Lungdon Read online

  And that was the end of our conversation.

  I do actually feel it is the servant, this poor music stand, this poor Janey Cunliffe.

  ‘Hello, dear,’ I say to it. ‘I hope to make you yourself once more. Truly I do. I have not forgotten you, Jane, even if everyone else has. (I shan’t call you Janey, if you don’t mind, it sounds too childish.)’

  I put her on the windowsill so that she may look out.

  Martha, the tweeny maid, fears to come near me since delivering the stand, as if I’m quite mad; she weeps a deal and says I’m mean to her. Even Nanny’s been a little odd of late, she comes less and less and spends her time in her room with her gilt-edged calf-skinned Bible and won’t go anywhere without it; she consults it, she whispers to it. (What a thing to wrap the Bible in, something’s skin, when you think about it that doesn’t seem right at all.) I don’t have many companions, I have no siblings and I am schooled here at home, so the loss of Nanny does make rather a gap in my social calendar.

  And all of this, all this strangeness, is on account of the new neighbours across the way. I wonder if it is just our household that suffers so, or if others are likewise inconvenienced.

  A Weeping Hatstand

  A Diseased Pair of Curtains With the Remnants of a Pelmet

  A Comforting Tin Compass

  A Burst Box of Matches

  A Sinking Boat, the Round Pond, Kensington Gardens

  Newly Obtained Objects, the Foundling Hospital

  2

  LONDON GAZETTE I

  Reports from around town

  From a lady, Battersea

  The hatstand in the hall has begun weeping. I thought at first it was just the rain from the umbrellas and the hats and coats and so had these removed and dried by the kitchen hearth. But the stand still dripped even though there was nothing on it. Awful puddle on the floor. I’d throw the thing out, except it was a gift from Mummy.

  From a chambermaid, Chelsea

  I didn’t think very much of it at first, but as it happened – the change – over numerous nights, I did note it so particular. My lady’s pelmets have all turned black and stiff. All over the house there is not a single pelmet that has not shrunken and blackened and I cannot tell why. All the curtains tend that way now, and have a terrible smell about them; the whole house stinks of ruined pelmets and curtains.

  From a young woman, Leinster Square

  And now no one can find him anywhere, there’s no sign, no notion of where he has gone to. My dear, my dearest Cuthbert. He said he loved me. I do think he meant it. I so long for him to come back again, to hold my hand like he did last week. I take small solace in the little tin compass they found in his room at the club. It was jolly kind of them to let me have it as a keepsake. I do wonder where he is. Some say he always was a terrible leg puller, and some say he never could be steady, but others think something untoward has occurred and that he may be in awful trouble. If he’d but come to me I feel certain we could work it out between us.

  If only there were sunlight again we might find some of what we have lost.

  From a matchbox seller, Hackney

  I don’t know how it happened. But my matches, every box of them, come ruined in the night. I did hear some shifting going on in our room, but that’s as often the case, there being five of us that perch here. But in the morning, I never should credit it. All them matches of mine, all them little boxes, what I earn my crust from. They’ve all, well, they’ve all gone and ruined on me. Seems the matches inside had growed in the night, and stretched and burst their boxes. And the other thing is them matches, they’re soft now, what before was hard and wooden are now very white and I’d say flabby, most soft to the touch. Sticky. How’s a fellow to sell them? Who’d buy such things?

  Park Keeper, Round Pond, Kensington Gardens

  Many of the wooden yachts and lesser sailboats that the children are wont to push out on the water have grown strangely heavy and do sink.

  The Foundling Hospital, Coram Fields

  To date seven children have succumbed; it is generally the newly arrived. One is now a label marked GIN, one a penknife, one a baby’s shoe, one a beating cane, one a sieve, one a doormat; two of them are pen nibs now. The rest of the children are most distressed and cease to play with the objects set aside for them, but rather sit now their hands in their laps regarding one another with the highest anxiety. Some cry. Some shout. All are put out. We have had some music performed by the children’s choir, but it has done but little good.

  Eleanor Cranwell’s Nanny; Her Eyebrow Comb

  3

  OBSERVATIONS FROM A PERAMBULATION

  From the diary of Eleanor Cranwell,

  23 Connaught Place,

  London W

  4th February 1876

  I went for my walk today. I must get out of the house, no matter how black it is outside. It felt so good to get out, and though the air was no clearer, there was certain relief to be away from Connaught Place. There are new bill stickers along the Edgware Road, and all the way up Oxford Street. This is what they say:

  IMPORTANT NOTICE!!

  ALL MUST READ!!!

  IT IS A CRIME TO HARBOUR ANY PERSON FROM THE EXTINGUISHED BOROUGH OF

  FOULSHAM

  ANYONE WHO IS FOUND CONCEALING ANY SUCH PERSON SHALL BE SUBJECT TO THE SEVEREST PENALTY OF THE LAW

  ALL PEOPLE OF FOULSHAM/FORLICHINGHAM MUST BE PLACED INTO QUARANTINE IMMEDIATELY. ANY PERSON SEEING OR COMING INTO CONTACT WITH ANY PERSON (ALIVE OR DEAD) FROM THE FORLICHINGHAM/FOULSHAM DISTRICT MUST

  IMMEDIATELY REPORT TO THE CONSTABULARY

  THERE IS TERRIBLE DANGER OF

  CONTAGION

  Further down the street I saw a bill posterer putting up new notices:

  KEEP ALL VISITS TO A MINIMUM

  STAY AT HOME WHENEVER POSSIBLE

  DO NOT TALK TO STRANGERS

  WASH FREQUENTLY WITH CARBOLIC SOAP

  KEEP YOUR DOORS LOCKED AND YOUR WINDOWS FASTENED

  THERE IS TERRIBLE DANGER OF

  CONTAGION

  There were so many new commands, so many do thises and do thats. And the streets so quiet now, and the constables so many. It was not long before one marched up to me. There was mud on his white trousers and his top hat was rather scuffed. He seemed very nervous.

  ‘What are you doing, miss, what’s your business?’

  ‘Hullo, Officer, I am going for my walk.’

  ‘Go home, child, it isn’t safe.’

  ‘I’m not a child, I’m thirteen.’

  ‘Go home, go quick.’

  ‘Why exactly isn’t it safe?’

  ‘People escaped.’

  ‘What people, if I may inquire?’

  ‘Dreadful bad people.’

  ‘What do they look like?’

  ‘Can’t tell exactly. Bad people, people of Foulsham.’

  ‘What’s exactly bad about them?’

  ‘They’re diseased. Mustn’t touch them, mustn’t go near.’

  ‘And what would happen should I come across such a person, and if I touched one, say?’

  ‘It would be the undoing of you.’

  ‘Oh! Really! How exactly might I come undone?’

  ‘There is contagion, there most certainly is.’

  ‘Tell me what they’ve done so wrong, these people, that they are hunted so.’

  ‘They’re vagrants, aren’t they? Foreign filth. They’re diseased sure enough, we need them off our streets. We must be certain of it.’

  ‘What are you so afraid of?’

  ‘Afraid? I’m not afraid of anything.’

  ‘You sound like you are. What may happen to us?’

  ‘Contagion. Worse than any cholera. We’ll all be dirt and rubbish.’

  ‘Shall we? Is it very likely?’

  ‘Go home, girl, and stay home.’

  But then I thought I should tell them, it wasn’t right to keep it quiet.

  ‘Excuse me, sir, I shouldn’t like to get anyone in trouble. But I
think the people you are talking of, I think they may be living in our street.’

  ‘Oh yes?’ he said. ‘Just come upon this notion, have you?’

  ‘I do think that’s where you shall find them. The house they are in looks abandoned, though it is not. I saw one of them once. (Well, perhaps it was two, I couldn’t swear to the second, he was so much in the shadow.) In the night, just for a moment. He wore a brass helmet.’

  ‘Move along now, miss, move along.’

  ‘Have they taken away the sunlight, these people? Are they the cause of it?’

  ‘Go home, will you?’

  ‘You do not believe me, do you?’

  ‘No, miss, I do not. We are very busy and seek to help, please go to your home and to safety. Leave the streets to us; we shall find them in the end.’

  ‘You’re all frightened, aren’t you?’

  ‘Go home and keep clear of any rubbish. Don’t go poking your nose in where it’s not wanted, you may just get it bitten off. There’s been people drowned dead in rubbish, falling in and coming up no more.’

  ‘Another rumour?’

  ‘No,’ he said, and there was a sudden sadness in his voice. ‘This I’ve seen myself.’

  I went back then, but not directly.

  I saw more policemen further down the Bayswater Road. They’d gotten hold of some poor tramp and were taking the fellow away. I wonder if he’d done anything wrong other than being a tramp. That would do it around here. Lowering the tone, they call it. These poor shelterless people – for we that have homes to put ourselves in ignore those others that don’t as if they were invisible, and the police move them on, and what happens to them then I wonder, what other miseries are waiting for them in streets darker even than ours?

  There were children in the park again, that was a bit of a relief, as if there could at least be some normal life somewhere. Except they hadn’t ventured far beyond the railings, as if they feared to go in too deep. I heard their game, their singing:

  ‘Black as night

  Black as death

  You’ve a stinking in your breath

  Your father’s got lost

  Your mother’s gone dead

  Your sister’s got spots

  All over her head

  Drop dead, drop dead, drop dead, drop dead

  The night’s come up and the sun has fled

  There’s a big fat rat at the foot of your bed.’

  They skipped along to this game, one around the other, and every now and then one must fall down and pretend to die in the most horrible convulsions. It did look fun. I waved at them but they were so preoccupied with their game they didn’t notice me.

  This morning Nanny left us. I say this morning, though of course and as usual there’s no sign that it’s day, other than the say-so of the clocks about the house, which keep telling us the day has come around again, though there’s precious little evidence. Nanny gave no warning, she left no note. Just in the morning (we must say it is the morning, you know, or go mad) she never appeared. Her room was much the same as ever, even her few possessions were still there, but no Nanny. And, I nearly forgot, there was an eyebrow comb upon the floor, a wooden one I’d never seen before. I thought I knew all Nanny’s things, I did like to snoop about them rather, and she’d ever been happy for me to look about, until recently that is, when she demanded more privacy. Yes, an eyebrow comb but no nanny. She’d gone. She’d deserted us.

  ‘Well,’ Mother said, ‘she wasn’t happy. I knew she wasn’t happy. I wish she’d said. I wish she’d given us warning. She may at least have done that.’

  ‘Shall we not see her again?’ I asked.

  ‘Did you say anything to her, Eleanor?’ Mother asked me. ‘Anything particular, that might have led to this?’

  ‘Nothing Mother, I just told her of those people across the street and of their queer ways.’

  ‘You frightened her away I suspect, Eleanor.’

  ‘How could I have?’

  ‘You’re a very clever girl, Eleanor, cleverer than most. And that cleverness can show itself, on occasions, to have a little too much imagining inside it. Well, child, I do not scare easily. Perhaps we may say you’re quite old enough now to go forward nanny-less.’

  It is not my fault Nanny has gone, it is the fault of the dark and shy new people across the street. They’ve changed everything since they’ve come and I see that I shall personally have to do something about it. Nanny never believed me, Mother won’t believe me, Father smiles but won’t properly listen. So then I am on my own, a small army of one.

  The fire extinguisher on my landing has grown another three inches. One of the servants must have moved it out of the cupboard, for it is just beside my bedroom door now. And Ann Belmont who helps Cook in the kitchen said she saw a strange, ugly dog prowling around, large and wild, and she was certain she saw it enter the abandoned house across the street.

  5th February 1876

  Oh but what news I have today! I have seen another of the new neighbours! I have seen him twice, three times this day! A young man. He comes to a window on the third floor of the house, opens the curtains just a little bit and looks out. He has dark circles under his eyes and black hair brushed in a parting. (I used Mother’s opera glasses to see him the better.) He was dressed in a nightshirt. Perhaps he is sick. I waved at him. Very cautiously, and just for the tiniest of moments, his fingers made a very small flicker, barely perceptible, but I know that he has seen me and knows that I am here.

  He holds up a candle to me, I hold one up to him.

  I wait for him. I’ve been waiting for him to wave again.

  I haven’t told anyone about him; I can’t see what would be the point of it, they’d only say I was lying again. No, him I keep to myself.

  The last time he came to the window I waved wildly at him. Then he was there so short a time and instantly rushed away and in his place appeared for a moment the top of the head of a strange squashed man, whose forehead and eyes only reached beyond the window level. They were very large, protuberant eyes he had and those eyes stared hard at me, and made me look away. When I looked back again, though I had glanced down only for the smallest moment, the curtains were closed. They have not been opened since. Nor has the young man ever reappeared.

  * * *

  I have vowed to go across the street and knock upon the door of the house. I know they’re in there. I do know it and I shall prove it. I want to talk to the young man. Tonight I shall meet him, I shall meet them all, I shall walk over and knock hard upon their door and keep knocking until someone comes to answer it. Perhaps we shall come to know each other very well, and visit often. Whatever the outcome, I shall gain entry and walk around the rooms and see quite how many they’re keeping in there. I think there must be hundreds of them, I really do. I’m going to wait until our house is quiet, then I shall slip out. I’m leaving this note so that if by any chance I do not come back then it shall be known where to look for me. If I’m not back I’ll be over there, in that house across the street.

  I’m going now.

  Deep breath.

  Here goes.

  Unusable Cricket Bails

  A Sudden Nutmeg Grater

  The Actor Henry Irving in His Dressing Room

  A Blocked Chimney, Bethnal Green

  Strange Visitors at Smithfield Meat Market

  A Terrestrial Globe With Pox

  4

  LONDON GAZETTE II

  Reports from around town

  Lord’s Cricket Ground, Marylebone

  Twelve cricket bats are now reported to have grown hair overnight. Five sets of stumps replaced, either because they were found stretched as long as broom poles, or else shrunken or blackened. One set of wooden bails appears to have grown teeth.

  Coffee stall owner, Hammersmith

  My wife’s a nutmeg grater. I know it’s her. I come home. The grater’s in her chair. Oh, Margaret. How’d it happen, deary?

  Stage Manager, Lyceum Theatre, West
End

  It’s the handkerchief we use for Othello. It keeps being misplaced. One stage hand swears he saw it flying about in the wings like a bat and, that on catching it with a butterfly net, it did bite him most fiercely. It has been replaced several times, but each time the handkerchief will not keep still. There have been reports of it suddenly appearing in the actors’ dressing rooms. The company is most perturbed and suspect there shall be a death among them. All their performances have been affected by the handkerchief. Mr Irving, who plays the Moor, terrifies all with his face darkened over; his murdering of Desdemona is the most repulsive thing I have ever seen on the stage.

  From a chimney sweep, Bethnal Green

  It was always soot that we were fighting up the chimneys, but now we have a new foe, all the chimneys are quite blocked with things, all stuffed up with bits and pieces from around the houses, some it seems going up the flue from the inside, others finding their way down the pots from outside. How they got to be there is anyone’s guess. Hundreds of things quite stuffed up. Think it some strange prank, but I now done four-and-twenty chimneys so suffocated. Should anyone light a fire below such a blocked chimney, there’d be black smoke in the house in a moment and all would choke, but that’s the very least of it – should a fire be unchecked with such a blocked chimney, then there’s every chance of it catching proper, of the whole house going up in flames, and if I’ve seen four-and-twenty so blocked, then how many might there be in all London?

  From a butcher’s apprentice, Smithfield Meat Market

  Sometimes people of London come to watch us in our labour, come to buy or just to see the sight of so much flesh all together. I don’t usually bother about them. But that morning among the gawpers was this strange dog I see, a huge dog it was, the size of a Great Dane or something, but misshapen and ugly and mangy. Curiously, it had a brass ring hanging from its nose. Then there was the dog’s owner, that was another queer thing right there. He was a bald man with a long nose, queer and pointy, and the other oddness was his ears: his ears were not equal to each other; one was old and wrinkled, the other small and neat and youthful. Despite all that he was quite a dapper little fellow – and kept an umbrella hooked at his arm. The man, he comes up, he says, ‘I want one whole dead pig. My dog, my dog shall carry it. Here, Otter, come, girl. Strap the pig to the dog, my good fellow.’