Read Observatory Mansions Online
Authors: Edward Carey
In the night that followed Father’s acknowledgement of his former companions, the stars, I slept badly. I was disturbed by Father’s breathing, or what I at first interpreted as Father’s breathing, but which I later realized was in fact Father calling out one word again and again. He was saying – Alice. Alice. Alice.
I left my bedroom to find Father sitting on an upright pine chair. He had somehow managed, unaided, to pull himself out of that red leather armchair which had held him mercilessly prisoner for so many years. Father was slowly shifting his new seat forward. Heading, with a snail’s sincerity, towards the passageway. I stood and watched him, unnoticed. Even when I said – Father. Father, are you all right? he did not look up, all his concentration was spent on moving himself and the pine chair forward. And as he moved, in rhythm to his breaths, he called in his weak voice: Alice, Alice. Once in the passageway, Father slowly progressed towards my mother’s room. Once he had eventually managed to open the door of Mother’s room, he edged himself and his new chair towards Mother’s bed. Alice, Alice. My mother was, I think, awake. I saw her eyes shifting beneath her eyelids. But she did not move. Alice, Alice. And she did not call to her husband – Francis, Francis. Francis Senior. My dear old father positioned his chair so that it touched the side of Mother’s bed. In one unbroken, heroic gesture, Father managed to heave himself on to Mother’s bed. He stretched
himself out next to Mother, he did not touch her. He said – Alice, Alice – once more. Then he muttered, straining his head to look at her docile form:
Alice, Alice. We need another Francis Orme. Alice, Alice. I don’t think this one will last. Alice, Alice, Orion, Cassiopeia.
Under Mother’s eyelids tears had formed and they burst through the lids and wandered hurriedly down her flabby cheeks.
For a while, before returning to my own room and dreamless sleep, I sat on that upright pine chair by my mother’s bed and watched Father close his eyes and breathe more calmly. Father’s jaws moved from side to side.
In former times Father’s placidly spent days would be counterbalanced at night by the ferocious grinding of his teeth. A terrible sound. We wondered what was happening in Father’s brain to make his teeth gnash so excitedly. My mother hated that noise, it kept her awake in those nights when they used to sleep together. She would scream at Father ordering him to control his teeth. Father, awakened and back in his mild ways, would look devastated and through tear-filled eyes would assure her that he was incapable of such noises, that my mother should stop bullying him. So Mother bought a dictaphone and one night recorded Father’s grinding teeth and played it back to him the next morning. Father looked shocked, he could not understand why his body, so polite and gentle all day through, would suddenly take up such menacing and unpleasant sounds during the night. He concluded that since his body spent the nights deceiving him it was not to be trusted. He waited patiently for his body’s clandestine betrayals to grow braver, he waited for that time when his body would set out on a journey, perhaps only as far as the park, even after his mind had strictly forbidden it. One day my father’s body did take my father to the park. Father used the only means he had left of defeating it. Father
watched the people around him, Father heard noises, Father fell off the park bench. Father gave himself a stroke. Ever after the lower lid of his left eye drooped slightly, showing its pink inside, a memento of the battle between Father’s body and Father’s mind. But that was all before, a different time when Father had teeth instead of gums to grind.
When Father was sleeping and Mother’s tears had dried, I considered that there was a term for what had passed that night: a family reunion.
Breakfasting Mother and Father
.
There was more action that night, as I discovered when I awoke the next morning. I was in the kitchen preparing breakfast when I felt sure that I was being watched. Seated in that famous red leather armchair was an elderly figure. But it was not Father. Mother. My mother. Mother’s eyes were open, Mother was looking directly at me.
Mother!
Good morning, Francis.
Mother!
Where’s breakfast?
It’s coming, it’s coming.
Did you sleep well, Francis?
Yes, thank you.
I’m so glad.
And you, Mother, did you sleep well?
I did not sleep at all. There’s a strange man in my bed.
We ate breakfast together at the dining table. We had not done this for many years. We did not speak as we ate. When Mother had finished watching me washing up (I was wearing those pink rubber gloves) she announced her intention of getting dressed, taking off her nightclothes and changing into day clothes, but she was not going to dress with a strange
man looking at her. I went into Mother’s room. Father was awake and mumbling to himself, lying on Mother’s bed. I tried to move him, to pull him off the bed, encourage him to sit on the pine chair, but Father was too heavy and unhelpful. I needed some help. Mother would not help me, she refused to acknowledge Father. The Porter would not be allowed to help, not after the last time he looked after Father, when he dropped Father because of a drop of spittle. Claire Higg was too weak to help, was anyway not talking to me. Only one person remained. I knocked on Miss Tap’s flat door, she followed me back down the stairs. Father’s in Mother’s bed, Mother wants to get dressed, I said. That was all.
We carried Father back out of Mother’s bedroom and, as we were shuffling him forwards, Mother rushed into the lavatory and only came out again when Father was safely out of sight in the kitchen, then she darted into her own room and slammed the door.
When we aimed Father’s bottom at that red leather armchair the old man began to panic again, shifting his weak body from side to side and whining in frustration. We propped him on an upright pine chair and fed him.
Mother in the mirror
.
Mother saw herself in the mirror and said very calmly:
Look at that ugly old hag.
Mother washed herself, changed out of her nightclothes and put on a red dress. She brushed her hair. She put on a little make-up. Then Mother, looking in the mirror, said:
Good morning, Alice. Irresistible Alice.
Indeed, Mother was a fine-looking woman when she took the time to smooth out her ugliness.
Gradually our routines began
.
Father, in those first days of his return to us, was able to move only with the greatest difficulty. Slowly though, with encouragement, Anna Tap and I taught Father to walk as parents teach babies. We stood, one behind Father and one in front, and softly dared him to take a few steps. Sometimes he fell, but we always caught him. What a heavy child Father was. But he progressed quickly and soon we were able to take him out of flat six and along the corridor. In time he learnt to climb the stairs, slowly, on all fours. Descending them, though, was more perilous. He grasped the banisters until his knuckles showed white and refused to let go. But slowly, with great patience, taking each step as an individual journey, we brought him back home.
Mother was making swifter progress. She was out of flat six on the first day she returned to us. A week later she managed, with supervision, a short walk in the park. Most of her days, though, were spent inside Observatory Mansions. She would walk from empty flat to empty flat; she hissed at the Porter and watched television with Claire Higg.
We found Father’s false teeth in a drawer, dusted and washed them and said: Open wide. At night we would disguise the red leather armchair with sheets and pillows and place Father in its familiar comfort. He slept badly and was often heard calling to the stars.
We took turns to look after Mother and Father. Usually I took Mother and Anna took Father, but often we supervised one parent together. At first Mother did not like Anna Tap at all, she called her the photograph thief, and it was only after Anna had shown her many kindnesses that she began to consider her tolerable company. Mother would only ever refer to Father as
that strange man
, and when informed that that strange man was in fact her husband, she would
invariably reply: Nonsense, my husband died of a stroke many years ago.
In the following weeks, time was divided into two. Mother and Father were imagining themselves in the same place but at different times. Father saw himself in Tearsham Park and could not understand why it had changed so much. Mother knew she was in Observatory Mansions, and not the Observatory Mansions in which she was happy; she was in the latest Observatory Mansions, the disintegrating Observatory Mansions, that the rest of us dwelt in, in real time. She understood that, she existed in the present, but she liked to wander into the past, and touching the walls of the various abandoned flats she would recall pictures that had once hung there. Mother was reminiscing, working her way backwards, remembering in reverse order, but Father was living the past. Father could not see that he had lost himself hopelessly in a time long dead. He believed he was in Tearsham Park and that Tearsham Park had become somehow alienated from him. He tried to redress this unfamiliarity by struggling to remember exactly where the rooms were that were temporarily avoiding him. Sadly, he found plasterboard walls in his way and would shriek –
The servants’ hall is here, just the other side of this wall
. And we would have to shrug our shoulders and pat his hand and say: No, Father, you are mistaken. He was right, though. He was always right.
Together my Mother and Father heaved themselves back to life. And as they did so the building that was called Tearsham Park, that was called Observatory Mansions, began to fill with the people and objects of their yesterdays.
THE COMPLETE HISTORY OF
OBSERVATORY MANSIONS
AND
TEARSHAM PARK
as seen through the eyes of my mother and father
(retold with the assistance of Francis Orme and Anna Tap):
PART ONE.
Observatory Mansions
.
My mother stood in the abandoned flat eight, in an empty bedroom. She wiped away cobwebs with her hands, blew all the dead flies into a corner and then sat in the centre of the bare, dusty floor. Here, where I’m sitting, she said, was the bachelor’s bed. It was a large double bed, it made no noises. The bachelor lay here on this bed, every night and slept (said Mother, spreading her hands around the dust). Some nights while he lay here he did not sleep, some nights, and some days too, he had a companion. I am here, said my mother, to recall the last time I came into this flat. I stood here (she stood with only one foot inside the flat, the rest of her on the threadbare landing carpet). He did not let me in. I saw through the gap in the door that all his bags were packed and that his flat was cleared. He was going to leave the next morning, without saying goodbye.
There could have been a thousand things to say to him. But he didn’t care for me any more and I couldn’t make him
care, the harder I tried, the more he pushed me away. As I stood on the landing, with only the smallest part of me in his flat, I thought: What’s the point, what’s the point of anything? And I just said a not very forceful
bastard
to him and left. I went to my bedroom in flat six, changed into my nightie, drew the curtains and got into bed. That’s how it started.
Francis came to see me, he said: Mother, get up, it’s not night-time. Listen Francis, I said, if I close my eyes I can be anywhere. I can imagine myself in any time I desire. I can always be in summer if I like. I can relive those rather better days that seem to have dried up for ever. Perhaps, if I want to see myself in flat eight with the bachelor, when I first met him, when we were happy, I can just close my eyes and be there. But perhaps it would be better if I had a little something of his to remember him by. Francis, I know you’re a thief. You’ve been a thief since you could crawl, it’s your nature, I’ve never complained, I’ve never reported you, even when I knew you were to blame, even when your victims were in tears and desperate. I could have, but I never did. So, now, Francis, I have a commission for you. You will be paid. Steal for me a pair of the bachelor’s Y-fronts.
Francis Orme, aside to Anna Tap
.
In time Mother and I drew out great plans. I helped to contain all Mother in one room. I stole back all the gifts that she had ever given. I piled objects into Mother’s room. And she paid me for each object returned. When I had collected all Mother’s memories I would sit in her room, holding hands with her, and we would laugh together. The Exhibition of Mother was one of the greatest achievements of my life; surpassed only by that other exhibition down in the cellar, in the tunnel that leads to the church. But how did Mother repay me for my genius? She shut herself up and loved only Mother’s past and Mother’s objects. Mother ghosted herself.
Tearsham Park
.
My father complained that the smells were all wrong.
There was a damp smell all about Observatory Mansions and the musty, sweet scent of rats. It never used to be like that, he said, it always used to smell of wood polish, they were always polishing the oak floorboards. Or it would smell of the delicious odours from the kitchen. After his first attempts to rediscover the rooms of Tearsham Park had led only to off-white walls and ripped wallpaper, my father decided to begin again. He decided to start with his childhood and work his way forward, slowly, methodically. He was sure that this process of remembering would eventually reveal the entire and familiar Tearsham Park to him, that he had somehow forgotten something that might explain it to him, that the building was a complicated puzzle which he must unravel.
Observatory Mansions
.
Mother said: Here I stand on the second floor facing flat twelve. To my right is flat thirteen, to my left is flat eleven. In flat twelve lives a mother. Either side of her live her two daughters. I open the door to flat twelve: here is the mother, she is called Elizabeth. I open the door to flat thirteen: here is the daughter called Christa. I open the door to flat eleven: here is the daughter called Eva. The sisters were twins, but never have I known such un-identical twins in my life before or since. Christa was tall and thin. Eva was short and fat. Elizabeth, their mother, was tall and fat, but she suffers from a terrible cancer that has made her progressively shorter and thinner. I close the door to flat twelve. Mother Elizabeth has died. I open the door to flat twelve, the mother is buried. Now in flat twelve are the two daughters, before so pleasant, but now screaming and clawing each other. They are dividing the complete possessions of their mother between them. The
sisters used to be inseparable, they spent their days nursing their sick mother. I have never before or since seen such devotion in children. However, when the mother died and it came to the division of the mother’s articles, never have I known before or since such harridan sisters. They are walking around the flat now. One holds a sheet of paper with little round red stickers on it. The other holds a sheet of paper with little round green stickers on it. They are walking around the flat placing the circular stickers on various items. They are arguing with each other, if one sees a red sticker on an object she demands that it be taken off so that it can be exchanged for a green sticker. And vice versa. Some objects have green or red stickers on them and directly underneath them, hidden from sight, are red or green stickers. Now they have both stopped before an object. This object is an eternity ring given to their mother by their long-dead father. It is a beautiful ring, its thick silver holds a precious diamond. Eva says the diamond is hers, Christa contradicts her. The diamond is covered by green and red stickers. They scream at each other, their screams are heard throughout the building, all the residents come out and stand in their doorways, trying to hear more. Both sisters say: This ring was given to my mother as a symbol of love, I loved Mother, I loved Father more than you, it is only right that I should have the ring. They curse each other. They slap each other. They accuse each other of never having loved their mother at all. They call each other selfish and materialistic. But they are unable to decide which sister should keep the ring. Finally, they resolve to break off their argument until the next morning. They lock the door to flat twelve. I close it. They return to their flats eleven and thirteen. I close these doors too. Behind them the sisters are sobbing alone. It is now night. Close your eyes. Open your eyes. It is now morning. I open the door to flat eleven. I open the door to flat thirteen. The two sisters bid each other a cold good morning. I open the door to flat
twelve. The sisters enter flat twelve. The eternity ring has gone. It went in the night. Christa says to Eva, Give back my diamond. Eva says to Christa, Return my ring immediately. They accuse each other for many hours, they search each other’s pockets and each other’s rooms. They do not find the eternity ring. The police are called. The police do not find the eternity ring either. Three days later flats eleven, twelve and thirteen are empty. The objects of flat twelve have been divided among the sisters under the supervision of lawyers. The sisters leave Observatory Mansions with their own possessions and a half each of their dead mother’s possessions. They never speak to each other again.