The Illustrated Gormenghast Trilogy (10 page)

Whether the Countess was thinking deeply or was lost in vacant reverie it would have been impossible to guess. She reclined hugely and motionlessly, her arms extended along the iron rail, when suddenly a great fluttering and scrambling broke into the wax-smelling silence of the room and turning her eyes to the ivy-filled window, fourteen feet from the ground, the Countess without moving her head, could see the leaves part and the white head and shoulders of an albino rook emerge guiltily.

‘Ah-ha,’ she said slowly, as though she had come to a conclusion, ‘so it is you, is it? So it is the truant back again. Where has he been? What has he been doing? What trees has he been sitting in? What clouds has he been flying through? What a boy he is! What a bunch of feathered whiteness. What a bunch of wickedness!’

The rook had been sitting fringed on all sides with the ivy leaves, with his head now on one side, now on the other; listening or appearing to listen with great interest and a certain show of embarrassment, for from the movement that showed itself in the ivy leaves from time to time, the white rook was evidently shifting from foot to foot.

‘Three weeks it is,’ continued the Countess, ‘three weeks I’ve been without him; I wasn’t good enough for
him
, oh no, not for Master Chalk, and here he is back again, wants to be forgiven! Oh yes! Wants a great treeful of forgiveness, for his heavy old beak and months of absolution for his plumage.’

Then the Countess hoisted herself up in bed again, twisted a strand of her dark hair round a long forefinger, and with her face directed at the doorway, but her eyes still on the bird, said as though to herself and almost inaudibly, ‘Come on then.’ The ivy rustled again, and before that sound was over the bed itself vibrated with the sudden arrival of the white rook.

He stood on the foot-rail, his claws curled around it, and stared at Lady Groan. After a moment or two of stillness the white rook moved his feet up and down on the rail in a treading motion and then, flopping on to the bedclothes at her ladyship’s feet, twisted his head around and pecked at his own tail, the feathers of his neck standing out as he did so, crisply like a ruff. The pecking over he made his way over the undulating terrain of the bed, until within a few inches of her ladyship’s face, when he tilted his big head in a characteristic manner and cawed.

‘So you beg my pardon, do you?’ said Lady Groan, ‘and you think that’s the end of it? No more questions about where you’ve been or where you’ve flown these three long weeks? So that’s it, is it, Master Chalk? You want me to forgive you for old sakes’ sake? Come here with your old beak and rub it on my arm. Come along my whitest one, come along, then. Come along.’ The raven on Lady Groan’s shoulder awoke from his sleep and raised his ethiopian wing an inch or two, sleepily. Then his eyes focused upon the rook in a hard stare. He sat there wide awake, a lock of dark red hair between his feet. The small owl as though to take the place of the raven fell asleep. One of the starlings turned about in three slow paces and faced the wall. The missel-thrush made no motion, and as a candle guttered, a ghoul of shadow from under a tall cupboard dislodged itself and moved across the floorboards, climbed the bed, and crawled halfway across the eiderdown before it returned by the same route, to curl up and roost beneath the cupboard again.

Lady Groan’s gaze had returned to the mounting pyramid of tallow. Her pale eyes would either concentrate upon an object in a remorseless way or would appear to be without sight, vacant, with the merest suggestion of something childish. It was in this abstracted manner that she gazed through the pale pyramid, while her hands, as though working on their own account, moved gently over the breast, head and throat of the white rook.

For some time there was complete silence in the room and it was with something of a shock that a rapping at the panels of her bedroom door awakened Lady Groan from her reverie.

Her eyes now took on the concentrated, loveless, cat-like look.

The birds coming to life at once, flapped simultaneously to the end rail of the bed, where they stood balancing in a long uneven line, each one on the alert, their heads turned towards the door.

‘Who’s that?’ said Lady Groan heavily.

‘It’s me, my lady,’ cried a quavering voice.

‘Who’s that hitting my door?’

‘It’s me with his lordship,’ replied the voice.

‘What?’ shouted Lady Groan. ‘What d’you want? What are you hitting my door for?’

Whoever it was raised her voice nervously and cried, ‘Nannie Slagg, it is. It’s me, my lady; Nannie Slagg.’

‘What d’you want?’ repeated her ladyship, settling herself more comfortably.

‘I’ve brought his Lordship for you to see,’ shouted Nannie Slagg, a little less nervously.

‘Oh, you have, have you? You’ve brought his lordship. So you want to come in, do you? With his lordship.’ There was a moment’s silence. ‘What for? What have you brought him to me for?’

‘For you to see, if you please, my lady,’ replied Nannie Slagg. ‘He’s had his bath.’

Lady Groan relaxed still further into the pillows. ‘Oh, you mean the
new
one, do you?’ she muttered.

‘Can I come in?’ cried Nannie Slagg.

‘Hurry up then! Hurry up then! Stop scratching at my door. What are you waiting for?’

A rattling at the door handle froze the birds along the iron bed-rail and as the door opened they were all at once in the air, and were forcing their way, one after another through the bitter leaves of the small window.

Nannie Slagg entered, bearing in her arms the heir to the miles of rambling stone and mortar; to the Tower of Flints and the stagnant moat; to the angular mountains and the lime-green river where twelve years later he would be angling for the hideous fishes of his inheritance.

She carried the child towards the bed and turned the little face to the mother, who gazed right through it and said:

‘Where’s that doctor? Where’s Prunesquallor? Put the child down and open the door.’

Mrs Slagg obeyed, and as her back was turned Lady Groan bent forward and peered at the child. The little eyes were glazed with sleep and the candlelight played upon the bald head, moulding the structure of the skull with shifting shade.

‘H’m,’ said Lady Groan, ‘what d’you want me to do with him?’

Nannie Slagg, who was very grey and old, with red rims around her eyes and whose intelligence was limited, gazed vacantly at her ladyship.

‘He’s had his bath,’ she said. ‘He’s just had his bath, bless his little lordship’s heart.’

‘What about it?’ said Lady Groan.

The old nurse picked the baby up dexterously and began to rock him gently by way of an answer.

‘Is Prunesquallor there?’ repeated Lady Groan.

‘Down,’ whispered Nannie, pointing a little wrinkled finger at the floor, ‘d-downstairs: oh yes, I think he is still downstairs taking punch in the Coldroom. Oh dear, yes, bless the little thing.’

Her last remark presumably referred to Titus and not to Doctor Prunesquallor. Lady Groan raised herself in bed and looking fiercely at the open door, bellowed in the deepest and loudest voice, ‘SQUALLOR!’

The word echoed along the corridors and down the stairs, and creeping under the door and along the black rug in the Coldroom, just managed, after climbing the doctor’s body, to find its way into both his ears simultaneously, in a peremptory if modified condition. Modified though it was, it brought Doctor Prunesquallor to his feet at once. His fish eyes swam all round his glasses before finishing at the top, where they gave him an expression of fantastic martyrdom. Running his long, exquisitely formed fingers through his mop of grey hair, he drained his glass of punch at a draught and started for the door, flicking small globules of the drink from his waistcoat.

Before he had reached her room he had begun a rehearsal of the conversation he expected, his insufferable laughter punctuating every other sentence whatever its gist.

‘My lady,’ he said, when he had reached her door and was showing the Countess and Mrs Slagg nothing except his head around the door-post in a decapitated manner, before entering. ‘My lady, ha, ha, he he. I heard your voice downstairs as I er – was –’

‘Tippling,’ said Lady Groan.

‘Ha, ha – how very right you are, how very very right you are, ha, ha, ha, he, as I was, as you so graphically put it, ha, ha, tippling. Down it came, ha, ha – down it came.’

‘What came?’ interrupted the Countess loudly.

‘Your voice,’ said Prunesquallor, raising his right hand and deliberately placing the tips of his thumb and little finger together, ‘your voice located me in the Coldroom. Oh yes, it did!’

The Countess stared at him heavily and then dug her elbows into the pillow.

Mrs Slagg had rocked the baby to sleep.

Doctor Prunesquallor was running a long tapering forefinger up and down a stalactite of wax and smiling horribly.

‘I called you’, said the Countess, ‘to tell you, Prunesquallor, that tomorrow I get up.’

‘Oh, he, ha, ha, oh ha, ha, my ladyship, oh, ha, ha, my ladyship –
tomorrow
?’

‘Tomorrow,’ said the Countess, ‘why not?’

‘Professionally speaking –’ began Doctor Prunesquallor.

‘Why not?’ repeated the Countess interrupting him.

‘Ha, ha, most abnormal, most unusual, ha, ha, ha, most unique, so
very
soon.’

‘So you would docket me, would you, Prunesquallor? I thought you would; I guessed it. I get up tomorrow – tomorrow
at dawn
.’

Doctor Prunesquallor shrugged his narrow shoulders and raised his eyes. Then placing the tips of his fingers together and addressing the dark ceiling above him, ‘I
advise
, but never order,’ he said, in a tone which implied that he could have done any amount of ordering had he thought it necessary. ‘Ha ha, ha, oh no! I only advise.’

‘Rubbish,’ said the Countess.

‘I do not think so,’ replied Prunesquallor, still gazing upwards. ‘Ha, ha, ha, ha, oh no! not at all.’ As he finished speaking his eyes for a second travelled downwards at great speed and took in the image of the Countess in bed and then even more rapidly swam up the glasses. What he had seen disquieted him, for he had found in her expression such a concentration of distaste that as he deflected his gaze away from her he found that his feet were moving backwards one after the other and that he was at the door before he knew that he had decided what to do. Bowing quickly he withdrew his body from the bedroom.

‘Isn’t he sweet, oh isn’t he the sweetest drop of sugar that ever was?’ said Mrs Slagg.

‘Who?’ shouted the Countess so loudly that a string of tallow wavered in the shifting light.

The baby awoke at the sound and moaned, and Nannie Slagg retreated.

‘His little lordship,’ she whimpered weakly, ‘his pretty little lordship.’

‘Slagg,’ said the Countess, ‘go away! I would like to see the boy when he is six. Find a wet nurse from the Outer Dwellings. Make him green dresses from the velvet curtains. Take this gold ring of mine. Fix a chain to it. Let him wear it around his wry little neck. Call him Titus. Go away and leave the door six inches open.’

The Countess put her hand under the pillow and drew forth a small reed, placed it in her vast mouth and gave it breath. Two long sweet notes sang out through the dark air. At the sound, Mrs Slagg, grabbing the gold ring from the bedclothes, where the Countess had thrown it, hurried as fast as her old legs could carry her from the room as though a werewolf were at her heels. Lady Groan was leaning forward in bed, her eyes were like a child’s: wide, sweet and excited. They were fixed upon the door. Her hands were gripping the edges of her pillow. She became rigid.

In the distance, a vibration was becoming louder and louder until the volume seemed to have filled the chamber itself, when suddenly there slid through the narrow opening of the door and moved into the fumid atmosphere of the room an undulation of whiteness, so that, within a breath, there was no shadow in all the room that was not blanched with cats.

Every morning of the year, between the hours of nine and ten, he may be found, seated in the Stone Hall, it is there, at the long table that he takes his breakfast. The table is raised upon a dais, and from where he sits he can gaze down the length of the grey refectory. On either side and running the entire length, great pillars prop the painted ceiling where cherubs pursue each other across a waste of flaking sky. There must be about a thousand of them all told, interweaving among the clouds, their fat limbs for ever on the move and yet never moving, for they are imperfectly articulated. The colours, once garish, have faded and peeled away and the ceiling is now a very subtle shade of grey and lichen green, old rose and silver.

Lord Sepulchrave may have noticed the cherubs long ago. Probably when a child he had attempted more than once to count them, as his father had done, and as young Titus in his turn will try to do; but however that might be, Lord Groan had not cast up his eyes to the old welkin for many years. Nor did he ever stare about him now. How could he
love
this place? He was a part of it. He could not imagine a world outside it; and the idea of loving Gormenghast would have shocked him. To have asked him of his feelings for his hereditary home would be like asking a man what his feelings were towards his own hand or his own throat. But his lordship remembered the cherubs in the ceiling. His great grandfather had painted them with the help of an enthusiastic servant who had fallen seventy feet from the scaffolding and had been killed instantly. But it seemed that Lord Sepulchrave found his only interest in these days among the volumes in his library and in a knob of jade on his silver rod, which he would scrutinize for hours on end.