The Illustrated Gormenghast Trilogy (107 page)

The word and the idea had fused into something fire-like. Suddenly the slight and floating enigma of the glade had taken on a sex, had become particularized, had woken in him a sensation of excitement that was new to him. Wide awake, all at once, he was at the same time plunged even deeper into a cloudland of symbols to which he had no key. And she was there – there, ahead of him. He could see, far away, the very forest roof that rustled above her.

The figures that moved ahead of him, Barquentine, his mother, and the men with the little box, were less real than the startling confusion of his heart.

He had come to a halt in a valley filled with mounds. Fuchsia was holding his hand. The crowd was all about him. A figure in a hood was scattering red dust into a little trench. A voice was intoning. The words meant nothing to him. He was adrift.

That same evening, Titus lay wide-eyed in the darkness and stared with unseeing eyes at the enormous shadows of two boys as they fought a mock battle of grotesque dimensions upon an oblong of light cast upon the dormitory wall. And while he gazed abstractedly at the cut and thrust of the shadow-monsters, his sister Fuchsia was crossing to the Doctor’s house.

‘Can I talk to you, Doctor?’ she asked as he opened the door to her. ‘I know it isn’t long since you had to bear with me, and …’ but Prunesquallor, putting his finger to his lips, silenced her and then drew her back into a shadow of the hall, for Irma was opening the door of the sitting-room.

‘Alfred,’ came the cry, ‘what
is
it, Alfred? I said what
is
it?’

‘The merest nothing, my love,’ trilled the Doctor. ‘I must get that hank of ivy torn up by its very roots in the morning.’

‘
What
ivy – I said
what
ivy, you irritating thing,’ she answered. ‘I sometimes wish that you could call a spade a spade, I really do.’

‘Have we one, sweet nicotine?’

‘Have we what?’

‘A spade, for the ivy, my love, the ivy that
will
keep tapping at our front door. By all that’s symbolic, it
will
go on doing it!’

‘Is that what it was?’

Irma relaxed. ‘I don’t remember any ivy,’ she added. ‘But what
are
you cowering in that corner for? It’s not like you, Alfred, to lurk about in the corner like that. Really, if I didn’t know it was you, well really, I’d be quite …’

‘But you’re
not
, are you, my sweet nerve-ending? Of course you’re not. So upstairs with you. By all that moves in rapid circles, I’ve had a seismic sister these last few days, haven’t I?’

‘O Alfred. It
will
be worth it, won’t it? There’s so much to think of and I’m so excited. And so
soon
now.
Our
party!
Our
party!’

‘And that’s why you must go to bed and fill yourself right up with sleep. That is what my sister needs, isn’t it? Of course it is. Sleep … O, the very treacle of it, Irma! So run away my dear. Away with you! Away with you! A … w … a … y!’ He fluttered his hand like a silk handkerchief.

‘Good night, Alfred.’

‘Good night, O thicker-than-water.’

Irma disappeared into the upper darkness.

‘And
now
,’ said the Doctor, placing his immaculate hands on his brittle and elegant knees, and rising at the same time on his toes, so that Fuchsia had the strongest impression that he was about to fall forwards on his speculative and smiling face … ‘and now, my Fuchsia, I think we’ve had enough of the hall, don’t you?’ and he led the girl into his study.

‘Now if you’ll draw the blinds and if I pull up that green arm-chair, we will be comfortable, affable, incredible and almost insufferable in two shakes of a lamb’s tail, won’t we?’ he said. ‘By all that’s unanswerable, we will!’

Fuchsia, pulling at the curtain, felt something give way and a loose sail of velvet hung across the glass.

‘O Doctor Prune I’m sorry – I’m sorry,’ she said, almost in tears.

‘Sorry! Sorry!’ cried the Doctor. ‘How dare you pity me! How dare you humiliate me! You know very well that I can do that sort of thing better than you. I’m an old man; I admit it. Nearly fifty summers have seeped through me. But there’s life in me yet. But
you
don’t think so. No! By all that’s cruel, you don’t. But I’ll show you. Catch me.’ And the Doctor striding like a heron to a further window ripped the long curtain from its runner, and whirling it round himself stood swathed before her like a long green chrysalis, with the pale sharp eager features of his bright face emerging at the top like something from another life.

‘There!’ he said.

A year ago Fuchsia would have laughed until her sides were sore. Even at the moment it was wonderfully funny. But she couldn’t laugh. She knew that he loved doing such a thing. She knew he loved to put her at her ease – and she
had
been put at her ease, for she no longer felt embarrassed, but she also knew that she should be laughing, and she couldn’t
feel
the humour, she could only
know
it. For within the last year she had developed, not naturally, but on a zig-zag course. The emotions and the tags of half-knowledge which came to her, fought and jostled, upsetting one another, so that what was natural to her appeared un-natural, and she lived from minute to minute, grappling with each like a lost explorer in a dream who is now in the arctic, now on the equator, now upon rapids, and now alone on endless tracts of sand.

‘O Doctor,’ she said, ‘thank you. That is very, very kind and funny.’

She had turned her head away, but now she looked up and found he had already disengaged himself of the curtain and was pushing a chair towards her.

‘What is worrying you, Fuchsia?’ he said. They were both sitting down. The dark night stared in at them through the curtainless windows.

She leant forwards and as she did so she suddenly looked older. It was as though she had taken a grip of her mind – to have, in a way, grown up to the span of her nineteen years.

‘Several important things, Doctor Prune,’ she said. ‘I want to ask you about them … if I may.’

Prunesquallor looked up sharply. This was a new Fuchsia. Her tone had been perfectly level. Perfectly adult.

‘Of course you may, Fuchsia. What are they?’

‘The first thing is, what happened to my father, Dr Prune?’

The Doctor leaned back in his chair, as she stared at him he put his hand to his forehead.

‘Fuchsia,’ he said. ‘Whatever you ask I will try to answer. I won’t evade your questions. And you must believe me. What happened to your father, I do not know. I only know that he was very ill – and you remember that as well as I do – just as you remember his disappearance. If anyone alive knows what happened to him, I do not know who that man might be unless it is either Flay, or Swelter who also disappeared at the same time.’

‘Mr Flay is alive, Dr Prune.’

‘No!’ said the Doctor. ‘Why do you say that?’

‘Titus has seen him, Doctor. More than once.’

‘Titus!’

‘Yes, Doctor, in the woods. But it’s a secret. You won’t …’

‘Is he well? Is he able to keep well? What did Titus say about him?’

‘He lives in a cave and hunts for his food. He asked after me. He is very loyal.’

‘Poor old Flay!’ said the Doctor. ‘Poor old faithful Flay. But you mustn’t see him, Fuchsia. It would do nothing but harm. I cannot have you getting into trouble.’

‘But my father,’ cried Fuchsia. ‘You said he might know about my father! He may be alive, Dr Prune. He may be
alive
!’

‘No. No. I don’t believe he is,’ said the Doctor. ‘I don’t believe so, Fuchsia.’

‘But Doctor. Doctor! I must see Flay. He loved me. I want to take him something.’

‘No Fuchsia. You mustn’t go. Perhaps you will see him again – but you will become distressed – more distressed than you are now, if you start escaping from the castle. And Titus also. This is all very wrong. He is not old enough to be so wild and secret. God bless me – what else does he say?’

‘This is all in secret. Doctor.’

‘Yes – yes, Fuchsia. Of course it is.’

‘He has seen something.’

‘Seen something? What sort of thing?’

‘A flying thing.’

The Doctor froze into a carving of ice.

‘A flying thing,’ repeated Fuchsia. ‘I don’t know what he means.’ She leaned back in her chair and clasped her hands. ‘Before Nannie Slagg died,’ she said – her voice falling to a whisper – ‘she talked to me. It was only a few days before she died – and she didn’t seem as nervy as usual, because she talked like she used to talk when she wasn’t worried. She told me about when Titus was born, and when Keda came to nurse him, which I remember myself, and how when Keda went away again to the Outer Dwellings, one of the Carvers made love to her and she had a baby and how the baby wasn’t really like other babies, because of Keda not being married, I mean, but different apart from that, and how there were various rumours about it. The Outer Dwellers wouldn’t have it, she said, because it wasn’t legitimate, and when Keda killed herself the baby was brought up differently as though it was her fault, and when she was a child she lived in a way that made them all hate her and never talked to the other children, but frightened them sometimes and ran across the roofs and down the Mud chimneys and began to spend all her time in the woods. And how the Mud Dwellers hated her and were frightened of her because she was so rapid and kept disappearing and bared her teeth. And Nannie Slagg told me that she left them altogether and they didn’t know where she had gone for a long time, only sometimes they heard her laughing at them at night, and they called her the “Thing”, and Nannie Slagg told me all this and said she is still alive and how she is Titus’ foster sister and when Titus told her of the flying thing in the air I wondered, Dr Prune, whether …’

Fuchsia lifted her eyes and found that the Doctor had risen from his chair and was staring through the window into the darkness where a shooting star was trailing down the sky.

‘If Titus knew I had told you,’ she said in a loud voice, rising to her feet, ‘I would never be forgiven. But I am frightened for him. I don’t want anything to happen to him. He is always staring at nothing and doesn’t hear half I say. And I love him, Dr Prune. That’s what I wanted to tell you.’

‘Fuchsia,’ said the Doctor. ‘It’s very late. I will think about all you have told me. A little at a time, you know. If you tell me everything at once I’ll lose my place, won’t I? But a little at a time. I know there are other things you want to tell me, about this and that and very important things too – but you must wait a day or two and I will try and help you. Don’t be frightened. I will do all I can. What with Flay and Titus and the “Thing” I must do some thinking, so run along to bed and come and see me very soon again. Why bless my wits if it isn’t hours after your bedtime. Away with you!’

‘Good night Doctor.’

‘Good night my dear child.’

A few days later when Steerpike saw Fuchsia emerge from a door in the west wing and make her way across the stubble of what had once been a great lawn, he eased himself out of the shadows of an arch where he had been lurking for over an hour, and taking a roundabout route began to run with his body half doubled, towards the object of Fuchsia’s evening journey.

Across his back, as he ran, was slung a wreath of roses from Pentecost’s flower garden. Arriving, unseen, at the servants’ burial ground a minute or two before Fuchsia, he had time to strike an attitude of grief as he knelt on one knee, his right hand still on the wreath which he was placing on the little weedy grave.

So Fuchsia came upon him.

‘What are
you
doing here?’ Her voice was hardly audible. ‘
You
never loved her.’

Fuchsia turned her eyes to the great wreath of red and yellow roses and then at the few wild flowers which were clasped in her hand.

Steerpike rose to his feet and bowed. The evening was green about them.

‘I did not know her as you did, your ladyship,’ he said. ‘But it struck me as so mean a grave for an old lady to be buried in. I was able to get these roses … and … well …’ (his simulation of embarrassment was exact).

‘But
your
wildflowers!’ he said, removing the wreath from the head of the little mound and placing it at the dusty foot – ‘they are the ones that will please her spirit most – wherever she is.’

‘I don’t know anything about that,’ said Fuchsia. She turned from him and flung her flowers away. ‘It’s all nonsense anyway.’ She turned again and faced him. ‘But
you
,’ she blurted. ‘I didn’t think
you
were sentimental.’

Steerpike had never expected this. He had imagined that she would feel she had found an ally in the graveyard. But a new idea presented itself. Perhaps he had found an ally in
her
. How far was her phrase ‘it’s all nonsense anyway’ indicative of her nature?

‘I have my moods,’ he said and with a single action plucked the great wreath of roses from the foot of the grave and hurled it from him. For a moment the rich roses glowed as they careered through the dark green evening to disappear in the darkness of the surrounding mounds.