The Illustrated Gormenghast Trilogy (27 page)

‘Oh, my poor heart, how late it’s getting!’ said Nannie, peering anxiously at the sky, and confiding her thoughts to Fuchsia in such a surreptitious way that it might be supposed she was anxious that the firmament should not overhear her. ‘How late it
is
getting, my only, and I must be back with your Mother very soon. I must take her something to drink, the poor huge thing. Oh, no, we mustn’t be long!’

Before them was a large courtyard and at the opposite corner was a three-storied building attached to the main bulk of the castle by a flying buttress. By day it stood out strangely from the ubiquitous grey stone of Gormenghast, for it was built with a hard red sandstone from a quarry that had never since been located.

Fuchsia was very tired. The day had been overcharged with happenings. Now, as the last of the daylight surrendered in the west, she was still awake and beginning, not ending, another experience.

Mrs Slagg was clasping her arm, and as they approached the main doorway, she stopped suddenly and, as was her usual habit when flustered, brought her hand up to her mouth and pulled at her little lower lip, her old watery eyes peering weakly at Fuchsia. She was about to say something, when the sound of footsteps caused her and her two companions to turn and to stare at a figure approaching in the darkness. A faint sound as of something brittle being broken over and over again accompanied his progress towards them.

‘Who is it?’ said Mrs Slagg. ‘Who is it, my only? Oh, how dark it is!’

‘It’s only Flay,’ said Fuchsia. ‘Come on. I’m tired.’ But they were hailed from the gloom.

‘Who?’ cried the hard, awkward voice. Mr Flay’s idiom, if at times unintelligible, was anything but prolix.

‘What do you want, Mr Flay?’ shouted Nannie, much to her own and to Fuchsia’s surprise.

‘Slagg?’ queried the hard voice again. ‘Wanted,’ it added.

‘Who’s wanted?’ Nannie shrilled back, for she felt that Mr Flay was always too brusque with her.

‘Who’s with you?’ barked Flay, who was now within a few yards. ‘Three just now.’

Fuchsia, who had long ago acquired the knack of interpreting the ejaculations of her father’s servant, turned her head around at once and was both surprised and relieved to find that Steerpike had disappeared. And yet, was there a tinge of disappointment as well? She put out her arm and pressed the old nurse against her side.

‘Three just now,’ repeated Flay, who had come up.

Mrs Slagg had also noticed that the boy was missing. ‘Where is he?’ she queried. ‘Where’s the ugly youth?’

Fuchsia shook her head glumly and then turned suddenly on Flay, whose limbs seemed to straggle away into the night. Her weariness made her irritable and now she vented her pent-up emotion upon the dour servant.

‘Go away! go away!’ she sobbed. ‘Who wants you here, you stupid, spiky thing? Who wants you – shouting out “Who’s there?” and thinking yourself so important when you’re only an old thin thing? Go away to my father where you belong, but leave us alone.’ And Fuchsia, bursting into a great exhausted cry, ran up to the emaciated Flay and, throwing her arms about his waist, drenched his waistcoat in her tears.

His hands hung at his sides, for it would not have been right for him to touch the Lady Fuchsia however benevolent his motive, for he was, after all, only a servant although a most important one.

‘Please go now,’ said Fuchsia at last, backing away from him.

‘Ladyship,’ said the servant, after scratching the back of his head. ‘Lordship wants her.’ He jerked his head at the old nurse.

‘Me?’ cried Nannie Slagg, who had been sucking her teeth.

‘You,’ said Flay.

‘Oh, my poor heart! When? When does he want me? Oh, my dear body! What can he want?’

‘Wants you tomorrow,’ replied Flay and, turning about, began to walk away and was soon lost to sight, and a short time afterwards even the sound of his knee joints was out of hearing.

They did not wait any longer, but walked as swiftly as they could to the main door of the house of sandstone, and Fuchsia gave a heavy rap with a door knocker, rubbing with her sleeve at the moisture in her eyes.

As they waited they could hear the sound of a violin.

Fuchsia knocked at the door again, and a few seconds later the music ceased and footsteps approached and stopped. A bolt was drawn back, the door opened upon a strong light, and the Doctor waved them in. Then he closed the door behind them, but not before a thin youth had squeezed himself past the door-post and into the hall where he stood between Fuchsia and Mrs Slagg.

‘Well! well! well! well!’ said the Doctor, flicking a hair from the sleeve of his coat, and flashing his teeth. ‘So you have brought a friend with you, my dear little Ladyship, so you have brought a friend with you – or’ (and he raised his eyebrows) ‘haven’t you?’

For the second time Mrs Slagg and Fuchsia turned about to discover the object of the Doctor’s inquiry, and found that Steerpike was immediately behind them.

He bowed, and with his eye on the Doctor. ‘At your service,’ he said.

‘Ha, ha, ha! but I don’t want
anyone
at my service,’ said Dr Prunesquallor, folding his long white hands around each other as though they were silk scarves. ‘I’d rather have somebody “in” my service perhaps. But not
at
it. Oh, no. I wouldn’t have any service left if every young gentleman who arrived through my door was suddenly
at
it. It would soon be in shreds. Ha, ha, ha! absolutely in shreds.’

‘He’s come,’ said Fuchsia in her slow voice, ‘because he wants to work because he’s clever, so I brought him.’

‘Indeed,’ said Prunesquallor. ‘I have always been fascinated by those who want to work, ha ha. Most absorbing to observe them. Ha, ha, ha! most absorbing and uncanny. Walk along, dear ladies, walk along. My very dear Mrs Slagg, you look a hundred years younger every day. This way, this way. Mind the corner of that chair, my very dear Mrs Slagg, and oh! my dear woman, you
must
look where you’re going, by all that’s circumspect, you really must. Now, just allow me to open this door and then we can make ourselves comfortable. Ha, ha, ha! that’s right, Fuchsia, my dear, prop her up! prop her up!’

So saying, and shepherding them in front of him and at the same time rolling his magnified eyes all over Steerpike’s extraordinary costume, the Doctor at last arrived within his own room and closed the door behind himself sharply with a click. Mrs Slagg was ushered into a chair with soft wine-coloured upholstery, where she looked particularly minute, and Fuchsia into another of the same pattern. Steerpike was waved to a high backed piece of oak, and the Doctor himself set about bringing bottles and glasses from a cupboard let into the wall.

‘What is it to be? What is it to be? Fuchsia, my dear child! what do you fancy?’

‘I don’t want anything, thank you,’ said Fuchsia. ‘I feel like going to sleep, Dr Prune.’

‘Aha! aha! A little stimulant, perhaps. Something to sharpen your faculties, my dear. Something to tide you over until – ha, ha, ha! you are snug within your little bed. What do you think? what do you think?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Fuchsia.

‘Aha! but
I
do.
I
do,’ said the Doctor, and whinnied like a horse; then, pulling back his sleeves so that his wrists were bare, he advanced like some sort of fastidious bird towards the door where he pulled a cord in the wall. Lowering his sleeves again neatly over his cuffs, he waited, on tip-toe, until he heard a sound without, at which he flung open the door, uncovering, as it were, a swarthy-skinned creature in white livery whose hand was raised as though to knock upon the panels. Before the Doctor had said a word Nannie leaned forward in her chair. Her legs, unable to reach the floor, were dangling helplessly.

‘It’s elderberry wine that you love best, isn’t it?’ she queried in a nervous, penetrating whisper to Fuchsia. ‘Tell the Doctor that. Tell him that, at once. You don’t want any stimulant, do you?’

The Doctor tilted his head slightly at the sound but did not turn, merely raising his forefinger in front of the servant’s eyes and wagging it, and his thin, rasping voice gave an order, for a powder to be mixed and for a bottle of elderberry wine to be procured. He closed the door, and, dancing up to Fuchsia, ‘Relax, my dear, relax,’ he said. ‘Let your limbs wander wherever they like, ha, ha, ha, as long as they do not stray
too
far, ha, ha, ha! as long as they don’t stray
too
far. Think of each of them in turn until they’re all as limp as jellyfish, and you’ll be ready to run to the Twisted Wood and back before you know where you are.’

He smiled and his teeth flashed. His mop of grey hair glistened like twine in the strong lamplight. ‘And what for you, Mrs Slagg? What for Fuchsia’s Nannie? A little port?’

Mrs Slagg ran her tongue between her wrinkled lips and nodded as her fingers went to her mouth on which a silly little smile hovered. She watched the Doctor’s every movement as he filled up the wine glass and brought it over to her.

She bowed in an old-fashioned way from her hips as she took the glass, her legs pointing out stiffly in front of her for she had edged herself further back in the chair and might as well have been sitting on a bed.

Then all at once the Doctor was back at Fuchsia’s chair, and bending over her. His hands, wrapped about each other in a characteristic manner, were knotted beneath his chin.

‘I’ve got something for you, my dear; did your nurse tell you?’ His eyes rolled to the side of his glasses giving him an expression of fantastic roguery which on his face would have been, for one who had never met him, to say the least, unsettling.

Fuchsia bent forward, her hands on the red bolster-like arms of the chair.

‘Yes, Dr Prune. What is it, thank you, what is it?’

‘Aha! ha, ha, ha, ha! Aha, ha, ha! It is something for you to wear, ha, ha! If you like it and if it’s not too heavy. I don’t want to fracture your cervical vertebrae, my little lady. Oh no, by all that’s most healthy I wouldn’t care to do that; but I’ll trust you to be careful. You will, won’t you? Ha, ha.’

‘Yes, yes, I will,’ said Fuchsia.

He bent even closer to Fuchsia. ‘Your baby brother has hurt you.
I
know, ha, ha.
I
know,’ the Doctor whispered, and the sound edged between his rows of big teeth, very faintly, but not so faintly as to escape Steerpike’s hearing. ‘I have a stone for your bosom, my dear child, for I saw the diamonds within your tear-ducts when you ran from your mother’s door. These, if they come again, must be balanced by a heavier if less brilliant stone, lying upon your bosom.’

Prunesquallor’s eyes remained quite still for a moment. His hands were still clasped at his chin.

Fuchsia stared. ‘Thank you, Dr Prune,’ she said at last.

The physician relaxed and straightened himself. ‘Ha, ha, ha! Ha, ha, ha!’ he trilled, and then bent forward to whisper again. ‘So I have decided to give you a stone from another land.’

He put his hand into his pocket, but kept it there as he glanced over his shoulder.

‘Who is your friend of the fiery eyes, my Fuchsia? Do you know him well?’

Fuchsia shook her head and stuck her lower lip out as though with instinctive distaste.

The Doctor winked at her, his magnified right eye closing enormously. ‘A little later, perhaps,’ said Prunesquallor, opening his eyelid again like some sort of sea creature, ‘when the night is a little further advanced, a little longer in the molar, ha, ha, ha!’ He straightened himself. ‘When the world has swung through space a further hundred miles or so, ha, ha! then – ah, yes, … then –’ and for the second time he looked knowing and winked. Then he swung round upon his heel.

‘And now,’ he said, ‘what will
you
have? And what, in the name of hosiery, are you wearing?’

Steerpike got to his feet. ‘I am wearing what I am forced to wear until clothes can be found which are more appropriate,’ he said. ‘These rags, although an official uniform, are as absurd upon me as they are insulting. Sir,’ he continued, ‘you asked me what I would take. Brandy, I thank you, sir, brandy.’ Mrs Slagg, staring her poor old eyes practically out of their hot sockets, peered at the Doctor as the speech ended, to hear what he could possibly say after so many words. Fuchsia had not been listening. Something to wear, he had said. Something to lie heavily on her bosom. A stone. Tired as she was she was all excitement to know what it could be. Dr Prunesquallor had always been kind to her, if rather above her, but he had never given her a present before. What colour would the heavy stone be? What would it be? What would it be?

The Doctor was for a moment nonplussed at the youth’s self-assurance, but he did not show it. He simply smiled like a crocodile. ‘Am I mistaken, dear boy, or is that a kitchen jacket you’re wearing?’

‘Not only is this a kitchen jacket, but these are kitchen trousers and kitchen socks and kitchen shoes and everything is kitchen about me, sir, except myself, if you don’t mind me saying so, Doctor.’

‘And what’, said Prunesquallor, placing the tips of his fingers together, ‘are you? Beneath your foetid jacket, which I must say looks amazingly unhygienic even for Swelter’s kitchen. What
are
you? Are you a problem case, my dear boy, or are you a clear-cut young gentleman with no ideas at all, ha, ha, ha?’