‘Sometimes they woke up to discover deep creases upon their faces which seemed on closer inspection to be cracks, and sometimes, later still, they just stopped working. People froze up, like pieces of rusted machinery, and no one knew why or what was happening, only that they were never well again. To begin with we put it about that these stopped people had just disappeared. We let loose rumours of murders and we lowered the price of gin. But then the stopped people did more than just stop, they turned, they grew, they morphed into things. Often enough a person should go to bed entirely well, his grimy spouse beside him, but when she awoke he would be gone, and there should be nothing in her bed beside her but a washing paddle. More people disappeared. A murderer is amongst us, we told them. But why then, some of the more inquisitive of Filching asked, why in those cases, if a proper inventory was done of the disappeared person’s possessions, why was there always to be found one thing extra, a pot, or a plate, a cup or an enamel bowl, a candlestick or a glove? How were we to answer that? There were waves of this disease, sometimes two people a month might shift from being a person into an object. And then there might follow whole seasons when not a single disappearance – or transformation – occurred. But we knew it, we Iremongers, we knew it: people, Clod, ah, dear Clod, were turning into things.’

Two more rags shifted now, they opened up like flower petals and became in one case a modest andiron and the other a joint stool, these larger objects moved off the slate and from my bed, padding about like domestic animals before disappearing beneath the bed.

‘To mollify the heap workers, to help them in their distress, for so many were struggling so, we became a sort of charity. Some desperate families, of which there have never been a shortage, had such an excess of family members, too many children, and, less often, too many old, for it is an exceptional heap worker that celebrates his fortieth birthday. They did not know what to do. There was such a crowding of people, such slums, such thickness of humans, that it was announced that swollen families might give up some of their number and should in return be rewarded for it. And so many children, and some old, and some infirm, were delivered to Bay Leaf House and the family was given money for them in return and a ticket. They were told to take especial care of the ticket, for should the ticket be lost they should not be permitted to redeem their person at a later date, whether they had the money or no.’

‘It is terrible, Grandfather.’

‘It is business, Grandson.’