by Mervyn Peake
He was strange and unappealing, with his high shoulders and his large swollen forehead; but he was slender, and young. Oh, that was what it was! He did not belong to the old, heavy, intolerant world of Barquentine: he belonged to the lightness of life. There was nothing about him that drew her, nothing she loved except his youth and his bravery. He had saved Nannie Slagg from the fire. He had saved Dr Prune from the fire – and oh! he had saved her, too. Where was his swordstick? What had he done with it? He was so silly about it, carrying it with him wherever he went.
The earth was being shovelled into the grave for the ramshackle coffin had been lowered. When the cavity was filled, Barquentine inspected the rectangular patch of disturbed earth. The shovelling had been messy work, the mud clinging to the spades, and Barquentine had shouted at the grave-hands irritably. Now, he scraped some of the unevenly distributed earth into the shallower patches with his foot, balancing at an angle upon his crutch. The mourners were dispersing, and Fuchsia, shambling away from her parents, found herself to the extreme right of the crowd as it moved towards the castle.
‘May I walk with you?’ said Steerpike, sidling up.
‘Yes,’ said Fuchsia. ‘Oh, yes; why shouldn’t you?’ She had never wanted him before, and was surprised at her own words.
Steerpike shot a glance at her as he pulled out his small pipe. When he had lit it, he said:
‘Not much in my line, Lady Fuchsia.’
‘What isn’t?’
‘Earth to earth; ashes to ashes, and all that sort of excitement.’
‘Not much in anyone’s line, I shouldn’t think,’ she replied. ‘I don’t like the idea of dying.’
‘Not when one’s young, anyway,’ said the youth. ‘It’s all right for our friend rattle-ribs: not much life left inside him, anyway.’
‘I like you being disrespectful, sometimes,’ said Fuchsia in a rush. ‘Why must one try and be respectful to old people when they aren’t considerate?’
‘It’s their idea,’ said Steerpike. ‘They like to keep this reverence business going. Without it where’d they be? Sunk. Forgotten. Over the side: for they’ve nothing except their age, and they’re jealous of our youth.’
‘Is that what it is?’ said Fuchsia, her eyes widening. ‘Is it because they are jealous? Do you really think it’s that?’
‘Undoubtedly,’ said Steerpike. ‘They want to imprison us and make us fit into their schemes, and taunt us, and make us work for them. All the old are like that.’
‘Mrs Slagg isn’t like that,’ said Fuchsia.
‘She is the exception,’ said Steerpike, coughing in a strange way with his hand over his mouth. ‘She is the exception that proves the rule.’
They walked on in silence for a few paces. The Castle was looming overhead and they were treading into the shadow of a tower.
‘Where’s your swordstick?’ said Fuchsia. ‘How can you be without it? You don’t know what to do with your hands.’
Steerpike grinned. This was a new Fuchsia. More animated – yet was it animation, or a nervous, tired excitement which gave the unusual lift to her voice?
‘My swordstick,’ said Steerpike, rubbing his chin, ‘my dear little swordstick. I must have left it behind in the rack.’
‘Why?’ said Fuchsia. ‘Don’t you adore it any more?’
‘I do, oh yes! I do,’ Steerpike replied in a comically emphatic voice. ‘I adore it just as much, but I felt it would be safer to leave it behind, because do you know what I should probably have done with it?’
‘What would you have done?’ said Fuchsia.
‘I would have pricked Barquentine’s guts with it,’ said Steerpike; ‘most delicately, here and there, and everywhere, until the old scarecrow was yelling like a cat; and when he had yelled all the breath from his black lungs, I’d have tied him by his one leg to a branch and set fire to his beard. So you see what a good thing it was that I didn’t have my swordstick, don’t you?’
But when he turned to her Fuchsia was gone from his side.
He could see her running through the misty air in a strange, bounding manner; but whether she was running for enjoyment, or in order to rid herself of him, he could not know.
THE TWINS ARE RESTIVE
About a week after Sourdust’s burial, or to be precise, about a week after the burial of all that was left of what had once been Sourdust, along with the calf skull and the ribbons, Steerpike revisited the Aunts for the purpose of selecting a set of rooms on the same floor as their own apartments in the south wing. Since the burning they had become not only very vain, but troublesome. They wished to know when, now that they had carried out the task according to plan, they were to come into their own. Why was not the south wing already alive with pageantry and splendour? Why were its corridors still so dusty and deserted? Had they set fire to their brother’s library for nothing? Where were the thrones they had been promised? Where were the crowns of gold? At each fresh appearance of Steerpike in their apartments these questions were renewed, and on every occasion it became more difficult to leave them mollified and convinced that their days of grievance were drawing to a close.
They were as outwardly impassive, their faces showing no sign at all of what was going on inside their identical bodies, but Steerpike had learned to descry from the almost imperceptible movements which they made with their limp fingers, roughly what was happening in their minds, or to what height their emotions were aroused. There was an uncanniness about the way their white fingers would move simultaneously, indicating that their brains were at that precise moment travelling along the same narrow strip of thought, at the same pace, with the same gait.
The glittering promises with which Steerpike had baited his cruel hook had produced an effect upon them more fundamental than he had anticipated. This concept of themselves as rulers of the south wing, was now uppermost in their minds, and in fact it filled their minds leaving no room for any other notion. Outwardly it showed itself in their conversation which harped upon nothing else. With the flush of success upon them, their fingers became looser, although their faces remained as expressionless as powdered slabs. Steerpike was now reaping the consequences of having persuaded them of their bravery and ingenuity, and of the masterly way in which they, and they alone, could set the library alight. It had been necessary at the time to blow them into tumours of conceit and self-assurance, but now, their usefulness for the moment at an end, it was becoming more and more difficult to deal with their inflation. However, with one excuse or another he managed to persuade them of the inadvisability of rushing a matter of such magnitude as that of raising them to their twin summits. Such things must be achieved with deliberation, cunning and foresight. Their position must improve progressively through a sequence of minor victories, which although each in itself attracted no notice, would build up insidiously, until before the castle was aware of it the South wing would blazon forth in rightful glory. The twins, who had expected the change in their status to be brought about overnight, were bitterly disappointed, and although Steerpike’s arguments to the effect that their power when it came must be something of sure foundation convinced them as he spoke, yet no sooner were they alone than they reverted at once to a condition of chagrin, and Steerpike’s every appearance was the sign for them to air their grievances anew.
On this particular afternoon, as soon as he had entered their room and their childish clamour had started, he cut them short by crying: ‘We shall begin!’
He had lifted his left hand high into the air to silence them, as he shouted. In his right hand he held a scroll of paper. They were standing with their shoulders and hips touching, side by side, their heads forced a little forward. When their loud, flat voices ceased, he continued:
‘I have ordered your thrones. They are being made in secret, but as I have insisted that they are to be beaten from the purest gold they will take some time to complete. I have been sent these designs by the goldsmith, a craftsman without a peer. It is for you, my Ladyships, to choose
. I have no doubt which you will choose, for although they are all three the most consummate works of art, yet with your taste, your flair for proportion, your grasp of minutiae, I feel confident you will select the one which I believe has no rival among the thrones of the world.’
Steerpike had, of course, made the drawings himself, spending several hours longer on them than he had intended, for once he had started he had become interested, and had the Doctor or his sister opened his door in the small hours of this same morning they would have found the high-shouldered boy bending over a table in his room, absorbed; the compasses, protractors and set square neatly placed in a row at the side of the table, the beautifully sharpened pencil travelling along the ruler with cold precision.
Now, as he unrolled the drawings before the wide eyes of the Aunts he handled them deftly, for it pleased him to take care of the fruits of his labours. His hands were clean, the fingers being curiously pointed, and the nails rather longer than is normal.
Cora and Clarice were at his side in an instant. There was no expression in their faces at all. All that could be found there was uncompromisingly anatomical. The thrones stared at the Aunts and the Aunts stared back at the thrones.
‘I have no doubt which one you will prefer, for it is unique in the history of golden thrones. Choose, your Ladyships – choose!’ said Steerpike.
Cora and Clarice pointed simultaneously at the biggest of the three drawings. It almost filled the page.
‘How right you are!’ said Steerpike. ‘How right you are! It was the only choice. I shall be seeing the goldsmith tomorrow and shall advise him of your selection.’
‘I want mine soon,’ said Clarice.
‘So do I,’ said Cora, ‘very soon.’
‘I thought I had explained to you,’ said Steerpike, taking them by their elbows and bringing them towards him – ‘I thought I had explained to you that a throne of hammered gold is not a thing which can be wrought overnight. This man is a craftsman, an artist. Do you want your glory ruined by a makeshift and ridiculous pair of bright yellow sit-upons? Do you want to be the laughing-stock of the Castle, all over again, because you were too impatient? Or are you anxious for Gertrude and the rest of them to stare, open-mouthed with jealousy, at you as you sit aloft like the two purple queens you undoubtedly are? … Everything must be of the best. You have entrusted me to raise you to the status that is your due and right. You must leave it to me. When the hour comes, we shall strike. In the meanwhile it is for us to make of these apartments something unknown to Gormenghast.’
‘Yes,’ said Cora. ‘That’s what I think. They must be wondrous. The rooms must be wondrous.’
‘Yes,’ said Clarice. ‘Because we are. The rooms must be just like us.’ Her mouth fell open, as though the lower jaw had died.
‘But we are the only ones who are worthy. No one must forget that, must they, Cora?’
‘No one,’ said Cora. ‘No one at all.’
‘Exactly,’ said Steerpike, ‘and your first duty will be to recondition the Room of Roots.’ He had glanced at them shrewdly. ‘The roots must be repainted. Even the smallest must be repainted, because there is no other room in Gormenghast that is so wonderful as to be full of roots. Your roots. The roots of your tree.’
To his surprise the twins were not listening to him. They were holding each other about their long barrel-like chests.
‘He made us do it,’ they were saying. ‘He made us burn dear Sepulchrave’s books. Dear Sepulchrave’s books.’
‘HALF-LIGHT’
Meanwhile, the Earl and Fuchsia were sitting together two hundred feet below and over a mile away from Steerpike and the Aunts. His lordship, with his back to a pine tree and his knees drawn up to his chin, was gazing at his daughter with a slithery smile upon his mouth that had once been so finely drawn. Covering his feet and heaped about his slender body on all sides was a cold, dark, undulating palliasse of pine needles, broken here and there with heavy, weary-headed ferns and grey fungi, their ashen surfaces exuding a winter sweat.
A kind of lambent darkness filled the dell. The roof was sky-proof, the branches interlacing so thickly that even the heaviest downpour was stayed from striking through; the methodical drip … drip … drip of the branch-captured rain only fell to the floor of needles several hours after the start of the heaviest storm. And yet a certain amount of reflected daylight filtered through into the clearing, mainly from the East, in which direction lay the shell of the library. Between the clearing and the path that ran in front of the ruin, the trees, although as thick, were not more than thirty to forty yards in depth.
‘How many shelves have you built for your father?’ said the Earl to his daughter with a ghastly smile.
‘Seven shelves, father,’ said Fuchsia. Her eyes were very wide and her hands trembled as they hung at her sides.
‘Three more shelves, my daughter – three more shelves, and then we will put the volumes back.’
‘Yes, father.’
Fuchsia, picking up a short branch, scored across the needled ground three long lines, adding them to the seven which already lay between her father and herself.
‘That’s it, that’s it,’ came the melancholy voice. ‘Now we have space for the Sonian Poets. Have you the books ready – little daughter?’
Fuchsia swung her head up, and her eyes fastened upon her father. He had never spoken to her in that way – she had never before heard that tone of love in his voice. Chilled by the horror of his growing madness, she had yet been filled with a compassion she had never known, but now there was more than compassion within her, there was released, of a sudden, a warm jet of love for the huddled figure whose long pale hand rested upon his knees, whose voice sounded so quiet and so thoughtful. ‘Yes, father, I’ve got the books ready,’ she replied; ‘do you want me to put them on the shelves?’
She turned to a heap of pine cones which had been gathered.
‘Yes, I am ready,’ he replied after a pause that was filled with the silence of the wood. ‘But one by one. One by one. We shall stock three shelves tonight. Three of my long, rare shelves.’
‘Yes, father.’
The silence of the high pines drugged the air.
‘Fuchsia.’
‘What, father?’
‘You are my daughter.’
‘Yes.’
‘And there is Titus. He will be the Earl of Gormenghast. Is that so?’
‘Yes, father.’
‘When I am dead. But do I know you, Fuchsia? Do I know you?’
‘I don’t know – very well,’ she replied; but her voice became more certain now that she perceived his weakness. ‘I suppose we don’t know each other very much.’
Again she was affected by an uprising of love. The mad smile making incongruous every remark which the Earl ventured, for he spoke with tenderness and moderation, had for the moment ceased to frighten her. In her short life she had been brought face to face with so many forms of weirdness that although the uncanny horror of the sliding smile distressed her, yet the sudden breaking of the barriers that had lain between them for so long as she could remember overpowered her fear. For the first time in her life she felt that she was a daughter – that she had a father – of her own. What did she care if he was going mad – saving for his own dear sake? He was hers.
‘My books …’ he said.
‘I have them here, father. Shall I fill up the first long shelf for you?’
‘With the Sonian Poets, Fuchsia.’
‘Yes.’
She picked up a cone from the heap at her side and placed it on the end of the line she had scored in the ground. The Earl watched her very carefully.
‘That is Andrema, the lyricist – the lover – he whose quill would pulse as he wrote and fill with a blush of blue, like a bruised nail. His verses, Fuchsia, his verses open out like flowers of glass, and at their centre, between the brittle petals lies a pool of indigo, translucent and as huge as doom. His voice is unmuffled – it is like a bell, clearl
y ringing in the night of our confusion; but the clarity is the clarity of imponderable depth – depth – so that his lines float on for ever more, Fuchsia – on and on and on, for ever more. That is Andrema … Andrema.’
The Earl, with his eyes on the cone which Fuchsia had placed at the end of the first line, opened his mouth more widely, and suddenly the pines vibrated with the echoes of a dreadful cry, half scream, half laughter.
Fuchsia stiffened, the blood draining from her face. Her father, his mouth still open, even after the scream had died out of the forest, was now upon his hands and knees. Fuchsia tried to force her voice from the dryness of her throat. Her father’s eyes were on her as she struggled, and at last his lips came together and his eyes recovered the melancholy sweetness that she had so lately discovered in them. She was able to say, as she picked up another cone and made as if to place it at the side of ‘Andrema’: ‘Shall I go on with the library, father?’