‘There we are then. But it’ll have to be another night. I must get on now.’

‘Tomorrow night?’

‘Tomorrow, yes, if you like.’

‘I’ll come and find you.’

‘Yes, well, all right.’

And I thought, what’s that on the chain he has going into his dressing gown pocket, what’s at the end of that?

‘Goodnight,’ I said to him.

And he said, ‘Goodnight.’ He said, ‘Goodnight, Lucy Pennant.’

Yes, that was the first time I met Clod Iremonger.

11

A PAIR OF NOSE TONGS

Clod Iremonger’s narrative continued

Lucy Pennant is in My Head

She is called Lucy Pennant. She cleans the fireplaces in some of the rooms after we are horizontal in our bedpits. I had not spoken to many of the cleaning, spic and spanning, smelling soapy, polishing up, whitewashing and scrubbing scrubbers, bleaching or blacking, ironing-Iremongers, crisp and starching, un-fleaing family branch members that lived, by day, out of sight somewhere down beneath Heap House, with dustpan and with brush. They were nocturnal, I supposed. They did not like us to go downstairs into the service rooms, Uncle Timfy would blow his whistle so and Mr Sturridge would be most unencouraging. So I did not see them much, those people. And they had no sounds to them, no names called out when they went by, not generally. And months would probably pass by without me having given them so much as a thought, as if it were the rats themselves that tried to clean our uncleanables, polished our palace and took all the ash and dead skin away. But now I had seen one of them, caught one in the candlelight. A brilliant moth.

Back in my room, in my space, I whispered, ‘I saw Lucy Pennant tonight. She struck me with her scuttle. She comes from London. I heard her birth object, but couldn’t catch its name.’

What else? She had green eyes. Was a very little older than me. Bit taller. I might grow, I thought, it probably was not tremendously important. Pinalippy had asked me to grow, but I didn’t want to think about Pinalippy then. I wanted to think about Lucy Pennant. She thought I was a ghost; I frightened her. I didn’t think I had ever frightened anyone before. I must learn the name of her birth object; I knew a person so much better when I knew what their birth object was and what it called itself.

A Secret From Tummis

Cousin Tummis knocked on my door early next morning.

‘Tummis,’ I said, ‘Tummis and Hilary, come in and close the door. I’ve something enormous to tell you. Something very wonderful. Close the door.’

‘What is it, Clod?’

‘Hilary Evelyn Ward-Jackson.’

‘Your nose is dripping. Hello, Hilary.’

Tummis smeared his nose on the cuff of his shirt.