With that cup in his hands, my Florence Balcombe, he, like all those other things just a short while before it, he let it drop, it fell to the ground. It didn’t smash. Amazing that it didn’t. It landed upright, Florence did, like a cat might. Well done, Florence. It rolled around a little, Florence did, but just a very little. And then the old man, crazy old man, ugly old man, lifted up one of his great black boots and he brought it down hard upon Florence Balcombe and he smashed her, he smashed her, she was broken now, she was in pieces, and he lifted up his boot and he brought it down again.

‘Florence!’ I screamed.

‘Lucy!’ Clod screamed. ‘Lucy, don’t!’

I ran at him.

He looked up then, he saw me coming, cold, cold those eyes.

And I –

23

A CLAY BUTTON

Concluding the narrative of Clod Iremonger

How It Ended

I could hear more, after the falling of the Gathering I could hear a bit. I could hear. Hear Lucy calling out, ‘Florence!’

I called after her.

And then her falling. Lucy fell. She was running towards Grandfather, and then she just stopped, she tumbled to the ground, rolled on the ground, and as she fell, as she rolled, she got smaller and smaller, until she was nothing more, I couldn’t see her.

‘Lucy! Lucy!’ I screamed.

‘Lucy Pennant.’

‘I hear you! I hear you! But I can’t see you. Where are you?’

‘Lucy Pennant.’

‘Lucy! Lucy!’

‘Lucy Pennant.’

On the ground, where she fell, where she stopped falling. There she was, there she was, a button. Nothing more than a button. A clay moulded button.

‘Lucy, my Lucy Pennant! I’ve got you.’

‘To me,’ said Grandfather, and she flipped up into the air, as if I’d tossed her, flicked her, like a coin, only I had not. She was in Grandfather’s great hands.

‘Please, please,’ I cried, ‘let me have her.’

‘This, Clod, even this is the cause of our recent misery, the reason the heaps had grown so disturbed, this guilty button, this Un-Iremonger, this wrong of blood. Objects were ill at ease even before it came, but when it came it did by its arrival so upset everything, so spread disease, so excited that cup, that it, turning cup-like, called all the other things to it. This thing is going back, back out now, into the deep of it, let it feel lost there and abandoned, missing without hope, let it suffer so. You – are you there, prefect, Moorcus? Strong of blood!’

There was Moorcus, a little bruised and creased, but there with his medal shining.

‘Here, sir, here, Grandfather.’

‘Take this thing, this button, and run you as fast as you can into the heaps.’

‘Out there, sir?’

‘It is quite becalmed now, the storm has blown itself out, do it, take it quick, throw it, throw it far out, lose it.’