The Long Hall by Guy Ware

Until he died, my father always called it the “gallery”. I argued that a gallery was a room – or set of rooms – dedicated to the display of visual art. What we had was more of a hall, or corridor, or even a passageway. My father would remind me that it contained pictures, which was true enough: there were seven, all selected for their historical relevance, along with a polished suit of armour and a bust of Sir Philip Sidney. But nobody would go there for the art, I said: although old, it wasn’t good and merely filled what would otherwise be blank spaces on the walls between the four windows on the left hand side of the passageway and the four doors on the right, plus a final door, at the end, which faced me whenever I entered the hall, or corridor; which I did, each morning, shortly after breakfast. The view of the formal gardens from the windows was likewise pleasant enough, but there were finer. From my father’s bedroom on the floor above, for example, one could see not only the gardens, but over the wall, with its espaliered apricot trees, to the countryside beyond.

As Tudor architecture was my father’s area of expertise I dare say he was right, if only technically, although contemporary documents suggest the original inhabitants referred to it as “The Long Room”. This seemed to me no better than “gallery”: it was certainly long – six or seven times longer than it was wide – but it was clearly not a room. It was not a place one visited or would wish to spend time. No, it was neither a gallery nor a room, but a hall, a corridor, a passageway to the actual rooms that lay behind the four doors to the right, and, I suppose, behind the door at the end, facing me; also to the vast linen press that occupied the space between the second and third windows on the left, where otherwise an eighth picture – most likely another portrait of another minor Seymour or Howard – would have hung.

The presence of the linen press was something of a mystery. Its gleaming, finely carpentered, beaded and polished walnut finish was so obviously Georgian, not Tudor. Indeed, it was the only significant item of furniture in the house – apart from the beds – that dated from later than 1603.  My father insisted on the importance of a good night’s sleep – to the lack of which he attributed Henry VIII’s persistent marital difficulties. We might have had to sit – to eat, to read, or simply to avoid further motion – on some of the most unaccommodating chairs outside a railway waiting room, but we slept in comfort. And after each untroubled night, I would rise, wash, dress and descend to the dining room for breakfast, after which I would proceed to the hall, or corridor, and there the linen press would be, gleaming, out of time, and locked.        

When my father died, I expected the key to the press to pass to me, along with those to all the other doors, safes, caskets, padlocks, cupboards, clocks and trunks in the house and its outbuildings. For as long as I could remember, these keys had been corralled, by size, on three brass rings, threaded on a braided silk rope that served my father for a belt. It may in fact have been a belt – for a dressing gown, perhaps, or a velvet smoking jacket – but my father used it to prevent his trousers – which had all become two or three sizes too small for his emaciated frame – from sliding into a puddle around his ankles. But when his solicitor – a thin, nervous man who said “sorry” far more often than he meant it, and coughed whether or not he had a cold, and who was now, I supposed, my solicitor – passed me the three brass rings, along with the deeds to the house and divers other official documents, he assured me that these, and only these, were the keys that had been in my father’s possession at the time of his untimely breakdown and subsequent death.

The following morning, I passed as usual from the dining room into the hall, or corridor. I ignored the view from the first and second windows to my left, and the temptations of the first and second doors to my right – which I knew led respectively to the schoolroom (with which I had been familiar from the age of five) and the library (which I had first entered a few years later). Without once looking ahead to the door at the end of the hall, or passageway, which faced me, I approached the linen press, keen to discover what additional inheritance it contained. One by one I tried each of the keys, starting with the smallest and working my way up to those I knew without having to hold them up to the lock were far too large, but trying them anyway. None fitted.

The next day, along with the keys, I brought a hammer, a chisel and a brutal, heavy iron bar bent at each end in opposite directions: one end was flattened, the other both flattened and split, like a viper’s tongue. My father had called it a “jemmy”, and used it to open packing cases, to prise items of interest out of the clay when the moat dried in summer, and as a weapon with which to threaten me. To make it easier to carry everything, I tied the braided silk rope, with the three brass key rings hanging from it, around my waist.

I had thought that the hammer and chisel – or, if not them, the jemmy – would make short work of the recalcitrant lock. However, when it came to the crunch, so to speak, I could not bring myself to damage the fine inlay work, or to splinter the doors. The press might be out of place in the corridor, or passage, of a moated pre-Reformation manor house, but it was nonetheless a thing of beauty and considerable craftsmanship. Besides, I thought how foolish I would feel if, after destroying it, the press turned out to contain only linen. This seemed unlikely, but I still decided to effect a feint and, in place of frontal assault, to attack the problem from the rear. I thought it likely that the back of the press might not be finished to the same high standards as the front and sides, and might therefore be susceptible to burglarization with minimal force and limited damage – which damage could be easily hidden by replacing the press against the wall. So I sauntered – as far as it is possible for a man carrying a heavy iron bar, bent at the ends, a hammer and a chisel, to saunter – past the press, as if making my way to the third or even the fourth door of the hall, or corridor, before turning suddenly back on myself and coming swiftly at the press from the far – the right-hand – side. Only then did I notice that it was not, in fact, flush with the wall, but stood about an inch and a half away from it. This made it easier for me to get my right hand behind and push, while lifting with my left as best I could. Slowly, and with considerable effort, I managed to shift the heavy press, pivoting it around its left hand side.

Once the press stood at forty-five degrees to the wall, and I had more than enough space to get behind it with my hammer and chisel, or even the jemmy, it became obvious that the rear, whilst unvarnished, was no less sturdily built than the front and sides. Before I could decide what to do, however, my eye was caught by something on the wall itself. At just the spot where the face of another Seymour, or another Howard, might have hung if the press itself had not occupied the space between the second and third windows, was a large and fleshy mushroom. The upper surface was soot grey, the gills below shivered pearlescent and soft; it measured six inches across, and protruded from the wall by an inch and a half. With my chisel I detached it with as little damage as I could – although it was impossible to say how much of the fungus remained, embedded in the wallpaper, or in the ancient plaster and brickwork beneath. I recalled having read somewhere that what we describe as mushrooms are just the visible “fruit”, as it were, of vast invisible fungal networks, capable of extending and, in a sense, communicating, over immense distances.

Abandoning my tools where they lay, and leaving the linen press akimbo, I retraced my steps, carrying the mushroom carefully out of the hall, or gallery, and upstairs into what I thought of as my father’s study, although it was of course now my study. I placed my trophy in an empty cigar box of the sort my father, once he had smoked the contents, used to store cufflinks, loose change, watches, interesting pebbles, letters, knick-knacks, corkscrews, nail clippers and all the assorted paraphernalia of adult life. Consulting his field guide, and comparing its images and information with that obtained from the internet, I concluded that the mushroom was edible, or at least not poisonous. And that evening, I ate it – sliced and fried and incorporated in a three-egg omelette – along with a light salad and a white Bordeaux from the lower, more valuable shelves of my father’s cellar. The taste – of the mushroom, not the wine – was a little musty, but not unpleasant. The wine was excellent.

In the small hours of the following morning, however, I woke with violent, stabbing pains in my belly and an irresistible urge to shit. Not bothering with a dressing gown, I raced to the bathroom, making it just in time to void my bowels in the toilet and not, as I had feared, on the floor or, worse still, all over myself. I had to return twice more before daybreak, and once after, following which I crawled back to bed, weak, shivering, my face clammy with cold sweat, in no state to face breakfast. It could have been the wine, I thought, but it seemed unlikely.

The next day I awoke early – hungry and with greater energy, fully purged of whatever poison I had ingested. After a substantial breakfast, I returned to the hall, or corridor, and, without any pretense of interest in the view from the windows, or in the rooms beyond the third and fourth doors, or even the door at the end, which faced me, I approached the linen press directly. It stood, not as I had left it, at forty-five degrees to the wall, but parallel to it, albeit at a distance of about two inches. Once again, by pushing with my right hand while lifting with my left, I was able to pivot the press far enough away from the wall to gain access to its rear, which I now intended to break open with my hammer and chisel, or jemmy, as necessary. Once I had rotated the press sufficiently to allow the light in, however, I saw immediately that, where previously the mushroom that I had eaten (and then regretted eating) had grown, were now two mushrooms, each larger than the first, at about eight inches in length and standing proud of the wall by a good two inches. Uncertain as to their degree of toxicity, but forewarned by experience, I decided not to handle the fungi directly. Having no receptacle to hand, I removed my shirt, laid it carefully against the skirting behind the press, and then carefully chiseled the new growths away from the wall. I wrapped them securely in my shirt before carrying the package out and depositing it in the fire pit where my father burned waste that could not be more effectively recycled. Crossing the garden, I passed the outhouse he used to store lawnmowers, shears, secateurs, spades, forks, bamboo poles, plant pots, trowels, compost, rat traps, fertilizer, twine et cetera; it occurred to me that, among the slug pellets and aphid sprays, I might find a specialist fungicide. I was right: not only was there such a chemical, but also a dispenser ideal for my purpose: a plastic tank one straps to one’s back attached via a length of flexible pipe to a triggered nozzle designed to give an accurate dose of poison in aerosol form. I immediately poured a healthy slug of fungicide into the tank, diluted it with water, strapped it to my shirtless back and tested the apparatus on the two mushrooms I had not yet disposed of: they shriveled with satisfying speed. I returned at once to the gallery where I found that in the short time since I had left, four more mushrooms had begun to sprout on the wall behind the linen press. I sprayed, and watched as they, too, died.

At this moment, I was startled by a heavy thump and the sound of splintering wood to my right. I turned and saw that the fourteenth-century Italian portrait of St Antony of Padua preaching to the fish at Rimini, which occupied the space between the third and fourth windows, had crashed to the floor, smashing beyond repair one corner of its sixteenth-century frame. On the wall where it had always hung was the largest mushroom I had yet seen. I sprayed it liberally, and watched it die.

It occurred to me that, although I could see no further sign of fungal growth, it was better to be safe than sorry: I would spray the walls behind each of the pictures in the hall. I proceeded therefore up past the fourth window, where I removed the small, school-of-Holbein portrait of John Seymour (brother of Henry VIII’s third wife), propped it against the skirting, and dosed the wall behind. A little further up, on a pedestal in the corner to the left of the door at the end of the hall, or corridor, stood the bust of Sir Philip Sidney, behind which I also sprayed, for good measure.

I now found myself having penetrated further into the hall, or corridor, than I ever had before – standing more or less face-to-face with the door at its end, which, it occurred to me, I could now open. Even if it were locked, the key would no doubt be found on one of the three brass rings that hung from the braided silk rope around my waist.

But no, duty called: I would first complete my task. Accordingly, I crossed in front of the last door, sprayed behind the suit of armour, behind the still life – or nature morte, as my father preferred – by Hans Memling; I then stepped backwards, admiring my handiwork, to the wall past the fourth door, where I took down Edward Howard, uncle to both Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard, second and fifth wives respectively of the sleep-deprived king. As I sprayed the wall, the third door opened and I heard a woman’s voice call my father’s name, that is, my name: Mr Perceval. I hesitated; the voice repeated the name, adding: “Please step this way.”

Passing through the third door for the first time, I found a middle-aged woman – short; with a plump, not unfriendly face; and soberly dressed – holding out her hand for me to shake. Behind her, a room far larger than I would have expected was filled with desks arranged in clusters of four or six, each desk equipped with a computer, a lamp, a coffee mug, files and an assortment of plants and small, cuddly toys. At each desk sat a man or a woman. There were no windows: apart from the desk lamps, lights set into the ceiling tiles illuminated the room. The effect was bright, but antiseptic. 

“Good afternoon, Mr. Perceval.”

I switched the fungicide spray from my right hand to my left, and shook hers. She directed me to a chair on the far side of her own desk, which had a lamp, but no computer or files. 

“I see you found us all right?”

I sat down; the fungicide tank banged awkwardly against the back of the chair, forcing me to perch on the edge of the seat. She invited me to take off the apparatus. Thanks to my father’s rigid tastes, however, I was no stranger to uncomfortable furniture, and politely declined. Apart from the tank and its straps I was naked from the waist up.

“So, Mr. Perceval, what do you know about St Antony?”

“Of Padua?” I said, recalling the portrait that had fallen from the wall.

“Or Lisbon, if you prefer. Same feller.”

It came to me. “He was the patron saint of lost things.”

“Is, Mr. Perceval. The saints are eternal; he helps us still to find those precious items – including people – that we may have mislaid. What else?”

“He preached by a river, and the fish came up to listen.”

“Very good, very good. And do you know how he died at all?”

I had no idea. I hazarded a guess that he might have been executed for his faith. Burned at the stake, perhaps?

“Not at all, Mr Perceval, although not wholly wrong. Do you know what St Antony’s Fire might be?”

Again, I was at a loss.

“It is the popular name for ergotism. I won’t ask if you know what that is; but it has nothing to do with an overly high opinion of oneself, or an excessive fondness for logical deduction!” She paused to permit herself a chuckle, before continuing. “It is a condition, Mr Perceval, from which the saint himself suffered. It causes a sort of dry gangrene, mostly in the hands and feet, identified through peeling skin, loss of sensation and, in time, decay of the affected organs. It causes also convulsions – painful seizures and spasms, along with diarrhea, nausea, headache, itching and strange prickling sensations under the flesh, sometimes giving rise to the delusion of infestation by invisible creatures. Eventually, it causes mania, psychosis and death.”

Throughout this litany of symptoms, I had been nodding along: when it ended, I found myself with nothing to say.

“It is caused,” she said, “by the ingestion of rye or other cereal contaminated by a fungus…”

“A mushroom?”

“Not exactly; but, again, not unrelated. The culprit is an ergot fungus: tiny, but not invisible: Claviceps purpurea.”

“Purple … club … head?”

“Exactly so, Mr. Perceval. And they wouldn’t have called it that if they couldn’t see the little purple buggers, now would they?”

“I suppose not.”

“Good. Good. Well,” she said, standing up again, “I think that’s everything. We’ll see you tomorrow morning at nine.”

I stood up and she held out her hand again. I said, “Nine?”

“O’clock, Mr Perceval: sharp.”

I shook her hand again. Back in the hall, or corridor, I was pleased to see that the walls I’d sprayed had dried without leaving any stain. I replaced the pictures in the order I had removed them, starting with St Antony, with its damaged frame, and proceeding clockwise to Edward Howard. I then completed the task – removing each picture in turn, spraying the wall behind it and replacing the picture – beginning with the wall between the third and second doors and continuing clockwise until I returned to the linen press, which I set straight against the wall, and left.

The following morning, after a brisker than usual breakfast, I returned. The pictures all lay at uneven angles on the floor, with varying degrees of damage. The suit of armour lay in a tangled heap, its silver polished plates scattered around the bust of Sir Philip Sidney. From each wall, between each window and each door, from each corner, there sprouted a mushroom, the largest of which must have been two feet across. I saw that I would have to remove them, and fetched my chisel and an old decorator’s dustsheet that had been left for many years in a cupboard outside the kitchen, which I could use to catch and wrap the fungi as I scraped them from the walls. My shirt would be far too small this time: besides, I had an appointment at nine, and did not want to present myself half dressed again. The thought prompted me to check my watch: it was already a few minutes to the hour. I could not possibly chisel off all the mushrooms, clear them away and re-hang the pictures before I was due in the room behind the third door. And yet, I could not possibly leave the hall, or corridor, or even passageway, in this state. I worked as fast as I could, but it was nearly ten by the time I wiped my hands on my trousers, straightened my hair and knocked at the third door.

There was no answer.

I returned to the kitchen, and thence to the garden, where I burned my crop of mushrooms in the fire pit, standing upwind to avoid any noxious smoke they might emit. There was no smoke, however, except that from the kindling I had used to set the fire; the mushrooms themselves burned like gas with a clean, iridescent flame, and left no ashes. 

The following morning, skipping breakfast altogether, I set off to the gallery before eight: if the mushrooms had re-grown, I would have time to clear them away before nine o’clock. When I arrived, I found each of the pictures, the armour and the bust once again on the wooden floor, with evidence of progressive damage. Where before there had been single mushrooms, there were now clumps – troops? clouds? – of innumerable grey fungi, some up to three feet across. By dint of considerable effort, however, I was able to chisel them all off the walls and into the dustsheet, which I left, knotted at the corners, beside the linen press; and, if not to re-hang the pictures, at least to stand them against the skirting where I hoped they would come to no further harm. I brushed myself down, wiped the sweat from my brow and presented myself at the third door just as my watch’s second hand swept up to join the minute hand in pointing to the hour.

This time the door opened promptly. Behind it, however, in place of the kindly woman I had previously spoken to, there stood a young man barely older than me. His suit was much too small: tight across the belly and under the arms, the trousers petering out well above the ankle to display a disconcerting quantity of white sock. His beard, too, seemed too small for his face, stretched thin and tight across his broad cheeks until it was possible to see the flesh beneath; its edges were carved with artificial precision.

“Yes?”

I explained why I had come, why I had not come yesterday, and hoped that I could start again, today. The young man showed no sign of interest, and every sign of impatience. The moment I paused, he jerked his thumb to the right, said “Next door, dumbass,” and slammed the door shut in my face.

Even without the gesture I would have been in no doubt that he meant not the second door, behind which lay the library, but the fourth, beyond which I had so far never penetrated. He could not, of course, have meant the last door, facing me at the end of the long hall, or corridor. No reasonable interpretation of the words “next door” could be taken to bypass, as it were, the fourth, and proceed directly to the final door.

When I knocked on the fourth door, however, there was no response. The key would be on one of the brass rings on the knotted silk rope, which at that moment hung, not around my waist, but from a hook on my bedroom wall. Turning to fetch it, I noticed the makeshift sack of mushrooms I had been forced by lack of time to leave knotted up beside the linen press. If I were going to leave the corridor, or passageway, I should take it with me, and dispose of the mushrooms before returning with the keys. Once outside, however, I discovered a light rain had begun to fall, in which it would be futile to attempt to light a fire. Waiting for the shower to pass, I realized that – having missed breakfast – I was hungry; I made toast and scrambled two eggs while the rain beat against the window. By the time I had washed up my plate and scoured the pan, to which so much of the egg had stuck fast, and once I had managed to light a fire with the damp kindling and had disposed of that day’s mushrooms, it was nearer to noon than nine, and surely too late to present myself at the fourth door. I returned to my bedroom, where I read and masturbated until dinnertime.

The following day was Sunday, which I spent as usual in contemplation of my sins, and of His divine mercy.

On Monday, I rose at five, breakfasted hurriedly and made my way to the gallery. There, I cleared away countless mushrooms, hauling three dustsheet-sacksful out to the garden and burning them in turn, before returning via the bathroom, where I washed my hands and face and brushed my hair. Finally, I presented myself before the fourth door at nine o’clock sharp.

There was no answer.

I hastened back to my room, collected the silk rope with the three brass rings holding all the keys I had inherited from my father and returned, at a run, to the gallery, or hall, or corridor, and straight to the fourth door, despite noticing, in passing the first and second doors, that already grey fungi were beginning to reappear. They were tiny now – perhaps invisible to anyone unused to dealing with them – but how large and numerous would they become by the time I completed whatever appointment awaited me behind the fourth door? It was a risk that I would have to take. I fumbled through the keys, trying each in turn, mixing them up and having to start all over again several times before, finally, a large, complex iron key that, unlike many of the others, showed no trace of rust, slipped silently into the lock, and turned.

“Good morning,” said a young woman in a pale blue tunic from behind a reception desk. “Do you have an appointment?”

I explained that I had been told to come at nine o’clock; that I had been invited, or instructed, to come the previous week, but that this had proved impossible; the delay had been unavoidable but I hoped it would not matter.

The young woman requested some personal details, which I provided. She made no notes, however, merely checked my answers against those already on the computer screen in front of her. Finally she asked me to take a seat, said she would see what they could do, and disappeared through a door immediately behind her desk. Behind me I found a row of hard plastic chairs, each occupied by a man or a woman, reading, scratching or staring at the wall where a TV set broadcast a property renovation programme with the sound turned off. After ten minutes or so, the woman reappeared and I stepped forward expectantly. She motioned me away, however, and called another name. An elderly man at the end of the row stood up and left the reception area through a second door I had not previously noticed. The young woman indicated to me the now vacant seat before disappearing once again through the door behind her desk.

On TV, a middle-aged couple appeared delighted with the changes to their home.

Finally, the young woman in the pale blue tunic reappeared and summoned me to the reception desk. “I’m sorry, Mr Perceval, but there’s nothing we can do.”

I explained again that the delay, while superficially my fault, really had been unavoidable.

“I’m sorry,” she repeated. “It’s too late.”

“Too late?”

“There’s really nothing we can do.”

I left. It was not her fault. It was not anybody’s fault.

Back in the gallery, the mushrooms had grown thickly over the walls, the ceilings and the edges of the floor. St Antony, the Seymours, the Howards and the still life were all where I had left them, propped against the skirting, but had now been entirely swallowed up by fungi; and even from where I stood, at the fourth door, it was no longer possible to see the end, the last door, the one at the end of the long hall that had faced me, every morning as I entered, after breakfast, on my way to somewhere else.  

********************

Guy Ware has published three novels and around thirty short stories, including the collection You Have 24 Hours to Love Us (Comma, 2012). He won the 2018 London Short Story Prize, and has been short- or long-listed for many others, including the Bridport, Edge Hill, Frank O’Connor, Galley Beggar Press, Fish and Bristol Short Story awards. He lives in London.
Twitter: @guyware