‘Yes, Lucy, well done, we might, we might.’

In the Great Dining Hall

The Great Dining Hall, all flock wallpaper and cut glass, chandelier and shining light, polish and sparkle, but dark too, and deep, as if rather than being in a grand setting for the purpose of eating, you were already in the stomach of some leviathan. That’s where we tumbled, and, tumbling in saw suddenly that we were not alone.

Birth objects all around, birth objects mumbling, hushed, in terror whispering. All the names were questions, every speaking object spoke with a question mark. My own plug was wondering too, very quietly, timidly, ‘James Henry Hayward?’ So many Iremongers had gathered themselves here in the Great Dining Hall. We had run straight into them. My relatives, the whole place thick with them. Iremongers all around.

‘Oh, Clod,’ whispered Lucy, ‘help me! What now?’

And all I could say was, ‘Oh!’

‘Please, Clod, you must do something.’

All around Iremonger eyes upon us, everyone looking up. How to explain? How to make right again?

‘Dreadful night,’ I said. ‘How do?’

All the eyes kept upon us, they did not look away.

‘I’ve just seen an ostrich. True as life, running down the way. Tummis’s ostrich, as I live and breathe. There’s fire, there’re flames down the midway corridor. How you stare so.’

They stared still.

‘How are you all, what’s new?’

Still they stared.

‘What a night it is!’ I said, not able to stop talking, because when I stopped, I felt certain they’d come for her. ‘What a night when the Iremongers go dumb one and all. I’ve been about tonight, seen such weather. I’m sure you all have, same as me. Well then, it’s a terror to be certain. Do I sound excited? Well, I am excited. I came upon this creature here beside me, this rag person. You may not recognise it, but I’d call it human. Lo, people, it is a serving Iremonger. I found her lumped in a corridor, so many things heaped on top of her. Took a while to dig her out. Couldn’t say what it was at first, wouldn’t gamble upon it. But there then I found this dishrag, this sink thing, and I thought, well, I thought, I thought …’

‘Oh, do shut up, Clod!’ came the voice of Uncle Aliver over in a corner. ‘What a fuss you make. This hall has been made a makeshift hospital, the Infirmary is closed off by the storm. Look about you, everyone’s hurt. Be useful. Find some use.’