Statement of facts — Hollowmere, room 9
Written by: Brian, aged 24 · Filed with: nobody · Kept since: 1658
In 1657 Brian, then twenty-three, boarded at the Hollowmere Academy of Waterworks
and Municipal Survey, learning to read meters and rule columns. He shared room 9 with
a man named Tobias Fenn, twenty-four, from Norwich, who wrote his
sevens with a line through them, which nobody in that county did.
The linen store issued bedding by number. Both men were issued a pillow marked
14. That was a clerical error and it was the only unusual thing that
ever happened at Hollowmere.
Brian believed, for fourteen months, that pillow 14 was his. He talked to it. Not about
anything. About the weather, and the columns, and whether he had got the columns right.
He was a person with nobody to talk to and it was a thing that was in the room. That is
the entire nature of the attachment and he would like that understood plainly.
In November 1658 the linen store came up one pillow short. The housemaster stood in
room 9 and asked whose it was. Tobias said he did not know, which was true.
Brian said nothing.
Tobias Fenn was sent down for the theft on the twenty-second of November, 1658, and
left Hollowmere the same afternoon with one bag. Brian watched him go from the window
on the stairs and did not open it.
Fifteen months later Brian walked into a bog to read a water meter, and the rest of
this page happened.