The Illustrated Gormenghast Trilogy

headlong, for me that he is rigid and dreadful.’

‘Aha!’ cried the Doctor. It was obvious he had not heard a word that his sister had said. ‘Aha!’ If he had appeared animated and vital before, he was trebly so now. His every gesture was as rapid and fluid as mercury. He took a prancing step towards his patient.

‘By all that’s pragmatical, it’s this or nothing.’ He slid his hand into one of his waistcoat pockets and withdrew a small silver hammer. This he swivelled between his thumb and index finger for a few moments, his eyebrows raised.

In the meanwhile Bellgrove had begun to grow impatient. The situation had taken a queer turn. It was not in circumstances like these that he had hoped to present himself to Irma nor was this the kind of atmosphere in which his tenderness could flourish. For one thing he was no longer the centre of attraction. His immediate desire was to be alone with her. The very words ‘alone with her’ made him blush. His hair shone more whitely than ever against his dark red brow. He glanced at her and immediately knew what to do. It was crystal clear that she was uncomfortable. The figure on the chair was not a pleasant sight for anyone, let alone a lady of distinction, a lady of delicate tastes.

He tossed the shaggy splendour of his mane. ‘Madam,’ he said. ‘This is no place for you.’ He drew himself up to his full height, forcing back his shoulders and drawing his long chin into his throat. ‘No place at all, madam,’ and then apprehensive that Irma might interpret him wrongly and find in his remark some slight upon her party, he shot a glance at her through his eyelashes. But she had found nothing amiss. On the contrary, there was gratitude in her small weak eyes; gratitude in the gleaming incline of her bosom, and in the nervous clasping of her hands.

She no longer heard her brother’s voice. She no longer felt the presence of the robed males. Someone had been thoughtful. Someone had realized that she was a woman, and that it was not proper for her to stand with the rest as though there was no difference between herself and her guests. And this someone, this noble and solicitous being was no other than the headmaster – O how splendid it was that there should still be a gentleman on the face of the earth: youth had fled from him, ah yes, but not romance.

‘Mr Headmaster,’ she said, pursing her lips and lifting her eyes to his craggy face with an archness hardly credible, ‘it is for you to say. It is for me to hearken. Speak on. I am listening … I said, I am listening.’

Bellgrove turned his head away from her. The wide, weak smile that had spread itself across his face was not the kind of thing that he would wish Irma to see. A year or so ago, he had once, with no warning, caught sight of himself in a mirror when a smile (an antecedent of the uncontrollable expression that was even now undermining the spurious grandeur of his face) had shocked him. It was to his credit that he had recognized the danger of allowing such a thing to become public – for he was, not without cause, proud of his features. And so he turned his face away. How could he help giving vent to some kind of demonstration of his feelings. For at Irma’s words ‘It is for you to say’ the wide rich panorama of married life suddenly appeared before him, stretched out, it seemed, to the horizon with its vistas of pale gold, its gentle meads. He saw himself as an immemorial oak, its branches spreading godlike, with Irma, a sapling poplar, whose leaves like heartthrobs twinkled in his shade. He saw himself as the proud eagle, landing with a sigh of his wings upon a solitary crag. He saw Irma, waiting for him in the nest, but curiously enough, she was sitting there in a nightdress. And then, suddenly, he saw himself as a very old man, with a toothache, and his memory caught sight of an ancient face in the mirrors of a thousand shaving-rooms.

He crushed this most unwelcome glimpse beneath the heel of his immediate sensations.

He turned back to Irma.

‘I offer you my arm, dear madam – such as it is.’

‘I will accompany you, Mr Headmaster.’

Irma lowered her little eyelids and then flicked a sideways glance at Mr Bellgrove, who having crooked out his elbow somewhat extravagantly paused a moment before dropping it with a sense of defeat that was quite intoxicating.

‘By hell!’ he murmured passionately to himself – ‘I am not so old that I miss the subtleties.’

‘Forgive my precipitation, dear madam,’ he said, bowing his head. ‘But perhaps … perhaps you understand …’

Clasping her hands together at her bosom Irma turned from the throng, and swaying strangely, began to pace into the empty regions of the room. The carpet lit by a hundred candles had lost something of its glow. It was even brighter but it was not so warm, for the chilly rays of the moon were now streaming through the open windows.

Bellgrove glanced about him as he turned to follow her. No one appeared to be interested in their departure. Every eye was fixed upon the Doctor. For a moment, Bellgrove felt disappointed that he could not stay, for there was drama in the air. The Doctor was evidently making an exhaustive overhaul of the stiffened figure whose clothes were being removed, one by one; no easy work; for the joints were quite inflexible. Mollocks and Canvas, the Prunesquallors’ servants, had, however, a pair of scissors each and, when necessary, were, under the Doctor’s supervision, using them to free the patient.

The Doctor still had the little silver hammer in one hand. With the other he was running his pianist-fingers over the rigid gentleman as though he were a keyboard – his eyebrows raised, his head cocked on one side like a tuner.

Bellgrove could see at a glance that in following Irma he was about to miss the climax of a considerable drama, but turning on his heel, and seeing her again he knew that a drama even more considerable was his for the making.

With his beautiful white gown rippling behind him, he strode in her wake, and on the eleventh stride he came within the orbit of her perfume.

Without pausing in the swaying movement of her gait she turned her head on its swan-white neck. Her emerald ear-ring flashed with light. Her long, sharp nose, immaculately powdered would have put most suitors off, but to Bellgrove it had the proportions of a beak on the proud head of a bird, exquisitely dangerous and sharp. Something to admire rather than love. It was almost a weapon, but a weapon which he felt confident would never be used against him. However that might be, it was hers – and in that simple fact lay its justification.

As they approached the bay window that was open to the night, Bellgrove inclined his head to her.

‘This,’ he said, ‘is our first walk together.’