The Illustrated Gormenghast Trilogy (72 page)

‘And what does your “ebbing” consist of?’ said the Doctor, returning his silk handkerchief to his pocket. ‘Is it your heart that’s tidal – or your nerves – or your liver, bless you – or a general weariness of the flesh?’

‘I get tired,’ said Mrs Slagg. ‘I get so tired, sir. I have
everything
to do.’ The poor old lady began to tremble.

‘Fuchsia,’ said the Doctor, ‘come along this evening and I’ll give you a tonic which you must make her take every day. By all that’s amaranthine you really must. Balsam and swansdown, Fuchsia dear, cygnets and the eider bird, she must take it every day – syrup on the nerves, dear, and fingers cool as tombs for her old, old brow.’

‘Nonsense,’ said his sister. ‘I said nonsense, Bernard.’

‘And here,’ continued Doctor Prunesquallor, taking no notice of his sister’s interjection, ‘is Titus. Apparisoned in a rag torn from the sun itself, ha, ha, ha! How vast he is getting! But how solemn.’ He made clucking noises in his cheek. ‘The great day draws near, doesn’t it?’

‘Do you mean the “Earling”?’ said Fuchsia.

‘No less,’ said Prunesquallor, his head on one side.

‘Yes,’ she answered, ‘it is in four days’ time. They are making the raft.’ Then suddenly, as though she could hold back the burden of her thoughts no longer: ‘Oh, Doctor Prune, I must talk to you! May I see you soon? Soon? Don’t use long words with me when we’re alone, dear Doctor, like you sometimes do, because I’m so … well … because I’ve got – I’ve got worries. Doctor Prune.’

Prunesquallor languidly began to make marks in the sand with his long white forefinger. Fuchsia, wondering why he did not reply, dropped her eyes and saw that he had written:

‘9 o’clock tonight Cool Room.’

Then the long hand brushed away the message and at the same moment they were conscious of presences behind them and, turning, they saw the twins, Fuchsia’s identical aunts, standing like purple carvings in the heat.

The Doctor sprang nimbly to his feet and inclined his reedy body in their direction.

They took no notice of his gallantry, staring past him in the direction of Titus, who was sitting quietly at the lake’s edge.

From the sky’s zenith to where he sat upon the strip of sand it seemed that a great backcloth had been let down, for the heat had flattened out the lake, lifted it upright on its sandy rim; lifted the sloping bank where the conifers, with their shadows, made patterns in three shades of green, sun-struck and enormous; and balanced in a jig-saw way upon the ragged edge of this painted wood was a heavy, dead, blue sky, towering to the proscenium arch of the vision’s limit – the curved eyelid. At the base of this staring drop-cloth of raw phenomena he sat, incredibly minute; Titus in a yellow shift, his chin once more in his hand.

Fuchsia felt uncomfortable with her aunts standing immediately behind her. She looked up sideways at them and it was hard to conceive that they would ever be able to move again. Effigies, white-faced, white-handed, and hung with imperial purple. Mrs Slagg was still unaware of their presence, and in the silence a silly impulse to chatter gripped her, and, forgetting her nervousness, she perked her head up at the standing Doctor.

‘You see, excuse me, Doctor sir,’ she said, startling herself by her own bravery, ‘you see, I’ve always been of the energetic system, sir. That’s how I always was since I was a little girl, doing this and that by turns. “What
will
she do next?” they always said. Always.’

‘I am sure they did,’ answered the Doctor, reseating himself on the rug and turning to Nannie Slagg, his eyebrows raised, and a look of incredulous absorption on his pink face.

Mrs Slagg was encouraged. No one had ever before appeared to be so interested in anything she said. Prunesquallor had decided that there was a fair chance of the twins remaining transfixed as they were, for a good half-hour yet, and that to hang around on his elegant legs was neither in his interests, physically, nor in accord with his self-respect, which, although of peculiar brand was nevertheless deep-rooted. They had not acknowledged his gesture. It is true they had not noticed it – but that was not his fault.

‘To hell with the old trouts,’ he trilled to himself. ‘Breastless as wallpaper. By all that’s sentient, my last post-mortem had more go in it than the pair of ’em, turning somersaults.’

As he held forth, inwardly, he was paying, outwardly, the most passionate attention to Mrs Slagg’s every syllable.

‘And it’s always been the same,’ she was quavering, ‘always the same. Responserverity all the time, Doctor; and I’m not a little thing any more.’

‘Of course not, of course not, tut, tut; by all that’s shrewd you speak nobly, Mrs Slagg – very nobly,’ said Prunesquallor, considering at the same time whether there would have been enough room for her in his black bag, without removing the bottles.

‘Because we’re not as young as we
were
, are we, sir?’

Prunesquallor considered this point very carefully. Then he shook his head. ‘What you say has the ring of truth in it,’ he said. ‘In fact, it has every possible kind of ring in it. Ring-ting, my heart’s on the wing, as it were. But tell me, Mrs Slagg – tell me in your own concise way – of Mr Slagg – or am I being indelicate? No – no – it couldn’t be. Do
you
know, Fuchsia? Do you? For myself, I am at sea over Mr Slagg. He is under my keel – utterly under. That’s queer! Utterly under. Or isn’t it? No matter. To put it brutally: was there a – No, no! Finesse,
please
. Who was – No, no! Crude; crude. Forgive me. Of Mr Slagg, dear lady, have you any … kind of – Good gracious me! and I’ve known you all this long while and then
this
teaser comes – crops up like a dove on tenterhooks. There’s a “ring” in that – ha, ha, ha! And what a teaser! Don’t you think so, dear?’

He turned to Fuchsia.

She could not help smiling, but held the old nurse’s hand.

‘When did you marry Mr Slagg, Nannie?’ she asked.

Prunesquallor heaved a sigh. ‘The direct approach,’ he murmured. ‘The apt angle. God bless my circuitous soul, we learn … we learn.’

Mrs Slagg became very proud and rigid from the glass grapes on her hat to her little seat.

‘Mr Slagg,’ she said in a thin, high voice, ‘married
me
.’ She paused, having delivered, as it seemed to her, the main blow; and then, as an afterthought: ‘He died the same night – and no wonder.’

‘Good heavens – alive and dead and halfway between. By all that’s enigmatic, my dear, dear Mrs Slagg, what can you possibly
mean
?’ cried the Doctor, in so high a treble that a bird rattled its way through the leaves of a tree behind them and sped to the west.

‘He had a stroke,’ said Mrs Slagg.

‘We’ve – had – strokes – too,’ said a voice.

They had forgotten the twins and all three turned their startled heads, but they were not in time to see which mouth had opened.

But as they stared Clarice intoned: ‘Both of us, at the same time. It was lovely.’

‘No, it wasn’t,’ said Cora. ‘You forget what a nuisance it became.’

‘Oh,
that
!’ replied her sister. ‘I didn’t mind
that
. It’s when we couldn’t do things with the left side of us that I didn’t like it much.’

‘That’s what I said, didn’t I?’

‘Oh no, you didn’t.’

‘Clarice Groan,’ said Cora, ‘don’t be above yourself.’

‘How do you mean?’ said Clarice, raising her eyes nervously.

Cora turned to the Doctor for the first time. ‘She’s ignorant,’ she said blankly. ‘She doesn’t understand figures of eight.’

Nannie could not resist correcting the Lady Cora, for the Doctor’s attention had infected her with an eagerness to go on talking. A little nervous smile appeared on her lips, however, when she said: ‘You don’t mean “figures of eight”, Lady Cora; you mean “figures of speech”.’

Nannie was so pleased at knowing the expression that the smile remained shuddering in the wrinkles of her lips until she realized that she was being stared at by the aunts.

‘Servant,’ said Cora. ‘Servant …’

‘Yes, my lady. Yes, yes, my lady,’ said Nannie Slagg, struggling to her feet.

‘Servant,’ echoed Clarice, who had rather enjoyed what had happened.

Cora turned to her sister. ‘There’s no need for
you
to say anything.’

‘Why not?’ said Clarice.

‘Because it wasn’t you that she was disobedient with, stupid.’

‘But I want to give her some punishment, too,’ said Clarice.

‘Why?’

‘Because I haven’t given any for such a long time … Have you?’

‘You’ve
never
given any at all,’ said Cora.

‘Oh yes, I have.’

‘Who to?’

‘It doesn’t matter
who
it was. I’ve given it, and that’s that.’

‘That’s what?’

‘That’s the punishment.’

‘Do you mean like our brother’s?’

‘I don’t know. But we mustn’t burn
her
, must we?’

Fuchsia had risen to her feet. To strike her aunts, or even to touch them, would have made her quite ill and it is difficult to know what she was about to do. Her hands were shaking at her sides.

The phrase, ‘But we mustn’t burn
her
, must we?’ had found itself a long shelf at the back of Doctor Prunesquallor’s brain that was nearly empty, and the ridiculous little phrase found squatting drowsily at one end was soon thrown out by the lanky newcomer, which stretched its body along the shelf from the ‘B’ of its head to the ‘e’ of its tail, and turning over had twenty-four winks (in defiance of the usual convention) – deciding upon one per letter and two over for luck; for there was not much time for slumber, the owner of this shelf – of the whole bone house, in fact – being liable to pluck from the most obscure of his grey-cell caves and crannies, let alone the shelves, the drowsy phrases at any odd moment. There was no real peace. Nannie Slagg, with her knuckles between her teeth, was trying to keep her tears back.

Irma was staring in the opposite direction. Ladies did not participate in ‘situations’. They did not
apprehend
them. She remembered that perfectly. It was Lesson Seven. She arched her nostrils until they were positively triumphal and convinced herself that she was not listening very hard.

Dr Prunesquallor, imagining the time to be ripe, leapt to his feet and, swaying like a willow wand that had been stuck in the ground and twanged at its so exquisitely peeled head – uttered a strangely bizarre cry, followed by a series of trills, which can only be stylized by the ‘Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha’, of literary convention, and wound up with:

‘Titus! By all that’s infinitesimal. Lord-bless-my-soul, if he hasn’t been eaten by a shark!’

Which of the five heads turned itself the most rapidly would be difficult to assess. Possibly Nannie was a fraction of a second behind the others, for the double reason that the condition of her neck was far from plastic and because any ejaculation, however dramatic and however much it touched on her immediate concerns, took time to percolate to the correct area of her confused little brain.

However, the word ‘Titus’ was different in that it had before now discovered a short cut through the cells. Her heart had leapt more quickly than her brain and, obeying it involuntarily, before her body knew that it had received any orders through the usual channels, she was upon her feet and had begun to totter to the shore.

She did not trouble to consider whether there could possibly
be
a shark in the fresh water that stretched before her; nor whether the Doctor would have spoken so flippantly about the death of the only male heir; nor whether, if he
had
been swallowed she could do anything about it. All she knew was that she must run to where he used to be.

With her weak old eyes it was only after she had travelled half the distance that she saw him. But this in no way retarded what speed she had. He was still
about
to be eaten by a shark, if he hadn’t already been; and when at last she had him in her arms, Titus was subjected to a bath of tears.

Tottering with her burden, she cast a last apprehensive glance at the glittering reach of water, her heart pounding.

Prunesquallor had begun to take a few loping, toe-pointed paces after her, not having realized how shattering his little joke would be. He had stopped, however, reflecting that since there
was
to be a shark, it would be best for Mrs Slagg to frustrate its evil plans for the sake of her future satisfaction. His only anxiety was that her heart would not be overtaxed. What he had hoped to achieve by his fanciful outcry had materialized, namely the cessation of the ridiculous quarrel and the freeing of Nannie Slagg from further mortification.

The twins were quite at a loss for some while. ‘I saw it,’ said Cora.

Clarice, not to be outdone, had seen it as well. Neither of them was very interested.

Fuchsia turned to the Doctor as Nannie sat down, breathless, on the rust-coloured rug, Titus sliding from her arms.

‘You shouldn’t have done that, Doctor Prune,’ she said. ‘But, oh, Lord, how funny! Did you see Miss Prunesquallor’s face?’ She began to giggle, without mirth in her eyes. And then: ‘Oh, Doctor Prune, I shouldn’t have said that – she’s your sister.’