshanks said that I must eat it all up, she would be cross with me if I didn’t. So then I ate it.

  She would tell me odd stories, Miss Cruickshanks would, not from a book, but from her head, she should sit by me and looking sternly she should begin, ‘Now listen, child, this is the truth of it.

  ‘There are two types of people, those that know about objects and those others that don’t. And I’m one of the former grouping, and so I can tell you. I can tell you that once there was a place where the objects didn’t do what they were told. In that place, I shan’t tell you its name, I shall not be so bold, in that place people had got so thick and muddled about with things that things may have appeared a human and a human likewise be struck down a thing. In that place you must have been very careful with whatever you picked up, for you may have thought it just a common teacup when in fact it was someone called Frederick Smith who’d been turned into a cup. And amongst that place there were high lords of things, terrible bailiffs, who may turn a person into a thing without ever much caring about it. What do you think about that?’

  ‘I hardly know what to think about it, Miss Cruickshanks.’

  ‘Well then, consider it until you do.’

  Often she would ask me, ‘Do you still have it? Show me now! Show me!’ I would take the golden half sovereign out of my pocket and show it her. I always had to keep this particular coin with me, my own sov it was. What a fuss they made over it. If I took it out in public the people around in the big old place gasped at it, and then Miss Cruickshanks shrieked,

  ‘Put it away! Put it out of sight! It isn’t safe! It’s not safe! You never know who’s looking!’

  Once in a while I would be summoned out of the nursery rooms to visit an old man. I should be sent into his grand room with all its shelves, and he would let me look at the things on the shelves, but not to touch them. Such odd things there were, some of it just rubbish, bits of old pipes, or a roof tile, an old tin mug, but others that shone and were silver or golden. I did not know why he kept them all. I supposed they were his special collection. I thought I would like to have a collection of my own someday.

  The first business I had always to do when visiting the old man was show him my sov. I brought it to him and I dropped it into his large wrinkled hands. He studied it and turned it over and over. He was very content to do this for some time. At last he would return it to me and watch me place it deep in my pocket.

  ‘I am pleased with you, young James Henry. You do good work.’

  ‘Thank you, sir. I should very much like to work, sir, if it is with you.’

  ‘Owner Umbitt is a very busy man,’ said Miss Cruickshanks.

  ‘You must never spend that sovereign, James Henry,’ the old man told me.

  ‘I know, sir. I do know that,’ I said, because he reminded me of it each visit.

  ‘Say it to me, James Henry.’ Very serious now.

  ‘I am never to spend my sovereign.’

  Where ever should I spend it anyway? There was certainly nowhere in the factory, and I was never allowed out into town. How they went on about it, over and over. Do not spend. Never to spend.

  ‘Good child,’ the old man said. ‘Mrs Groom shall bake you something. She is a most excellent cook, the best in all Forlichingham. How lucky we are that she sends us food here to Bayleaf House.’ And then I should have to make a small bow to him and be taken back to the nursery.

  Bayleaf House, my home, was the tallest, grandest place in all the whole borough. Built like a great weight it was, like an anchor. It was a certain place. It wasn’t going anywhere. You might sleep easy in such a place, knowing that when you woke up in the morning Bayleaf should still be standing. Yes, what a place it was! How fortunate I was with all the good things to eat!

  Actually, it was them that told me how fortunate I was to be there, over and over. I was not sure I felt very fortunate. Bayleaf House was some sort of factory, though what exactly it made I could not tell. It was very hot in places. There were ovens and chimneys that poured out smoke. They smothered the rest of the borough with soot.

  There were pipes all over the house, great metal pipes that snaked over the ceilings that columned the walls, sometimes a hundred thick and more. They got everywhere those pipes. I doubt there was a single room in the whole place that didn’t have pipes inside it. Some of these pipes were cold to touch, very cold, and some were awful hot and could scald you.

  There were so many rooms where I was not permitted. You’re not to go in there, boy, do you hear? That place is not for you. Keep clear of the second floor, of the third. Where are the bells sounding from? I would ask. That is none of your business, they would say. What do all the whistles mean that blow day and night, I wondered. That need not concern you, they replied.

  So, all in all, it must be said, I knew very little of Bayleaf House. Sometimes I heard the house about its business. I might hear people calling out, calls that sounded as if someone not very far off was hurting. They were children’s voices, I’d swear on it. When I heard the calling I got unsettled. And then Ada Cruickshanks picked up a hammer and banged it upon the pipes. Then, after a moment, the calling would often stop.

  ‘I heard them, Miss Cruickshanks! I heard children!’

  ‘You did not.’

  ‘I know I did.’

  ‘You know nothing.’

  Well, and that was true enough.

  I knew that my name was James Henry Hayward, that I lived in the London borough of Filching, just by the great waste heaps. I knew that I was born here, in Filching. I have the place in my blood. But it was Miss Cruickshanks who told me all that, it was not something that I remembered. She called me gutter-born.

  I tried so hard to remember my family but I c
ould not. What did my mother look like, my father? Did I have any brothers or sisters? Why was I stuck inside with her and not out there with them? How did I come to be in this great house? Why did I live in a factory at all?

  ‘Might I go out?’ I asked her, ‘Are my family still living there? I can’t really remember them. May I go and see them?’

  ‘No, no!’ she snapped, ‘Dirty! You’ll get filthy out there. You’d get yourself lost, out in Forlichingham. It’s not safe, there are terrible people, thieves and murderers. Come away from the window, how many times must I tell you!’ Then she’d turn on me. ‘Do you still have it? Show me! Show me!’ And I’d show her the coin.

  It was all smallholdings, Filching was. I saw it from the window, little places a bit derelict here and there, smashed windows, holes in roofs, buildings propped up, jerry-built, that sort of thing.

  I saw the heap wall that protected Filching from all the mass of dirtheaps, and on the other side of the dirty town was the other wall. The wall that kept Filching from London itself. That wall was taller than the heap wall and more recently built. It had spikes on the top it did, and beyond it was London, true London, so near to us, so close but so far away because that London we should never enter. London was an impossible place to us people of Filching. No Trespassing.

  Beneath my window, just beyond the factory railing, was the very nearest part of Filching to Bayleaf House. It was a tall white building, people kept running in and out of it. I liked to watch it. When I looked out from the windows and saw the crooked town I knew I loved it. I knew that I longed to get out into it, to be in those winding dark streets. Somewhere out there was my family.

  I got terror headaches, and when I got them, when my poor old top smarted from all my thinking, then Miss Cruickshanks brought me the physic on the tablespoon. You felt so warm inside after eating it and the headache went right away and it all rather fogged over, but in a very nice way. All in all, I’d say, it was always foggy for me. I knew so little, so much was kept from me, that I lived in a smog. And on top of that, or confirming it really, was Miss Cruickshanks who wore a black bonnet that had a veil to it, so that I could not see her face properly. It was kept from me. I saw just hints of it, shadows under the veil. I never saw it properly. I could not say what she actually looked like.

  But even after taking the physic, I could not stop thinking about my people out there in Filching.

  ‘Do you know where my parents are?’ I asked her.

  ‘There are greater matters at stake.’

  ‘I would like to visit them. If they are there, beyond the gates.’

  ‘Well, you can’t, boy. You mustn’t.’

  ‘Why may I not?’

  ‘Questions! Questions! Nothing but questions. Your questions peck at me like beaks, they scratch into me and send me into a fury. Let me tell you then, that which others would spare you: the place is dangerous and rickety, full of disease and cruelty. They don’t say Filching any more, the common people, they call it Foulsham these days, because it is a stinking, quagmire of a place, thick with pestilence.

  ‘A man they call the Tailor hides in the alleys out there and murders people – and the people out there are of such little worth that no one makes much of a fuss about it. Step out, James Henry Hayward, and you would not last a minute. You cannot be safe out there. The very air is pestilential. Step out and die, step out and crumble, step out and shatter.’

  ‘But there are people out there. I have seen them in the dark streets.’

  ‘Rat people, roach people. Ill people, dying people.’

  I think it must have been the mention of rat people that jogged my memory, for I suddenly found myself remembering something I hadn’t before. I remembered a house, I recalled a room in a house with a dirt floor. There was a cupboard there, a door to it. I remembered opening the cupboard door, there was a little girl inside putting her finger to her lips to shush me. I remembered that! I remembered something! I couldn’t tell who she was, at first, or where I’d dreamt up such a thing. But I liked the thought of it. I kept trying to picture that face, but each time when I went back to it in my mind, when I opened the cupboard again in my thoughts the girl was not there, and in her place was a rat.

  The night after I’d remembered the girl in the cupboard, I heard Miss Cruickshanks muttering away in her side room. I wondered what she was muttering about so furiously. She’d already twice come tiptoeing in to see if I was asleep and to make sure I had the half sovereign beneath my pillow, and so I think she must have felt sure I was finally sleeping. I wasn’t though and I quietly, so quietly, got out of my bed, and so, so silently moved across the floor and then looked into her room and there she was, sitting on the side of her bed with a looking glass in her hands, and I saw her lift up her veil. And then I saw her face. Oh, the shock of it!

  There was a great crack down the centre of it! A great rent running down the middle! Like she was a bit of pottery and not a person at all!

  ‘Evil child!’ she screamed, turning round.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Miss Cruickshanks. I didn’t mean to.’

  ‘Horrible little thief!’

  ‘Does it hurt, Miss Cruickshanks? Your cut I mean? I am very sorry for it, I did not know you were hurt. Excuse me, miss.’

  ‘I hate you!’

  ‘Yes, Miss Cruickshanks.’

  ‘I hope you rot!’

  ‘Yes, Miss Cruickshanks.’

  ‘Take your medicine. Now.’

  ‘Yes, Miss Cruickshanks.’

  ‘We are stuck with each other, child.’

  ‘Yes, Miss Cruickshanks.’

  ‘Go to bed!’

  Seeing her wounded face made me feel different about her. Poor old Cruickshanks, I resolved to think of her more kindly. Cruickshanks was a person and a woman to boot, with all those woman things around her, all those bits and pieces signifying a female. I didn’t like to credit the thought.

  I preferred not to take my physic so much afterwards, I didn’t want to be so fogged over. I began to pretend to take it. I’d slip it in my pocket. I’d spit it out when I had a chance. All that thick whiteness went away and I could focus again. My head hurt perpetually, but I remembered more. I remembered the girl in a cupboard, I saw her better.

  She was hiding there; it was her secret place. She kept her rag doll in there. I began to wonder if the girl was my sister. I began to be certain she was. And with that certainty I remembered more than a cupboard. I saw a whole room and people in it. An old woman coughing, a younger woman and man. There was a boy then as well, all busy about some activity. I could not tell what it was at first. Then forcing myself, I began to see more. I could look over their shoulders. They were making small cages. Cages, cages for what? I looked up, there were cages, any amount of them, hanging from the ceilings, there were birds in some of these cages, scruffy seagulls and dusty pigeons.

  And there were other cages on the ground. The ones on the ground had a sort of shutter to them on a spring. Then I knew it! Then I had it! Traps! Rat traps, they were rat traps. That’s what they were, they were ratters, these people. They were champion rat catchers. How my heart raced at that. Yes, yes I knew them. I knew them and I loved them. They were my family. My family were great ratters of Filching!

  There was my father, strong and burly, scratches all over his hands and face, what a champion rat catcher he was! There, my mother, scratched over a good deal too, fierce and fond. Yes I know you, Mother. My brother, learning to make a mouse trap. My sister and her rag doll, not a rag doll, a rag rat she had, a rat in a dress. My grandmother in the corner, fixing traps, two of her fingers missing from her early hunting days. What stories she used to tell us of those, of grandfather and wharf rats! And there was my grandfather, bent over, but grinning. Oh my family, my family. They all came flooding back to me. How I loved to be there with all of them.

  There was more I saw, there was me amongst them all, going out with father in his leathers to hunt, to lay down the traps. And there was
the outside of the house, a one-storey place, fairly rickety, but with a shop sign flapping merrily in the wind, HAYWARD RAT CATCHERS FULLY LICENSED BY APPOINTMENT TO TUNCRID IREMONGER, GENT. Yes, home, what a home it was! And there pasted on the walls, the bill stickers, RATS FOR SALE, and MOUSETRAPS, FLYPAPERS, GULLTRAPS, GULL MEAT, RAT RACKS, TAXIDERMY, WE ARTICULATE!, FEATHERS BY THE SACK, SKINS! What a home it was, what a place! That was it, the House of Rats, that was my place, that was where my people were. I had to find it.

  The House of Rats.

  Home.

  That was the start of it. From then on I needed to learn more. Miss Cruckshanks kept a diary. I had seen her at it often enough, but I never should have thought to look at it, not until after I stopped taking the physic. She went out every day, locking the door behind her, to give her report to the old man. And so I took out her diary, and I read there all the thoughts of my governess, and those words brought even more confusion into my head,

  I split. I crack. I am coming apart. Every day a little more.

  One day, one day soon, I shall be in pieces.

  Do not let me shatter, keep me in one part. I want, I so want to stay whole. But they say that I shall not. They say it is hopeless for me. They say I have the fever and that in time I shall fall to pieces. Shall it be tomorrow, I ask. Shall I be broken tomorrow? They tell me perhaps, though it is not likely. There is some time yet. Probably.