The Illustrated Gormenghast Trilogy (39 page)

‘I’m not deaf,’ said Cora.

‘He said we weren’t being honoured enough and we must remember who we are. We’re Lady Clarice and Cora Groan; that’s who we are.’

‘Cora and Clarice’, her sister corrected her, ‘of Gormenghast.’

‘But no one is awed when they see us. He said he’d make them be.’

‘Make them be what, dear?’ Cora had begun to unbend now that she found their thoughts had been identical.

‘Make them be awed,’ said Clarice. ‘That’s what they ought to be. Oughtn’t they, Cora?’

‘Yes; but they won’t do it,’

‘No. That’s what it is,’ said Clarice, ‘although I tried this morning.’

‘What, dear?’ said Cora.

‘I tried this morning, though,’ repeated Clarice.

‘Tried what?’ asked Cora in a rather patronizing voice.

‘You know when I said “I’ll go for a saunter”?’

‘Yes.’ Cora sat down and produced a minute but heavily scented handkerchief from her flat bosom. ‘What about it?’

‘I didn’t go to the bathroom at all.’ Clarice sat down suddenly and stiffly, ‘I took some ink instead –
black
ink.’

‘What for?’

‘I won’t tell you yet, for the time isn’t ripe,’ said Clarice importantly; and her nostrils quivered like a mustang’s. ‘I took the black ink, and I poured it into a jug. There was lots of it. Then I said to myself, what you tell me such a lot, and what I tell you as well, which is that Gertrude is no better than us – in fact, she’s not as good because she hasn’t got a speck of Groan blood in her veins like we have, but only the common sort that’s no use. So I took the ink and I knew what I would do. I didn’t tell you because you might have told me not to, and I don’t know why I’m telling you now because you may think I was wrong to do it; but it’s all over now so it doesn’t matter what you think, dear, does it?’

‘I don’t know yet,’ said Cora rather peevishly.

‘Well, I knew that Gertrude had to be in the Central Hall to receive the seven most hideous beggars of the Outer Dwellings and pour a lot of oil on them at nine o’clock, so I went through the door of the Central Hall at nine o’clock with my jug full of ink, and I walked up to her at nine o’clock, but it was not what I wanted because she had a black dress on.’

‘What do you mean?’ said Cora.

‘Well, I was going to pour the ink all over her dress.’

‘That would be good,
very
good,’ said Cora. ‘Did you?’

‘Yes,’ said Clarice, ‘but it didn’t show because her dress was black, and she didn’t see me pouring it, anyway, because she was talking to a starling.’

‘One of
our
birds,’ said Cora.

‘Yes,’ said Clarice. ‘One of the stolen birds. But the others saw me. They had their mouths open. They saw my decision. But Gertrude didn’t, so my decision was no use. I hadn’t anything else to do and I felt frightened, so I ran all the way back; and now I think I’ll wash out the jug.’

She got up to put her idea into operation when there was a discreet tapping at their door. Visitors were very few and far between and they were too excited for a moment to say ‘Come in.’

Cora was the first to open her mouth and her blank voice was raised more loudly than she had intended:

‘Come in.’

Clarice was at her side. Their shoulders touched. Their heads were thrust forward as though they were peering out of a window.

The door opened and Steerpike entered, an elegant stick with a shiny metal handle under his arm. Now that he had renovated and polished the pilfered swordstick to his satisfaction, he carried it about with him wherever he went. He was dressed in his habitual black and had acquired a gold chain which he wore about his neck. His meagre quota of sandy-coloured hair was darkened with grease, and had been brushed down over his pale forehead in a wide curve.

When he had closed the door behind him he tucked his stick smartly under his arm and bowed.

‘Your Ladyships,’ he said, ‘my unwarranted intrusion upon your privacy, with but the summary knock at the panels of your door as my mediator, must be considered the acme of impertinence were it not that I come upon a serious errand.’

‘Who’s died?’ said Cora.

‘Is it Gertrude?’ echoed Clarice.

‘No one has died,’ said Steerpike, approaching them. ‘I will tell you the facts in a few minutes; but first, my dear Ladyships, I would be most honoured if I were permitted to appreciate your embroideries. Will you allow me to see them?’ He looked at them both in turn inquiringly.

‘He said something about them before; at the Prunesquallors’ it was,’ whispered Clarice to her sister. ‘He said he wanted to see them before. Our embroideries.’

Clarice had a firm belief that as long as she whispered, no matter how loudly, no one would hear a word of what she said, except her sister.

‘I heard him,’ said her sister. ‘I’m not blind, am I?’

‘Which do you want to see first?’ said Clarice. ‘Our needlework or the Room of Roots or the Tree?’

‘If I am not mistaken’, said Steerpike by way of an answer, ‘the creations of your needle are upon the walls around us, and having seen them, as it were, in a flash, I have no choice but to say that I would first of all prefer to examine them more closely, and then if I may, I would be delighted to visit your Room of Roots.’

‘“Creations of our needle”, he said,’ whispered Clarice in her loud, flat manner that filled the room.

‘Naturally,’ said her sister, and shrugged her shoulders again, and turning her face to Steerpike gave to the right-hand corner of her inexpressive mouth a slight twitch upwards, which although it was as mirthless as the curve between the lips of a dead haddock, was taken by Steerpike to imply that she and he were above making such
obvious
comments.

‘Before I begin,’ said Steerpike, placing his innocent-looking swordstick on a table, ‘may I inquire out of my innocence why you ladies were put to the inconvenience of bidding me to enter your room? Surely your footman has forgotten himself. Why was he not at the door to inquire who wished to see you and to give you particulars before you allowed yourselves to be invaded? Forgive my curiosity, my dear Ladyships, but where was your footman? Would you wish me to speak to him?’

The sisters stared at each other and then at the youth. At last Clarice said:

‘We haven’t got a footman.’

Steerpike, who had turned away for this very purpose, wheeled about, and then took a step backwards as though struck.

‘No footman!’ he said, and directed his gaze at Cora.

She shook her head. ‘Only an old lady who smells,’ she said. ‘No footman at all.’

Steerpike walked to the table and, leaning his hands upon it, gazed into space.

‘Their Ladyships Cora and Clarice Groan of Gormenghast have no footman – have no one save an old lady who smells. Where are their servants? Where are their retinues, their swarms of attendants?’ And then in a voice little above a whisper: ‘This must be seen to. This must end.’ With a clicking of his tongue he straightened his back. ‘And now’, he continued in a livelier voice, ‘the needlework is waiting.’

What Steerpike had said, as they toured the walls, began to re-fertilize those seeds of revolt which he had sown at the Prunesquallors’. He watched them out of the corner of his eyes as he flattered their handiwork, and he could see that although it was a great pleasure for them to show their craft, yet their minds were continually returning to the question he had raised. ‘We do it all with our left hands, don’t we, Cora?’ Clarice said, as she pointed to an ugly green-and-red rabbit of intricate needlework.

‘Yes,’ said Cora, ‘it takes a long time because it’s all done like that – with our left hands. Our right arms are starved, you know,’ she said, turning to Steerpike. ‘They’re quite, quite starved.’

‘Indeed, your Ladyship,’ said Steerpike. ‘How is that?’

‘Not only our left arms,’ Clarice broke in, ‘but all down our left-hand sides and our right-hand legs, too. That’s why they’re rather stiff. It was the epileptic fits which we had. That’s what did it and that’s what makes our needlework all the more clever.’

‘And beautiful,’ said Cora.

‘I cannot but agree,’ said Steerpike.

‘But nobody sees them,’ said Clarice. ‘We are left alone. Nobody wants our advice on anything. Gertrude doesn’t take any notice of us, nor does Sepulchrave. You know what we ought to have, don’t you, Cora?’

‘Yes,’ said her sister, ‘I know.’

‘What, then?’ said Clarice. ‘Tell me. Tell me.’

‘Power,’ said Cora.

‘That’s right. Power. That’s the very thing we want.’ Clarice turned her eyes to Steerpike. Then she smoothed the shiny purple of her dress.

‘I rather liked them,’ she said.

Steerpike, wondering where on earth her thoughts had taken her, tilted his head on one side as though reflecting upon the truth in her remark, when Cora’s voice (like the body of a plaice translated into sound) asked:

‘You rather liked
what
?’

‘My convulsions,’ said Clarice earnestly. ‘When my left arm became starved for the first time.
You
remember, Cora, don’t you? When we had our
first
fits? I rather liked them.’

Cora rustled up to her and raised a forefinger in front of her sister’s face. ‘Clarice Groan,’ she said, ‘we finished talking about
that
long ago. We’re talking about Power now. Why can’t you follow what we’re talking about? You are always losing your place. I’ve noticed that.’

‘What about the Room of Roots?’ asked Steerpike with affected gaiety. ‘Why is it called the Room of Roots? I am most intrigued.’

‘Don’t you
know
?’ came their voices.

‘He doesn’t know,’ said Clarice. ‘You see how we’ve been forgotten. He didn’t know about our Room of Roots.’

Steerpike was not kept long in ignorance. He followed the two purple ninepins through the door, and after passing down a short passage, Cora opened a massive door at the far end whose hinges could have done with a gill of oil apiece, and followed by her sister entered the Room of Roots. Steerpike in his turn stepped over the threshold and his curiosity was more than assuaged.

If the name of the room was unusual there was no doubt about its being apt. It was certainly a room of roots. Not of a few simple, separate formations, but of a thousand branching, writhing, coiling, intertwining, diverging, converging, interlacing limbs whose origin even Steerpike’s quick eyes were unable for some time to discover.

He found eventually that the thickening stems converged at a tall, narrow aperture on the far side of the room, through the upper half of which the sky was pouring a grey, amorphous light. It seemed at first as though it would be impossible to stir at all in this convoluting meshwork, but Steerpike was amazed to see that the twins were moving about freely in the labyrinth. Years of experience had taught them the possible approaches to the window. They had already reached it and were looking out into the evening. Steerpike made an attempt at following them, but was soon inextricably lost in the writhing maze. Wherever he turned he was faced with a network of weird arms that rose and fell, dipped and clawed, motionless yet alive with serpentine rhythms.

Yet the roots were dead. Once the room must have been filled with earth, but now, suspended for the most part in the higher reaches of the chamber, the thread-like extremities clawed impotently in the air. Nor was it enough that Steerpike should find a room so incongruously monopolized, but that every one of these twisting terminals should be
hand-painted
was even more astonishing. The various main limbs and their wooden tributaries, even down to the minutest rivulet of root, were painted in their own especial colours, so that it appeared as though seven coloured boles had forced their leafless branches through the window, yellow, red and green, violet and pale blue, coral pink and orange. The concentration of effort needed for the execution of this work must have been considerable, let alone the almost superhuman difficulties and vexations that must have resulted from the efforts to establish, among the labyrinthic entanglements of the finer roots, which tendril belonged to which branch, which branch to which limb, and which limb to which trunk, for only after discovering its source could its correct colour be applied.