The Illustrated Gormenghast Trilogy

‘What’s the holiday for?’ said Fuchsia with her eyes still on the water which was now swaying to and fro across the tank.

‘I’m not sure,’ said Titus. ‘Something to do with Mother, I think. Birthday or something.’

‘Oh,’ said Fuchsia and then after a pause, ‘it’s funny how one has to be told everything. I don’t remember her having birthdays before. It’s all so inhuman.’

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ said Titus.

‘No,’ said Fuchsia. ‘You wouldn’t, I suppose. It’s not your fault and you’re lucky in a way. But I’ve read quite a lot and I know that most children see a good deal of their parents – more than we do anyway.’

‘Well, I don’t remember father at all,’ said Titus.

‘I do,’ said Fuchsia. ‘But he was difficult too. I hardly ever spoke to him. I think he wanted me to be a boy.’

‘Did he?’

‘Yes.’

‘Oh … I wonder why.’

‘To be the next Earl of course.’

‘Oh … but I am … so it’s all right, I suppose.’

‘But he didn’t know you were going to be born, when I was a child, did he? He couldn’t have. I was about fourteen when you were born.’

‘Were you really …’

‘Of course I was. And for all that time he wished I was you, I suppose.’

‘That’s funny, isn’t it?’ said Titus.

‘It wasn’t funny at all – and it isn’t funny now – is it? Not that it’s your fault …’

At that moment there was a knock at the door and a messenger entered.

‘What do you want?’ said Fuchsia.

‘I have a message, my lady.’

‘What is it?’

‘Her ladyship, the Countess, your mother, wishes Lord Titus to accompany me back to her room. She is going to take him for a walk.’

Titus and Fuchsia stared at the messenger and then at one another. Several times they opened their mouths to speak but closed them again. Then Fuchsia turned her eyes back to the melting snow – and Titus walked out through the half open door, the messenger following him closely.

II

The Countess was waiting for them on the landing. She gestured the messenger to be gone with a single, lazy movement to her head.

She gazed at Titus with a curious lack of expression. It was as though what she saw interested her, but in the way that a stone would interest a geologist, or a plant, a botanist. Her expression was neither kindly nor unkindly. It was simply absent. She appeared to be unconscious of having a face at all. Her features made no effort to communicate anything.

‘I am taking them for a walk,’ she said in her heavy, abstracted, millstone voice.

‘Yes, mother,’ said Titus. He supposed she was talking of her cats.

A shadow settled for a moment on her broad brow. The word mother had perplexed her. But the boy was quite right, of course.

Her massive bulk had always impressed Titus. The hanging draperies and scollop’d shadows, the swathes of musty darkness – all this he found most awesome.

He was fascinated by her but he had no point of contact. When she spoke it was in order to make a statement. She had no conversation.

She turned her head and, pursing her lips, she whistled with a peculiar ululation. Titus gazed up at the sartorial mass above him. Why had she wanted him to accompany her? he wondered. Did she want him to tell her anything? Had she anything to tell him? Was it just a whim?

But she had started to descend the stairs and Titus followed her.

From a hundred dim recesses, from favourite ledges, from shelves and draught-proof corners, from among the tattered entrails of old sofas, from the scarred plush of chairs, from under clock-stands, from immemorial sun-traps, and from nests of claw-torn paper – from the inside of lost hats, from among rafters, from rusty casques, and from drawers half-open, the cats poured forth, converged, foamed, and with a rapid pattering of their milk-white feet filled up the corridors, and a few moments later had reached the landing and were on their way, in the wake of their great mistress, down the stairway they obscured.

When they were in the open and had passed through an archway in the outer wall and were able to see Gormenghast Mountain clear before them, with dark grey snow on its cruel heights, the Countess waved her ponderous arm, as though she were scattering grain, and the cats on the instant, fanning out, sped in every direction, and leapt, twisting in the air, curvetting for the very joy of their only release from the castle since first the snow came down. And though a number of them sported together, rolling over one another, or sitting up straight with their heads bridled back, tapped at each other sparring like fighters, only to lose all interest of a sudden, their eyes unfocusing, their thoughts turning – yet for the main the white creatures behaved as though each one were utterly alone, utterly content to be alone, conscious only of its own behaviour, its own leap into the air, its own agility, self-possessed, solitary, enviable and legendary in a beauty both heraldic and fluent as water.