The Illustrated Gormenghast Trilogy

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.’