Bin. A. Dit.
It.
Ben. E. Dict.
So much have I been called. These my names. The first given me by my own mother, scratched on a piece of tin. The second by Foulsham people – It, they said. It of the Heaps. Third by her. Benedict, that she called me. Is a lovely name, no doubting. Only one person calls me that name, many other people say or sing and shout ‘It’ at me often enough. And now, day to day, am Binadit known. All call me that, Binadit, and have me say it too, like I’m learning at school, ‘Binadit, Binadit,’ but should rather, should much more like the hearing of ‘Benedict’ by that single voice of hers.
I like bottons.
She was a botton. And I found her.
And lost her when they found me, my family, them Binadit-sayers.
I have family now. Big family. Big love. I am fussed and pinched. They coo at me, they kiss, they stroke, they comb, they brush, they mutter, they purr, they pluck, they punch, they bite, they bump and hold on hard and do not let go. What a lot of loving there is. All for me. They lined up to look at me, one by one, to peer in, to touch and gasp, or bite or shout a bit, but not, not really, to hit upon. I keep waiting for them to leave me behind like they done before, but they don’t, no they don’t they keep me with them all and all, day and night, I’m their Binadit.
Mother she comes, she comes most often. Can hardly get peace with all her comings and her comings, her botherings and clottings, her weepings, her touchings, she will touch me so and so and so, on my head, on my cheeks in particular. She calls me more than Binadit, baby she calls me, my baby boy. But I’ve not been baby these many years since, and last I was a baby, when I was a new thing, a very fresh Binadit indeed, she gone and left me in the heaps. She did herself. Left a little token, a scratch on scrap tin. BINADIT read the wobbly hand. She named me, then she left me.
‘You gone and left me in the heaps,’ I say. True enough.
‘My baby, my baby Bin …’ she returns, and is not to deny it. Rosamud her name.
‘Didn’t ought to have done that.’
‘… come back to me after all these years.’
‘Why did you do it, missus?’
‘Mother, you are to call me Mother.’
‘Such a big, brave boy.’
‘I always wondered.’
‘How you’ve all grown up.’
‘Why did you?’
‘Please Binadit, please my darling Bin, you break my heart.’
‘I might have deaded.’
‘Oh, Bin!’
‘I don’t understand. I want to understand.’
‘I cannot undo it, Bin, I cannot.’
‘I didn’t die.’
‘No, my darling, I am so glad of that.’
‘Heaps saved me, my heaps, my land of bits.’
‘It is the miracle, Bin.’
‘A bin’s a thing you rubbish put, is that why you called me that? I was your rubbish. You put all your rubbish in me and hoped heaps would lose it for you.’
‘Please, Binadit, no more, no more.’
‘I just thinking-wondering, missus.’
‘Mother, please to say Mother.’
‘I was rubbish to you.’
‘I was so unhappy, your father had just died.’
‘Father.’
‘Milcrumb was his name.’
‘How die?’
‘In the heaps.’
‘Drowned dead?’
‘Yes, my poor Milcrumb. Dear Milcrumb, such a gentle fellow. Even though he was one of the sons of Umbitt and Ommaball Oliff, even so he was never treated properly. And now they forget him, only I ever remember him, only I ever mention his name, otherwise he would be quite forgot. He was weak and pale and ever so kind, and they despised him for his weakness. He was not born tough like some of them, so they sent him out into the heaps to toughen him up. Poor frail man that he was, and I was marked to marry him, and we did become friendly before we were exactly supposed to, and then he died before we could marry. So it is that I am a token aunt to all those with their precious blood. And he, yes, he drowned out there in the heaps.’
‘E’en so I wonder why you did it.’
She would have her hands about me, plucking away all the little objects that come and stick themselves to me. They can’t stop themselves, never could. The rubbish bits do always rush to me. Rubbish moves for me, it seeks me out. So I am to sit, as thingless as possible in empty rooms. Mother pulled them away from me. Every day, pulling, tearing. But they still come, they must. Whenever the door is opened, more things come to me. My bits and pieces. I never mind much. A sock. A spool of thread. Some of a newspaper. Old food wrappings. And such. But always the rubbish it looks for me, always has, ever since it kept me living out there in the great waste. I am a great trouble to my new family. We to remain hidden but wherever they hide me, still the bits do come for me. It is a worry for them I do see that. A great worry. The longer we keep a place, the more the bits come for me, and bits they are big number. So that it is true danger that the bits shall give my whole family away. And so I must be as thingless as is possible and so they keep me in a kitchen store cupboard, in a big ice chest that they found here. Is cold, and she comes, the missus, and she tries her little bit. She do groom me. One day she come at me with her arms wide open. Whatever was she about? Was great upset. All rubbish about in the house they told, lurched and wanted to come down into cellar.
‘Don’t do it, missus! Away! Get! Get!’
‘I’m so sorry, Binadit,’ she said.
‘Not to do that.’
‘I was trying to hug you.’
‘Not to,’ I told her.
‘Oh, Binadit.’
‘Mustn’t, things don’t like it. Upset things.’
‘Oh, Binadit.’
‘Things hurt me.’
‘I am most appallingly sorry.’
‘Not come so close. Get back.’
‘I think, perhaps, if you’d had a birth object.’
‘No, I never.’
‘No, Binadit, there was no birth object for you.’
‘No, missus, I don’t got none.’
‘If you did have a birth object I wonder what it should have been. Ommaball Oliff won’t give you one, you see. I have asked. She says there’s no such thing for Iremonger bastards, and if you’ve managed thus far you must not have need of one. But if, Bin, if you were to have one I wonder what it should be.’
‘A botton.’
‘A button?’
‘I like bottons.’
She brings me bottons every day, the missus woman do. A new botton every day. But none of them yet is right botton.
There is more things come down to stick upon me, no matter how hard they try to keep them off, each time the woman comes she brings with her more bits to stick upon me, all them new bottons and everything from out her pockets. I have thread and patches of leather and am getting taller and rounder, am putting on. If I don’t want them and she don’t want them, then no one does want them and they are rubbish become, and then they do stick on me. They get the idea in a moment. Like they were coming home to Binadit, the rubbish heap.
They, my family upstairs, have been saying that I may give them all away, that they should never have taken me in. Well I never asked it of them, did I. They just took. And their loving is turned and spoiled now and not as it was, is gone off and starts to smell. They lost it, had it one day, fallen off somewhere, no place to be seen. Shouldn’t be afeard, I tell the woman Rosamud. Tell them not to be afeard. Heaps more like to find you if you have fear. That’s when they find you most, all those bits, when you are afearing. Must have been so for the Milcrumb fellow. Tell them not to, tell them.
What shall happen then. If we were to move house.
That is what I fear, for if we do move, then the most of things shall come after. They shall come in a great gushing and I cannot stop them.
‘You shall not leave me again shalt you, missus?’
‘Mother. No, no, Bin darling, of course not.’
‘Will you leave me?’
‘No, no Bin, I swear upon this doorknob I shall never leave you again.’
She cried as she said it. It might be the fear that’s creeping all over them. Mustn’t fear. Things’ll be quick to find you that way.
Milcrumb must have feared and so found his death, right quick!
I think about the heaps, my heapland, gone and gone, and I do wonder about the missus I must call Mother but can’t seem to, and also, ever think about my botton I found and lost.
Whatever did happen to that botton of mine?
The Owner Umbitt Iremonger in Hiding
