I was very nearly at the Sitting Room when I heard a new mumbling coming from the schoolmasters’ common room. Looking in I saw some serving Iremonger busy about her night-time tidying business and thought nothing of it to start off with, I have little enough time for the serving Iremongers but do prefer it when they are less conspicuous, and I was about to move on, but then I heard that there was something very wrong with this Iremonger. I thought serving Iremongers never made noises, yet this one did. This one definitely was saying something with its serving mouth shut. Why was this one making noises, what was it saying? As I listened out for the words, the serving Iremonger, who I saw now was young and had quite some red hair visible beneath her bonnet, came at me with maddened looks and struck me upon the head with a coal scuttle.

9

A PAIR OF CURVED FORCEPS

From the medical journals of Doctor Aliver Iremonger, G.P.

Wednesday 9th November 1875

The patient Rosamud Poorler Iremonger, aged fifty-seven, is distressed. Yellowness to the eyes. No comfortable position can be obtained. The patient describes aching all over her corpus. She keeps reaching out to hold something, but whatever is placed in her hand is not a comfort. I have had other brass door handles brought before her but these have only quickened her terror. She believes that she shall become something other than she is now. There is no quietening her, save with physic.

Thursday 10th November 1875 – 10 a.m.

Great prostration of strength. She has not left her bed all day. She fears she shall be struck into something any moment. The patient wails about a return of the Old Disease. Her brother, she says, fell to it aged seven; he folded into a possing-stick for tub washing. Patient cannot be comforted. Surely, her fears are exaggerated. If she would but calm herself, but the patient has it in her mind that the terrible malady is returning and nothing shall persuade her otherwise.

Thursday 10th November 1875 – 11 p.m.

Features much altered. A coldness now about the surface of her body. Eyes sunken in sockets. Body is changing colour, a blue-blackness to it now not present before. She has not spoken these past five hours. Patient sleeps at last and is to be considered comfortable. Pulse imperceptible.

10

A BRASS DOORKNOB

Lucy Pennant’s narrative continued

A surly Iremonger, middle-aged and heavy, with many insect bites all over her legs, guided me, took me up from the underhouse, up all those stairs. At the turn of each staircase there was a hatch.

‘Why so many hatches?’ I asked.

‘In case it floods,’ the iremonger said. ‘In case the heaps pour in, to seal the house up, stop the flooding coming up any further.’

‘But what about those beneath the flooding?’

‘They’re flooded in, aren’t they, what do you think? Come along, come up.’