Gormenghast (13 page)

       'What weight I have I'll pull to pieces for you, Irma.'

       'You are resolved, A1fred - I say, you are 'resolved',' she asked breathlessly.

       'It is you who are resolved, sweet Perturbation. It is I who have submitted. But there it is. I am weak. I am ductile. You 'will' have your way - a way, I fear, that is fraught with the possibility of monstrous repercussions - but your own, Irma, your own. And a party we will throw. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!'

       There was something that did not altogether ring true in his shrill laughter. Was there a touch of bitterness in it somewhere?

       'After all,' he continued, perching himself on the back of a chair (and with his feet on the seat and his chin on his knees he looked remarkably like a grasshopper)... 'After all, you have waited a long time. A long time. But, as you know, I would never advise such a thing. You're not the type to give a party. You're not even the type to go to a party. You have nothing of the flippancy about you that makes a party 'go', sister mine; but you are determined.'

       'Unutterably,' said Irma.

       'And have you confidence in your brother as a host?'

       'Oh, Alfred, I 'could' have!' she whispered grimly. 'I would have, if you wouldn't try to make everything sound clever. I get so tired of the way you say things. And I don't really like the things you say.'

       'Irma,' said her brother, 'nor do I. They always sound stale by the time I hear them. The brain and the tongue are so far apart.'

       'That's the sort of nonsense I 'loathe'!' cried Irma, suddenly becoming passionate. 'Are we going to talk about the party, or are we going to listen to your silly soufflés? Answer me, Alfred. Answer me at once.'

       'I will talk like bread and water. What shall I say?'

       He descended from the chairback and sat on the seat. Then he leant forward a little and, with his hands folded between his knees, he gazed expectantly at Irma through the magnifying lenses of his spectacles. Staring back at him through the darkened glass of her own lenses, the enlargement of his eyes was hardly noticeable.

       Irma felt that for the moment she had a certain moral ascendancy over her brother. The air of submission which he had about him gave her strength to divulge to him the real reason for her hankering for this party she had in mind... for she needed his help.

       'Did you know, Alfred,' she said, that I am thinking of getting married?'

       'Irma!' cried her brother. 'You aren't!'

       'Oh, yes, I am,' muttered Irma. 'Oh yes, I am.'

       Prunesquallor was about to inquire who the lucky man was when a peculiar twinge of sympathy for her, poor white thing that she was, sitting so upright in the chair before him, caught at his heart. He knew how few her chances of meeting men had been in the past: he knew that she knew nothing of love's gambits save what she had read in books. He knew that she would lose her head. He also knew that she had no one in view. So he said.

       'We will find just the man for 'you'. You deserve a thoroughbred: something that can cock his ears and whisk his tail. By all that's unimpeachable, you do indeed. Why...'

       The Doctor stopped himself: he had been about to take verbal flight when he remembered his promise: so he leant forward again to hear what his sister had to say.

       'I don't know about cocking his ears and frisking his tail,' said Irma, with the suggestion of a twitch at one corner of her thin mouth; 'but I would like you to know, Alfred - I said I would like you to know, that I am glad you understand the position. I am being wasted, Alfred. You realize that, don't you - don't you?'

       'I do, indeed.'

       'My skin is the whitest in Gormenghast.'

       'And your feet are the flattest,' thought her brother: but he said: 'Yes, yes, but what we must 'do', sweet huntress - (O virgin through wild sex's thickets prowling)' (he could not resist this image of his sister) 'what we must 'do' is to decide whom to ask. To the Party, I mean. That is fundamental.'

       'Yes, yes!' said Irma.

       'And when we will ask them.'

       'That's easier,' said Irma.

       'And at what time of the day.'

       'The evening, of course,' said Irma.

       'And what they shall wear.'

       'Oh, their evening clothes, obviously,' said Irma.

       'It depends on whom we ask, don't you think? What ladies, my dear, have dresses as resplendent as yours, for instance? There's a certain cruelty about evening dress.'

       'Oh, that is of no avail.'

       'Do you mean "of no account"?'

       'Yes, yes,' said Irma.

       'But how embarrassing! Won't they feel it keenly, my dear - or will you put on rags, in an overflow of love and sympathy?'

       'There will be no women.'

       'No women!' cried her brother, genuinely startled.

       'I must be alone,' his sister murmured, pushing her black glasses further up the bridge of her long, pointed nose... 'with 'them' - the males.'

       'But what of the entertainment for your guests?'

       'I shall be there,' said Irma.

       'Yes, yes; and no doubt you will prove ravishing and ubiquitous; but, my love, my love, think again.'

       'Alfred,' said Irma, standing up and lowering one of her iliac crests and raising its counterpart so high that her pelvis looked thoroughly dangerous – Alfred,' she said, 'how can you be so perverse? What use could women be? You haven't forgotten what we have in mind, have you? Have you?'

       Her brother was beginning to admire her. Had she all this long while been hiding beneath her neuroticism, her vanity, her childishness, an iron will?

       He rose and, cupping his hands over her hips, corrected their angle with the quick jerk of a bonesetter. Then, sitting back in his chair and fastidiously crossing his long, elegant, cranelike legs while going through the movements of washing his hands: 'Irma, my revelation, tell me but this...' he raised his eyes quizzically - 'who are these males - these stags - these rams - these tom cats - these cocks, stoats and ganders that you have in mind? And on what scale is this carousal to be?'

       'You know very well, Alfred, that we have no choice. Among the gentry, who are there? I ask you, Alfred, who are there?'

       'Who, indeed?' mused the Doctor, who could think of no one. The idea of a party in his house was so novel that the effort of trying to people it was beyond him. It was as though he were trying to assemble a cast for an unwritten drama.

       'As for the size of the party, Alfred - are you listening? I have in mind a gathering of some forty men.'

       'No! no!' shouted her brother, clutching at the arms of his chair, 'not in this room, surely? It would be worse than the white cats. It would be a dog fight.'

       Was that a blush that stole across his sister's face?

       'Alfred,' she said after a while, 'it is my last chance. In a year my glamour may be tarnished. Is it a time to think of your own personal comfort?'

       'Listen to me,' Prunesquallor spoke very slowly. His high voice was strangely meditative. 'I will be as concise as I can. Only you must listen, Irma.'

       She nodded.

       'You will have more success if your party is not too large. At a large party the hostess has to flutter from guest to guest and can never enjoy a protracted conversation with anyone. What is more, the guests continually flutter towards the hostess in a manner calculated to show her how much they are enjoying themselves.

       'But at a smaller party where everyone can easily be seen the introductions and general posturing can be speedily completed. You will then have time to size up the persons present and decide on those worth giving your attention to.'

       'I see,' said Irma. 'I am going to have lanterns hanging in the garden, too, so that I can lure those whom I think fit out into the apple orchard.'

       'Good heavens!' said Prunesquallor, half to himself. 'Well, I hope it won't be raining.'

       'It won't,' said Irma.

       He had never known her like this. There was something frightening in seeing a second side of a sister whom he had always assumed had only one. 'Well, some of them must be left out, then.'

       'But who 'are' they? Who 'are' they?' he cried. 'I can't bear this frightful tension. What are these males that you seem to think of en bloc? This doglike horde who at, as it were, a whistle will be ready to stream across the quadrangle and through the hall, through this door and to take up a score of masculine postures? In the name of fundamental mercy, Irma, tell me who they are.'

       'The Professors.'

       As Irma uttered the words her hands grappled with one another behind her back. Her flat bosom heaved. Her sharp nose twitched and a terrible smile came over her face.

       'They are gentlemen!' she cried in a loud voice. 'Gentlemen! And worthy of my love.'

       'What! All forty of them.' Her brother was on his feet again. He was shocked. But at the same time he could see the logic of Irma's choice. Who else was there for a party with this hidden end in view? As for their being 'gentlemen' - perhaps they were. But only just. If their blood was bluish, so for the most part were their jaws and finger-nails. If their backgrounds bore scrutiny, the same could hardly be said for their foregrounds.

       'What a vista opens out before us! How old are you, Irma?'

       'You know very well, Alfred.'

       'Not without thinking,' said the Doctor. 'But leave it. It's what you look like that matters. God knows you're clean! It's a good start. I am trying to put myself in your place. It takes an effort - ha ha! - I can't do it.'

       'Alfred.'

       'My love?'

       'How many do you think would be ideal?'

       'If we chose well, Irma, I should say a dozen.'

       'No, no, Alfred, it's a party! It's a 'party'! Things 'happen' at parties ' not at friends' gatherings. I've read about it. Twenty, at least, to make the atmosphere pregnant.'

       'Very well, my dear. Very 'well'. Not that we will include a mildewed and wheezy beast with broken antlers because he comes twentieth on the list when the other nineteen are stags, are virile and eligible. But come, let us go into this matter more closely. Let us say, for sake of argument, that we have whittled the probable down to fifteen. Now, of this fifteen, Irma, my sweet co-strategist, surely we could not hope for more than six as possible husbands for you. - No, no, do not wince; let us be honest, though it is brutal work. The whole thing is very subtle, for the six you might prefer are not necessarily the six that would care to share the rest of their lives with you; oh no. It might be another six altogether whom you don't care about one little bit. And over and above these interchangeables we must have the floating background of those whom I have no doubt you would spurn with your elegantly cloven hooves were they to make the least advance. You would bridle up, Irma: I'm sure you would. But nevertheless they are needful, these untouchables, for we must have a hinterland. They are the ones who will make the party florid, the atmosphere potential. '

'Do you think we could call it a soirée, Alfred?'

       'There is no law against it that I know of,' answered Prunesquallor, a little irritably perhaps, for she had obviously not been listening. 'But the Professors, as I remember them, are hardly the types I would associate with the term. Who, by the way, 'do' comprise the Staff these latter days? It is a long time since I last saw the flapping of a gown.'

       'I know that you are cynical. Alfred, BUT I would have you know that they are my choice. I have always wished for a man of learning to be my own. I would understand him. I would administer to him. I would protect him and dam his socks.'

       'And a more dexterous darner never protected the tendo achilles with a double skein!'

       'Alfred!'

       'Forgive me, my own. By all that's unforeseeable I am getting to like the idea. For my part, Irma, I will see to the wines and liqueurs, the barrels and the punch-bowl. For your part the eatables, the invitations, the schooling of the staff - our staff, not the luminaries'. And now, my dear, 'when'? This is the question - 'when'?'

       'My gown of a thousand frills, with its corsage of hand-painted parrots will be ready within ten days, and...'

       'Parrots!' cried the Doctor in consternation.

       'Why not?' said Irma, sharply.

       'But,' wavered her brother, 'how many of them?'

       'What on earth does it matter to you, Alfred? They are brightly coloured birds.'

       'But will they chime in with the frills, my sweet one? I would have thought if you must have hand-painted creatures on your corsage, as you call it - that something calculated to turn the thoughts of the Professors to your femininity, your desirability, something less aggressive than parrots might be wise.... Mind you, Irma, I'm only...'

       'Alfred!' Her voice jerked him back to his chair.

       'My, province, I 'think',' she said, with heavy sarcasm. 'I imagine when it comes to parrots you can leave them to me.'

       'I will,' said her brother.

       'Will ten days give us time, Alfred?' she said, as she rose from her chair and approached her brother, smoothing back her iron-grey hair with her long, pale fingers. Her tone had softened. To the Doctor's horror she sat on the arm of his chair.

       Then, with a sudden kittenish abandon, she flung back her head so that her over-long yet pearl-white neck was tautened in a backward curve and her chignon tapped her between her shoulder-blades in so peremptory a way as to make her cough. But directly she had ascertained that it was not her brother being wilful, the ecstatic and kittenish expression came back to her powdered face, and she clapped her hands together at her breast.

       Prunesquallor, staring up, horrified at yet another facet of her character coming to light, noticed that one of her molars needed filling, but decided it was not the moment to mention it.