Gormenghast (22 page)

       Bellgrove, holding his gown at the height of his shoulders and at the same time both leaning backwards from the hips and thrusting his head forward and downwards so that the blunt end of his long chin rested in the capacious pit of his neck like an egg in an egg-cup, raised his eyes to the ceiling.

       'As your headmaster,' he said, 'I felt it my bounden duty, in loco parentis, to have a word with you, my boy.'

       'Yes, sir.'

       'And to see how you were getting along. H'm.'

       'Thank you, sir,' said Titus.

       'H'm,' said Bellgrove. There were a few moments of rather awkward silence and then the headmaster, finding that the attitude which he had struck was putting too great a strain upon those muscles employed for its maintenance, sat down upon the chair and began unconsciously to work his long, proud jawbone to and fro, as though to test it for the toothache that had been so strangely absent for over five hours. Perhaps it was the unwonted relief of his long spell of normal health that caused a sudden relaxing of Bellgrove's body and brain. Or perhaps it was Bellgrove's innate simplicity, which sensed that in this particular situation (where a boy and a Headmaster equally ill at ease with the Adult Mind, sat opposite one another in the stillness) there was a reality, a world apart, a secret place to which they alone had access. Whatever it was, a sudden relaxing of the tension he had felt made itself manifest in a long, wheezing, horse-like sigh, and he stared across at Titus contemplatively, without wondering in the least whether his relaxed, almost slumped position in the chair, was of the kind that headmasters adopt. But when he spoke, he had, of course, to frame his sentences in that threadbare, empty way to which he was now a slave. Whatever is felt in the heart or the pit of the stomach, the old habits remain rooted. Words and gestures obey their own dictatorial, unimaginative laws; the ghastly ritual, that denies the spirit.

       'So your old headmaster has come to see you, my boy...'

       'Yes, sir,' said Titus.

       '... Leaving his classes and his duties to cast his eye on a rebellious pupil. A very naughty pupil. A terrible child who, from what I can remember of his scholastic progress, has little cause to absent himself from the seats of learning.'

       Bellgrove scratched his long chin ruminatively.

       'As your headmaster, Titus, I can only say that you make things a little difficult. What am I to do with you? H'm. What indeed? You have been punished. You are 'being' punished: so I am glad to say that there is no need for us to trouble any more about 'that' side of it; but what am I to say to you in 'loco parentis'. I am an old man, you would say, wouldn't you, my small friend? You would say I was an old man, wouldn't you?'

       'I suppose so, sir.'

       'And as an old man, I should by now, be very wise and deep, shouldn't I, my boy? After all I have long white hair and a long black gown, and that's a good start, isn't it?'

       'I don't know, sir.'

       'Oh, well it is, my, boy. You can take it from me. The first thing you must procure if you are anxious to be wise and sagacious is a long black gown, and long white hair, and if possible a long jaw-bone, like your old headmaster's.'

       Titus didn't think that the Professor was being very funny, but he threw his head back and laughed very loudly indeed, and thumped his hands on the side of his table.

       A flush of light illumined the old man's face. His anxiety fled from his eyes and hid itself where the deep creases and pits that honeycomb the skin of ancient men provided caves and gullies for its withdrawal.

       It was so long since anyone had really laughed at anything he had said, and laughed honestly and spontaneously. He turned his big lion head away from the boy so that he could relax his old face in a wide and gentle smile. His lips were drawn apart in the most tender of snarls, and it was some while before he could turn his head about and return his gaze to the boy.

       But at once the habit returned, unconsciously, and his decades of school-mastering drew his hands behind his back, beneath his gown, as though there were a magnet in the small of his back: his long chin couched itself in the pit of his neck; the irises of his eyes floated up to the top of the whites, so that in his expression there was something both of the drug-addict and the caricature of a sanctimonious bishop - a peculiar combination and one which generations of urchins had mimicked as the seasons moved through Gormenghast, so that there was hardly a spot in dormitory, corridor, classroom, hall or yard where at one time or another some child had not stood for a moment with his inky hands behind his back, his chin lowered, his eyes cast up to the sky, and, perhaps, an exercise book on top of his head by way of mortar-board.

       Titus watched his headmaster. He had no fear of him. But he had no love for him either. That was the sad thing. Bellgrove, eminently lovable, because of his individual weakness, his incompetence, his failure as a man, a scholar, a leader or even as a companion, was nevertheless utterly alone. For the weak, above all, have their friends. Yet his gentleness, his pretence at authority, his palpable humanity were unable, for some reason or other, to function. He was demonstrably the type of venerable and absent-minded professor about whom all the sharp-beaked boys of the world should swarm like starlings in wheeling murmurations - loving him all unconsciously, while they twitted and cried their primordial jests, flung their honey-centred, prickle-covered verbiage to and fro, pulled at the long black thunder-coloured gown, undid with fingers as quick as adders' tongues the buttons of his braces; pleaded to hear the ticking of his enormous watch of brass and rust red iron, with the verdigris like lichen on the chain; fought between those legs like the trousered stilts of the father of all storks; while the great, corded, limpish hands of the fallen monarch flapped out from time to time, to clip the ears of some more than venturesome child, while far above, the long, pale lion's head turned its eyes to and fro in a slow, ceremonious rhythm, as though he were a lighthouse whose slowly swivelling beams were diffused and deadened in the sea-mists; and all the while, with the tassel of the mortar-board swinging high above them like the tail of a mule, with the trousers loosening at the venerable haunches, with the cat-calls and the thousand quirks and oddities that grow like brilliant weeds from the no-man's-land of urchins' brains - all the while there would be this love like a sub-soil, showing itself in the very fact that they trusted his lovable weakness, wished to be with him because he was like them irresponsible, magnificent with his locks of hair as white as the first page of a new copy-book, and with his neglected teeth, his jaw of pain, his completeness, ripeness, false-nobility, childish temper and childish patience; in a word, that he belonged to them; to tease and adore, to hurt and to worship for his very weakness' sake. For what is more lovable than failure?

       But no. None of this happened. None of it. Bellgrove was all this. There was no gap in the long tally of his spineless faults. He was constructed as though expressly for the starlings of Gormenghast. There he was, but no one approached him. His hair was white as snow, but it might as well have been grey or brown or have moulted in the dank of faithless seasons. There seemed to be a blind spot in the mass-vision of the swarming youths.

       They looked this great gift-lion in the mouth. It snarled in its weakness, for its teeth were aching. It trod the immemorial corridors. It dozed fitfully at its desk through the terms of sun and ice. And now, it was a Headmaster and lonelier than ever. But there was pride. The claws were blunt, but they were ready. But not so, now. For at the moment his vulnerable heart was swollen with love.

       'My young friend,' he said, his eyes still on the ceiling of the fort and his chin tucked into the pit of his neck. 'I propose to talk to you as man to man. Now the thing 'is'...' (he lingered over the last word)... 'the thing... is... what shall we talk 'about'?' He lowered his rather dull eyes and saw that Titus was frowning at him thoughtfully.

       'We 'could', you see, young man, talk of so many things, could we not, as man to man. Or even as boy to boy. H'm. Quite so. But what? That is the paramount consideration - isn't it?'

       'Yes, sir. I suppose so,' said Titus.

       'Now, if you are twelve, my boy, and I am eighty-six, let us say, for I think that ought to cover me, then let us take twelve from eighty-six and halve the result. No, no. I won't make 'you' do it because that would be most unfair. Ah yes, indeed it would - for what's the good of being a prisoner and then being made to do lessons too? Eh? Eh? Might as well not be punished, eh?... Let me see, where were we, where were we? Yes, yes, yes, twelve from eighty-six, that's about seventy-four, isn't it? Well, what is half seventy-four? I wonder... h'm, yes, twice three are six, carry one, and twice seven are fourteen... thirty-seven, I do believe. Thirty-seven. And what is thirty-seven? Why, it's just exactly the half-way age between us. So if I tried to be thirty-seven years young - and you tried to be thirty-seven years old - but that would be ' ' difficult, wouldn't it? Because you've never been thirty-seven, have you? But then, although your old headmaster has 'been' thirty-seven, long ago, he can't remember a thing about it except that it was somewhere about that time that he bought a bag of glass marbles. O yes he did. And why? Because he became tired of teaching grammar and spelling and arithmetic. O yes, and because he saw how much happier the people were who played marbles than the people were who didn't. That's a bad sentence, my boy. So I used to play in the dark after the other young professors were asleep. We had one of the old Gormenghast tapestry-carpets in the room and I used to light a candle and place my marbles on the corners of patterns in the carpet, and in the middle of crimson and yellow flowers. I can remember the carpet perfectly as though it was here in this old fort, and there, every night by the glow of a candle, I would practise until I could flick a marble along the floor so that when it struck another it spun round and round but stayed exactly where it was, my boy, while the one it had struck shot off like a rocket to land at the other end of the room in the centre of a crimson carpet flower (if I was successful), or if not, near enough to couch itself at the next flick. And the sounds of the glass marbles in the still of the night when they struck was like the sound of tiny crystal vases breaking on stone floors - but I am getting too poetic, my boy, aren't I? And boys don't like poetry, do they?'

       Bellgrove took off his mortar-board, placed it on the floor and wiped his brow with the biggest and grubbiest handkerchief Titus had ever seen come out of a grown-up's pocket.

       'Ah me, my young friend, the sound of those marbles... the sound of those silly marbles. Forlorn, it is, my, boy, to remember the little glass notes - forlorn as the tapping of a woodpecker in a summer forest.'

       'I've got some marbles, sir, said Titus, sliding off the table and diving his hand into his trouser pocket.

       Bellgrove dropped his hands to his sides where they hung like dead weights.

       It was as though his joy at finding his little plan maturing so successfully was so all-absorbing that he had no faculties left over to control his limbs. His wide, uneven mouth was ajar with delight. He rose to his feet and turning his back on Titus made his way to the far end of the small fort. He was sure that his joy, was written all over his face and that it was not for headmasters to show that sort of thing to any but their wives, and he had no wife... no wife at all.

       Titus watched him. What a funny way he put his big flat feet on the ground, as though he were smacking it slowly with the soles of his boots - not so much to hurt it, as to wake it up.

       'My boy,' said Bellgrove at last when he had returned to Titus, having fought the smile away from his face - 'this is an extraordinary coincidence, you know. Not only do you like marbles, but I...' and he drew from the decaying darkness of a pocket like a raw-lipped gulch, exactly six globes.

'O sir!' said Titus. 'I never thought 'you'd' have marbles.'

       'My boy,' said Bellgrove. 'Let it be a lesson to you. Now where shall we play.

       Eh? Eh? Good grief, my young friend, what a long way down it is to the floor and how my poor old muscles creak...'

       Bellgrove was lowering himself by degrees to the dusty ground.

       'We must examine the terrain for irregularities, h'm, yes, that's what we must do, isn't it, my boy? Examine the terrain, like generals, eh? And find our battle ground: 'Yes, sir,' said Titus, dropping to the knees and crawling alongside the old, pale lion. 'But it looks flat enough to me, sir, I'll make one of the squares here, and...'

       But at this moment the door of the fort opened again and Doctor Prunesquallor stepped out of the sunlight and into the grey gloom of the small fort.

       'Well! well! well! well! well!' he trilled, peering into the shadows. 'Well, well, well! What a dreadful place to gaol an earl in, by all that's merciless. And where is he, this fabulous little wrong-doer - this breaker of bounds, this flouter of unwritten laws, this thoroughly naughty boy? God bless my shocked spirit if I don't see two of them - and one much bigger than the other - or is there someone with you, Titus, and if so, who can it be, and what in the name of dust and ashes can you find so absorbing on the earth's bosom, that you must crawl about on it, belly to stubble, like beasts that stalk their prey?'

       Bellgrove rose, creaking, to his knees and then catching his feet in the swathes of his gown, tore a great rent in its thread-bare material as he struggled into an upright position. He straightened his back and struck the attitude of a headmaster, but his old face had coloured.

       'Hullo, Doctor Prune,' said Titus. 'We were just going to play marbles.'

       'Marbles! eh? By all that's erudite, and a very fine invention too, God bless my spherical soul,' cried the physician. 'But, if your accomplice isn't Professor Bellgrove, your headmaster, then my eyes are behaving in a very peculiar manner.'