The Illustrated Gormenghast Trilogy (49 page)

The flat blur of his wife’s head turned itself towards the scream upon a blurred neck, and he could see the vast wavering profile begin to move away from him, inch by inch, and steer into the thickness beyond, charting its course by the shrill shooting-star of Irma’s cry.

Lord Sepulchrave gripped his hands together convulsively until his knuckles were bloodless and their ten staring crests wavered whitely through the smoke which lay between his hands and his head.

The blood began to beat a tattoo at his temples, and upon his high white brow a few big beads gathered.

He was biting at his lower lip, and his eyebrows were drawn down over his eyes as though he were cogitating upon some academic problem. He knew that no one could see him, for by now the smoke was all but opaque, but he was watching himself. He could see that the position of his arms, and the whole attitude of his body was exaggerated and stiffened. He discovered that his fingers were splayed out in a histrionic gesture of alarm. It was for him to control his members before he could hope to organize the activities in the smoke-filled room. And so he watched and waited for the moment to assert himself, and as he watched he found himself struggling. There was blood on his tongue. He had bitten his wrist. His hands were now grappling with one another and it seemed an eternity before the fingers ceased their deadly, interlocked and fratricidal strangling. Yet his panic could have taken no longer than a few moments, for the echo of Irma’s scream was still in his ears when he began to loosen his hands.

Meanwhile Prunesquallor had reached his sister’s side and had found her bridling her body up in preparation for another scream. Prunesquallor, as urbane as ever, had nevertheless something in his fish-like eyes that might almost be described as determination. One glance at his sister was sufficient to make him realize that to attempt to reason with her would be about as fruitful as to try to christianize a vulture. She was on tip-toe and her lungs were expanded when he struck her across her long white face with his long white hand, the pent breath from her lungs issuing from her mouth, ears and nostrils. There was something of shingle in the sound – of shingle dragged seawards on a dark night.

Dragging her across the room swiftly, her heels scraping the floor, he found a chair, after probing around in the smoke with his delicate feet, and sat his sister in it.

‘Irma!’ he shouted into her ear, ‘my humiliating and entirely unfortunate old string of whitewash, sit where you are! Alfred will do the rest. Can you hear me? Be good now! blood of my blood, be good now, damn you!’

Irma sat quite still as though dead, save for a look of profound wonder in her eyes.

Prunesquallor was on the point of making another effort to locate the origin of the smoke when he heard Fuchsia’s voice high above the coughing that by now was a constant background of noise in the library.

‘Dr Prune! Dr Prune! quickly! Quickly, Dr Prune!’

The Doctor pulled down his cuffs smartly over his wrists, tried to square his shoulders, but met with no success, and then began to pick his way, half running, half walking, towards the door where Fuchsia, Mrs Slagg and Titus had been last seen. When he judged he was about halfway to the door and was clear of the furniture, Prunesquallor began to accelerate his speed. This he did by increasing not only the length of his stride but the height also, so that he was, as it were, prancing through the air, when he was brought to a sudden ruthless halt by a collision with something that felt like an enormous bolster on end.

When he had drawn his face away from the tallow smelling draperies that seemed to hang about him like curtains, he stretched out his hand tentatively and shuddered to feel it come in contact with large fingers.

‘’Squallor?’ came the enormous voice. ‘Is that ’Squallor?’ The mouth of the Countess was opening and shutting within an inch of his left ear.

The Doctor gesticulated eloquently, but his artistry was wasted in the smoke.

‘It
is
. Or rather,’ he continued, speaking even more rapidly than usual – ‘it is
Prunesquallor
, which is, if I may say so, more strictly correct, ha, ha, ha! even in the dark.’

‘Where’s Fuchsia?’ said the Countess. Prunesquallor found that his shoulder was being gripped.

‘By the door,’ said the Doctor, longing to free himself from the weight of her Ladyship’s hand, and wondering, even in the middle of the coughing and the darkness, what on earth the material that fitted around his shoulders so elegantly would look like when the Countess had finished with it. ‘I was on the point of finding her when we met, ha, ha! met, as it were, so palpably, so inevitably.’

‘Quiet, man! quiet!’ said Lady Gertrude, loosening her grasp.

‘Find her for me. Bring her here – and smash a window, ’Squallor, smash a window.’

The Doctor was gone from her in a flash and when he judged himself to be a few feet from the door – ‘Are you there, Fuchsia?’ he trilled.

Fuchsia was just below him, and he was startled to hear her voice come up jerkily through the smoke.

‘She’s ill. Very ill. Quick, Dr Prune, quick! Do something for her.’ The Doctor felt his knees being clutched. ‘She’s down here, Dr Prune. I’m holding her.’

Prunesquallor hitched up his trousers and knelt down at once.

There seemed to be more vibration in the atmosphere in this part of the room, more than could be accounted for by any modicum of air that might have been entering through the keyhole. The coughing was dreadful to hear; Fuchsia’s was heavy and breathless; but the thin, weak, and ceaseless coughing of Mrs Slagg gave the Doctor the more concern. He felt for the old nurse and found her in Fuchsia’s lap. Slipping his hand across her little chicken bosom he found that her heart was the merest flutter. To his left in the darkness there was a mouldy smell, and then the driest series of brick-dust coughs he had ever heard revealed the proximity of Flay, who was fanning the air mechanically with a large book he had clawed out of a nearby shelf. The fissure left in the row of hidden books had filled immediately with the coiling smoke – a tall, narrow niche of choking darkness, a ghastly gap in a row of leather wisdom teeth.

‘Flay,’ said the Doctor, ‘can you hear me, Flay? Where’s the largest window in the room, my man? Quickly now, where is it?’

‘North wall,’ said Flay. ‘High up.’

‘Go and shatter it at once. At once.’

‘No balcony there,’ said Flay. ‘Can’t reach.’

‘Don’t argue! Use what you’ve got in that head of yours. You know the room. Find a missile, my good Flay – find a missile, and break a window. Some oxygen for Mrs Slagg. Don’t you think so? By all the zephyrs, yes! Go and help him, Fuchsia. Find where the window is and break it, even if you have to throw Irma at it, ha, ha, ha! And don’t be alarmed. Smoke, you know, is only smoke: it’s not composed of crocodiles, oh dear no, nothing so tropical. Hurry now. Break the window somehow and let the evening pour itself in – and I will see to dear Mrs Slagg and Titus, ha, ha, ha! Oh dear, yes!’

Flay gripped Fuchsia’s arm, and they moved away into the darkness.

Prunesquallor did what he could to help Mrs Slagg, more by way of assuring her that it would be over in a brace of shakes than through anything scientific. He saw that Titus was able to breathe although wrapped up very tightly. Then he sat back on his heels and turned his head, for an idea had struck him.

‘Fuchsia!’ he shouted, ‘find your father and ask him to sling his jade-cane at the window.’

Lord Sepulchrave, who had just fought down another panic, and had nearly bitten his lower lip in half, spoke in a wonderfully controlled voice immediately after the Doctor had finished piping his message.

‘Where are you, Flay?’ he said.

‘I’m here,’ said Flay from a few feet behind him.

‘Come to the table.’

Flay and Fuchsia moved to the table, feeling for it with their hands.

‘Are you at the table?’

‘Yes, Father,’ said Fuchsia, ‘we’re both here.’

‘Is that you, Fuchsia?’ said a new voice. It was the Countess.

‘Yes,’ said Fuchsia. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Have you seen the warbler?’ answered her mother. ‘Have you seen him?’

‘No,’ said Fuchsia. The smoke was stinging her eyes and the darkness was terror. Like her father, she had choked a score of cries in her throat.

Prunesquallor’s voice rang out again from the far end of the room: ‘Damn the warbler and all its feathered friends! Have you got the missiles, Flay?’

‘Come here, you ’Squallor,’ began the Countess; but she could not continue, for her lungs had filled with black wreaths.

For a few moments there was no one in the room who was capable of speaking and their breathing was becoming momentarily more difficult. At last Sepulchrave’s voice could be distinguished.

‘On the table,’ he whispered – ‘paperweight – brass – on the table. Quick – Flay – Fuchsia – feel for it. Have you found it? – Paperweight – brass.’

Fuchsia’s hands came across the heavy object almost at once, and as they did so the room was lit up with a tongue of flame that sprang into the air among the books on the right of the unused door. It died almost at once, withdrawing itself like the tongue of an adder, but a moment later it shot forth again and climbed in a crimson spiral, curling from left to right as it licked its way across the gilded and studded spines of Sepulchrave’s volumes. This time it did not die away, but gripped the leather with its myriad flickering tentacles while the names of the books shone out in ephemeral glory. They were never forgotten by Fuchsia, those first few vivid titles that seemed to be advertising their own deaths.

For a few moments there was a deadly silence, and then, with a hoarse cry, Flay began to run towards the shelves on the left of the main door. The firelight had lit up a bundle on the floor, and it was not until Flay had picked it up and had carried it to the table that the others were reminded with horror of the forgotten octogenarian – for the bundle was Sourdust. For some time it was difficult for the Doctor to decide whether he were alive or not.

While Prunesquallor was attempting to revive the old man’s breathing as he lay in his crimson rags upon the marble table, Sepulchrave, Fuchsia and Flay took up positions beneath the window, which could be seen with ever growing clarity. Sepulchrave was the first to fling the brass paperweight, but his effort was pitiable, final proof (if any were needed) that he was no man of action, and that his life had not been mis-spent among his books. Flay was the next to try his skill. Although having the advantage of his height, he was no more successful than his Lordship, on account of a superabundance of calcium deposit in his elbow joints.

While this was going on, Fuchsia had begun to climb up the bookshelves, which reached upwards to within about five feet of the window. As she climbed laboriously, her eyes streaming and her heart beating wildly, she scooped the books to the ground in order to find purchase for her hands and feet. It was a difficult climb, the ascent being vertical and the polished shelves too slippery to grip with any certainty.

The Countess had climbed to the balcony, where she had found the wood-warbler fluttering wildly in a dark corner. Plucking out a strand of her dark-red hair she had bound the bird’s wings carefully to its sides, and then after laying its pulsing breast against her cheek, had slipped it between her own neck and the neck of her dress, and allowed it to slide into the capacious midnight regions of her bosom, where it lay quiescent between great breasts, thinking, no doubt, when it had recovered from the terror of the flames, that here, if anywhere, was the nest of nests, softer than moss, inviolate, and warm with drowsy blood.

When Prunesquallor had ascertained beyond doubt that Sourdust was dead, he lifted one of the loose ends of crimson sacking that straggled across the marble table from the ancient shoulders and laid it across the old man’s eyes.

Then he peered over his shoulders at the flames. They had spread in area and now covered about a quarter of the east wall. The heat was fast becoming insufferable. His next glance was directed to the door that had so mysteriously become locked, and he saw that Nannie Slagg, with Titus in her arms, was crouching immediately before the keyhole, the only possible place for them. If the only window could be broken and some form of erection constructed below it, it was just possible that they could climb out in time, though how, in heaven’s name, they were to descend on the far side was another matter. A rope, perhaps. But where was a rope to be found – and for that matter what could the erection be constructed with?

Prunesquallor peered around the room in an effort to catch sight of anything that might be used. He noticed that Irma was full length on the floor, and twitching like a section of conger eel that has been chopped off but which still has ideas of its own. Her beautiful, tightly fitting skirt had become rucked up around her thighs. Her manicured nails were scratching convulsively at the floorboards. ‘Let her twitch,’ he said to himself quickly. ‘We can deal with her later, poor thing.’ Then he turned his eyes again to Fuchsia, who was by now very near the top of the bookcase and was reaching down precariously for her father’s rod with the knob of black jade.

‘Keep steady, my Fuchsia child.’

Fuchsia dimly heard the Doctor’s voice come up to her from below. For a moment everything swam before her eyes, and her right hand which gripped the slippery shelf was shaking. Slowly her eyes cleared. It was not easy for her to swing the rod with her left hand, but she drew her arm back stiffly preparatory to swinging at the window with a single rigid movement.