by Mervyn Peake
‘Speaking professionally,’ said Doctor Prunesquallor, ‘I should say the face was irregular.’
‘Do you mean it’s ugly?’ said Lord Groan.
‘It is unnatural,’ said Prunesquallor.
‘What is the difference, man,’ said Lord Groan.
‘Sir?’ questioned the doctor.
‘I asked if it was ugly, sir, and you answer that it is unnatural. Why must you hedge?’
‘Sir!’ said Prunesquallor, but as he gave no colour to the utterance, very little could be made of it.
‘When I say “ugly” have the goodness to use the word. Do you understand?’ Lord Groan spoke quietly.
‘I comprehend, sir. I comprehend.’
‘Is the boy hideous,’ persisted Lord Groan as though he wished to thrash the matter out. ‘Have you ever delivered a more hideous child? Be honest.’
‘Never,’ said the doctor. ‘Never, ha, ha, ha, ha. Never. And never a boy with such – er, ha, ha, ha, never a boy with such extraordinary eyes.’
‘Eyes?’ said Lord Groan, ‘what’s wrong with them?’
‘Wrong?’ cried Prunesquallor. ‘Did you say “wrong” your lordship? Have you not seen them?’
‘No, quick, man. Hurry yourself. What is it? What is the matter with my son’s eyes?’
‘They are violet.’
FUCHSIA
As his lordship stared at the doctor another figure appeared, a girl of about fifteen with long, rather wild black hair. She was gauche in movement and in a sense, ugly of face, but with how small a twist might she not suddenly have become beautiful. Her sullen mouth was full and rich – her eyes smouldered.
A yellow scarf hung loosely around her neck. Her shapeless dress was a flaming red.
For all the straightness of her back she walked with a slouch.
‘Come here,’ said Lord Groan as she was about to pass him and the doctor.
‘Yes father,’ she said huskily.
‘Where have you been for the last fortnight, Fuchsia?’
‘Oh, here and there, father,’ she said, staring at her shoes. She tossed her long hair and it flapped down her back like a pirate’s flag. She stood in about as awkward a manner as could be conceived. Utterly unfeminine – no man could have invented it.
‘Here and there?’ echoed her father in a weary voice. ‘What does “here and there” mean? You’ve been in hiding. Where, girl?’
‘’N the libr’y and ’n the armoury, ’n walking about a lot,’ said Lady Fuchsia, and her sullen eyes narrowed. ‘I just heard silly rumours about mother. They said I’ve got a brother – idiots! idiots! I hate them. I haven’t, have I? Have I?’
‘A little brother,’ broke in Doctor Prunesquallor. ‘Yes, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, a minute, infinitesimal, microscopic addition to the famous line is now behind this bedroom door. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, he, he, he! Oh yes! Ha, ha! Oh yes indeed! Very much so.’
‘No!’ said Fuchsia so loudly that the doctor coughed crisply and his lordship took a step forward with his eyebrows drawn together and a sad curl at the corner of his mouth.
‘It’s not true!’ shouted Fuchsia, turning from them and twirling a great lock of black hair round and round her wrist. ‘I don’t believe it! Let me go! Let me go!’
As no one was touching her, her cry was unnecessary and she turned and ran with strange bounds along the corridor that led from the landing. Before she was lost to view, Steerpike could hear her voice shouting from the distance, ‘Oh how I hate! hate! hate! How I hate people! Oh how I hate people!’
All this while Mr Flay had been gazing out of a narrow window in the octagonal room and was preoccupied with certain matters relating to how he could best let Lord Groan know that he, Flay, his servant for over forty years, disapproved of having been put aside as it were at the one moment when a son had been born – at the one moment when he, Flay, would have been invaluable as an ally. Mr Flay was rather hurt about the whole business, and he very much wanted Lord Groan to know this, and yet at the same time it was very difficult to think of a way in which he could tactfully communicate his chagrin to a man quite as sullen as himself. Mr Flay bit his nails sourly. He had been at the window for a much longer time than he had intended and he turned with his shoulders raised, an attitude typical of him and saw young Steerpike, whose presence he had forgotten. He strode over to the boy and catching him by his coat-tails jerked him backwards into the centre of the room. The great picture swung back across the spy-hole.
‘Now,’ he said, ‘back! You’ve seen her door, Swelter’s boy.’
Steerpike, who had been lost in the world beyond the oak partition, was dazed, and took a moment to come to.
‘Back to that loathsome chef?’ he cried at last, ‘oh no! couldn’t!’
‘Too busy to have you here,’ said Flay, ‘too busy, can’t wait.’
‘He’s ugly,’ said Steerpike fiercely.
‘Who?’ said Flay. ‘Don’t stop here talking.’
‘Oh so ugly, he is. Lord Groan said so. The doctor said so. Ugh! So hideous.’
‘Who’s hideous, you kitchen thing,’ said Flay, jerking his head forward grotesquely.
‘Who?’ said Steerpike. ‘The baby. The new baby. They both said so. Most terrible he is.’
‘What’s this?’ cried Flay. ‘What’s these lies all about? Who’ve you heard talking? Who’ve you been listening to? I’ll tear your little ears off, you snippet thing! Where’ve you been? Come here!’
Steerpike, who had determined to escape from the Great Kitchen, was now bent on finding an occupation among those apartments where he might pry into the affairs of those above him.
‘If I go back to Swelter I’ll tell him and all of them what I heard his lordship say and then . . .’
‘Come here!’ said Flay between his teeth, ‘come here or I’ll break your bones. Been agaping, have you? I’ll fix you.’ Flay propelled Steerpike through the entrance at a great pace and halted halfway down a narrow passage before a door. This he unlocked with one of his many keys and thrusting Steerpike inside turned it upon the boy.
‘TALLOW AND BIRDSEED’
Like a vast spider suspended by a metal chord, a candelabrum presided over the room nine feet above the floorboards. From its sweeping arms of iron, long stalactites of wax lowered their pale spilths drip by drip, drip by drip. A rough table with a drawer half open, which appeared to be full of birdseed, was in such a position below the iron spider that a cone of tallow was mounting by degrees at one corner into a lambent pyramid the size of a hat.
The room was untidy to the extent of being a shambles. Everything had the appearance of being put aside for the moment. Even the bed was at an angle, slanting away from the wall and crying out to be pushed back flush against the red wallpaper. As the candles guttered or flared, so the shadows moved from side to side, or up and down the wall, and with those movements behind the bed there swayed the shadows of four birds. Between them vacillated an enormous head. This umbrage was cast by her ladyship, the seventy-sixth Countess of Groan. She was propped against several pillows and a black shawl was draped around her shoulders. Her hair, a very dark red colour of great lustre, appeared to have been left suddenly while being woven into a knotted structure on the top of her head. Thick coils still fell about her shoulders, or clustered upon the pillows like burning snakes.
Her eyes were of the pale green that is common among cats. They were large eyes, yet seemed, in proportion to the pale area of her face, to be small. The nose was big enough to appear so in spite of the expanse that surrounded it. The effect which she produced was one of bulk, although only her head, neck, shoulders and arms could be seen above the bedclothes.
A magpie moving sideways up and down her left forearm, which lay supine upon the bedclothes, pecked intermittently at a heap of grain which lay in the palm of her hand. On her shoulders sat a stonechat, and a huge raven which was asleep. The bed-rail boasted two starlings, a missel-thrush and a small owl. Every now and then a bird would ap
pear between the bars of a small high window which let in less than no light. The ivy had climbed through it from the outside and had begun to send its tendrils down the inner wall itself and over the crimson wallpaper. Although this ivy had choked out what little light might have trickled into the room, it was not strong enough to prevent the birds from finding a way through and from visiting Lady Gertrude at any hour of night or day.
‘That’s enough, that’s enough, that’s enough!’ said the Countess in a deep husky voice, to the magpie. ‘That’s enough for you today, my dear.’ The magpie jumped a few inches into the air and landed again on her wrist and shook his feathers; his long tail tapped on the eiderdown.
Lady Groan flung what remained of the grain across the room and the stonechat hopping from the bed-rail to her head, took off again from that rabous landing ground with a flutter, circled twice around the room steering during his second circuit through the stalactites of shining wax, and landed on the floor beside the grain.
The Countess of Groan dug her elbows into the pillows behind her, which had become flattened and uncomfortable and levered her bulk up with her strong, heavy arms. Then she relaxed again, and spread out her arms to left and right along the bed-rail behind her and her hands drooped from the wrists at either extremity, overhanging the edges of the bed. The line of her mouth was neither sad nor amused, as she gazed abstractedly at the pyramid of wax that was mounting upon the table. She watched each slow drip as it descended upon the blunt apex of the mound, move sluggishly down the uneven side and solidify into a long pulpy petal.
Whether the Countess was thinking deeply or was lost in vacant reverie it would have been impossible to guess. She reclined hugely and motionlessly, her arms extended along the iron rail, when suddenly a great fluttering and scrambling broke into the wax-smelling silence of the room and turning her eyes to the ivy-filled window, fourteen feet from the ground, the Countess without moving her head, could see the leaves part and the white head and shoulders of an albino rook emerge guiltily.
‘Ah-ha,’ she said slowly, as though she had come to a conclusion, ‘so it is you, is it? So it is the truant back again. Where has he been? What has he been doing? What trees has he been sitting in? What clouds has he been flying through? What a boy he is! What a bunch of feathered whiteness. What a bunch of wickedness!’
The rook had been sitting fringed on all sides with the ivy leaves, with his head now on one side, now on the other; listening or appearing to listen with great interest and a certain show of embarrassment, for from the movement that showed itself in the ivy leaves from time to time, the white rook was evidently shifting from foot to foot.
‘Three weeks it is,’ continued the Countess, ‘three weeks I’ve been without him; I wasn’t good enough for him, oh no, not for Master Chalk, and here he is back again, wants to be forgiven! Oh yes! Wants a great treeful of forgiveness, for his heavy old beak and months of absolution for his plumage.’
Then the Countess hoisted herself up in bed again, twisted a strand of her dark hair round a long forefinger, and with her face directed at the doorway, but her eyes still on the bird, said as though to herself and almost inaudibly, ‘Come on then.’ The ivy rustled again, and before that sound was over the bed itself vibrated with the sudden arrival of the white rook.
He stood on the foot-rail, his claws curled around it, and stared at Lady Groan. After a moment or two of stillness the white rook moved his feet up and down on the rail in a treading motion and then, flopping on to the bedclothes at her ladyship’s feet, twisted his head around and pecked at his own tail, the feathers of his neck standing out as he did so, crisply like a ruff. The pecking over he made his way over the undulating terrain of the bed, until within a few inches of her ladyship’s face, when he tilted his big head in a characteristic manner and cawed.
‘So you beg my pardon, do you?’ said Lady Groan, ‘and you think that’s the end of it? No more questions about where you’ve been or where you’ve flown these three long weeks? So that’s it, is it, Master Chalk? You want me to forgive you for old sakes’ sake? Come here with your old beak and rub it on my arm. Come along my whitest one, come along, then. Come along.’ The raven on Lady Groan’s shoulder awoke from his sleep and raised his ethiopian wing an inch or two, sleepily. Then his eyes focused upon the rook in a hard stare. He sat there wide awake, a lock of dark red hair between his feet. The small owl as though to take the place of the raven fell asleep. One of the starlings turned about in three slow paces and faced the wall. The missel-thrush made no motion, and as a candle guttered, a ghoul of shadow from under a tall cupboard dislodged itself and moved across the floorboards, climbed the bed, and crawled halfway across the eiderdown before it returned by the same route, to curl up and roost beneath the cupboard again.
Lady Groan’s gaze had returned to the mounting pyramid of tallow. Her pale eyes would either concentrate upon an object in a remorseless way or would appear to be without sight, vacant, with the merest suggestion of something childish. It was in this abstracted manner that she gazed through the pale pyramid, while her hands, as though working on their own account, moved gently over the breast, head and throat of the white rook.
For some time there was complete silence in the room and it was with something of a shock that a rapping at the panels of her bedroom door awakened Lady Groan from her reverie.
Her eyes now took on the concentrated, loveless, cat-like look.
The birds coming to life at once, flapped simultaneously to the end rail of the bed, where they stood balancing in a long uneven line, each one on the alert, their heads turned towards the door.
‘Who’s that?’ said Lady Groan heavily.
‘It’s me, my lady,’ cried a quavering voice.
‘Who’s that hitting my door?’
‘It’s me with his lordship,’ replied the voice.
‘What?’ shouted Lady Groan. ‘What d’you want? What are you hitting my door for?’
Whoever it was raised her voice nervously and cried, ‘Nannie Slagg, it is. It’s me, my lady; Nannie Slagg.’
‘What d’you want?’ repeated her ladyship, settling herself more comfortably.
‘I’ve brought his Lordship for you to see,’ shouted Nannie Slagg, a little less nervously.
‘Oh, you have, have you? You’ve brought his lordship. So you want to come in, do you? With his lordship.’ There was a moment’s silence. ‘What for? What have you brought him to me for?’
‘For you to see, if you please, my lady,’ replied Nannie Slagg. ‘He’s had his bath.’
Lady Groan relaxed still further into the pillows. ‘Oh, you mean the new one, do you?’ she muttered.
‘Can I come in?’ cried Nannie Slagg.
‘Hurry up then! Hurry up then! Stop scratching at my door. What are you waiting for?’
A rattling at the door handle froze the birds along the iron bed-rail and as the door opened they were all at once in the air, and were forcing their way, one after another through the bitter leaves of the small window.
A GOLD RING FOR TITUS
Nannie Slagg entered, bearing in her arms the heir to the miles of rambling stone and mortar; to the Tower of Flints and the stagnant moat; to the angular mountains and the lime-green river where twelve years later he would be angling for the hideous fishes of his inheritance.
She carried the child towards the bed and turned the little face to the mother, who gazed right through it and said:
‘Where’s that doctor? Where’s Prunesquallor? Put the child down and open the door.’
Mrs Slagg obeyed, and as her back was turned Lady Groan bent forward and peered at the child. The little eyes were glazed with sleep and the candlelight played upon the bald head, moulding the structure of the skull with shifting shade.
‘H’m,’ said Lady Groan, ‘what d’you want me to do with him?’
Nannie Slagg, who was very grey and old, with red rims around her eyes and whose intelligence was limited, gazed vacantly at her ladyship.
‘He’s had his bath,’ she said. ‘He’s just had his bath, bless his little lordship’s heart.’
‘What about it?’ said Lady Groan.
The old nurse picked the baby up dexterously and began to rock him gently by way of an answer.
‘Is Prunesquallor there?’ repeated Lady Groan.
‘Down,’ whispered Nannie, pointing a little wrinkled finger at the floor, ‘d-downstairs: oh yes, I think he is still downstairs taking punch in the Coldroom. Oh dear, yes, bless the little thing.’
Her last remark presumably referred to Titus and not to Doctor Prunesquallor. Lady Groan raised herself in bed and looking fiercely at the open door, bellowed in the deepest and loudest voice, ‘SQUALLOR!’
The word echoed along the corridors and down the stairs, and creeping under the door and along the black rug in the Coldroom, just managed, after climbing the doctor’s body, to find its way into both his ears simultaneously, in a peremptory if modified condition. Modified though it was, it brought Doctor Prunesquallor to his feet at once. His fish eyes swam all round his glasses before finishing at the top, where they gave him an expression of fantastic martyrdom. Running his long, exquisitely formed fingers through his mop of grey hair, he drained his glass of punch at a draught and started for the door, flicking small globules of the drink from his waistcoat.
Before he had reached her room he had begun a rehearsal of the conversation he expected, his insufferable laughter punctuating every other sentence whatever its gist.
‘My lady,’ he said, when he had reached her door and was showing the Countess and Mrs Slagg nothing except his head around the door-post in a decapitated manner, before entering. ‘My lady, ha, ha, he he. I heard your voice downstairs as I er – was –’
‘Tippling,’ said Lady Groan.
‘Ha, ha – how very right you are, how very very right you are, ha, ha, ha, he, as I was, as you so graphically put it, ha, ha, tippling. Down it came, ha, ha – down it came.’