Titus Groan

by Mervyn Peake

  ‘My dears,’ he said, fixing them in turn with his magnetic eyes; ‘my dears, how are you? But what need is there to ask? You both look radiant. Lady Clarice, I have seldom seen you look lovelier; and your sister refuses to let you have it all your own way. You refuse utterly, Lady Cora, don’t you? You are about as bridal as I ever remember you. It is a delight to be with you again.’

  The twins stared at him and wriggled, but no expression appeared in their faces.

  After a long silence during which Steerpike had been warming his hands at the blaze Cora said, ‘Do you mean that I’m glorious?’

  ‘That’s not what he said,’ came Clarice’s flat voice.

  ‘Glorious’, said Steerpike, ‘is a dictionary word. We are all imprisoned by the dictionary. We choose out of that vast, paper-walled prison our convicts, the little black printed words, when in truth we need fresh sounds to utter, new enfranchised noises which would produce a new effect. In dead and shackled language, my dears, you are glorious, but oh, to give vent to a brand new sound that might convince you of what I really think of you, as you sit there in your purple splendour, side by side! But no, it is impossible. Life is too fleet for onomatopoeia. Dead words defy me. I can make no sound, dear ladies, that is apt.’

  ‘You could try,’ said Clarice. ‘We aren’t busy.’

  She smoothed the shining fabric of her dress with her long, lifeless fingers.

  ‘Impossible,’ replied the youth, rubbing his chin. ‘Quite impossible. Only believe in my admiration for your beauty that will one day be recognized by the whole castle. Meanwhile, preserve all dignity and silent power in your twin bosoms.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said Cora, ‘we’ll preserve it. We’ll preserve it in our bosoms, won’t we, Clarice? Our silent power.’

  ‘Yes, all the power we’ve got,’ said Clarice. ‘But we haven’t got much.’

  ‘It is coming to you,’ said Steerpike. ‘It is on its way. You are of the blood; who else but you should wield the sceptre? But alone you cannot succeed. For years you have smarted from the insults you have been forced to endure. Ah, how patiently, you have smarted! How patiently! Those days have gone. Who is it that can help you?’ He took a pace towards them and bent forward. ‘Who is it that can restore you: and who will set you on your glittering thrones?’

  The aunts put their arms about one another so that their faces were cheek to cheek, and from this double head they gazed up at Steerpike with a row of four equidistant eyes. There was no reason why there should not have been forty, or four hundred of them. It so happened that only four had been removed from a dead and endless frieze whose inexhaustible and repetitive theme was forever, eyes, eyes, eyes.

  ‘Stand up,’ said Steerpike. He had raised his voice.

  They got to their feet awkwardly and stood before him evil. A sense of power filled Steerpike with an acute enjoyment.

  ‘Take a step forward,’ he said.

  They did so, still holding one another.

  Steerpike watched them for some time, his shoulders hunched against the mantelpiece. ‘You heard me speak,’ he said. ‘You heard my question. Who is it that will raise you to your thrones?’

  ‘Thrones,’ said Cora in a whisper; ‘our thrones.’

  ‘Golden ones,’ said Clarice. ‘That is what we want.’

  ‘That is what you shall have. Golden thrones for Lady Cora and Lady Clarice. Who will give them to you?’

  He stretched forward his hands and, holding each of them firmly by an elbow, brought them forward in one piece to within a foot of himself. He had never gone so far before, but he could see that they were clay in his hands and the familiarity was safe. The dreadful proximity of the identical faces caused him to draw his own head back.

  ‘Who will give you the thrones, the glory and the power?’ he said. ‘Who?’

  Their mouths opened together. ‘You,’ they said. ‘It’s you who’ll give them to us. Steerpike will give them to us.’

  Then Clarice craned her head forward from beside her sister’s and she whispered as though she were telling Steerpike a secret for the first time.

  We’re burning Sepulchrave’s books up,’ she said, ‘the whole of his silly library. We’re doing it – Cora and I. Everything is ready.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Steerpike. ‘Everything is ready.’

  Clarice’s head regained its normal position immediately above her neck, where it balanced itself, a dead thing, on a column, but Cora’s came forward as though to take the place of its counterpart and to keep the machinery working. In the same flat whisper she continued from where her sister had left off:

  ‘All we do is to do what we’ve been told to do.’ Her head came forward another two inches. ‘There isn’t anything difficult. It’s easy to do. We go to the big door and then we find two little pieces of cloth sticking through from the inside, and then –’

  ‘We set them on fire!’ broke in her sister in so loud a voice that Steerpike closed his eyes. Then with a profound emptiness: ‘We’ll do it now,’ said Clarice.

  ‘It’s easy.’

  ‘Now?’ said Steerpike. ‘Oh no, not now. We decided it should be tomorrow, didn’t we? Tomorrow evening.’

  ‘I want to do it now,’ said Clarice. ‘Don’t you, Cora?’

  ‘No,’ said Cora.

  Clarice bit solemnly at her knuckles. ‘You’re frightened,’ she said; ‘frightened of a little bit of fire. You ought to have more pride than that, Cora. I have, although I’m gently manured.’

  ‘ “Mannered” you mean,’ said her sister. ‘You stupid. How ignorant you are. With our blood, too. I am ashamed of our likenesses and always will be, so there!’

  Steerpike brushed an elegant green vase from the mantel with his elbow, which had the effect he had anticipated. The four eyes moved towards the fragments on the floor – the thread of their dialogue was as shattered as the vase.

  ‘A sign!’ he muttered in a low, vibrant voice. ‘A portent! A symbol! The circle is complete. An angel has spoken.’

  The twins stared open-mouthed.

  ‘Do you see the broken porcelain, dear ladies?’ he said. ‘Do you see it?’ They nodded.

  ‘What else is that but the Régime, broken for ever – the bullydom of Gertrude – the stony heart of Sepulchrave – the ignorance, malice and brutality of the House of Groan as it now stands – smashed for ever? It is a signal that your hour is at hand. Give praise, my dears; you shall come unto your splendour.’

  ‘When?’ said Cora. ‘Will it be soon?’

  ‘What about tonight?’ said Clarice. She raised her flat voice to its second floor, where there was more ventilation. ‘What about tonight?’

  ‘There is a little matter to be settled first,’ said Steerpike. ‘One little job to be done. Very simple; very, very simple; but it needs clever people to do it.’ He struck a match.

  In the four lenses of the four flat eyes, the four reflections of a single flame, danced – danced.

  ‘Fire!’ they said. ‘We know all about it. All, all, all.’

  ‘Oh, then, to bed,’ said the youth, speaking rapidly. ‘To bed, to bed, to bed.’

  Clarice lifted a limp hand like a slab of putty to her breast and scratched herself abstractedly. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘Good night.’ And as she moved towards the bedroom door she began to unfasten her dress.

  ‘I’m going too,’ said Cora. ‘Good night.’ She also, as she retired, could be seen unclasping and unhooking herself. Before the door closed behind her she was half unravelled of imperial purple.

  Steerpike filled his pocket with nuts from a china bowl and letting himself out of the room began the descent to the quadrangle. He had had no intention of broaching the subject of the burning, but the aunts had happily proved less excitable than he had anticipated and his confidence in their playing their elementary rôles effectively on the following evening was strengthened.

  As he descended the stone stairs he filled his pipe, and on coming into the mild evening light, his tob
acco smouldering in the bowl, he felt in an amiable mood, and spinning his swordstick he made for the pine wood, humming to himself as he went.

  He had found Fuchsia, and had built up some kind of conversation, although he always found it more difficult to speak to her than to anyone else. First he inquired with a certain sincerity whether she had recovered from the shock. Her cheek was inflamed, and she limped badly from the severe pain in her leg. The Doctor had bandaged her up carefully and had left instructions with Nannie that she must not go out for several days, but she had slipped away when her nurse was out of the room, leaving a scribble on the wall to the effect that she loved her; but as the creature never looked at the wall the message was abortive.

  By the time they had come to the edge of the wood Steerpike was talking airily of any subject that came into his head, mainly for the purpose of building up in her mind a picture of himself as someone profoundly brilliant, but also for the enjoyment of talking for its own sake, for he was in a sprightly mood.

  She limped beside him as they passed through the outermost trees and into the light of the sinking sun. Steerpike paused to remove a stag-beetle from where it clung to the soft bark of a pine.

  Fuchsia went on slowly, wishing she were alone.

  ‘There should be no rich, no poor, no strong, no weak,’ said Steerpike, methodically pulling the legs off the stag-beetle, one by one, as he spoke. ‘Equality is the great thing, equality is everything.’ He flung the mutilated insect away. ‘Do you agree, Lady Fuchsia?’ he said.

  ‘I don’t know anything about it, and I don’t care much,’ said Fuchsia.

  ‘But don’t you think it’s wrong if some people have nothing to eat and others have so much they throw most of it away? Don’t you think it’s wrong if some people have to work all their lives for a little money to exist on while others never do any work and live in luxury? Don’t you think brave men should be recognized and rewarded, and not just treated the same as cowards? The men who climb mountains, or dive under the sea, or explore jungles full of fever, or save people from fires?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Fuchsia again. ‘Things ought to be fair,’ I suppose. But I don’t know anything about it.’

  ‘Yes, you do,’ said Steerpike. ‘When you say “Things ought to be fair” it is exactly what I mean. Things ought to be fair, why aren’t they fair? Because of greed and cruelty and lust for power. All that sort of thing must be stopped.

  ‘Well, why don’t you stop it, then?’ said Fuchsia in a distant voice. She was watching the sun’s blood on the Tower of Flints, and a cloud like a drenched swab, descending, inch by inch, behind the blackening tower.

  ‘I am going to,’ said Steerpike with such an air of simple confidence that Fuchsia turned her eyes to him.

  ‘You’re going to stop cruelty?’ she asked. ‘And greediness, and all those things? I don’t think you could. You’re very clever, but, oh no, you couldn’t do anything like that.’

  Steerpike was taken aback for a moment by this reply. He had meant his remark to stand on its own – a limpid statement of fact – something that he imagined Fuchsia might often turn over in her mind and cogitate upon.

  ‘It’s nearly gone,’ said Fuchsia as Steerpike was wondering how to reassert himself. ‘Nearly gone.’

  ‘What’s nearly gone?’ He followed her eyes to where the circle of the sun was notched with turrets. ‘Oh, you mean the old treacle bun,’ he said. ‘Yes, it will get cold very quickly now.’

  ‘Treacle bun?’ said Fuchsia. ‘Is that what you call it?’ She stopped walking. ‘I don’t think you ought to call it that. It’s not respectful.’ She gazed. As the deaththroes weakened in the sky, she watched with big, perplexed eyes. Then she smiled for the first time. ‘Do you give names to other things like that?’

  ‘Sometimes,’ said Steerpike. ‘I have a disrespectful nature.’

  ‘Do you give people names?’

  ‘I have done.’

  ‘Have you got one for me?’

  Steerpike sucked the end of his swordstick and raised his straw-coloured eyebrows. ‘I don’t think I have,’ he said. ‘I usually think of you as Lady Fuchsia.’

  ‘Do you call my mother anything?’

  ‘Your mother? Yes.’

  ‘What do you call my mother?’

  ‘I call her the old Bunch of Rags,’ said Steerpike.

  Fuchsia’s eyes opened wide and she stood still again. ‘Go away,’ she said.

  ‘That’s not very fair,’ said Steerpike. ‘After all, you asked me.’

  ‘What do you call my father, then? But I don’t want to know. I think you’re cruel,’ said Fuchsia breathlessly, ‘you who said you’d stop cruelty altogether. Tell me some more names. Are they all unkind – and funny?’

  ‘Some other time,’ said Steerpike, who had begun to feel chilly. ‘The cold won’t do your injuries any good. You shouldn’t be out walking at all, Prunesquallor thinks you’re in bed. He sounded very worried about you.’

  They walked on in silence, and by the time they had reached the castle night had descended.

  ‘MEANWHILE’

  The morning of the next day opened drearily, the sun appearing only after protracted periods of half-light, and then only as a pale paper disc, more like the moon than itself, as, for a few moments at a time it floated across some corridor of cloud. Slow, lack-lustre veils descended with almost imperceptible motion over Gormenghast, blurring its countless windows, as with a dripping smoke. The mountain appeared and disappeared a score of times during the morning as the drifts obscured it or lifted from its sides. As the day advanced the gauzes thinned, and it was in the late afternoon that the clouds finally dispersed to leave in their place an expanse of translucence, that stain, chill and secret, in the throat of a lily, a sky so peerless, that as Fuchsia stared into its glacid depths she began unwittingly to break and re-break the flower-stem in her hands.

  When she turned her head away it was to find Mrs Slagg watching her with such a piteous expression that Fuchsia put her arms about her old nurse and hugged her less tenderly than was her wish, for she hurt the wrinkled midget as she squeezed.

  Nannie gasped for breath, her body bruised from the excess of Fuchsia’s burst of affection, and a gust of temper shook her as she climbed excitedly onto the seat of a chair.

  ‘How dare you! How dare you!’ she gasped at last after shaking and wriggling a miniature fist all around Fuchsia’s surprised face. ‘How dare you bully me and hurt me and crush me into so much pain, you wicked thing, you vicious, naughty thing! You, whom I’ve always done everything for. You, whom I washed and brushed and dressed and spoiled and cooked for since you were the size of a slipper. You… you . . .’ The old woman began to cry, her body shaking underneath her black dress like some sort of jerking toy. She let go of the rail of the chair, crushed her fists into her tearful, bloodshot eyes, and, forgetting where she was, was about to run to the door, when Fuchsia jumped forward and caught her from falling. Fuchsia carried her to the bed and laid her down.

  ‘Did I hurt you very much?’

  Her old nurse, lying on the coverlet like a withered doll in black satin, pursed her lips together and waited until Fuchsia, seating herself on the side of the bed, had placed one of her hands within range. Then her fingers crept forward, inch by inch, over the eiderdown, and with a sudden grimace of concentrated naughtiness she smacked Fuchsia’s hand as hard as she was able. Relaxing against the pillow after this puny revenge, she peered at Fuchsia, a triumphant gleam in her watery eyes.

  Fuchsia, hardly noticing the malicious little blow, leant over and suffered herself to be hugged for a few moments.

  ‘Now you must start getting dressed,’ said Nannie Slagg. ‘You must be getting ready for your father’s Gathering, mustn’t you? It’s always one thing or another. “Do this. Do that.” And my heart in the state it is. Where will it all end? And what will you wear today? What dress will look the noblest for the wicked, tempestable thing?’

  ‘You�
��re coming, too, aren’t you?’ Fuchsia said.

  ‘Why, what a thing you are,’ squeaked Nannie Slagg, climbing down over the edge of the bed. ‘Fancy such an ignorous question! I am taking his little LORDSHIP, you big stupid!’

  ‘What! is Titus going, too?’

  ‘Oh, your ignorance,’ said Nannie, ‘ “Is Titus going, too?” she says.’ Mrs Slagg smiled pityingly. ‘Poor, poor, wicked thing! what a querail!’ The old woman gave forth a series of pathetically unconvincing laughs and then put her hands on Fuchsia’s knees excitedly. ‘Of course he’s going,’ she said. ‘The Gathering is for him. It’s about this Birthday Breakfast.’

  ‘Who else is going, Nannie?’

  Her old nurse began to count on her fingers.

  ‘Well, there’s your father,’ she began, placing the tips of her forefingers together and raising her eyes to the ceiling. ‘First of all there’s him, your father . . .’

  As she spoke Lord Sepulchrave was returning to his room after performing the bi-annual ritual of opening the iron cupboard in the armoury, and, with the traditional dagger which Sourdust had brought for the occasion, of scratching on the metal back of the cupboard another half moon, which, added to the long line of similar half moons, made the seven hundred and thirtyseventh to be scored into the iron. According to the temperaments of the deceased Earls of Gormenghast the half moons were executed with precision or with carelessness. It was not certain what significance the ceremony held, for unfortuately the records were lost, but the formality was no less sacred for being unintelligible.

  Old Sourdust had closed the iron door of the ugly, empty cupboard with great care, turning the key in the lock, and but for the fact that while inserting the key a few strands of his beard had gone in with it and been turned and caught, he would have felt the keen professional pleasure that all ritual gave him. It was in vain for him to pull, for not only was he held fast, but the pain to his chin brought tears to his eyes. To bring the key out and the hairs of his beard with it would ruin the ceremony, for it was laid down that the key must remain in the lock for twenty-three hours, a retainer in yellow being posted to guard the cupboard for that period. The only thing to do was to sever the strands with the knife, and this is eventually what the old man did, after which he set fire to the grey tufts of his alienated hairs that protruded from the keyhole like a fringe around the key. These flamed a little, and when the sizzling had ceased Sourdust turned apologetically to find that his Lordship had gone.