Observatory Mansions by Edward Carey Page A

communication. But I would not have remained there were it not for one thing …

The nursery days’ entertainment .
    Clump, clump, clump! The confectioner, the tobacconist, the audio-library was on her way. In she came. She shook my hand. We bade each other good morning. She sat. She rolled a cigarette – too slowly, she knew what I was waiting for, she was doing it purposefully. She took out her matches – too slowly, too slowly. The first one blew out before it had achieved its function – she had let it blow out, deliberately, I was sure of it. The second one lit the cigarette. She took a long drag. Smoke left her mouth. Silence.
    What shall we do today?
    That’s it. That’s what I was waiting for.
    A story, a story, I cried. That’s what I wanted always forever.
    Emma’s stories became more complicated and fascinating the more I learnt to speak. Emma’s stories had been passed down from generation to generation – always changing slightly from mother or grandmother to child. Emma had heard many of the stories she told from her grandmother: she learnt them by heart then embroidered them or forgot parts and replaced the missing segments with her own additions. Often I’d demand her to repeat certain tales again and again – sometimes she’d change the ending or leave it open for me to finish. How can I explain Emma’s stories? They were alive. They moved. They lived! They were a swirling mass of colours and smells that could never be caught. They shifted shape, swallowed themselves whole, contradicted themselves, ends chased beginnings, they leapt off at tangents or into other stories as if switching trains, hurled in strange directions, forgot themselves, remembered themselves, metamorphosed from romances to tragedies and back again by way of comedy. I heard of princes and princesses, of stepmothers, of donkeys that shat gold, of dragons, magic kingdoms, beasts, bluebeards, witches, goblins, ogres, trolls and many other phantasms.
    As well as the standard fairy-tale characters, Emma added her own. And of her own tales, a certain group began, not in some imagined kingdom but in Tearsham Park. These tales would often start with – They didn’t know it up in the nursery, but down below in the library, something extraordinary had begun to happen to Mr Orme. My father, absent-minded and mysterious, who we saw so often around the house staring into nothingness or crouched with intense curiosity in front of some object or other, became with Emma’s help, the most magical of characters. Emma would tell of Father’s adventures.
    When Father had been ordered out for a walk by my mother, Emma would tell me he had gone on safari into strange, distant lands where people had heads in theirstomachs; when we saw him in the parkland fascinated by molehills, Emma would send him deep beneath the earth where odd, hairy people lived; or she would summon gales to fly Father up into the sky to visit the strange weightless people who lived in the clouds. And I almost believed all these stories. Looking at Father they seemed entirely plausible.

The ending of a thousand tales .
    On a certain day Emma was late. I went down to tell Mother. She told me to wait in the nursery, Emma would come. But when she didn’t come, I went. Emma’s front door was shut but unlocked. I let myself in. Emma was sitting in front of her fireplace. The fire had exhausted itself many hours earlier. Emma’s eyes were closed. With her eyes closed, her one sector of energy was absented. She looked as if her skin was made of burnt paper and her clothes of cigarette ash. If I blew I was sure her head would sink into her chest and the two parts, connected and unreadable as Emma, would soon float down to what was once Emma’s feet, and then all Emma, old Emma, would lie tidy in a little mound waiting to be swept away. The spent fire would look like her twin sister. But I did not blow. Emma did not subside; I’m just thinking my childish thoughts.
    I