The Illustrated Gormenghast Trilogy

nine, what’s nine? Nine for a nine, nine – ten for a tower of turbulent toast – but what is seven. What is seven?’

Fuchsia stamped her foot and peered into the poor old nurse’s face.

Nannie Slagg made little noises in her throat which was her way of filling in time and then said, ‘Would you like some hot milk, my precious? Tell me now because I’m busy, and must feed your mother’s white cats, dear. Just because I’m of the energetic system, my dear heart, they give me everything to do. What did you ring for? Quickly, quickly my caution. What did you ring for?’

Fuchsia bit her big red lower lip, tossed a mop of midnight from her brow and gazed out of the window, her hands grasping her elbows behind her. Very stiff she had become and angular.

‘I want a big breakfast,’ said Fuchsia at last. ‘I want a lot to eat, I’m going to think today.’

Nannie Slagg was scrutinizing a wart on her left forearm.

‘You don’t know where I’m going, but I’m going somewhere where I can think.’

‘Yes, dear,’ said the old nurse.

‘I want hot milk and eggs and lots of toast done only on one side,’ Fuchsia frowned as she paused; ‘and I want a bag of apples to take along with me for the whole of the day, for I get hungry when I think.’

‘Yes, dear,’ said Mrs Slagg again, pulling a loose thread from the hem of Fuchsia’s skirt. ‘Put some more on the fire, my caution, and I’ll bring your breakfast and make your bed for you, though I’m not very well.’

Fuchsia descended suddenly upon her old nurse again and kissing her cheek, released her from the room, closing the door on her retreating figure with a crash that echoed down the gloomy corridors.

As soon as the door had closed, Fuchsia leaped at her bed and diving between the blankets head first, wriggled her way to the far end, where from all appearances, she became engaged in a life and death struggle with some ambushed monster. The heavings of the bedclothes ended as suddenly as they had begun and she emerged with a pair of long woollen stockings which she must have kicked off during the night. Sitting on her pillows she began pulling them on in a series of heaves, twisting with difficulty, at a very late stage, the heel of each from the front to the back.

‘I won’t see anybody today,’ she said to herself – ‘no, not anybody at all. I will go to my secret room and think things over.’ She smiled a smile to herself. It was sly but it was so childishly sly that it was lovable. Her lips, big and well-formed and extraordinarily mature, curled up like plump petals and showed between them her white teeth.

As soon as she had smiled her face altered again, and the petulant expression peregrine to her features took control. Her black eyebrows were drawn together.

Her dressing became interrupted between the addition of each garment by dance movements of her own invention. There was nothing elegant in these attitudes into which she flung herself, standing sometimes for a dozen of seconds at a time in some extraordinary position of balance. Her eyes would become glazed like her mother’s and an expression of abstract calm would for an instant defy the natural concentration of her face. Finally her blood-red dress, absolutely shapeless, was pulled over her head. It fitted nowhere except where a green cord was knotted at her waist. She appeared rather to inhabit, than to wear her clothes.

Meanwhile Mrs Slagg had not only prepared the breakfast for Fuchsia in her own little room, but was on the way back with the loaded tray shaking in her hands. As she turned a corner of the corridor she was brought to a clattering standstill by the sudden appearance of Doctor Prunesquallor, who also halting with great suddenness, avoided a collision.

‘Well, well, well, well, well, ha, ha, ha, if it isn’t dear Mrs Slagg, ha, ha, ha, how very very, very dramatic’, said the doctor, his long hands clasped before him at his chin, his high-pitched laugh creaking along the timber ceiling of the passage. His spectacles held in either lens the minute reflection of Nannie Slagg.

The old nurse had never really approved of Doctor Prunesquallor. It was true that he belonged to Gormenghast as much as the Tower itself. He was no intruder, but somehow, in Mrs Slagg’s eyes he was definitely wrong. He was not her idea of a doctor in the first place, although she could never have argued why. Nor could she pin her dislike down to any other cause. Nannie Slagg found it very difficult to marshal her thoughts at the best of times, but when they became tied up with her emotions she became quite helpless. What she felt but had never analysed was that Doctor Prunesquallor rather played down to her and even in an obtuse way made fun of her. She had never thought this, but her bones knew of it.

She gazed up at the shock-headed man before her and wondered why he never brushed his hair, and then she felt guilty for allowing herself such thoughts about a gentleman and her tray shook and her eyes wavered a little.

‘Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, my dear Mrs Slagg, let me take your tray, ha, ha, until you have tasted the fruits of discourse and told me what you have been up to for the last month or more. Why have I not seen you, Nannie Slagg? Why have my ears not heard your footfall on the stairs, and your voice at nightfall, calling … calling …?’

‘Her ladyship don’t want me any more, sir,’ said Nannie Slagg, looking up at the doctor reproachfully. ‘I am kept in the west wing now, sir.’

‘So that’s it, is it?’ said Doctor Prunesquallor, removing the loaded tray from Nannie Slagg and lowering both it and himself at the same time to the floor of the long passage. He sat there on his heels with the tray at his side and peered up at the old lady, who gazed in a frightened way at his eye swimming hugely beneath his magnifying spectacles.

‘You are kept in the west wing? So that’s it?’ Doctor Prunesquallor with his forefinger and thumb stroked his chin in a profound manner and frowned magnificently. ‘It is the word “kept”, my dear Mrs Slagg, that galls me. Are you an animal, Mrs Slagg? I repeat are you an animal?’ As he said this he rose halfway to his feet and with his neck stretched forward repeated his question a third time.

Poor Nannie Slagg was too frightened to be able to give her answer to the query.

The doctor sank back on his heels.

‘I will answer my own question, Mrs Slagg. I have known you for some time. For, shall we say, a decade? It is true we have never plumbed the depths of sorcery together nor argued the meaning of existence – but it is enough for me to say that I have known you for a considerable time, and that you are no animal. No animal whatsoever. Sit upon my knee.’