by Mervyn Peake
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.’
‘Only just,’ said the Doctor; and putting his teeth near Fuchsia’s ear he whispered: ‘She thinks she’s a lady.’ And then he grinned until the very lake seemed to be in danger of engulfment. ‘Oh, dear! the poor thing. Tries so hard, and the more she tries the less she is. Ha! ha! ha! Take it from me, Fuchsia dear, the only ladies are those to whom the idea of whether they are or not never occurs. Her blood’s all right – Irma’s – same as mine, ha, ha, ha! but it doesn’t go by blood. Its equipoise, my Gipsy, equipoise t
hat does it – with a bucketful of tolerance thrown in. Why, bless my inappropriate soul, if I’m not treading on the skirts of the serious. Tut, tut, if I’m not.’
By now they were all sitting upon the rug and between them creating a monumental group of unusual grandeur. The little gusts of air were still leaping through the wood and ruffling the lake. The branches of the trees behind them chafed one another, and their leaves, like a million conspiring tongues, were husky with heresy.
Fuchsia was about to ask what ‘equipoise’ meant when her eye was caught by a movement among the trees on the farther side of the lake, and a moment later she was surprised to see a column of figures threading their way down to the shore, along which they began to move to the north, appearing and disappearing as the great water-growing cedars shrouded or revealed them.
Saving for the foremost figure, they carried loops of rope and the boughs of trees across their shoulders, and excepting the leader they appeared to be oldish men, for they moved heavily.
They were the Raft Makers, and were on their way by the traditional footpath, on the traditional day, to the traditional creek – that heat-hazy indentation of water backed by the crumbling wall and the coppice where the minnows and the tadpoles and the myriad microscopic small-fry of the warm, shallow water were so soon to be disturbed.
It was quite obvious who the leading figure was. There could be no mistaking that nimble, yet shuffling and edgeways-on – that horribly deliberate motivation that was neither walking nor running – both close to the ground as though on the scent, and yet loosely and nimbly above it.
Fuchsia watched him, fascinated. It was not often that Steerpike was to be seen without his knowing it. The Doctor, following Fuchsia’s eyes, was equally able to recognize the youth. His pink brow clouded. He had been cogitating a great deal lately on this and that – this being in the main the inscrutable and somehow ‘foreign’ youth, and that centring for the most part on the mysterious Burning. There had been so strange a crop of enigmas of late. If they had not been of so serious a character Doctor Prunesquallor would have found in them nothing but diversion. The unexpected did so much to relieve the monotony of the Castle’s endless rounds of unwavering procedure; but Death and Disappearance were no tit-bits for a jaded palate. They were too huge to be swallowed, and tasted like bile.
Although the Doctor, with a mind of his own, had positively heterodox opinions regarding certain aspects of the Castle’s life – opinions too free to be expressed in an atmosphere where the woof and warp of the dark place and its past were synonymous with the mesh of veins in the bodies of its denizens – yet he was of the place and was a freak only in that his mind worked in a wide way, relating and correlating his thoughts so that his conclusions were often clear and accurate and nothing short of heresy. But this did not mean that he considered himself to be superior. Oh no. He was not. The blind faith was the pure faith, however muddy the brain. His gem-like conclusions may have been of the first water, but his essence and his spirit were warped in proportion to his disbelief in the value of even the most footling observance. He was no outsider – and the tragedies that had occurred touched him upon the raw. His airy and fatuous manner was deceptive. As he trilled, as he prattled, as he indulged in his spontaneous ‘conceits’, as he gestured, fop-like and grotesque, his magnified eyes skidding to and fro behind the lenses of his glasses, like soap at the bottom of a bath, his brain was often other-where, and these days it was well occupied. He was marshalling the facts at his disposal – his odds and ends of information, and peering at them with the eye of his brain, now from this direction, now from that; now from below, now from above, as he talked, or seemed to listen, by day and by night, or in the evening with his feet on the mantelpiece, a liqueur at his elbow and his sister in the opposite chair.
He glanced at Fuchsia to make sure that she had recognized the distant boy, and was surprised to see a look of puzzled absorption on her dark face, her lips parted a little as though from a faint excitement. By now the crocodile of figures was rounding the bend of the lake away to their left. And then it stopped. Steerpike was moving away from the retainers, to the shore. He had apparently given them an order, for they all sat down among the shore-side pines and watched him as he stripped himself of his clothes and thrust his swordstick, point down, into the muddy bank. Even from so great a distance it could be seen that his shoulders were very hunched and high.
‘By all that’s public,’ said Prunesquallor, ‘so we have a new official, have we? The lakeside augury of things to come – fresh blood in summertime with forty years to go. The curtains part – precocity advances, ha, ha, ha! And what’s he doing now?’
Fuchsia had given a little gasp of surprise, for Steerpike had dived into the lake. A moment before he dived he had waved to them, although as far as they had been able to judge he had not so much as moved his eyes in their direction.
‘What was that?’ said Irma, swivelling her neck about in a most lubricated way. ‘I said, “what was that?”, Bernard. It sounded like a splash; do you hear me, Bernard? I say it sounded like a splash.’
‘That’s why,’ said her brother.
‘“That’s why?” What do you mean, Bernard by “that’s why”? You are so tiresome. I said, you are so tiresome. That’s why what?’
‘That’s why it was like a splash, my butterfly.’
‘But why? Oh, my conscience for a normal brother! Why, Bernard, was-it-like-a-splash?’
‘Only because it happened to be one, peahen,’ he said. ‘It was an authentic, undiluted splash. Ha! ha! ha! An undiluted splash.’
‘Oh!’ cried Mrs Slagg, her fingers plucking at her nether lip, ‘it wasn’t the shark, was it, Doctor sir? Oh, my weak heart, sir! Was it the shark?’
‘Nonsense!’ said Irma. ‘Nonsense, you silly woman! Sharks in Gormenghast Lake! The very idea!’
Fuchsia’s eyes were on Steerpike. He was a strong swimmer and was by now halfway across the lake, the thin white arms obtusely angled at the elbows methodically dipping and emerging.
Cora’s voice said: ‘I can see somebody.’
‘Where?’ said Clarice.
‘In the water.’
‘What? In the lake?’
‘Yes, that’s the only water there is, stupid.’
‘No, it isn’t.’
‘Well, it’s the only water there is that’s near us now.’
‘Oh yes, it’s the only water of that sort.’
‘Can you see him?’
‘I haven’t looked yet.’
‘Well, look now.’
‘Shall I?’
‘Yes. Now.’
‘Oh … I see a man. Do you see a man?’
‘I told you about him. Of course I do.’
‘He’s swimming to me.’
‘Why to you? It might as well be to me.’
‘Why?’
‘Because we’re just the same.’
‘That’s our glory.’
‘And our pride. Don’t forget that.’
‘No, I won’t.’
They stared at the approaching swimmer. His face was most of the time either under water or lying sideways along it to draw breath, and they had no idea that it was Steerpike.
‘Clarice,’ said Cora.
‘Yes.’
‘We are the only ladies present, aren’t we?’
‘Yes. What about it?’
‘Well, we’ll go down to the shore, so that when he arrives we can unbend to him.’
‘Will it hurt?’ said Clarice.
‘Why are you so ignorant of phrases?’ Cora turned her face to her sister’s profile.
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ muttered Clarice.
‘I haven’t time to explain about language,’ said Cora. ‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘Doesn’t it?’
‘No. But this is what does.’
‘Oh.’
‘We are being swum to.’
‘Yes.’
‘So we must receive his
homage on the shore.’
‘Yes … yes.’
‘So we must go and patronize him now.’
‘Now?’
‘Yes, now. Are you ready?’
‘When I get up I’ll be.’
‘Have you finished?’
‘Nearly. Have you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Come on, then.’
‘Where?’
‘Don’t bother me with ignorance. Just walk where I do.’
‘Yes.’
‘Look!’
‘Look!’
Steerpike had found himself in his depth and was standing upright. The water lapped at the base of his ribs, the mud of the lake’s floor oozing between his toes, while he waved his arm over his head to the group, the bright drops falling from them in sparkling strings.
Fuchsia was excited. She loved what he had done. To suddenly see them, to throw off his clothes, to plunge into the deep water and to strike out across the lake to them, and then finally to stand, panting, with the water curling at his narrow wiry waist – was fine, all up on the spur of the moment.
Irma Prunesquallor who had not seen her ‘admirer’ for several weeks gave a shriek as she saw his naked body rising from the lake, and covering her face with her hands she peered between her fingers.
Nannie still couldn’t make out who it was, and months afterwards was still in doubt.
Steerpike’s voice sounded over the shallow water.
‘Well met!’ he shouted, ‘Only just saw you! Lady Fuchsia! good day. It’s delightful to see you again. How is your health? Miss Irma? Excuse my skin. And, Doctor, how’s yours?’