Titus Groan

by Mervyn Peake

  ‘But it’s not enough, you argumentary thing. It’s not enough when there’s so much to do. What with your big mother being so cross with me as though I could help your poor father’s disappearance and all the trouble of the food in the kitchen; as though I could help.’

  At the mention of her father Fuchsia closed her eyes.

  She had herself searched – searched. She had grown far older during the last few weeks – older in that her heart had been taxed by greater strains of passion than it had ever felt before. Fear of the unearthly, the ghastly – for she had been face to face with it – the fear of madness and of a violence she suspected. It had made her older, stiller, more apprehensive. She had known pain – the pain of desolation – of having been forsaken and of losing what little love there was. She had begun to fight back within herself and had stiffened, and she began to be conscious of a vague pride; of an awakening realization of her heritage. Her father in disappearing had completed a link in the immemorial chain. She grieved his loss, her breast heavy and aching with the pain of it; but beyond it and at her back she felt for the first time, the mountain-range of the Groans, and that she was no longer free, no longer just Fuchsia, but of the blood. All this was cloud in her. Ominous, magnificent and indeterminate. Something she did not understand. Something which she recoiled from – so incomprehensible in her were its workings. Suddenly she had ceased to be a girl in all save in habits of speech and action. Her mind and heart were older and all things, once so clear, were filled with mist – all was tangled. Nannie repeated again, her dim eyes gazing over the lake: ‘As though I could help all the troubles and the badnesses of people here and there doing what they shouldn’t. Oh, my weak heart! as though it were all my fault.’

  ‘No one says it’s your fault,’ said Fuchsia. ‘You think people are thinking what they don’t. It hasn’t been anything to do with you.’

  ‘It hasn’t, has it – oh, my caution dear, it hasn’t, has it?’ Then her eyes became focused again (as far as they were able). ‘What hasn’t, darling?’

  ‘Never mind,’ said Fuchsia. ‘Look at Titus.’

  Nannie turned her head, disapproving of Fuchsia’s answer as she did so, and saw the little creature in his yellow shift rise to his feet and walk solemnly away, from the great rust-coloured rug and over the hot drab sand, his hands clasped before him.

  ‘Don’t you go and leave us, too!’ cried Nannie Slagg. ‘We can do without that horrid, fat Mr Swelter, but we can’t do without our little Lordship. We can do without Mr Flay and –’

  Fuchsia rose to her knees, ‘we can’t! we can’t! Don’t talk like that – so horribly. Don’t talk of it – you never must. Dear Flay and – but you don’t understand; it’s no good. Oh, what has happened to them?’ She sank back on her heels, her lower lip quivering, knowing that she must not let the old nurse’s thoughtless remarks touch on her open wounds.

  As Mrs Slagg stared open-eyed, both she and Fuchsia were startled by a voice, and turning they saw two tall figures approaching them through the trees – a man – and, could it be? – yes, it was – a woman. It had a parasol. Not that there would have been anything masculine about this second figure, even were it to have left the parasol at home. Far from it. The swaying motion was prodigiously feminine. Her long neck was similar to her brother’s, tactlessly so, as would have been her face had not a fair portion of it been mercifully obscured by her black glasses: but their major dissimilarity was manifest in their pelvic zone. The Doctor (for it was Prunesquallor) showed about as much sign of having a pair of hips as an eel set upon its end, while Irma, in white silk, had gone out of her way, it appeared, to exhibit to their worst advantage (her waist being ridiculously tight) a pair of hips capable of balancing upon their osseous shelves enough bric-a-brac to clutter up a kleptomaniac’s cupboard.

  ‘The top of the morning to you, my dears,’ trilled the Doctor; ‘and when I say “top” I mean the last cubic inch of it that sits, all limpid-like on a crest of ether, ha, ha, ha.’

  Fuchsia was glad to see the Doctor. She liked him, for all his windy verbiage.

  Irma, who had hardly been out of doors since that dreadful day when she disgraced herself at the Burning, was making every effort to re-establish herself as a lady – a lady, it is true, who had lapsed, but a lady nevertheless, and this effort at re-establishment was pathetically ostentatious. Her dresses were cut still lower across her bosom; her peerless, milky skin appearing to cover a couple of perches at least. She made even more play with her hips which swayed when she talked as though, like a great bell, they were regulated and motivated by a desire to sound, for they did all but chime as her sharp, unpleasant voice (so contrasted to the knell her pelvis might have uttered) dictated their figure-of-eight (bird’seye view, cross section) patternations.

  Her long, sharp nose was directed at Fuchsia.

  ‘Dear child,’ said Irma, ‘are you enjoying the delicious breeze, then, dear child? I said are you enjoying the delicious breeze? Of course. Irrefutably and more so, I have no doubt whatever.’ She smiled, but there was no mirth in her smile, the muscles of her face complying only so far as to move in the directions dictated, but refusing to enter into the spirit of the thing – not that there was any.

  ‘Tut tut!’ said her brother in a tone which implied that it was unnecessary to answer his sister’s conventional openings; and he sat down at Fuchsia’s side and flashed her a crocodile smile with gold stoppings.

  ‘I’m glad you’ve come,’ said Fuchsia.

  He patted her on the knee in a friendly staccato way, and then turned to Nannie.

  ‘Mrs Slagg,’ he said, laying great emphasis upon the ‘Mrs’ as though it was some unique prefix, ‘and how are you? How’s the blood-stream, my dear, invaluable little woman? How’s the blood-stream? Come, come, let your doctor know.’

  Nannie edged a little closer to Fuchsia, who sat between them, and peered at the Doctor around her shoulder.

  ‘It’s quite comfortable, sir… I think, sir, thank you,’ she said.

  ‘Aha!’ said Prunesquallor, stroking his smooth chin, ‘a comfortable stream, is it? Aha! v-e-r-y good. V-e-r-y good. Dawdling lazily ’twixt hill and hill, no doubt. Meandering through groves of bone, threading the tissues and giving what sustenance it can to your dear old body, Mrs Slagg. I am so glad. But in yourself – right deep down in yourself – how do you feel? Carnally speaking, are you at peace – from the dear grey hairs of your head to the patter of your little feet – are you at peace?’

  ‘What does he mean, dear?’ said poor Mrs Slagg, clutching Fuchsia’s arm.

  ‘Oh, my poor heart, what does the Doctor mean?’

  ‘He wants to know if you feel well or not,’ said Fuchsia.

  Nannie turned her red-rimmed eyes to the shock-headed, smooth-skinned man, whose eyes behind their magnifying spectacles swam and bulged.

  ‘Come, come, my dear Mrs Slagg I’m not going to eat you. Oh, dear no. Not even with some toast to pop you on, and a little pepper and salt. Not a bit of it. You have been unwell, oh dear, yes – since the conflagration. My dear woman, you have been unwell – most unwell, and most naturally. But are you better – that’s what your doctor wants to know – are you better?’

  Nannie opened her puckered little mouth. ‘I ebbs and I flows, sir,’ she said, ‘and I falls away like.’ Then she turned her head to Fuchsia very quickly as though to make sure she was still there, the glass grapes tinkling on her hat.

  Doctor Prunesquallor brought forth a large silk handkerchief and began to dab his forehead. Irma, after a good deal of difficulty, presumably with whalebones and such like, had managed to sit down on the rug amid a good deal of creaking as of pulleys, cranks, hawsers and fish-hooks. She did not approve of sitting on the ground, but she was tired of looking down on their heads and decided to risk a brief interlude of unladyness. She was staring at Titus and saying to herself: ‘If that were my child I should cut his hair, especially with his position to keep up.’

  ‘An
d what does your “ebbing” consist of?’ said the Doctor, returning his silk handkerchief to his pocket. ‘Is it your heart that’s tidal – or your nerves – or your liver, bless you – or a general weariness of the flesh?’

  ‘I get tired,’ said Mrs Slagg. ‘I get so tired, sir. I have everything to do.’ The poor old lady began to tremble.

  ‘Fuchsia,’ said the Doctor, ‘come along this evening and I’ll give you a tonic which you must make her take every day. By all that’s amaranthine you really must. Balsam and swansdown, Fuchsia dear, cygnets and the eider bird, she must take it every day – syrup on the nerves, dear, and fingers cool as tombs for her old, old brow.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ said his sister. ‘I said nonsense, Bernard.’

  ‘And here,’ continued Doctor Prunesquallor, taking no notice of his sister’s interjection, ‘is Titus. Apparisoned in a rag torn from the sun itself, ha, ha, ha! How vast he is getting! But how solemn.’ He made clucking noises in his cheek.

  ‘The great day draws near, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Do you mean the “Earling”?’ said Fuchsia.

  ‘No less,’ said Prunesquallor, his head on one side.

  ‘Yes,’ she answered, ‘it is in four days’ time. They are making the raft.’ Then suddenly, as though she could hold back the burden of her thoughts no longer: ‘Oh, Doctor Prune, I must talk to you! May I see you soon? Soon? Don’t use long words with me when we’re alone, dear Doctor, like you sometimes do, because I’m so… well… because I’ve got – I’ve got worries. Doctor Prune.’

  Prunesquallor languidly began to make marks in the sand with his long white forefinger. Fuchsia, wondering why he did not reply, dropped her eyes and saw that he had written:

  ‘9 o’clock tonight Cool Room.’

  Then the long hand brushed away the message and at the same moment they were conscious of presences behind them and, turning, they saw the twins, Fuchsia’s identical aunts, standing like purple carvings in the heat.

  The Doctor sprang nimbly to his feet and inclined his reedy body in their direction.

  They took no notice of his gallantry, staring past him in the direction of Titus, who was sitting quietly at the lake’s edge.

  From the sky’s zenith to where he sat upon the strip of sand it seemed that a great backcloth had been let down, for the heat had flattened out the lake, lifted it upright on its sandy rim; lifted the sloping bank where the conifers, with their shadows, made patterns in three shades of green, sun-struck and enormous; and balanced in a jig-saw way upon the ragged edge of this painted wood was a heavy, dead, blue sky, towering to the proscenium arch of the vision’s limit – the curved eyelid. At the base of this staring drop-cloth of raw phenomena he sat, incredibly minute; Titus in a yellow shift, his chin once more in his hand.

  Fuchsia felt uncomfortable with her aunts standing immediately behind her. She looked up sideways at them and it was hard to conceive that they would ever be able to move again. Effigies, white-faced, white-handed, and hung with imperial purple. Mrs Slagg was still unaware of their presence, and in the silence a silly impulse to chatter gripped her, and, forgetting her nervousness, she perked her head up at the standing Doctor.

  ‘You see, excuse me, Doctor sir,’ she said, startling herself by her own bravery, ‘you see, I’ve always been of the energetic system, sir. That’s how I always was since I was a little girl, doing this and that by turns. “What will she do next?” they always said. Always.’

  ‘I am sure they did,’ answered the Doctor, reseating himself on the rug and turning to Nannie Slagg, his eyebrows raised, and a look of incredulous absorption on his pink face.

  Mrs Slagg was encouraged. No one had ever before appeared to be so interested in anything she said. Prunesquallor had decided that there was a fair chance of the twins remaining transfixed as they were, for a good half-hour yet, and that to hang around on his elegant legs was neither in his interests, physically, nor in accord with his self-respect, which, although of peculiar brand was nevertheless deep-rooted. They had not acknowledged his gesture. It is true they had not noticed it – but that was not his fault.

  ‘To hell with the old trouts,’ he trilled to himself. ‘Breastless as wallpaper. By all that’s sentient, my last post-mortem had more go in it than the pair of ’em, turning somersaults.’

  As he held forth, inwardly, he was paying, outwardly, the most passionate attention to Mrs Slagg’s every syllable.

  ‘And it’s always been the same,’ she was quavering, ‘always the same. Responserverity all the time, Doctor; and I’m not a little thing any more.’

  ‘Of course not, of course not, tut, tut; by all that’s shrewd you speak nobly, Mrs Slagg – very nobly,’ said Prunesquallor, considering at the same time whether there would have been enough room for her in his black bag, without removing the bottles.

  ‘Because we’re not as young as we were, are we, sir?’

  Prunesquallor considered this point very carefully. Then he shook his head. ‘What you say has the ring of truth in it,’ he said. ‘In fact, it has every possible kind of ring in it. Ring-ting, my heart’s on the wing, as it were. But tell me, Mrs Slagg – tell me in your own concise way – of Mr Slagg – or am I being indelicate? No – no – it couldn’t be. Do you know, Fuchsia? Do you? For myself, I am at sea over Mr Slagg. He is under my keel – utterly under. That’s queer! Utterly under. Or isn’t it? No matter. To put it brutally: was there a – No, no! Finesse, please. Who was – No, no! Crude; crude. Forgive me. Of Mr Slagg, dear lady, have you any… kind of – Good gracious me! and I’ve known you all this long while and then this teaser comes – crops up like a dove on tenterhooks. There’s a “ring” in that – ha, ha, ha! And what a teaser! Don’t you think so, dear?’

  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 w
as 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.