Heap House for Hotkeys Read online

  There were other children in the building, we used to play together, we went to school in Filching, and most of what we learnt there was about the Empire and Victoria and how much of the globe we were, but also we had lessons in Filching history and about the heaps and their dangers and their greatness. They told us the old story about Actoyviam Iremonger who was in charge of London heaps, of all London’s rubbish brought into our district, a hundred years ago and more, back when the heaps were smaller and manageable, and that he drank too much and fell asleep for three days and so never gave the heap sifters the order to sift and so the heaps just got bigger and bigger, all the used stuff, all the filth of Londoners pouring in, and the job got huger and huger, and ever afterwards the heaps have always had the advantage of us. The Great Heap sneaked ahead and became the gross wild thing it is. Because of Actoyviam and because of gin, and how they worked in partnership. I don’t think I believed a word of it, they just told us it to make us work harder, that story had a message: don’t be idle or you’ll drown in it. I never wanted to be married, I’d rather stay in the building with my parents and work there, and there was no reason, not then, if I worked hard, why I shouldn’t.

  It wasn’t a bad life, all told. There was a man upstairs in one of the top rooms who never came out at all, but we would hear him wandering about. Sometimes we put our faces to the keyhole, me and my friends in the house, but we never exactly saw him. How we spooked ourselves about him and then ran downstairs laughing and screaming. But then the illness started.

  It was seen first upon things, upon objects. They stopped behaving like they used to. Something solid would turn slippery, something shiny would grow hairs. Sometimes you’d look about and objects wouldn’t be where you’d put them. It was a bit of a joke at first, no one entirely believing it. But then it got out of hand. You couldn’t get things to do what you wanted them to, there was something up with them, they kept breaking. And then some of them, I don’t know how else to say it, some of them seemed so unwell that they were shivering and sweating, and some had sores on them or spots or horrible brown stains. You could really feel that some were in pain. I can’t remember it very well. Only that shortly afterwards, people started getting ill too, they stopped working, their jaws wouldn’t open or they wouldn’t shut, or they’d grow great cracks upon them, or they’d look somehow busted, and they just stayed in a heap and wouldn’t do anything. Yes, that’s it. People started stopping, even as they walked down the street. They’d just stop and they couldn’t be started again afterwards. And then when I came home from the schoolhouse one day there were men outside our basement room, official men with gold braid bay leaves embroidered on their collars, not the green bay leaves that most of the people I knew wore on their everyday uniforms. They wore gloves, these people, and had spray pumps, and the ones that went into our room put on leather masks with round eye windows in them that made them look like some sort of monster. They said I couldn’t go in. I kicked and shrieked hell and smashed my way through but there were Mother and Father, leant up against the wall, quite neatly, as if they were bits of furniture, no life in their faces at all and Father’s ears which were always quite big anyway looked like jug handles. Just for a second, I only saw them for a second, because then other men were screaming that I must not touch, that on no account must there be any touching, and I was pulled away then. And I hadn’t touched.

  To see them like that. Father and Mother. I wasn’t allowed to stay. They grabbed me. I didn’t fight so much then. And I was taken away. They asked me if I’d touched, again and again. I said I hadn’t touched, neither Mother nor Father.

  I was put in a room on my own for a while. There was a hatch in the door; every now and again someone would look in, to see if I was getting ill too. Some food would appear once in a while. I banged on the door, but no one came. After a long bit, some nurses in high white hats marched in to look at me. They knocked on my head with their knuckles, they listened to my chest to see if I was going hollow. I don’t know exactly how long they kept me in the room waiting, but in the end the door was opened, and men with gold bay leaves looked me up and down and nodded to each other and said, ‘Not this one. For some reason, not this one.’

  Some people it took, the illness. And some it didn’t. I was one of the lucky ones. Perhaps, perhaps I wasn’t. It depends which side you come down on. It had all happened before. Heap Fever, as it was called, came and went; this was the first bout of it since I was born.

  There was a place for children like me, those made orphans by the illness. It was situated against a bit of the heap wall that was said to have been built just after Actoyviam’s time, and sometimes, if there was a bad storm in the heaps, some object might lift up and dash itself upon the roof. It was a place full of snivelling and yelling, a lot of cowering and swearing went on in those soiled rooms. Every one of us it was certain should be married to the heaps when we came of age, there was no escaping the heaps from that place. And we listened to them smashing and shifting and groaning in the night and knew that, soon enough, we’d be out there in the thick of it. We were got up in very worn black dresses and pointed leather caps that was the uniform of the orphanage; the leather cap was a sign that we belonged to the heaps, that soon enough we’d be out there. Before the illness came, I’d often seen the orphans being marched through Filching in their leather caps; we were not allowed to speak to them, they were always so silent, and there were always unhappy-looking adults marching alongside them. Sometimes, one of us might whistle out to them or call to them, but there was never any answer, and now, there I was, in a leather cap myself, marked out.

  There was another redheaded girl in the orphanage. She was cruel and stupid. That ruddy miss was of the opinion that there should only be the one girl with such hair in the place. We fought but no matter how I walloped her there never seemed to be an end of it. I knew given half a chance she should always come at me again, for the spite of it. She was that angry.

  There then.

  I think that’s all right. I think it is. I find it hard to remember, always harder. We never left the orphanage once we were in it, and those old bits of our lives grew so far away and the further away they grew the less we could be sure of them. But I think I’m right. I do think so.

  I can’t remember what they look like any more, my own mother and father.

  What else was there?

  The next big thing.

  A man arrived at the orphanage, particularly to see me. He said his name was Cusper Iremonger. ‘An Iremonger?’ I asked. ‘A proper?’ Yes, he said, an actual one of those. He had a golden bay leaf on his collar. It’s their symbol, I should probably explain, the symbol of the Iremonger business, the bay leaf to represent them, because they are powerful bailiffs among other things. This Cusper person said something about my mother’s family, about how her family was related to the Iremongers a while back, a long while back. ‘All right,’ I said, ‘so what am I then, an heiress?’ He told me that I wasn’t but he said there was work, should I want it, in a great mansion. By which he meant the great mansion.

  I knew about the Iremongers of course, everyone did, everyone from Filching and all the other wheres beyond too, I suspect. They owned it pretty much. They owned the Great Heap. And they were bailiffs, had been for always, and it was said they owned all the debts of London and called on them when they had the itch for it. They were very wealthy. Odd people, cold people. Never trust an Iremonger, that’s what we always said in Filching, amongst ourselves. Shouldn’t say it to their faces. Lose our jobs for that. No question. I’d heard stories about their house far out in the heaps but I’d never seen it. Just a fat blot in the distance. But now I might. I was being offered employment. It was a chance for me to get away from the heapwork, to leave that leather cap behind, the only chance I was ever likely to get. I should be very glad, I said. Obliged of it. What a bit of luck. ‘I shan’t be married, then?’ I asked.

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘not to the heaps.’
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br />   ‘You’re on,’ I said.

  ‘Please to hurry.’

  He took me in a dull one-horse carriage away from the orphanage, the nag was thin and shivering, the carriage was old and bashed about. We travelled through the sorting lanes, it was a sunny day, I do remember that, and the heaps were so quiet you could barely hear them, there was blue in the sky, the haze was relatively thin. So there it is: blue in the sky, me smiling as we bumped along to Bay Leaf House, actually to Bay Leaf House itself.

  ‘What, here?’ I asked.

  ‘Even here,’ he said.

  ‘Am I going in?’

  ‘You are. Momentarily.’

  ‘What a business!’ I said.

  We’d always talked about being inside Bay Leaf House, me and my friends, but none of us ever had. We hadn’t got within a hundred yards of it, we’d be moved on pretty sharp if we did. Family only it was. All the rest, keep out. And here I was in a carriage being driven in, family too. Me an Iremonger! The gates were shut behind me and the Cusper fellow was urging me to hurry. And then we were inside the actual place, and there were offices and desks and people with paper and noises and strange pipes everywhere and clanging noises, and distant thuds. People all done up in collars and ties and all of them yellowish.

  ‘Show us around?’ I asked.

  ‘Don’t be impertinent,’ he said, ‘don’t touch anything. Come with me.’

  So I followed him down some corridor, people busy either side of us, all of them men. And then at a door that had written upon it TO FORLICHINGHAM PARK we stopped, the next door over said FROM FORLICHINGHAM PARK. Cusper rang a bell that hung above the doorframe, there was a creaking cracking sound and then he opened the door TO not FROM and we stepped inside a cupboard-sized room. He told me to hold onto the railing there. I held on, the man pulled on a rope that hung down from the ceiling, I heard a bell sound somewhere and then the cupboard-room began to move. I let out a scream, the world seemed to shift and we were moving down, down, down, I felt my heart rise into my mouth, I thought we should surely be killed, I thought we were plunging to our deaths. There was a sudden burst of light, the man had lit a small gunny-lamp, he wasn’t even holding on, but smiled at me, and told me not to worry. The cupboard-room stopped with a bump, and went downwards no further.

  ‘Where are we?’ I asked.

  ‘Under,’ he said, ‘deep under. You must go under to get where you are going.’

  We were at a station. There were train tracks. There were signs painted against the wall saying WELCOME TO BAY LEAF HOUSE STATION and there was an arrow pointing one way which said TO GREATER LONDON and another that said TO IREMONGER PARK. The train was already there and stoked up too, steam pouring out, I was hurried along the platform past many men in dark suits and toppers looking nowhere in particular. There was a goods van at the back with baskets of things and boxes and supplies. I was pushed up inside by Cusper Iremonger; I was the only one there, only me and a lot of things.

  ‘Sit on a basket, someone will fetch you when the train arrives. Behave yourself.’

  And then he slid the door closed and a bit later I found that it was locked. I sat there a good half hour, then I saw through the wire mesh window – there was no glass – a very tall, old man, all dressed up in top hat and long black overcoat with fur collar, marching forwards, and other smaller people rushing and bowing behind him, what a size this old man was, what a grim determined look he had about him as he got on the train. I think the train must have been waiting for him because almost immediately a man in a cap came running along the platform, waving a flag, blowing a whistle, and off we shunted. I looked out of the mesh but soon enough there was nothing to see but black and more black and only black. And smells and fogs came into the goods van which wasn’t sealed and as the train sped on I was dripped upon a good deal, spray coming through the mesh window, and the smell of it wasn’t good. At last the train slowed down and stopped with a screeching whistle which deafened me for a while, and I looked out but could see very little until a while later, when the goods door was slid open and a woman, tall and thin in a plain dress, was saying to me, ‘You’re to come this way and to hurry yourself.’

  That was the beginning of it. I had arrived.

  3

  A Medal (Marked ‘FOR VALOUR’)

  Clod Iremonger’s narrative continued

  My Cousin Tummis (and Moorcus)

  Before I had quite reached the schoolrooms I was met by the approaching noise:

  ‘Hilary Evelyn Ward-Jackson.’

  That was the particular cry of the birth object of my cousin Tummis, and indeed he rounded the corner a second later.

  ‘Clod, dear man,’ he panted, ‘so glad to have intercepted you.’

  ‘Good morrow, old Tummis, you look fair puffed out.’

  ‘Indeed, I do, I do, and I shall tell you why: school is abandoned for the day, on account of Aunt Rosamud. The teachers have all prodded and patted us down, emptied our pockets and poked us all aboutwards, looking, one and all, for the missing handle, and, it not being found, we’ve been hurried out to be in our own rooms until further notice and not to be in anyone’s way whatsoever, but to holler loudly should we see Aunt Rosamud’s brass headacher.’

  I was very often in the company of my cousin Tummis, it was most usual for us, mucking about, chewing the fat, ruminating, cogitating, philosophising, mumbling, tumbling, peaking and troughing. My cousin Tummis was very tall and very thin. Tummis always had Hilary Evelyn Ward-Jackson about him, which was a tap, a tap that would not be out of place in a bathtub; it had a small enamel disc in the centre of its tap-wheel inscribed with an H for hot. It was a very fine object and had had a profound effect upon Tummis because the dear fellow did leak a lot and there was very often a drop of liquid snot hanging from his nose; that drop had such a long way to fall, all the length of Tummis, it must have been quite dead before it hit the ground. He was quite a sensitive fellow, Tummis was, and very concerned for a great many things. He had yellowish hair – it always looked rather uncertain as if it hadn’t quite made up its mind to be hair yet and thought it might really be a cloud, of methane say, it was so very thin, you could see his skull beneath it.

  Even though he was already seventeen by the time Aunt Rosamud lost her door handle, Tummis had not married. At sixteen an Iremonger should change from wearing corduroy shorts to long trousers made of grey flannel. At sixteen an Iremonger should marry a wife who has been chosen for him, an Iremonger girl, not a sister or first cousin but certainly a relation of some sort. At sixteen an Iremonger should put away all school things and commence proper work at home in one of the departments in the house, or, if we were particularly gifted, to be employed beyond the dirtheaps in London itself, at least in the borough of Forlichingham, which we could sometimes see in the distance from the windows higher up in the house. It was certainly unlikely that I should be allowed to work in Forlichingham on account of my being ill from a young age, and poor Tummis was being held back from marrying Ormily and from grey-flannel trousers; he was not thought ready.

  Tummis loved animals, he loved all the animals that were so numerous about the house, cockroach or rat or bat or cat or blat, and he collected them, he brought them into his rooms, and whenever he had collected too large a family Cousin Moorcus should come to his room and disperse them, often smiting one or two or ten in the process. This may have been the cause of his still wearing corduroy shorts a good year longer than was usual and his knees, still on display, were rather knobbly and embarrassed and they so longed, longed for grey flannel that he kept his hands upon them whenever he could, as if to cover them up, but which actually made them appear all the more naked with those big hands (something like boiled tripe) about them. I suppose Cousin Tummis was rather an anxious creature altogether.

  ‘No school then,’ I cried to Tummis. ‘A day of rest!’

  ‘Yes, but, Clod, man, listen up a moment; I should not go home if I were you.’

  ‘It may be two rooms unke
mpt and unclean to you, but to me, it’s a palace.’

  ‘It’s not that, Clod.’

  ‘Shall we go to your menagerie, then, to caw and shriek with it, old drip?’

  ‘It’s Moorcus, Clod.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘Moorcus, is it?’

  Cousin Moorcus, school prefect, my first cousin, the biggest and most handsome of the Iremonger boys, had about him a medal with ribbon that said FOR VALOUR which he wore most unusually out on permanent display. This was the only particular object that had never spoken to me, not a whisper, not a sound; it was most stubbornly silent. But this was a relatively recent phenomenon, just six months ago Moorcus had kept his birth object hidden about his person, and I had often heard it groaning the words ‘Rowland Collis.’ But suddenly, half a year since, Moorcus sported a medal upon his chest, declared this his birth object, and had many locks put upon the door of his apartment. And after that I never heard Rowland Collis no more.

  ‘Cousin Moorcus,’ repeated Tummis, and held up his hands which were bloody about the knuckles.

  ‘What has he done?’

  ‘Not much at all this time, as you see,’ said Tummis, casually examining his small wounds. ‘He was busy enough though, he’s been denting top hats and banging heads, right in front of the masters, and they did nothing to stop him.’