The Illustrated Gormenghast Trilogy (12 page)

She had pulled at the long black pigtail of a chord which hung from the ceiling in one corner of her bedroom and had set a bell jangling in the remote apartment which Mrs Slagg had inhabited for two decades.

The sunlight was streaming through the eastern turrets and was lighting the Carvers’ Battlement and touching the sides of the mountain beyond. As the sun rose, thorn tree after thorn tree on Gormenghast Mountain emerged in the pale light and became a spectre, one following another, now here, now there, over the huge mass until the whole shape was flattened into a radiant jagged triangle against the darkness. Seven clouds like a group of naked cherubs or sucking-pigs, floated their plump pink bodies across a sky of slate. Fuchsia watched them through her window sullenly. Then she thrust her lower lip forward. Her hands were on her hips. Her bare feet were quite still on the floorboards.

‘Seven’, she said, scowling at each. ‘There’s seven of them. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Seven clouds.’

She drew a yellow shawl more tightly around her shoulders for she was shivering in her nightdress, and pulled the pigtail again for Mrs Slagg. Rummaging in a drawer, she found a stick of black chalk and approaching an area of wall that was comparatively vacant she chalked a vicious 7 and drew a circle round it with the word ‘CLOWDS’ written beneath in heavy, uncompromising letters.

As Fuchsia turned away from the wall she took an awkward shuffling step towards the bed. Her jet black hair hung loosely across her shoulders. Her eyes, that were always smouldering, were fixed on the door. Thus she remained with one foot forward as the doorknob turned and Mrs Slagg entered.

Seeing her, Fuchsia continued her walk from where she had left off, but instead of going towards the bed, she approached Mrs Slagg with five strides, and putting her arms quickly around the old woman’s neck, kissed her savagely, broke away, and then beckoning her to the window, pointed towards the sky. Mrs Slagg peered along Fuchsia’s outstretched arm and finger and inquired what there was to look at.

‘Fat clouds,’ said Fuchsia. ‘There’s seven of them.’

The old woman screwed up her eyes and peered once more but only for a moment. Then she made a little noise which seemed to indicate that she was not impressed.

‘Why seven?’ said Fuchsia. ‘Seven is for something. What’s seven for? One for a glorious golden grave – two for a terrible torch of tin; three for a hundred hollow horses; four for a knight with a spur of speargrass; five for a fish with fortunate fins, six – I’ve forgotten six, and seven – what’s seven for? Eight for a frog with eyes like marbles, nine, what’s nine? Nine for a nine, nine – ten for a tower of turbulent toast – but what is seven. What is seven?’

Fuchsia stamped her foot and peered into the poor old nurse’s face.

Nannie Slagg made little noises in her throat which was her way of filling in time and then said, ‘Would you like some hot milk, my precious? Tell me now because I’m busy, and must feed your mother’s white cats, dear. Just because I’m of the energetic system, my dear heart, they give me everything to do. What did you ring for? Quickly, quickly my caution. What did you ring for?’

Fuchsia bit her big red lower lip, tossed a mop of midnight from her brow and gazed out of the window, her hands grasping her elbows behind her. Very stiff she had become and angular.

‘I want a big breakfast,’ said Fuchsia at last. ‘I want a lot to eat, I’m going to think today.’

Nannie Slagg was scrutinizing a wart on her left forearm.

‘You don’t know where I’m going, but I’m going somewhere where I can think.’

‘Yes, dear,’ said the old nurse.

‘I want hot milk and eggs and lots of toast done only on one side,’ Fuchsia frowned as she paused; ‘and I want a bag of apples to take along with me for the whole of the day, for I get hungry when I think.’

‘Yes, dear,’ said Mrs Slagg again, pulling a loose thread from the hem of Fuchsia’s skirt. ‘Put some more on the fire, my caution, and I’ll bring your breakfast and make your bed for you, though I’m not very well.’

Fuchsia descended suddenly upon her old nurse again and kissing her cheek, released her from the room, closing the door on her retreating figure with a crash that echoed down the gloomy corridors.

As soon as the door had closed, Fuchsia leaped at her bed and diving between the blankets head first, wriggled her way to the far end, where from all appearances, she became engaged in a life and death struggle with some ambushed monster. The heavings of the bedclothes ended as suddenly as they had begun and she emerged with a pair of long woollen stockings which she must have kicked off during the night. Sitting on her pillows she began pulling them on in a series of heaves, twisting with difficulty, at a very late stage, the heel of each from the front to the back.

‘I won’t see anybody today,’ she said to herself – ‘no, not anybody at all. I will go to my secret room and think things over.’ She smiled a smile to herself. It was sly but it was so childishly sly that it was lovable. Her lips, big and well-formed and extraordinarily mature, curled up like plump petals and showed between them her white teeth.

As soon as she had smiled her face altered again, and the petulant expression peregrine to her features took control. Her black eyebrows were drawn together.

Her dressing became interrupted between the addition of each garment by dance movements of her own invention. There was nothing elegant in these attitudes into which she flung herself, standing sometimes for a dozen of seconds at a time in some extraordinary position of balance. Her eyes would become glazed like her mother’s and an expression of abstract calm would for an instant defy the natural concentration of her face. Finally her blood-red dress, absolutely shapeless, was pulled over her head. It fitted nowhere except where a green cord was knotted at her waist. She appeared rather to inhabit, than to wear her clothes.

Meanwhile Mrs Slagg had not only prepared the breakfast for Fuchsia in her own little room, but was on the way back with the loaded tray shaking in her hands. As she turned a corner of the corridor she was brought to a clattering standstill by the sudden appearance of Doctor Prunesquallor, who also halting with great suddenness, avoided a collision.

‘Well, well, well, well, well, ha, ha, ha, if it isn’t dear Mrs Slagg, ha, ha, ha, how very very, very dramatic’, said the doctor, his long hands clasped before him at his chin, his high-pitched laugh creaking along the timber ceiling of the passage. His spectacles held in either lens the minute reflection of Nannie Slagg.

The old nurse had never really approved of Doctor Prunesquallor. It was true that he belonged to Gormenghast as much as the Tower itself. He was no intruder, but somehow, in Mrs Slagg’s eyes he was definitely
wrong
. He was not her idea of a doctor in the first place, although she could never have argued why. Nor could she pin her dislike down to any other cause. Nannie Slagg found it very difficult to marshal her thoughts at the best of times, but when they became tied up with her emotions she became quite helpless. What she felt but had never analysed was that Doctor Prunesquallor rather played down to her and even in an obtuse way made fun of her. She had never thought this, but her bones knew of it.

She gazed up at the shock-headed man before her and wondered why he never brushed his hair, and then she felt guilty for allowing herself such thoughts about a gentleman and her tray shook and her eyes wavered a little.

‘Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, my dear Mrs Slagg, let me take your tray, ha, ha, until you have tasted the fruits of discourse and told me what you have been up to for the last month or more. Why have I not seen you, Nannie Slagg? Why have my ears not heard your footfall on the stairs, and your voice at nightfall, calling … calling …?’

‘Her ladyship don’t want me any more, sir,’ said Nannie Slagg, looking up at the doctor reproachfully. ‘I am kept in the west wing now, sir.’

‘So that’s it, is it?’ said Doctor Prunesquallor, removing the loaded tray from Nannie Slagg and lowering both it and himself at the same time to the floor of the long passage. He sat there on his heels with the tray at his side and peered up at the old lady, who gazed in a frightened way at his eye swimming hugely beneath his magnifying spectacles.

‘You are
kept
in the west wing? So that’s it?’ Doctor Prunesquallor with his forefinger and thumb stroked his chin in a profound manner and frowned magnificently. ‘It is the word “kept”, my dear Mrs Slagg, that galls me. Are you an animal, Mrs Slagg? I repeat are you an animal?’ As he said this he rose halfway to his feet and with his neck stretched forward repeated his question a third time.

Poor Nannie Slagg was too frightened to be able to give her answer to the query.

The doctor sank back on his heels.

‘I will answer my own question, Mrs Slagg. I have known you for some time. For, shall we say, a decade? It is true we have never plumbed the depths of sorcery together nor argued the meaning of existence – but it is enough for me to say that I have known you for a considerable time, and that you are
no animal
. No animal
whatsoever
. Sit upon my knee.’

Nannie Slagg, terrified at this suggestion, raised her little bony hands to her mouth and raised her shoulders to her ears. Then she gave one frightened look down the passage and was about to make a run for it when she was gripped about the knees, not unkindly, but firmly and without knowing how she got there found herself sitting upon the high bony knee-cap of the squatting doctor.

‘You are
not
an animal,’ repeated Prunesquallor, ‘are you?’

The old nurse turned her wrinkled face to the doctor and shook her head in little jerks.

‘Of course you’re not. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, of course you’re not. Tell me what you
are
?’

Nannie’s fist again came to her mouth and the frightened look in her eyes reappeared.

‘I’m … I’m an old woman,’ she said.

‘You’re a very unique old woman,’ said the doctor, ‘and if I am not mistaken, you will very soon prove to be an exceptionally invaluable old woman. Oh yes, ha, ha, ha, oh yes, a very invaluable old woman indeed.’ (There was a pause.) ‘How long is it since you saw her ladyship, the Countess? It must be a very long time.’

‘It is, it is,’ said Nannie Slagg, ‘a very long time. Months and months and months.’

‘As I thought,’ said the doctor. ‘Ha, ha, ha, as I very much thought. Then you can have no idea of why you will be indispensable?’

‘Oh no, sir!’ said Nannie Slagg, looking at the breakfast tray whose load was fast becoming cold.

‘Do you like babies, my very dear Mrs Slagg?’ asked the doctor, shifting the poor woman on to his other acutely bended knee joint and stretching out his former leg as though to ease it. ‘Are you fond of the little creatures, taken by and large?’

‘Babies?’ said Mrs Slagg in the most animated tone that she had so far used. ‘I could eat the little darlings, sir, I could eat them up!’

‘Quite,’ said Doctor Prunesquallor, ‘quite so, my good woman. You could eat them up. That will be unnecessary. In fact it would be positively injurious, my dear Mrs Slagg, and especially under the circumstances about which I must now enlighten you. A child will be placed in your keeping. Do not devour him Nannie Slagg. It is for you to bring him up, that is true, but there will be no need for you to swallow him first. You would be, ha, ha, ha, ha – swallowing a Groan.’

This news filtered by degrees through Nannie Slagg’s brain and all at once her eyes looked very wide indeed.

‘No, oh no, sir!’

‘Yes, oh yes, sir!’ replied the physician. ‘Although the Countess has of late banished you from her presence, yet, Nannie Slagg, you will of necessity be restored, ha, ha, ha, be restored to a very important state. Sometime today, if I am not mistaken, my wide-eyed Nannie Slagg, I shall be delivering a brand new Groan. Do you remember when I delivered the Countess of Lady Fuchsia?’

Nannie Slagg began to shake all over and a tear ran down her cheek as she clasped her hands between her knees, very nearly overbalancing from her precarious perch.

‘I can remember every little thing sir – every little thing. Who would have thought?’

‘Exactly,’ interrupted Doctor Prunesquallor. ‘Who would have thought. But I must be going, ha, ha, ha, I must dislodge you, Nannie Slagg, from my patella – but tell me, did you know nothing of her ladyship’s condition?’

‘Oh, sir,’ said the old lady, biting her knuckle and shifting her gaze. ‘Nothing! nothing! No one ever tells me anything.’

‘Yet all the duties will devolve on you,’ said Doctor Prunesquallor. ‘Though you will doubtless enjoy yourself. There is no doubt at all about that. Is there?’

‘Oh, sir, another baby, after all this time! Oh, I could smack him already.’

‘Him?’ queried the doctor. ‘Ha, ha, ha, you are very sure of the gender, my dear Mrs Slagg.’

‘Oh yes, sir, it’s a him, sir. Oh, what a blessing that it is. They
will
let me have him, sir? They will let me won’t they?’

‘They have no choice,’ said the doctor somewhat too briskly for a gentleman and he smiled a wide inane smile, his thin nose pointing straight at Mrs Slagg. His grey hayrick of hair removed itself from the wall. ‘What of my Fuchsia? Has she an inkling?’

‘Oh, no, not an inkling. Not an inkling, sir, bless her. She hardly ever leaves her room except at night, sir. She don’t know nothing, sir, and never talks to no one but me.’