The Illustrated Gormenghast Trilogy (162 page)

‘I will tell you why, my friends. It didn’t come off because you see, it was
verse
all the time.’

‘
Blank
verse?’ inquired the lady, whose head was bent forward by the weight of the sapphires. She was eager to be helpful. ‘Was it
blank
verse?’

‘It went like this,’ said the dark man, unclasping his hands before him and clasping them behind him, and at the same time placing the heel of his left shoe immediately in front of the toe of his right shoe so that the two feet formed a single and unbroken line of leather. ‘It went like this.’ He lifted his head. ‘But do not forget it is
not
Poetry – except perhaps for three
singing
lines at the outside.’

‘Well, for the love of Parnassus – let’s
have
it,’ broke in the petulant voice of Mr Thirst who, finding his thunder stolen, was no longer interested in good manners.

‘A-l-t-h-o-u-g-h,’ mused the man with the long blue jaw, who seemed to consider other people’s time and patience as inexhaustible commodities like air, or water, ‘a-l-t-h-o-u-g-h,’ (he lingered over the word like a nurse over a sick child), ‘there
were
those who said the whole thing
sang
; who hailed it as the purest poetry of our generation – “incandescent stuff” as one gentleman put it – but there you are – there you are – how is one to tell?’

‘Ah,’ whispered a voice of curds and whey. And a man with gold teeth turned his eyes to the lady with the sapphires, and they exchanged the arch expression of those who find themselves, however unworthily, to be witnesses at an historic moment.

‘Quiet please,’ said the poet. ‘And listen carefully.’

A mule at prayer! Ignore him: turn to me

Until the gold contraption of our love

Rattles its seven biscuit boxes, and the sea

Withdraws its combers from the rhubarb-grove
.

This is no place for maudlin-headed fays

To smirk behind their mushrooms! ’t is a shore

For gaping daemons: it is such a place
,

As I, my love, have long been looking for
.

Here, where the rhubarb-grove into the wave

Throws down its rueful image, we can fly

Our kites of love, above the sandy grave

Of those long lost in ambiguity
.

For love is ripest in a rhubarb-grove

Where weird reflections glimmer through the dawn:

O vivid essence vegetably wove

Of hues that die, the moment they are born
.

Lost in the venal void our dreams deflate

By easy stages through green atmosphere:

Imagination’s bright balloon is late
,

Like the blue whale, in coming up for air
.

It is not known what genus of the wild

Black plums of thought best wrinkle, twitch and flow

Into sweet wisdom’s prune – for in the mild

Orchards of love there is no need to know
.

What use to cry for Capricorn? it sails

Across the heart’s red atlas: it is found

Only within the ribs, where all the tails

The tempest has are whisking it around
.

No time for tears: it is enough, today
,

That we, meandering these granular shores

Should watch the ponderous billows at their play

Like midnight beasts with garlands in their jaws …

It was obvious that the poem was still in its early stages. The novelty of seeing so distinguished-looking a man behave in a manner so blatant, so self-centred, so withdrawn at one and the same time had intrigued Titus so keenly that he had outlasted at least thirty guests since the poem started. The lady with the sapphires and Mr Thirst had long since edged away, but a floating population surrounded the poet who had become sightless as he declaimed, and it would have been all the same to him if he had been alone in the room.

Titus turned his head away, his brain jumping in his skull with words and images.

Now that the poem was gone, and gone with it the poet, for truly he seemed to follow in the wake of something greater than himself, Titus became aware of a strange condition, a quality of flux, an agitation; a weaving or a
threading
motion – and then, all at once, one of those tidal movements that occur from time to time at crowded parties, began to manifest itself. There is nothing that can be done about them. They move to a rhythm of their own.

The first sensation perceived by the guest was that he or she was off-balance. There was a lot of elbow-jogging and spirit-spilling. As the pressure increased a kind of delicate stampeding began. Apologies broke loose on every side. Those by the walls were seriously crushed, while those in the centre leaned across one another at intimate angles. Tiny, idiotic footsteps were taken by everyone as the crowd began to surge meaninglessly, uncontrollably, round and round the room. Those who were talking together at one moment saw no sign of one another a few seconds later, for underwater currents and cross-eddies took their toll.

And yet the guests were still arriving. They entered through the doorway, were caught up in the scented air, wavered like ghosts and, hovering for a moment on the coiling fumes, were drawn into the slow but invincible maelstrom.

Titus, who had not been able to foresee what was about to happen, was now able to appreciate in retrospect the actions of a couple of old roués whom he had observed a few minutes earlier, seated by the refreshment table.

Long versed in the vicissitudes of party phenomena, they had put down their glasses and, leaning back, as it were, in the arms of the current, had given themselves up to the flow, and were now to be seen conversing at an incredible angle as they circled the room, their feet no longer touching the floor.

By the time some balance was restored it was nearly midnight, and there was a general pulling down of cuffs, straightening of garments, fingering of coifs and toupees, a straightening of ties, a scrutiny of mouths and eyebrows and a general state of salvage.

And so, by a whim of chance, yet another group of guests stood there beneath him. Some had limped and some had slid away. Some had been boisterous: some had been aloof.

This particular group were neither and both, as the offshoots of their brain-play merited. Tall guests they were, and witless that through the accident of their height and slenderness they were creating between them a grove – a human grove. They turned, this group, this grove of guests, turned as a newcomer, moving sideways an inch at a time, joined them. He was short, thick and sapless, and was most in appropriate in that lofty copse, where he gave the appearance of being pollarded.

One of this group, a slender creature, thin as a switch, swathed in black, her hair as black as her dress and her eyes as black as her hair, turned to the newcomer.

‘Do join us,’ she said. ‘Do talk to us. We need your steady brain. We are so pitifully emotional.
Such
babies.’

‘Well I would hardly –’

‘Be quiet, Leonard. You have been talking quite enough,’ said the slender, doe-eyed Mrs Grass to her fourth husband. ‘It is Mr Acreblade or nothing. Come along dear Mr Acreblade. There … we are … there … we are.’

The sapless Mr Acreblade thrust his jaw forward, a sight to be wondered at, for even when relaxed his chin gave the impression of a battering ram; something to prod with; in fact a
weapon
.

‘Dear Mrs Grass,’ he said, ‘you are always so unaccountably kind.’

The attenuate Mr Spill had been beckoning a waiter, but now he suddenly crouched down so that his ear was level with Acreblade’s mouth. He did not face Mr Acreblade as he crouched there, but swivelling his eyes to their eastern extremes, he obtained a very good view of Acreblade’s profile.

‘I’m a bit deaf,’ he said. ‘Will you repeat yourself? Did you say “unaccountably kind”? How droll.’

‘Don’t be a bore,’ said Mrs Grass.

Mr Spill rose to his full working height, which might have been even more impressive were his shoulders not so bent.

‘Dear lady,’ he said. ‘If I am a bore, who made me so?’

‘Well who
did
darling?’

‘It’s a long story –’

‘Then we’ll skip it, shall we?’

She turned herself slowly, swivelling on her pelvis until her small conical breasts, directed at Mr Kestrel, were for all the world like some kind of delicious
threat
. Her husband, Mr Grass, who had seen this manoeuvre at least a hundred times, yawned horribly.

‘Tell me,’ said Mrs Grass, as she let loose upon Mr Kestrel a fresh broadside of naked eroticism, ‘tell me, dear Mr Acreblade, all about
yourself
.’

Mr Acreblade, not really enjoying being addressed in this off-hand manner by Mrs Grass, turned to her husband.

‘Your wife is very special. Very rare. Conducive to speculation. She talks to me through the back of her head, staring at Kestrel the while.’

‘But that is as it should be!’ cried Kestrel, his eyes swimming over with excitement, ‘for life must be various, incongruous, vile and electric. Life must be ruthless and as full of love as may be found in a jaguar’s fang.’

‘I like the way you talk, young man,’ said Grass, ‘but I don’t know
what
you’re saying.’

‘What are you mumbling about?’ said the lofty Spill, bending one of his arms like the branch of a tree and cupping his ear with a bunch of twigs.

‘You are somewhat divine,’ whispered Kestrel, addressing Mrs Grass.

‘I think I spoke to you, dear,’ said Mrs Grass over her shoulder to Mr Acreblade.

‘Your wife is talking to me again,’ said Acreblade to Mr Grass. ‘Let’s hear what she has to say.’

‘You talk about my wife in a very peculiar way,’ said Grass. ‘Does she annoy you?’

‘She would if I lived with her,’ said Acreblade. ‘What about you?’

‘O, but my dear chap, how naïve you are! Being
married
to her I seldom
see
her. What is the point of getting married if one is always bumping into one’s wife? One might as well not be married. Oh no dear fellow, she does what she wants. It is quite a coincidence that we found each other here tonight. You see? And we enjoy it – it’s like first love all over again without the heartache – without the
heart
in fact. Cold love’s the loveliest love of all. So clear, so crisp, so empty. In short, so civilized.’

‘You are out of a legend,’ said Kestrel, in a voice that was so muffled with passion that Mrs Grass was quite unaware that she had been addressed.

‘I’m as hot as a boiled turnip,’ said Mr Spill.

‘But tell me, you horrid man, how do I feel?’ cried Mrs Grass as she saw a newcomer, lacerating her beauty with the edge of her voice. ‘I’m looking so well these days, even my husband said so, and you know what husbands are.’

‘I have no idea what they
are
,’ said the fox-like man newly arrived at her elbow, ‘but you must tell me. What are they? I only know what they become … and perhaps … what drove them to it.’

‘Oh, but you are
clever
. Wickedly clever. But you must tell me all. How
am
I, darling?’

The fox-like man (a narrow-chested creature with reddish hair above his ears, a very sharp nose and a brain far too large for him to manage with comfort) replied:

‘You are feeling, my dear Mrs Grass, in need of something sweet. Sugar, bad music, or something of that kind might do for a start.’

The black-eyed creature, her lips half open, her teeth shining like pearls, her eyes fixed with excited animation on the foxy face before her, clasped her delicate hands together at her conical breasts.