The Illustrated Gormenghast Trilogy

more than a dozen fine trees whose limbs had grown in roughly the direction they had found most natural. But the grass about their stems was closely mown, and under their boughs a rustic chair or two was artlessly positioned.

On this particular evening there was a hunter’s moon. No wonder. Irma had seen to it.

When she reached the french windows she was delighted with the scene before her, the goblin-garden, silver and mysterious, the moonbeams glimmering on the fountain, the sun-dial, the trellis work and the moon itself reflected in the fish pond. It was all a bit blurred to her, and that was a pity, but she could not have it both ways. Either she was to wear her dark glasses and look less attractive, or she must put up with finding everything about her out of focus. It didn’t matter much how out of focus a garden by moonlight was – in fact in the adding of this supercharge of mystery it became a kind of emotional haze, which was something which Irma, as a spinster, could never have enough of – but how would it be when she had to disengage one professor from another? Would she be able to appreciate the subtlety of their advances, if they made any; those little twitches and twists of the lips, those narrowings and rollings of the eye, those wrinklings of the speculative temple, that shrugging of an eye-brow at play? Would all this be lost to her?

When she had told her brother of her intention to dispense with her glasses, he had advised her, in that case, to leave them off an hour before the guests were due. And he had been right. She was quite sure he had been. For the pain in her forehead had gone and she was moving faster on her swathed legs than she had dared to do at first. But it was all a little confusing, and though her heart beat at the sight of her moon-blur of a garden, yet she clenched her hands at the same time in a gay little temper that she should have been born with bad eyes.

She rang a bell. A head appeared at the door.

‘Is that Mollocks?’

‘Yes, Madam.’

‘Have you got your soft shoes on?’

‘Yes, Madam.’

‘You may enter.’

Mollocks entered.

‘Cast your eye around, Mollocks – I said cast your eye around. No, no! Get the feather duster. No, no. Wait a minute – I said wait a minute.’ (Mollocks had made no move.) ‘I will ring.’ (She rang.) Another head appeared. ‘Is that Canvas?’ ‘Yes, Madam, it is Canvas.’ ‘Yes Madam is quite enough, Canvas. Quite enough. Your exact name is not so enormously important. Is it? Is it? To the larder with you and fetch a feather brush for Mollocks. Away with you. Where are you, Mollocks?’

‘Beside you, Madam.’

‘Ah yes. Ah yes. Have you shaved?’

‘Definitely, Madam.’

‘Quite so. Mollocks. It must be my eyes. You look so dark across the face. Now you are to leave no stone unturned – not one – do you understand me? Move from place to place all over this room, backwards and forwards restlessly do you understand me, with Canvas at your side – searching for those specks of dust that have escaped me – did you say you had your soft shoes on?’

‘Yes, Madam.’

‘Good. Very good. Is that Canvas who has just come in? Is it? Good. Very good. He is to travel with you. Four eyes are better than two. But you can use the brush – whoever finds the specks. I don’t want anything spoilt or knocked over and Canvas can be very clumsy, can’t you, Canvas?’

The old man Canvas who had been sent running about the house since dawn, and who did not feel that as an old retainer he was being appreciated, said that he ‘didn’t know about that’. It was his only line of defence, a repetitive, stubborn attitude beyond which one could not go.

‘Oh yes you are,’ repeated Irma. ‘Quite clumsy. Run along now. You are slow, Canvas, slow.’

Again the old man said he ‘didn’t know about that’ and having said so, turned in a puny fury of temper from his mistress and tripping over his own feet as he turned, grabbed at a small table. A tall alabaster vase swayed on its narrow base like a pendulum while Mollocks and Canvas watched it, their mouths open, their limbs paralysed.

But Irma had surged away from them and was practising a certain slow and languid mode of progress which she felt might be effective. Up and down a little strip of the soft grey carpet she swayed, stopping every now and again to raise a limp hand before her, presumably to be touched by the lips of one or other of the professors.

Her head would be tilted away at these moments of formal intimacy, and there was only a segment of her sidelong glance as it grazed her cheekbones, to reward the imaginary gallant as he mouthed her knuckles.

Knowing Irma’s vision to be faulty and that they could not be seen, with the length of the salon between them, Canvas and Mollocks watched her from under their gathered brows, marking time, like soldiers the while, to simulate the sounds of activity.

They had not long, however, in which to watch their mistress for the door opened and the doctor came in. He was in full evening dress and looked more elegant than ever. Across his immaculate breast was the pick of the few decorations with which Gormenghast had honoured him. The crimson Order of the Vanquished Plague, and the Thirty-fifth Order of the Floating Rib lay side by side upon his narrow, snow-white shirt, and were suspended from wide ribbons. In his buttonhole was an orchid.

‘O Alfred,’ cried Irma. ‘How do I seem to you? How do I seem to you?’

The Doctor glanced over his shoulder and motioned the retainers out of the room with a flick of his hand.

He had hidden himself away all afternoon and sleeping dreamlessly had to a great extent recovered from the nightmares he had suffered. As he stood before his sister he appeared as fresh as a daisy, if less pastoral.

‘Now I tell you what,’ he cried, moving round her, his head cocked on one side, ‘I tell you what, Irma. You’ve made something out of yourself, and if it ain’t a work of art, it’s as near as makes no matter. By all that emanates, you’ve brought it off. Great grief! I hardly know you. Turn round,