by Mervyn Peake
THE STONE LANES
Mr Flay’s gorge had risen steadily and, as the dreadful minutes passed, he had been filled with a revulsion so consuming that but for the fact that the chef was surrounded by the youths he would have attacked the drunkard. As it was he bared his sand-coloured teeth, and fixed his eyes for a last moment on the cook with an expression of unbelievable menace. He had turned his head away at last and spat, and then brushing aside whoever stood in his path, had made his way with great skeleton strides, to a narrow doorway in the wall opposite that through which he had entered. By the time Swelter’s monologue was dragging to its crapulous close, Mr Flay was pacing onwards, every step taking him another five feet further from the reek and horror of the Great Kitchen.
His black suit, patched on the elbows and near the collar with a greasy sepia-coloured cloth, fitted him badly but belonged to him as inevitably as the head of a tortoise emerging from its shell or the vulture’s from a rubble of feathers belong to that reptile or that bird. His head, parchment coloured and bony, was indigenous to that greasy fabric. It stuck out from the top window of its high black building as though it had known no other residence.
While Mr Flay was pacing along the passages to that part of the castle where Lord Sepulchrave had been left alone for the first time for many weeks, the curator, sleeping peacefully in the Hall of the Bright Carvings, snored beneath the venetian blind. The hammock was still swinging a little, a very little, from the movement caused by Mr Rottcodd’s depositing himself therein directly he had turned the key on Mr Flay. The sun burned through the shutters, made bands of gold around the pedestals that supported the sculpture and laid its tiger stripes across the dusty floorboarding.
The sunlight, as Mr Flay strolled on, still had one finger through the kitchen window, lighting the perspiring stone pillar which was now relieved of its office of supporting the chef for the soak had fallen from the wine-barrel a moment after the disappearance of Mr Flay and lay stretched at the foot of his rostrum.
Around him lay scattered a few small flattened lumps of meat, coated with sawdust. There was a strong smell of burning fat, but apart from the prone bulk of the chef, the Grey Scrubbers under the table, and the gentlemen who were suspended from the beam, there was no one left in the huge, hot, empty hall. Every man and boy who had been able to move his legs had made his way to cooler quarters.
Steerpike had viewed with a mixture of amazement, relief and malignant amusement the dramatic cessation of Mr Swelter’s oratory. For a few moments he had gazed at the wine-spattered form of his overlord spread below him, then glancing around and finding that he was alone he had made for the door through which Mr Flay had passed and was soon racing down the passages turning left and right as he ran in a mad effort to reach the fresh air.
He had never before been through that particular door, but he imagined that he would soon find his way into the open and to some spot where he could be on his own. Turning this way and that he found that he was lost in a labyrinth of stone corridors, lit here and there by candles sunk in their own wax and placed in niches in the walls. In desperation he put his hands to his head as he ran, when suddenly, as he rounded the curve of a wall a figure passed rapidly across the passage before him, neither looking to right or left.
As soon as Mr Flay – for it was his lordship’s servant on his way to the residential apartments – as soon as he had passed from sight, Steerpike peered around the corner and followed, keeping as much as possible in step to hide the sound of his own feet. This was almost impossible, as Mr Flay’s spider-like gait besides being particularly long of stride, had like the slow-march, a time-lag before the ultimate descent of the foot. However, young Steerpike, feeling that here at any rate was his one chance of escaping from these endless corridors, followed as best he could in the hope that Mr Flay would eventually turn into some cool quadrangle or open space where get-away could be effected. At times, when the candles were thirty or forty feet apart, Mr Flay would be lost to view and only the sound of his feet on the flagstones would guide his follower. Then slowly, as his erratic shape approached the next guttering aura he would begin by degrees to become a silhouette, until immediately before the candle he would for a moment appear like an inky scarecrow, a mantis of pitch-black cardboard worked with strings. Then the progression of the lighting would be reversed and for a moment immediately after passing the flame Steerpike would see him quite clearly as a lit object against the depths of the still-to-be-trodden avenues of stone. The grease at those moments shone from the threadbare cloth across his shoulders, the twin vertical muscles of his neck rose out of the tattered collar nakedly and sharply. As he moved forward the light would dim upon his back and Steerpike would lose him, only hearing the cracking of his knee-joints and his feet striking the stones, until the ensuing candle carved him anew. Practically exhausted, first by the unendurable atmosphere of the Great Kitchen and now with this seemingly endless journey, the boy, for he was barely seventeen, sank suddenly to the ground with exhaustion, striking the flags with a thud, his boots dragging harshly on the stone. The noise brought Flay to a sudden halt and he turned himself slowly about, drawing his shoulders up to his ears as he did so. ‘What’s that?’ he croaked, peering into the darkness behind him.
There was no answer. Mr Flay began to retrace his steps, his head forward, his eyes peering. As he proceeded he came into the light of one of the candles in the wall. He approached it, still keeping his small eyes directed into the darkness beyond, and wrenched the candle, with a great substratum of ancient tallow with it, from the wall and with this to help him he soon came across the boy in the centre of the corridor several yards further on.
He bent forward and lowered the great lump of lambent wax within a few inches of Steerpike, who had fallen face downwards and peered at the immobile huddle of limbs. The sound of his footsteps and the cracking of his knee-joints had given place to an absolute silence. He drew back his teeth and straightened himself a little. Then he turned the boy over with his foot. This roused Steerpike from his faintness and he raised himself weakly on one elbow.
‘Where am I?’ he said in a whisper. ‘Where am I?’
‘One of Swelter’s little rats’, thought Flay to himself, taking no notice of the question. ‘One of Swelter’s, eh? One of his striped rats.’ ‘Get up,’ said Mr Flay aloud. ‘What you doing here?’ and he put the candle close to the boy’s face.
‘I don’t know where I am’, said young Steerpike. ‘I’m lost here. Lost. Give me daylight.’
‘What you doing here, I said … what you doing here?’ said Flay. ‘I don’t want Swelter’s boys here. Curse them!’
‘I don’t want to be here. Give me daylight and I’ll go away. Far away.’
‘Away? Where?’
Steerpike had recovered control of his mind, although he still felt hot and desperately tired. He had noticed the sneer in Mr Flay’s voice as he had said ‘I don’t want Swelter’s boys here,’ and so, at Mr Flay’s question ‘Away where?’ Steerpike answered quickly, ‘Oh anywhere, anywhere from that dreadful Mr Swelter.’
Flay peered at him for a moment or two, opening his mouth several times to speak, only to close it again.
‘New?’ said Flay looking expressionlessly through the boy.
‘Me?’ said young Steerpike.
‘You,’ said Flay, still looking clean through the top of the boy’s head. ‘New?’
‘Seventeen years old, sir,’ said young Steerpike, ‘but new to that kitchen.’
‘When?’ said Flay, who left out most of every sentence.
Steerpike, who seemed able to interpret this sort of shorthand talk, answered.
‘Last month. I want to leave that dreadful Swelter,’ he added, replaying his only possible card and glancing up at the candlelit head.
‘Lost, were you?’ said Flay after a pause, but with perhaps less darkness in his tone. ‘Lost in the Stone Lanes, were you? One of Swelter’s little rats, lost in the Stone Lanes, eh?’ and Mr Flay
raised his gaunt shoulders again.
‘Swelter fell like a log,’ said Steerpike.
‘Quite right,’ said Flay, ‘doing honours. What have you done?’
‘Done, sir?’ said Steerpike, ‘when?’
‘What Happiness?’ said Flay, looking like a death’s-head. The candle was beginning to fail. ‘How much Happiness?’
‘I haven’t any happiness,’ said Steerpike.
‘What! no Great Happiness? Rebellion. Is it rebellion?’
‘No, except against Mr Swelter.’
‘Swelter! Swelter! Leave his name in its fat and grease. Don’t talk of that name in the Stone Lanes. Swelter, always Swelter! Hold your tongue. Take this candle. Lead the way, put it in the niche. Rebellion is it? Lead the way, left, left, right, keep to the left, now right … I’ll teach you to be unhappy when a Groan is born … keep on … straight on …’
Young Steerpike obeyed these instructions from the shadows behind him.
‘A Groan is born’, said Steerpike with an inflection of voice which might be interpreted as a question or a statement.
‘Born,’ said Flay. ‘And you mope in the Lanes. With me, Swelter’s boy. Show you what it means. A male Groan. New, eh? Seventeen? Ugh! Never understand. Never. Turn right and left again – again … through the arch. Ugh! A new body under the old stones – one of Swelter’s, too … don’t like him, eh?’
‘No, sir.’
‘H’m,’ said Flay. ‘Wait here.’
Steerpike waited as he was told and Mr Flay, drawing a bunch of keys from his pocket and selecting one with great care as though he were dealing with objects of rarity inserted it into the lock of an invisible door, for the blackness was profound. Steerpike heard the iron grinding in the lock.
‘Here!’ said Flay out of the darkness. ‘Where’s that Swelter boy? Come here.’
Steerpike moved forward towards the voice, feeling with his hands along the wall of a low arch. Suddenly he found himself next to the dank smelling garments of Mr Flay and he put forward his hand and held Lord Groan’s servant by a loose portion of the long jacket. Mr Flay brought down his bony hand suddenly over the boy’s arm, knocking it away and a t’ck, t’ck, t’ck, sounded in the tall creature’s throat, warning him against any further attempts at intimacy.
‘Cat room,’ said Flay, putting his hand to the iron knob of the door.
‘Oh,’ said Steerpike, thinking hard and repeating ‘Cat room’ to fill in time, for he saw no reason for the remark. The only interpretation he could give to the ejaculation was that Flay was referring to him as a cat and asking to be given more room. Yet there had been no irritation in the voice.
‘Cat room,’ said Flay again, ruminatively, and turned the iron doorknob. He opened the door slowly and Steerpike, peering past him, found no longer any need for an explanation.
A room was filled with the late sunbeams. Steerpike stood quite still, a twinge of pleasure running through his body. He grinned. A carpet filled the floor with blue pasture. Thereon were seated in a hundred decorative attitudes, or stood immobile like carvings, or walked superbly across their sapphire setting, interweaving with each other like a living arabesque, a swarm of snow-white cats.
As Mr Flay passed down the centre of the room, Steerpike could not but notice the contrast between the dark rambling figure with his ungainly movements and the monotonous cracking of his knees, the contrast between this and the superb elegance and silence of the white cats. They took not the slightest notice of either Mr Flay or of himself save for the sudden cessation of their purring. When they had stood in the darkness, and before Mr Flay had removed the bunch of keys from his pocket, Steerpike had imagined he had heard a heavy, deep throbbing, a monotonous sea-like drumming of sound, and he now knew that it must have been the pullulation of the tribe.
As they passed through a carved archway at the far end of the room and had closed the door behind them he heard the vibration of their throats, for now that the white cats were once more alone it was revived, and the deep unhurried purring was like the voice of an ocean in the throat of a shell.
‘THE SPY-HOLE’
‘Whose are they?’ asked Steerpike. They were climbing stone stairs. The wall on their right was draped with hideous papers that were peeling off and showed rotting surfaces of chill plaster behind. A mingling of many weird colours enlivened this nether surface, dark patches of which had a submarine and incredible beauty. In another dryer area, where a great sail of paper hung away from the wall, the plaster had cracked into a network of intricate fissures varying in depth and resembling a bird’s-eye view, or map of some fabulous delta. A thousand imaginary journeys might be made along the banks of these rivers of an unexplored world.
Steerpike repeated his question, ‘Whose are they?’ he said.
‘Whose what?’ said Flay, stopping on the stairs and turning round. ‘Still here are you? Still following me?’
‘You suggested that I should,’ said Steerpike.
‘Ch! Ch!’ said Flay, ‘what d’you want, Swelter’s boy?’
‘Nauseating Swelter,’ said Steerpike between his teeth but with one eye on Mr Flay, ‘vile Swelter.’
There was a pause during which Steerpike tapped the iron banisters with his thumb-nail.
‘Name?’ said Mr Flay.
‘My name?’ asked Steerpike.
‘Your name, yes, your name, I know what my name is.’ Mr Flay put a knuckly hand on the banisters preparatory to mounting the stairs again, but waited, frowning over his shoulder, for the reply.
‘Steerpike sir,’ said the boy.
‘Queerpike, eh? eh?’ said Flay.
‘No, Steerpike.’
‘What?’
‘Steerpike. Steerpike.’
‘What for?’ said Flay.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘What for, eh? Two Squeertikes, two of you. Twice over. What for? One’s enough for a Swelter’s boy.’
The youth felt it would be useless to clear up the problem of his name. He concentrated his dark eyes on the gawky figure above him for a few moments and shrugged his shoulders imperceptibly. Then he spoke again, showing no sign of irritation.
‘Whose cats were those, sir? May I ask?’
‘Cats?’ said Flay, ‘who said cats?’
‘The white cats,’ said Steerpike. ‘All the white cats in the Cat room. Who do they belong to?’
Mr Flay held up a finger. ‘My Lady’s,’ he said. His hard voice seemed a part of this cold narrow stairway of stone and iron. ‘They belong to my Lady. Lady’s white cats they are. Swelter’s boy. All hers.’
Steerpike pricked his ears up, ‘Where does she live?’ he said. ‘Are we close to where she lives?’
For answer Mr Flay shot his head forward out of his collar and croaked, ‘Silence! you kitchen thing. Hold your tongue you greasy fork. Talk too much,’ and he straddled up the stairs, passing two landings in his ascent, and then at the third he turned sharply to his left and entered an octagonal apartment where full-length portraits in huge dusty gold frames stared from seven of the eight walls. Steerpike followed him in.
Mr Flay had been longer away from his lordship than he had intended or thought right and it was on his mind that the earl might be needing him. Directly he entered the octagonal room he approached one of the portraits at the far end and pushing the suspended frame a little to one side, revealed a small round hole in the panelling the size of a farthing. He placed his eye to this hole and Steerpike watched the wrinkles of his parchment-coloured skin gather below the protruding bone at the base of the skull, for Mr Flay both had to stoop and then to raise his head in order to apply his eye at the necessary angle. What Mr Flay saw was what he had expected to see.
From his vantage point he was able to get a clear view of three doors in a corridor, the central one belonging to the chamber of her ladyship, the seventy-sixth Countess of Groan. It was stained black and had painted upon it an enormous white cat. The wall of the landing was covered with pictures of
birds and there were three engravings of cacti in bloom. This door was shut, but as Mr Flay watched the doors on either side were being constantly opened and closed and figures moved quickly in and out or up and down the landing, or conversed with many gesticulations or stood with their chins in the curled palms of their hands as though in profound meditation.
‘Here,’ said Flay without turning round.
Steerpike was immediately at Flay’s elbow. ‘Yes?’ he said.
‘Cat door’s hers,’ said Flay removing his eye, and then, stretching his arms out he spread his long fingers to their tips and yawned cavernously.
Young Steerpike glued his eye to the hole, keeping the heavy gold frame from swinging back with his shoulder. All at once he found himself contemplating a narrow-chested man with a shock of grey hair and glasses which magnified his eyes so that they filled the lenses up to their gold rims, when the central door opened, and a dark figure stole forth, closing the door behind him quietly, and with an air of the deepest dejection. Steerpike watched him turn his eyes to the shock-headed man, who inclined his body forward clasping his hands before him. No notice was taken of this by the other, who began to pace up and down the landing, his dark cloak clasped around him and trailing on the floor at his heels. Each time he passed the doctor, for such it was, that gentleman inclined his body, but as before there was no response, until suddenly, stopping immediately before the physician in attendance, he drew from his cape a slender rod of silver mounted at the end with a rough globe of black jade that burned around its edges with emerald fire. With this unusual weapon the mournful figure beat sadly at the doctor’s chest as though to inquire whether there was anyone at home. The doctor coughed. The silver and jade implement was pointed to the floor, and Steerpike was amazed to see the doctor, after hitching his exquisitely creased trousers to a few inches above his ankle, squat down. His great vague eyes swam about beneath the magnifying lenses like a pair of jellyfish seen through a fathom of water. His dark grey hair was brushed out over his eyes like thatch. For all the indignity of his position it was with a great sense of style that he became seated following with his eyes the gentleman who had begun to walk around him slowly. Eventually the figure with the silver rod came to a halt.