The Illustrated Gormenghast Trilogy (163 page)

‘You’re quite right! O, but
quite
!’ she said breathlessly. ‘So absolutely and miraculously
right
, you brilliant,
brilliant
little man; something sweet is what I
need
!’

Meanwhile Mr Acreblade was making room for a long-faced character dressed in a lion’s pelt. Over his head and shoulders was a black mane.

‘Isn’t it a bit hot in there?’ said young Kestrel.

‘I am in agony,’ said the man in the tawny skin.

‘Then why?’ said Mrs Grass.

‘I thought it was Fancy Dress,’ said the skin, ‘but I mustn’t complain. Everyone has been most kind.’

‘That doesn’t help the heat you’re generating in there,’ said Mr Acreblade. ‘Why don’t you just whip it off?’

‘It is all I have on,’ said the lion’s pelt.

‘How delicious,’ cried Mrs Grass, ‘you thrill me utterly. Who are you?’

‘But my
dear
,’ said the lion, looking at Mrs Grass, ‘surely you …’

‘What is it, O King of Beasts?’

‘Can’t you remember me?’

‘Your nose seems to ring a bell,’ said Mrs Grass.

Mr Spill lowered his head out of the clouds of smoke. Then he swivelled it until it lay alongside Mr Kestrel. ‘What did she say?’ he asked.

‘She’s worth a million,’ said Kestrel. ‘Lively, luscious, what a plaything!’

‘Plaything?’ said Mr Spill. ‘How do you mean?’

‘You wouldn’t understand,’ said Kestrel.

The lion scratched himself with a certain charm. Then he addressed Mrs Grass.

‘So my nose rings a bell – is that all? Have you forgotten me?
Me!
Your onetime Harry?’

‘Harry? What … my …?’

‘Yes, your Second. Way back in time. We were married, you remember, in Tyson Street.’

‘Lovebird!’ cried Mrs Grass. ‘So we
were
. But take that foul mane off and let me see you. Where have you been all these years?’

‘In the wilderness,’ said the lion, tossing back his mane and twitching it over his shoulder.

‘What sort of wilderness, darling? Moral? Spiritual? O but tell us about it!’ Mrs Grass reached forward with her breasts and clenched her little fists at her sides, which attitude she imagined would have appeal. She was not far wrong, and young Kestrel took a step to the left which put him close beside her.

‘I believe you said “wilderness”,’ said Kestrel. ‘Tell me, how wild
is
it? Or isn’t it? One is so at the mercy of words. And would you say, sir, that what is wilderness for one might be a field of corn to another with little streams and bushes?’

‘What sort of bushes?’ said the elongated Mr Spill.

‘What does that matter?’ said Kestrel.

‘
Everything
matters,’ said Mr Spill. ‘
Everything
. That is part of the pattern. The world is bedevilled by people thinking that some things matter and some things don’t. Everything is of equal importance. The wheel must be complete. And the stars. They
look
small. But are they? No. They are large. Some are very large. Why, I remember –’

‘Mr Kestrel,’ said Mrs Grass.

‘Yes, my dear lady?’

‘You have a vile habit, dear.’

‘What is it, for heaven’s sake? Tell me about it that I may crush it.’

‘You are too
close
, my pet. But
too
close. We have our little areas you know. Like the home waters, dear, or fishing rights. Don’t trespass, dear. Withdraw a little. You know what I mean, don’t you? Privacy is
so
important.’

Young Kestrel turned the colour of a boiled lobster and retreated from Mrs Grass who, turning her head to him, by way of forgiveness switched on a light in her face, or so it seemed to Kestrel, a light that inflamed the air about them with a smile like an eruption. This had the effect of drawing the dazzled Kestrel back to her side, where he stayed, bathing himself in her beauty.

‘Cosy again,’ she whispered.

Kestrel nodded his head and trembled with excitement until Mr Grass, forcing his way through a wall of guests, brought his foot down sharply upon Kestrel’s instep. With a gasp of pain, young Kestrel turned for sympathy to the peerless lady at his side, only to find that her radiant smile was now directed at her own husband where it remained for a few moments before she turned her back on them both and, switching off the current, she gazed across the room with an aspect quite drained of animation.

‘On the other hand,’ said the tall Spill, addressing the man in the lion’s pelt, ‘there is something in the young man’s question. This wilderness of yours. Will you tell us more about it?’

‘But oh! But do!’ rang out the voice of Mrs Grass, as she gripped the lion’s pelt cruelly.

‘When I say “wilderness”,’ said the lion, ‘I only speak of the heart. It is Mr Acreblade that you should ask. His wasteland is the very earth itself.’

‘Ah me, that Wasteland,’ said Acreblade, jutting out his chin, ‘knuckled with ferrous mountains. Peopled with termites, jackals, and to the north-west – hermits.’

‘And what were
you
doing out there?’ said Mr Spill.

‘I shadowed a suspect. A youth not known in these parts. He stumbled ahead of me in the sandstorm, a vague shape. Sometimes I lost him altogether. Sometimes I all but found myself beside him, and was forced to retreat a little way. Sometimes I heard his singing, mad, wild, inconsequential songs. Sometimes he shouted out as though he were delirious – words that sounded like “Fuchsia”, “Flay” and other names. Sometimes he cried out “Mother!” and once he fell on his knees and cried, “Gormenghast, Gormenghast, come back to me again!”’

‘It was not for me to arrest him – but to follow him, for my superiors informed me his papers were not in order, or even in
existence
.

‘But on the second evening the dust rose up more terribly than ever, and as it rose it blinded me so that I lost him in a red and gritty cloud. I could not find him, and I never found him again.’

‘Darling.’

‘What is it?’

‘Look at Gumshaw.’

‘Why?’

‘His polished pate reflects a brace of candles.’

‘Not from where I am.’

‘No?’

‘No. But look – to the left of centre I see a tiny image, one might almost say of a boy’s face, were it not that faces are unlikely things to grow on ceilings.’

‘Dreams. One always comes back to dreams.’

‘But the silver whip RK 2053722220 – the moon circles, first of the new –’

‘Yes, I know all about that.’

‘But love was nowhere near.’

‘The sky was smothered with planes. Some of them, though pilotless, were bleeding.’

‘Ah, Mr Flax, how is your son?’

‘He died last Wednesday.’

‘Forgive me, I am so sorry.’

‘Are you? I’m not. I never liked him. But mark you – an excellent swimmer. He was captain of his school.’

‘This heat is horrible.’

‘Ah, Lady Crowgather, let me present the Duke of Crowgather; but perhaps you have met already?’

‘Many times. Where are the cucumber sandwiches?’

‘Allow me –’

‘Oh I beg your pardon. I mistook your foot for a tortoise. What is happening?’

‘No, indeed, I do not like it.’

‘Art should be artless, not heartless.’

‘I am a great one for beauty.’

‘Beauty, that obsolete word.’

‘You beg the question, Professor Savage.’

‘I beg nothing. Not even your pardon. I do not even beg to differ. I differ without begging, and would rather beg from an ancient, rib-staring, sightless groveller at the foot of a column than beg from you, sir. The truth is not in you, and your feet smell.’

‘Take that … and that,’ muttered the insultee, tearing off one button after another from his opponent’s jacket.

‘What fun we do have,’ said the button-loser, standing on tip-toe and kissing his friend’s chin: ‘Parties would be unbearable without abuse, so don’t go away Harold. You sicken me. What is that?’

‘It is only Marblecrust making his bird noises.’

‘Yes, but …’

‘Always, somehow …’

‘O no … no … and yet I like it.’

‘And so the young man escaped me without knowing,’ said Acreblade, ‘and judging by the hardship he must have undergone he must surely be somewhere in the City … where else could he be? Has he stolen a plane? Has he fled down the …?’

Then came the stroke of midnight, and for a few moments gooseflesh ran up every leg in Lady Cusp-Canine’s party, swarmed up the thighs and mustered its hideous forces at the base of every backbone, sending forth grisly outriders throughout the lumbar landscape. Then up the spine itself, coiling like lethal ivy, fanning out, eventually, from the cervicals, draping like icy muslin across the breasts and belly. Midnight. As the last cold crash resounds, Titus, alone on the rooftop, easing the cramp in his arm, shifting the weight of his elbow, smashes suddenly the skylight and with no time to recover, falls through the glass roof in a shower of splinters.

It was very lucky for all concerned that no one was seriously hurt. Titus himself was cut in a few places but the wounds were superficial and as far as the actual fall was concerned, he was particularly fortunate in that a dome-shouldered, snowball-breasted lady was immediately below him as he fell.

They capsized together, and lay for a moment alongside one another on the thickly carpeted floor. All about them glittered fragments of broken glass, but for Juno, lying at Titus’ side, and for the others who had been affected by his sudden appearance in mid-air and later on the floor, the overriding sensation was not pain but shock.

For there was something that was shocking in more than one sense in the almost biblical visitation of a youth in rags.

Titus withdrew his face, which had been crushed against a naked shoulder, and got dizzily to his feet, and as he did so he saw that the lady’s eyes were fixed upon him. Even in her horizontal position she was superb. Her dignity was unimpaired. When Titus reached down to her with his hand to help her she touched his fingertips and rose at once and with no apparent effort to her feet, which were small and very beautiful. Between these little feet of hers and her noble, Roman head, lay, as though between the poles, a golden world of spices.

Someone bent over the boy. It was the Fox.

‘Who the devil are you?’ he said.

‘What does that matter?’ said Juno. ‘Keep your distance. He is bleeding … Isn’t that enough?’ and with quite indescribable
élan
she tore a strip from her dress and began to bind up Titus’ hand, which was bleeding steadily.

‘You are very kind,’ said Titus.

Juno softly shook her head from side to side, and a little smile evolved out of the corner of her generous lips.

‘I must have startled you,’ said Titus.

‘It was a rapid introduction,’ said Juno. She arched one of her eyebrows. It rose like a raven’s wing.

‘Did you hear what he said?’ snarled a vile voice. ‘“
I must have startled you
.” Why, you mongrel-pup, you might have killed the lady!’

An angry buzz of voices suddenly began and scores of faces raised themselves to the shattered skylight. At the same time a nearby section of the crowd, which until a few moments ago had appeared to be full of friendly flippancy, was now wearing a very different aspect.

‘Which one of you,’ said Titus, whose face had gone white, ‘which one of you called me a mongrel-pup?’ In the pocket of his ragged trousers his hand clutched the knuckle of flint from the high towers of Gormenghast.

‘Who was it?’ he yelled, for all at once rage boiled up in him, and jumping forward he caught the nearest figure by the throat. But no sooner had he done so than he was himself hauled back to his position at Juno’s side. Then Titus saw before him the back of a great angular man, on whose shoulder sat a small ape. This figure whose proportions were unmistakably those of Muzzlehatch now moved very slowly along the half-circle of angry faces and as he did so he smiled with a smile that had no love in it. It was a wide smile. It was a lipless smile. It was made up of nothing but anatomy.

Muzzlehatch stretched out his big arm: his hand hovered and then took hold of the man who had insulted Titus, picked him up, and raised him through the hot and coiling air to the level of his shoulder, where he was received by the ape who kissed him upon the back of his neck in such a way that the poor man collapsed in a dead faint, and then, since the ape had already lost interest in him, he slid to the carpeted floor.

Muzzlehatch turned to the gaping circle of faces and whispered ‘Little children. Listen to Oracle. Because Oracle loves you,’ and Muzzlehatch drew a wicked-looking penknife from his pocket, flicked it open and began to strop it upon the ball of his thumb.

‘He is not pleased with you. Not so much because you have done anything wicked but because your Soul smells – your collective
Soul
– your little dried-up turd of a Soul. Is it not so? Little Ones?’