The Illustrated Gormenghast Trilogy (109 page)

‘Bloody hell!’ he muttered and sat down heavily in his chair again.

As the Professors were changing into their evening gowns, stabbing at startled hanks of hair with broken combs, maligning one another, finding in one another’s rooms long lost towels, studs and even major garments that had disappeared in mysterious ways – while this was happening to the accompaniment of much swearing and muttering; and while the coarse jests rumbled along the verandah, and Flannelcat, half sick with excitement, was sitting on the floor of his room with his head between his knees as the heavy hand of Opus Fluke reached hairily through his doorway to steal a towel from a rack – while this and a hundred things were going on around the Masters’ Quadrangle, Irma was perambulating the long white room which had been re-opened for the occasion.

It had once been the original salon; a room which the Prunesquallors had never used, being too vast for their requirements. It had been locked up for years, but now, after many days of cleaning and repainting, dusting and polishing, it shone with a terrible newness. A group of skilled men had been kept busy, under Irma’s watchful eye. She had a delicate taste, had Irma. She could not bear vulgar colours, or coarse furniture. What she lacked was the power to combine and make a harmony out of the various parts that, though exquisite in themselves, bore no relationship either in style, period, grain, colour or fabric to one another.

Each thing was seen on its own. The walls had to be a most tender shade of washed out coral. And the carpet had to be the kind of green that is almost grey, the flowers were arranged bowl by bowl, vase by vase, and though each was lovely in itself, there was no general beauty in the room.

Unknown to her the ‘bittiness’ that resulted gave to the salon a certain informality far from her intentions. This was to prove a lubricating thing, for the professors might well have been frozen into a herd of lock-jawed spectres had Irma made of the place the realm of chill perfection that was at the back of her mind. Peering at everything in turn she moved about this long room like something that had spent all its life in planning to counteract the sharpness of its nose, with such a flaunting splendour of silk and jewellery, powder and scent, as set the teeth on edge like coloured icing.

About three quarters of the way along the southern wall of the salon a very fine double window opened upon a walled-in garden where rockeries, crazy pavement, sun-dials, a small fountain (now playing after a two-day struggle with a gardener), trellis work, arbours, statuettes and a fish pond made of the place something so terrifying to the sensitive eye of the Doctor, that he never crossed the garden with his eyes open. Much practice had given him confidence and he could move across it blindly at high speed. It was Irma’s territory; a place of ferns and mosses and little flowers that opened at odd hours during the night. Little miniature grottoes had been made for them to twinkle in.

Only at the far end of the garden was there any sense of nature, and even there it was made manifest by no more than a dozen fine trees whose limbs had grown in roughly the direction they had found most natural. But the grass about their stems was closely mown, and under their boughs a rustic chair or two was artlessly positioned.

On this particular evening there was a hunter’s moon. No wonder. Irma had seen to it.

When she reached the french windows she was delighted with the scene before her, the goblin-garden, silver and mysterious, the moonbeams glimmering on the fountain, the sun-dial, the trellis work and the moon itself reflected in the fish pond. It was all a bit blurred to her, and that was a pity, but she could not have it both ways. Either she was to wear her dark glasses and look less attractive, or she must put up with finding everything about her out of focus. It didn’t matter much
how
out of focus a garden by moonlight was – in fact in the adding of this supercharge of mystery it became a kind of emotional haze, which was something which Irma, as a spinster, could never have enough of – but how would it be when she had to disengage one professor from another? Would she be able to appreciate the subtlety of their advances, if they made any; those little twitches and twists of the lips, those narrowings and rollings of the eye, those wrinklings of the speculative temple, that shrugging of an eye-brow at play? Would all this be lost to her?

When she had told her brother of her intention to dispense with her glasses, he had advised her, in that case, to leave them off an hour before the guests were due. And he had been right. She was quite sure he had been. For the pain in her forehead had gone and she was moving faster on her swathed legs than she had dared to do at first. But it was all a little confusing, and though her heart beat at the sight of her moon-blur of a garden, yet she clenched her hands at the same time in a gay little temper that she should have been born with bad eyes.

She rang a bell. A head appeared at the door.

‘Is that Mollocks?’

‘Yes, Madam.’

‘Have you got your soft shoes on?’

‘Yes, Madam.’

‘You may enter.’

Mollocks entered.

‘Cast your eye around, Mollocks – I said cast your eye around. No, no! Get the feather duster. No, no. Wait a minute – I said wait a minute.’ (Mollocks had made no move.) ‘I will ring.’ (She rang.) Another head appeared. ‘Is that Canvas?’ ‘Yes, Madam, it is Canvas.’ ‘Yes Madam is quite enough, Canvas. Quite enough. Your exact name is not so enormously important. Is it? Is it? To the larder with you and fetch a feather brush for Mollocks. Away with you. Where are you, Mollocks?’

‘Beside you, Madam.’

‘Ah yes. Ah yes. Have you shaved?’

‘Definitely, Madam.’

‘Quite so. Mollocks. It must be my eyes. You look so dark across the face. Now you are to leave no stone unturned – not one – do you understand me? Move from place to place all over this room, backwards and forwards restlessly do you understand me, with Canvas at your side –
searching
for those specks of dust that have escaped me – did you say you had your soft shoes on?’

‘Yes, Madam.’

‘Good. Very good. Is that Canvas who has just come in? Is it? Good. Very good. He is to travel with you. Four eyes are better than two. But
you
can use the brush –
whoever
finds the specks. I don’t want anything spoilt or knocked over and Canvas can be very clumsy, can’t you, Canvas?’

The old man Canvas who had been sent running about the house since dawn, and who did not feel that as an old retainer he was being appreciated, said that he ‘didn’t know about that’. It was his only line of defence, a repetitive, stubborn attitude beyond which one could not go.

‘Oh yes you are,’ repeated Irma. ‘
Quite
clumsy. Run along now. You are
slow
, Canvas,
slow
.’

Again the old man said he ‘didn’t know about that’ and having said so, turned in a puny fury of temper from his mistress and tripping over his own feet as he turned, grabbed at a small table. A tall alabaster vase swayed on its narrow base like a pendulum while Mollocks and Canvas watched it, their mouths open, their limbs paralysed.

But Irma had surged away from them and was practising a certain slow and languid mode of progress which she felt might be effective. Up and down a little strip of the soft grey carpet she swayed, stopping every now and again to raise a limp hand before her, presumably to be touched by the lips of one or other of the professors.

Her head would be tilted away at these moments of formal intimacy, and there was only a segment of her sidelong glance as it grazed her cheekbones, to reward the imaginary gallant as he mouthed her knuckles.

Knowing Irma’s vision to be faulty and that they could not be seen, with the length of the salon between them, Canvas and Mollocks watched her from under their gathered brows, marking time, like soldiers the while, to simulate the sounds of activity.

They had not long, however, in which to watch their mistress for the door opened and the doctor came in. He was in full evening dress and looked more elegant than ever. Across his immaculate breast was the pick of the few decorations with which Gormenghast had honoured him. The crimson Order of the Vanquished Plague, and the Thirty-fifth Order of the Floating Rib lay side by side upon his narrow, snow-white shirt, and were suspended from wide ribbons. In his buttonhole was an orchid.

‘O Alfred,’ cried Irma. ‘How do I seem to you? How do I seem to you?’

The Doctor glanced over his shoulder and motioned the retainers out of the room with a flick of his hand.

He had hidden himself away all afternoon and sleeping dreamlessly had to a great extent recovered from the nightmares he had suffered. As he stood before his sister he appeared as fresh as a daisy, if less pastoral.

‘Now I tell you
what
,’ he cried, moving round her, his head cocked on one side, ‘I tell you
what
, Irma. You’ve made something out of yourself, and if it ain’t a work of art, it’s as near as makes no matter. By all that emanates, you’ve brought it off. Great grief! I hardly know you. Turn round, my dear, on one heel! La! La!
Significant
form, that’s what she is! And to think the same blood batters in our veins! It’s quite embarrassing.’

‘What do you mean, Alfred? I thought you were praising me.’ (There was a catch in her voice.)

‘And so I was, and so I was! – but tell me sister, what is it, apart from your luminous, un-sheltered eyes – and your general dalliance – what is it that’s altered you – that has, as it were … aha … aha … H’m … I’ve got it – O dear me … quite so, by all that’s pneumatic, how silly of me – you’ve got a bosom, my love, or haven’t you?’

‘Alfred! It is not for you to prove.’

‘God forbid, my love.’

‘But if you
must
know …’

‘No, no, Irma, no no! I am content to leave everything to your judgement.’

‘So you won’t listen to me …’ (Irma was almost in tears).

‘O but I will. Tell me all.’

‘Alfred dear – you liked the look of me. You
said
you did.’

‘And I still do. Enormously. It was only that, well, I’ve known you a long time and …’

‘I’m
told
,’ said Irma, breaking in breathlessly, ‘that busts are … well …’

‘… that busts are what you make them?’ queried her brother standing on his toes.

‘Exactly! Exactly!’ his sister shouted. ‘And I’ve
made
one, Alfred, and it gives me pride of bearing. It’s a hot water bottle, Alfred; an expensive one.’

There was a long and deathly silence. When at last Prunesquallor had reassembled the fragments of his shattered poise he opened his eyes.

‘When do you expect them, my love?’

‘You know as well as I do. At nine o’clock, Alfred. Shall we call in the Chef.’

‘What for?’

‘For final instructions, of course.’

‘What again?’

‘One can’t be too final, dear.’

‘Irma,’ said the Doctor, ‘perhaps you have stumbled on a truth of the first water. And talking of water – is the fountain playing?’

‘Darling!’ said Irma, fingering her brother’s arm. ‘It’s playing its heart out,’ and she gave him a pinch.

The doctor felt the blushes spreading all over his body, in little rushes like red Indians leaping from ambush, to ambush, now here, now there.

‘And
now
, Alfred, since it’s nearly nine o’clock, I am going to give you a surprise. You haven’t seen
anything
yet. This sumptuous dress. Those jewels at my ears, these flashing stones about my white throat –’ (her brother winced) ‘… and the fancy knot-work of my silvery coiff – all this is but a setting, Alfred, a mere setting. Can you bear to wait, Alfred, or shall I tell you? Or still more better – O yes! Yes, still more better, dear, I’ll show you NOW –’

And away she went. The Doctor had no idea she could travel so fast. A swish of ‘nightmare blue’ and she was gone, leaving behind her the faint smell of almond icing.

‘I wonder if I’m getting old?’ thought the doctor, and he put his hand to his forehead and shut his eyes. When he opened them she was there again – but O creeping hell! what had she done.

What faced him was not merely the fantastically upholstered and bedizened image of his sister to whose temperament and posturing he had long been immune, but something else, which turned her from a vain, nervous, frustrated, outlandish, excitable and prickly spinster which was bearable enough, into an
exhibit
. The crude inner workings of her mind were thrust nakedly before him by reason of the long flower-trimmed veil that she now wore over her face. Only her eyes were to be seen, above the thick black netting, very weak, and rather small. She turned them to left and right to show her brother the principle of the thing. Her nose was hidden, and in itself that was excellent, but in no way could it offset the blatancy, the terrible soul-revealing blatancy of the underlying idea.

For the second time that evening Prunesquallor blushed. He had never seen anything so openly, ridiculously, predatory in his life. Heaven knew she would say the wrong thing at the wrong time, but above all she must not be allowed to expose her intention in that palpable way.

But what he said was Aha! H’m. What a flair you have. Irma! What a consummate flair. Who else would have thought of it?’