Lungdon by Edward Carey

Author:Edward Carey [CAREY, EDWARD]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Tags: JUV000000
ISBN: e9781468312928
Publisher: The Overlook Press
Published: 2015-11-02T16:00:00+00:00

A Candle Factory, Bishopsgate

18

THE FACTORY OF LIGHT

Continuing the narrative of Lucy Pennant

I haven’t travelled much. I haven’t stepped in very many wheres, but I have heard about them. I know there are big sandy patches, I know there are some locations that are very hot. I gather there are mountains too, that in some places it snows all the year round. I know there’s a sea somewhere, several of them, supposed to be, seven they say, I know that. In theory. I’ve never seen it. The only ocean I ever knew was one of garbage that was wont to drown a fellow if you didn’t take good care. I know (or I’ve been told, or heard about it from books) there are places where people can sit in the sun and the sun feels hot on your skin and the air is clear and the birds sing and don’t snatch your food away from you when you have it out in the open. I’ve heard there are places that are even green in colour. Well, I take that all on trust, don’t I, and hope one day to become an experienced journeyer in my way and to walk in fields and even one day, one day who knows, dip my toe into the ocean and see what the ocean thinks of it.

One day.

Can’t say which.

But now I come to the bit when we arrive in a new place, into and along the home of our guide and saviour, Georgie-no-smell, odd fish, our one person in all London, and there was he down a narrow court and pulling us along. Then Georgie stops at a dark door, says, ‘Home! Here we are.’

And he knocked heavily on the door, it opened and a grim looking man poked his head out.

‘Open up,’ said Georgie.

The man put his hand out, and Georgie dropped some coins into it.

The door was opened to us.

‘He’s all right,’ said Georgie, meaning the porter I supposed. ‘He’s tame enough, so long as he’s paid he lets us in and out. Come along then, get in.’

Down a dark passageway and there we were.

The mansion of Georgie.

Georgiepalace.

Castle Georgie.

Let me describe it, tourist that I was to such hallowed regions.

It was a squalid room about twenty feet square, a general filth all around. Many things hung from the ceiling by chains, they were candles, I began to understand, that had been dipped in great basins of candle wax and left to dry upside down. The whole place was like being in some cavern and all about were stalactites hanging from the ceiling, and they dripped too of course, down onto the floor and the floor was thick with the splattings and drippings, the droppings of wax.

About all these candles, all these great thick sinews of tallows waiting to be embraced by wax, about all the great steaming basins and the hot air and the flames beneath the basins to keep the wax liquid, about all the little basin moulds and night-light moulds

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