by Mervyn Peake
‘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.’
THIRTY
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.
For a moment she stood motionless, the blood drained from her face, and then she sprang at the young man and buried the nails of her hands in his high cheekbones.
He made no move. Dropping her arms and backing away from him with slow, exhausted steps, she saw him standing perfectly quietly, his face absolutely white save the bright blood on his cheeks that were red like a clown’s.
Her heart beat as she saw him. Behind him the green porous evening was hung like a setting for his thin body, his whiteness, and the hectic wounds on his cheeks.
For a moment she forgot her sudden, inconsistent hatred of his act; forgot his high shoulders; forgot her station as a daughter of the Line – forgot everything and saw only a human whom she had hurt, and a tide of remorse filled her, and half blind with confusion she stumbled towards him her arms outstretched. Quick as an adder he was in her arms – but even at that moment they fell, tripping each other up on the rough ground – fell, their arms about one another. Steerpike could feel her heart pounding against his ribs, her cheek against his mouth but he made no movement with his lips. His mind was racing ahead. For a few moments they lay. He waited for her limbs and body to relax, but she was taut as a bowstring in his arms. Not a move did he make, nor she, until lifting her head from his she saw, not the blood on his cheeks but the dark red colour of his eyes, the high bulge of his shining forehead. It was unreal. It was a dream. There was a kind of horrible novelty about it. Her gush of tenderness had ended, and there she was in the arms of the high-shouldered man. She turned her head again and realized with a start of horror that they were using for their pillow the narrow grassy grave-mound of her old nurse.
‘Oh horrible!’ she screamed. ‘Horrible! horrible!’ and forcing him aside as she scrambled to her feet she bounded like a wild thing into the darkness.
THIRTY-ONE
Sitting at her bedroom window, Irma Prunesquallor awaited the daybreak as though a clandestine meeting of the most hushed and secret kind had been agreed upon between herself and the first morning ray. And suddenly it came – the dawn – a flush of swallow light above a rim of masonry. The day had arrived. The day of the Party, or of what she now called her Soirée.
In spite of her brother’s advice, she had passed a very poor night, her speculative excitement breaking through her sleep over and over again. At last she had lit the long green candles on the table by her bed, and frowning at each in turn had begun to polish yet again the ten long and perfect fingernails, her mouth pursed, her muscles tensed. Then she had slipped on her dressing gown and drawing a chair to the window had waited for the sunrise.
Below her window the quadrangle, as yet untouched by the pale light in the east, was spread like a lake of black water. There was no sound, no movement anywhere. Irma sat motionless, bolt upright, her hands clasped in her lap. Her eyes were fixed upon the sunrise. The candle flames in the room behind her stood balanced upon their wicks like yellow leaves upon tiny black stalks. Not a tremor disturbed their perfect lines – and then, suddenly a cock crew – a barbarous, an imperious sound; primal and unashamed it split the darkness, lifting Irma to her feet as it were on the updraught of its clarion. Her pulses raced. She sprang for the bathroom and within a few moments the hissing, steaming water had filled the bath and Irma, standing in an attitude of excruciating coyness was tossing handfuls of emerald and lilac crystals into the sumptuous depths.
Alfred Prunesquallor, his head thrown back across his pillow, was only half asleep. His brows were drawn together and a strange frown gave to his face an unexpected quality. Had any of his acquaintances seen him lying there they would have wondered whether, after all, they had the slightest inkling as to his real nature. Was this the gay, irrepressible and facetious physician?
He had passed a restless and unhappy night. Confused dreams had kept him turning on his bed, dreams that from time to time gathered themselves into vivid images of terrible clarity.
Struggling for breath and strength, he beat his way through the black moat-water to a drowning Fuchsia no bigger than a child’s doll. But every time he reached her and stretched out his hand she sank beneath the surface, and there in her place were floating bottles half filled with coloured poison. And then he would see her again, calling for help, tiny, dark desperate, and he would flounder after her, his heart hammering and he would waken.
At various moments through the night he could see Steerpike running through the air, his body bent forward, his feet a few inches above the ground but never touching it. And keeping pace with him and immediately below him as though it were his shadow a swarm of rats with their
fangs bared ran in a compact body like one thing, veering as he veered, pausing as he paused, most horrible and intent, filling the landscape of his midnight brain.
He saw the Countess on a great iron tray far out at sea. The moon shone down like a blue lamp, as she fished, with Flay as her frozen rod, attenuate and stiff beyond belief. Between the teeth of the petrified mouth he held a strand of the Countess’s dark red hair which shone like a thread of fire in the blue light.
Effortlessly she held him aloft, her big hand gripping him about both ankles. His clothes were tight about him and he appeared mummified, the thin rigid length of him reaching up stiffly into the stars. With hideous regularity she would pluck at the line and swing aboard another and yet another of her white and sea-drowned cats, and place it tenderly upon the mounting heap of whiteness on the tray.
And then he saw Bellgrove galloping like a horse on all fours with Titus on his back. Through the ravine of terrible darkness and up the slopes of pine-covered mountains he galloped, his white mane blowing out behind his head while Titus, plucking arrow after arrow from an unfailing quiver, let fly at everything in view until, the image dwindling in the Doctor’s brain, he lost them in the dire shade of the night.
And the dead, he saw. Mrs Slagg clutching at her heart as she pattered along a tight rope, and the tears that coursed down her cheeks and fell to the earth far below, sounded like gunshots as they struck the ground.
And Swelter, for an instant, filled the darkness, so that even in his sleep, the Doctor retched to see so vile a volume forcing its boneless way, inch by inch, through a keyhole.
And Sepulchrave and Sourdust danced together upon a bed, leaping and turning in the air, their hands joined, and over their heads were great crude paper masks, so that over Sourdust’s wizened shoulders the flapping face of a painted kitten put out its tongue at the cardboard sunflower through the great black centre of which the eyes of the seventy-sixth earl of Gormenghast glittered like broken glass.