The Illustrated Gormenghast Trilogy (46 page)

‘I am going to,’ said Steerpike with such an air of simple confidence that Fuchsia turned her eyes to him.

‘You’re going to stop cruelty?’ she asked. ‘And greediness, and all those things? I don’t think you could. You’re very clever, but, oh no, you couldn’t do anything like that.’

Steerpike was taken aback for a moment by this reply. He had meant his remark to stand on its own – a limpid statement of fact – something that he imagined Fuchsia might often turn over in her mind and cogitate upon.

‘It’s nearly gone,’ said Fuchsia as Steerpike was wondering how to reassert himself. ‘Nearly gone.’

‘What’s nearly gone?’ He followed her eyes to where the circle of the sun was notched with turrets. ‘Oh, you mean the old treacle bun,’ he said. ‘Yes, it will get cold very quickly now.’

‘Treacle bun?’ said Fuchsia. ‘Is that what you call it?’ She stopped walking. ‘I don’t think you ought to call it that. It’s not respectful.’ She gazed. As the death-throes weakened in the sky, she watched with big, perplexed eyes. Then she smiled for the first time. ‘Do you give names to other things like that?’

‘Sometimes,’ said Steerpike. ‘I have a disrespectful nature.’

‘Do you give people names?’

‘I have done.’

‘Have you got one for me?’

Steerpike sucked the end of his swordstick and raised his straw-coloured eyebrows. ‘I don’t think I have,’ he said. ‘I usually think of you as Lady Fuchsia.’

‘Do you call my mother anything?’

‘Your mother? Yes.’

‘What do you call my mother?’

‘I call her the old Bunch of Rags,’ said Steerpike.

Fuchsia’s eyes opened wide and she stood still again. ‘Go away,’ she said.

‘That’s not very fair,’ said Steerpike. ‘After all, you
asked
me.’

‘What do you call my father, then? But I don’t want to know. I think you’re cruel,’ said Fuchsia breathlessly, ‘you who said you’d stop cruelty altogether. Tell me some more names. Are they
all
unkind – and funny?’

‘Some other time,’ said Steerpike, who had begun to feel chilly. ‘The cold won’t do your injuries any good. You shouldn’t be out walking at all, Prunesquallor thinks you’re in bed. He sounded very worried about you.’

They walked on in silence, and by the time they had reached the castle night had descended.

The morning of the next day opened drearily, the sun appearing only after protracted periods of half-light, and then only as a pale paper disc, more like the moon than itself, as, for a few moments at a time it floated across some corridor of cloud. Slow, lack-lustre veils descended with almost imperceptible motion over Gormenghast, blurring its countless windows, as with a dripping smoke. The mountain appeared and disappeared a score of times during the morning as the drifts obscured it or lifted from its sides. As the day advanced the gauzes thinned, and it was in the late afternoon that the clouds finally dispersed to leave in their place an expanse of translucence, that stain, chill and secret, in the throat of a lily, a sky so peerless, that as Fuchsia stared into its glacid depths she began unwittingly to break and re-break the flower-stem in her hands.

When she turned her head away it was to find Mrs Slagg watching her with such a piteous expression that Fuchsia put her arms about her old nurse and hugged her less tenderly than was her wish, for she hurt the wrinkled midget as she squeezed.

Nannie gasped for breath, her body bruised from the excess of Fuchsia’s burst of affection, and a gust of temper shook her as she climbed excitedly onto the seat of a chair.

‘How
dare
you! How
dare
you!’ she gasped at last after shaking and wriggling a miniature fist all around Fuchsia’s surprised face. ‘How
dare
you bully me and hurt me and crush me into so much pain, you wicked thing, you vicious, naughty thing!
You
, whom I’ve always done everything for.
You
, whom I washed and brushed and dressed and spoiled and cooked for since you were the size of a slipper. You … you …’ The old woman began to cry, her body shaking underneath her black dress like some sort of jerking toy. She let go of the rail of the chair, crushed her fists into her tearful, bloodshot eyes, and, forgetting where she was, was about to run to the door, when Fuchsia jumped forward and caught her from falling. Fuchsia carried her to the bed and laid her down.

‘Did I hurt you very much?’

Her old nurse, lying on the coverlet like a withered doll in black satin, pursed her lips together and waited until Fuchsia, seating herself on the side of the bed, had placed one of her hands within range. Then her fingers crept forward, inch by inch, over the eiderdown, and with a sudden grimace of concentrated naughtiness she smacked Fuchsia’s hand as hard as she was able. Relaxing against the pillow after this puny revenge, she peered at Fuchsia, a triumphant gleam in her watery eyes.

Fuchsia, hardly noticing the malicious little blow, leant over and suffered herself to be hugged for a few moments.

‘Now you must start getting dressed,’ said Nannie Slagg. ‘You must be getting ready for your father’s Gathering, mustn’t you? It’s always one thing or another. “Do this. Do that.” And my heart in the state it is. Where will it all end? And what will you wear today? What dress will look the noblest for the wicked, tempestable thing?’

‘You’re coming, too, aren’t you?’ Fuchsia said.

‘Why, what a
thing
you are,’ squeaked Nannie Slagg, climbing down over the edge of the bed. ‘Fancy such an ignorous question! I am taking his little LORDSHIP, you big stupid!’

‘What! is Titus going, too?’

‘Oh, your
ignorance
,’ said Nannie, ‘“Is Titus going, too?” she says.’ Mrs Slagg smiled pityingly. ‘Poor, poor, wicked thing! what a querail!’ The old woman gave forth a series of pathetically unconvincing laughs and then put her hands on Fuchsia’s knees excitedly. ‘Of
course
he’s going,’ she said. ‘The Gathering is
for
him. It’s about this Birthday Breakfast.’

‘Who else is going, Nannie?’

Her old nurse began to count on her fingers.

‘Well, there’s your father,’ she began, placing the tips of her forefingers together and raising her eyes to the ceiling. ‘First of all there’s him, your father …’

As she spoke Lord Sepulchrave was returning to his room after performing the bi-annual ritual of opening the iron cupboard in the armoury, and, with the traditional dagger which Sourdust had brought for the occasion, of scratching on the metal back of the cupboard another half moon, which, added to the long line of similar half moons, made the seven hundred and thirty-seventh to be scored into the iron. According to the temperaments of the deceased Earls of Gormenghast the half moons were executed with precision or with carelessness. It was not certain what significance the ceremony held, for unfortuately the records were lost, but the formality was no less sacred for being unintelligible.

Old Sourdust had closed the iron door of the ugly, empty cupboard with great care, turning the key in the lock, and but for the fact that while inserting the key a few strands of his beard had gone in with it and been turned and caught, he would have felt the keen professional pleasure that all ritual gave him. It was in vain for him to pull, for not only was he held fast, but the pain to his chin brought tears to his eyes. To bring the key out and the hairs of his beard with it would ruin the ceremony, for it was laid down that the key must remain in the lock for twenty-three hours, a retainer in yellow being posted to guard the cupboard for that period. The only thing to do was to sever the strands with the knife, and this is eventually what the old man did, after which he set fire to the grey tufts of his alienated hairs that protruded from the keyhole like a fringe around the key. These flamed a little, and when the sizzling had ceased Sourdust turned apologetically to find that his Lordship had gone.

When Lord Sepulchrave reached his bedroom he found Flay laying out the black costume that he habitually wore. The Earl had it in his mind to dress more elaborately this evening. There had been a slight but perceptible lifting of his spirit ever since he had conceived this Breakfast for his son. He had become aware of a dim pleasure in having a son. Titus had been born during one of his blackest moods, and although he was still shrouded in melancholia, his introspection had, during the last few days, become tempered by a growing interest in his heir, not as a personality, but as the symbol of the Future. He had some vague presentiment that his own tenure was drawing to a close and it gave him both pleasure when he remembered his son, and a sense of stability amid the miasma of his waking dreams.

Now that he knew he had a son he realized how great had been the unspoken nightmare which had lurked in his mind. The terror that with
him
the line of Groan should perish. That he had failed the castle of his forebears, and that rotting in his sepulchre the future generations would point at his, the last of the long line of discoloured monuments and whisper: ‘He was the last. He had no son.’

As Flay helped him dress, neither of them speaking a word, Lord Sepulchrave thought of all this, and fastening a jewelled pin at his collar he sighed, and within the doomed and dark sea-murmur of that sigh was the plashing sound of a less mournful billow. And then, as he gazed absently past himself in the mirror at Flay, another comber of far pleasure followed the first, for his books came suddenly before his eyes, row upon row of volumes, row upon priceless row of calf-bound Thought, of philosophy and fiction, of travel and fantasy; the stern and the ornate, the moods of gold or green, of sepia, rose, or black; the picaresque, the arabesque, the scientific – the essays, the poetry and the drama.

All this, he felt, he would now re-enter. He could inhabit the world of words, with, at the back of his melancholy, a solace he had not known before.

‘Then
next
,’ said Mrs Slagg, counting on her fingers, ‘there’s your mother, of course. Your father and your mother – that makes Two.’ Lady Gertrude had not thought of changing her dress. Nor had it occurred to her to prepare for the gathering.

She was seated in her bedroom. Her feet were planted widely apart as though for all time. Her elbows weighed on her knees, from between which the draperies of her skirt sagged in heavy U-shaped folds. In her hands was a paper-covered book, with a coffee-stain across its cover and with as many dogs’ ears as it had pages. She was reading aloud in a deep voice that rose above the steady drone of a hundred cats. They filled the room. Whiter than the tallow that hung from the candelabra or lay broken on the table of birdseed. Whiter than the pillows on the bed. They sat everywhere. The counterpane was hidden with them. The table, the cupboards, the couch, all was luxuriant with harvest, white as death, but the richest crop was all about her feet where a cluster of white faces stared up into her own. Every luminous, slit-pupilled eye was upon her. The only movement lay in the vibration in their throats. The voice of the Countess moved on like a laden ship upon a purring tide.

As she came to the end of every right hand page and was turning it over her eyes would move around the room with an expression of the deepest tenderness, her pupils filling with the minute white reflections of her cats.

Then her eyes would turn again to the printed page. Her enormous face had about it the wonderment of a child as she read. She was re-living the story, the old story which she had so often read to them.

‘And the door closed, and the latch clicked, but the prince with stars for his eyes and a new-moon for his mouth didn’t mind, for he was young and strong, and though he wasn’t handsome, he had heard lots of doors close and click before this one, and didn’t feel at all frightened. But he would have been if he had known who had closed the door. It was the Dwarf with brass teeth, who was more dreadful than the most spotted of all things, and whose ears were fixed on backwards.

‘Now when the prince had finished brushing his hair …’

While the Countess was turning the page Mrs Slagg was ticking off the third and fourth fingers of her left hand.

‘Dr Prunesquallor and Miss Irma will come as well, dear: they always come to nearly everything – don’t they, though I can’t see
why
– they aren’t ancestral. But they always come. Oh, my poor conscience! it’s always I who have to bear with them, and do everything, and I’ll have to go in a moment, my caution, to remind your mother, and she’ll shout at me and make me so nervous; but I’ll have to go for she won’t remember, but that’s just how it
always
happens. And the Doctor and Miss Irma make another two people, and that makes four altogether.’ Mrs Slagg gasped for breath. ‘I don’t like Dr Prunesquallor, my baby; I don’t like his proud habits,’ said Nannie. ‘He makes me feel so silly and small when I’m not. But he’s always asked, even when his vain and ugly sister isn’t; but she’s been asked this time so they’ll both be there, and you must stay next to me, won’t you? Won’t you? Because I’ve got his little Lordship to care for. Oh, my dear heart! I’m not well – I’m not; I’m
not
. And nobody cares – not even you.’ Her wrinkled hand gripped at Fuchsia’s. ‘You will look after me?’

‘Yes,’ said Fuchsia. ‘But I like the Doctor.’

Fuchsia lifted up the end of her mattress and burrowed beneath the feather-filled weight until she found a small box. She turned her back on her nurse for a moment and fastened something around her neck, and when she turned again Mrs Slagg saw the solid fire of a great ruby hung beneath her throat.