The Illustrated Gormenghast Trilogy (101 page)

One afternoon of his imprisonment he was interrupted at his hundredth attempt at impaling his jack-knife in the wooden door, at which he flung the weapon in what he imagined was a method peculiar to brigands. He had cried himself to a stop during the morning, for the sun shone through the narrow window-slits and he longed for the wild woods that were so fresh in his mind and for Mr Flay and for Fuchsia.

He was interrupted by a low whistle at one of the narrow windows, and then as he reached it, Fuchsia’s husky whisper:

‘Titus.’

‘Yes.’

‘It’s me.’

‘O, good!’

‘I can’t stay.’

‘Can’t you?’

‘No.’

‘Not for a little, Fuchsia?’

‘No. Got to take your place. Beastly tradition business. Dragging the moat for the Lost Pearls or something. I should be there now.’

‘Oh!’

‘But I’ll come after dark.’

‘O, good!’

‘Can’t you see my hand? I’m reaching as far as I can.’

Titus thrust his arm as far as he could through the window slit of the five-foot wall, and could just touch the tip of her fingers.

‘I must go.’

‘Oh!’

‘You’ll soon be out, Titus.’

The silence of the Lichen Fort was about them like deep water, and their fingers touching might have been the prows of foundered vessels which grazed one another in the subaqueous depths, so huge and vivid and yet unreal was the contact that they made with one another.

‘Fuchsia.’

‘Yes?’

‘I have things to tell you.’

‘Have you?’

‘Yes. Secrets.’

‘Secrets?’

‘Yes, and adventure.’

‘I won’t tell! I won’t ever tell. Nothing you tell me I’ll tell. When I come tonight, or if you like when you’re free, tell me then. It won’t be long.’

Her fingertips left his. He was alone in space.

‘Don’t take your hand away,’ she said after a moment’s pause. ‘Can you feel anything?’

He worked his fingers even further into the darkness and touched a paper object which with difficulty he tipped over towards himself and then withdrew. It was a paper bag of barley sugar.

‘Fuchsia,’ he whispered. But there was no reply. She had gone.

On the last day but one he had an official visitor. The caretaker of the Lichen Fort had unbolted the heavy door and the grotesquely broad, flat feet of the Headmaster, Bellgrove, complete in his zodiac gown, and dog-eared mortar-board, entered with a slow and ponderous tread. He took five or more paces across the weed-scattered earthen floor before he noticed the boy sitting at a table in a corner of the fort.

‘Ah. There you are. There you are, indeed. How are you, my friend?’

‘All right. Thank you, sir.’

‘H’m. Not much light in here, eh, young man? What have you been doing to pass the time away?’

Bellgrove approached the table behind which Titus was standing. His noble, leonine head was weak with sympathy for the child, but he was doing his best to play the rôle of headmaster. He had to inspire confidence. That was one of the things that headmasters had to do. He must be Dignified and Strong. He must evoke Respect. What else had he to be? He couldn’t remember.

‘Give me your chair, young fellow,’ he said in a deep and solemn voice. ‘You can sit on the table, can’t you? Of course you can. I seem to remember being able to do things like that when I was a boy!’

Had he been at all amusing? He gave Titus a sidelong glance in the faint hope that he
had
been, but the boy’s face showed no sign of a smile, as he placed the chair for his headmaster and then sat with his knees crossed on the table. Yet his expression was anything but sullen.

Bellgrove, holding his gown at the height of his shoulders and at the same time both leaning backwards from the hips and thrusting his head forward and downwards so that the blunt end of his long chin rested in the capacious pit of his neck like an egg in an egg-cup, raised his eyes to the ceiling.

‘As your headmaster,’ he said, ‘I felt it my bounden duty,
in loco parentis
, to have a word with you, my boy.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And to see how you were getting along. H’m.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ said Titus.

‘H’m,’ said Bellgrove. There were a few moments of rather awkward silence and then the headmaster, finding that the attitude which he had struck was putting too great a strain upon those muscles employed for its maintenance, sat down upon the chair and began unconsciously to work his long, proud jawbone to and fro, as though to test it for the toothache that had been so strangely absent for over five hours. Perhaps it was the unwonted relief of his long spell of normal health that caused a sudden relaxing of Bellgrove’s body and brain. Or perhaps it was Bellgrove’s innate simplicity, which
sensed
that in this particular situation (where a boy and a Headmaster equally ill at ease with the Adult Mind, sat opposite one another in the stillness) there was a reality, a world apart, a secret place to which they alone had access. Whatever it was, a sudden relaxing of the tension he had felt made itself manifest in a long, wheezing, horse-like sigh, and he stared across at Titus contemplatively, without wondering in the least whether his relaxed, almost
slumped
position in the chair, was of the kind that headmasters adopt. But when he spoke, he had, of course, to frame his sentences in that threadbare, empty way to which he was now a slave. Whatever is felt in the heart or the pit of the stomach, the old habits remain rooted. Words and gestures obey their own dictatorial, unimaginative laws; the ghastly ritual, that denies the spirit.

‘So your old headmaster has come to see you, my boy …’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Titus.

‘… Leaving his classes and his duties to cast his eye on a rebellious pupil. A very naughty pupil. A terrible child who, from what I can remember of his scholastic progress, has little cause to absent himself from the seats of learning.’

Bellgrove scratched his long chin ruminatively.

‘As your headmaster, Titus, I can only say that you make things a little difficult. What am I to do with you? H’m. What indeed? You have been punished. You are
being
punished: so I am glad to say that there is no need for us to trouble any more about
that
side of it; but what am I to say to you
in loco parentis
. I am an old man, you would say, wouldn’t you, my small friend? You would say I was an old man, wouldn’t you?’

‘I suppose so, sir.’

‘And as an old man, I
should
by now be very wise and deep, shouldn’t I, my boy? After all I have long white hair and a long black gown, and that’s a good start, isn’t it?’

‘I don’t know, sir.’

‘Oh, well it
is
, my, boy. You can take it from me. The first thing you must procure if you are anxious to be wise and sagacious is a long black gown, and long white hair, and if possible a long jaw-bone, like your old headmaster’s.’

Titus didn’t think that the Professor was being very funny, but he threw his head back and laughed very loudly indeed, and thumped his hands on the side of his table.

A flush of light illumined the old man’s face. His anxiety fled from his eyes and hid itself where the deep creases and pits that honeycomb the skin of ancient men provided caves and gullies for its withdrawal.

It was so long since anyone had really laughed at anything he had said, and laughed honestly and spontaneously. He turned his big lion head away from the boy so that he could relax his old face in a wide and gentle smile. His lips were drawn apart in the most tender of snarls, and it was some while before he could turn his head about and return his gaze to the boy.

But at once the habit returned, unconsciously, and his decades of school-mastering drew his hands behind his back, beneath his gown, as though there were a magnet in the small of his back: his long chin couched itself in the pit of his neck; the irises of his eyes floated up to the top of the whites, so that in his expression there was something both of the drug-addict and the caricature of a sanctimonious bishop – a peculiar combination and one which generations of urchins had mimicked as the seasons moved through Gormenghast, so that there was hardly a spot in dormitory, corridor, classroom, hall or yard where at one time or another some child had not stood for a moment with his inky hands behind his back, his chin lowered, his eyes cast up to the sky, and, perhaps, an exercise book on top of his head by way of mortar-board.

Titus watched his headmaster. He had no fear of him. But he had no love for him either. That was the sad thing. Bellgrove, eminently lovable, because of his individual weakness, his incompetence, his failure as a man, a scholar, a leader or even as a companion, was nevertheless utterly alone. For the weak, above all, have their friends. Yet his gentleness, his pretence at authority, his palpable humanity were unable, for some reason or other, to function. He was demonstrably the type of venerable and absent-minded professor about whom all the sharp-beaked boys of the world should swarm like starlings in wheeling murmurations – loving him all unconsciously, while they twitted and cried their primordial jests, flung their honey-centred, prickle-covered verbiage to and fro, pulled at the long black thunder-coloured gown, undid with fingers as quick as adders’ tongues the buttons of his braces; pleaded to hear the ticking of his enormous watch of brass and rust red iron, with the verdigris like lichen on the chain; fought between those legs like the trousered stilts of the father of all storks; while the great, corded, limpish hands of the fallen monarch flapped out from time to time, to clip the ears of some more than venturesome child, while far above, the long, pale lion’s head turned its eyes to and fro in a slow, ceremonious rhythm, as though he were a lighthouse whose slowly swivelling beams were diffused and deadened in the sea-mists; and all the while, with the tassel of the mortar-board swinging high above them like the tail of a mule, with the trousers loosening at the venerable haunches, with the cat-calls and the thousand quirks and oddities that grow like brilliant weeds from the no-man’s-land of urchins’ brains – all the while there would be this love like a sub-soil, showing itself in the very fact that they trusted his lovable weakness, wished to be with him because he was like them irresponsible, magnificent with his locks of hair as white as the first page of a new copy-book, and with his neglected teeth, his jaw of pain, his completeness, ripeness, false-nobility, childish temper and childish patience; in a word, that he
belonged
to them; to tease and adore, to hurt and to worship for his very weakness’ sake. For what is more lovable than failure?

But no. None of this happened. None of it. Bellgrove was all this. There was no gap in the long tally of his spineless faults. He was constructed as though expressly for the starlings of Gormenghast. There he was, but no one approached him. His hair was white as snow, but it might as well have been grey or brown or have moulted in the dank of faithless seasons. There seemed to be a blind spot in the mass-vision of the swarming youths.

They looked this great gift-lion in the mouth. It snarled in its weakness, for its teeth were aching. It trod the immemorial corridors. It dozed fitfully at its desk through the terms of sun and ice. And now, it was a Headmaster and lonelier than ever. But there was pride. The claws were blunt, but they were ready. But not so, now. For at the moment his vulnerable heart was swollen with love.

‘My young friend,’ he said, his eyes still on the ceiling of the fort and his chin tucked into the pit of his neck. ‘I propose to talk to you as man to man. Now the thing
is
…’ (he lingered over the last word) … ‘the thing …
is
… what shall we talk
about
?’ He lowered his rather dull eyes and saw that Titus was frowning at him thoughtfully.

‘We
could
, you see, young man, talk of so many things, could we not, as man to man. Or even as boy to boy. H’m. Quite so. But what? That is the paramount consideration – isn’t it?’

‘Yes, sir. I suppose so,’ said Titus.

‘Now, if you are twelve, my boy, and I am eighty-six, let us say, for I think that ought to cover me, then let us take twelve from eighty-six and halve the result. No, no. I won’t make
you
do it because that would be most unfair. Ah yes, indeed it would – for what’s the good of being a prisoner and then being made to do lessons too? Eh? Eh? Might as well not be punished, eh? … Let me see, where were we, where were we? Yes, yes, yes, twelve from eighty-six, that’s about seventy-four, isn’t it? Well, what is half seventy-four? I wonder … h’m, yes, twice three are six, carry one, and twice seven are fourteen … thirty-seven, I do believe. Thirty-seven. And what
is
thirty-seven? Why, it’s just exactly the halfway age between us. So if I tried to be thirty-seven years young – and you tried to be thirty-seven years old – but that would be
very
difficult, wouldn’t it? Because you’ve never been thirty-seven, have you? But then, although your old headmaster has
been
thirty-seven, long ago, he can’t remember a thing about it except that it was somewhere about that time that he bought a bag of glass marbles. O yes he did. And why? Because he became tired of teaching grammar and spelling and arithmetic. O yes, and because he saw how much happier the people were who played marbles than the people were who didn’t. That’s a bad sentence, my boy. So I used to play in the dark after the other young professors were asleep. We had one of the old Gormenghast tapestry-carpets in the room and I used to light a candle and place my marbles on the corners of patterns in the carpet, and in the middle of crimson and yellow flowers. I can remember the carpet perfectly as though it was here in this old fort, and there, every night by the glow of a candle, I would practise until I could flick a marble along the floor so that when it struck another it spun round and round but stayed exactly where it was, my boy, while the one it had struck shot off like a rocket to land at the other end of the room in the centre of a crimson carpet flower (if I was successful), or if not, near enough to couch itself at the next flick. And the sounds of the glass marbles in the still of the night when they struck was like the sound of tiny crystal vases breaking on stone floors – but I am getting too poetic, my boy, aren’t I? And boys don’t like poetry, do they?’