The Illustrated Gormenghast Trilogy

Steerpike dropped his hands from his face where they had been all this time. His voice had been running on with a certain charm for he had managed to vary it with a kind of stutter – not so much nervous in effect as eager and candid.

‘But what happened, Fuchsia? Well, you know that as well as I do. I turned the north corner with your mother the length of a corridor behind – and there you were, like a bonfire, the length of the corridor before me. Put yourself in my place. One cannot have all the noble emotions at the same time. One cannot mix up desperation with being a perfect gentleman. At least I can’t. Perhaps I should have been given lessons. All I could do was to save the situation. To hide you. To save you. You were there too early; and Fuchsia, it made me angry. I have never been angry with you before as you know. I could never imagine being angry with you. And perhaps even now, it wasn’t really you I was angry with, but fate, or destiny or whatever it is that might have upset our plans. And it was because our plans have always been so carefully prepared – so that there shall be no risk, and you shall come to no harm – that my rage boiled up. You were no longer Fuchsia to me, at that moment. You were this thing that I was to save. After I had got behind the door, then you would be Fuchsia again. Had I waited for a moment before stifling your light or getting you through the door, then our lives might indeed have been ruined. For I love you, Fuchsia. You are all I ever longed for. Can’t you see that it was because of this that I had no time to be polite? It was a boiling moment. It was a maelstrom. I called you “fool”, yes “fool”, out of my love for you – and then … and then … here in this room again, it all seemed so unbelievable and it does so still, and I am half ashamed of the gift I had brought you and the writing I have done for you – O Fuchsia – I don’t even know if I can show it to you now …’ he turned abruptly with his hand clenched at his forehead, and then as though to say he would not give way to his despair, ‘Come on then, Satan,’ he whispered. ‘Come on, my wicked boy!’ and the monkey leapt on to Steerpike’s shoulder.

‘What writing?’ said Fuchsia.

‘I had written you a poem.’ He spoke very softly, in a way that had often proved successful but he was a step too far in advance of his progress.

‘But perhaps now,’ he said, ‘you will not wait to see it, Fuchsia.’

‘No,’ she said after a pause. ‘Not now.’

Her inflection was so strange that it was impossible to tell whether she meant ‘not now’ in the sense of it being no longer possible for her to do anything so intimate as to read a love poem; or not now, but some other time.

Steerpike could only cry, ‘I understand,’ and placed the monkey on the table where it walked rapidly to and fro, on all four legs, and then leapt onto one of his cabinets.

‘And I will understand, if you have no wish for Satan.’

‘Satan?’ her voice was quite expressionless.

‘Your monkey,’ he said. ‘Perhaps you would rather not be bothered. I thought he would please you. I made his clothes myself.’

‘I don’t know! I don’t know!’ cried Fuchsia suddenly. ‘I don’t know, I tell you, I don’t know!’

‘Shall I take you to your room?’

‘I will go myself.’

‘As you please,’ said Steerpike. ‘But recall what I have said, I implore you. Try and understand; for I love you as the shadows love the castle.’

She turned her eyes to him. For a moment a light came into them, but in the next moment they appeared empty once more; empty and blank.

‘I will never understand,’ she said. ‘It is no good however much you talk. I may have been wrong. I don’t know. At any rate everything is changed. I don’t feel the same any more. I want to go now.’

‘Yes, of course. But will you grant me two small favours?’

‘I suppose so,’ said Fuchsia. ‘What are they? I’m tired.’

‘The first one is to ask you from the bottom of my heart to try to understand the strain which was put upon me, and to ask you whether, even if it is for the last time, you will meet me, as we have done for so long, meet me that we can talk for a little while – not about us, not about our trouble, not about my faults, not about this terrible chasm between us, but about all the happy things. Will you meet me tomorrow night, on those conditions?’

‘I don’t know!’ said Fuchsia. ‘I don’t know! But I suppose so. O God, I suppose so.’

‘Thank you,’ said Steerpike. ‘Thank you, Fuchsia.’

‘And my other request is only this. To know, whether, if you have no use for Satan, you will let me have him back – because he is yours … and …’ Steerpike turned his head from her and moved away a few paces.

‘You would like to know, wouldn’t you, Satan, to whom you belong …’ he cried in a voice that was intended to sound gallant.

Fuchsia turned on him suddenly. It seemed that she had now realized the natural edge of her own intellect. She stared at the skewbald man with the monkey on his shoulder and then her words cut into the pale man like knives. ‘Steerpike,’ she said. ‘I think you’re going soft.’

From that moment Steerpike knew that when she came on the following night he would seduce her. With so dark a secret to keep hidden, the daughter of the Countess would indeed be at his mercy. He had waited long enough. Now, upon the heels of his mistake, was the only time for him to strike. He had felt the first intimation of something slipping away beneath his feet. If guile and coercion failed him, then there could be no two ways about it. This was no time for mercy – and though she proved a tigress he would have her – and blackmail would follow as smoothly as a thundercloud.

FIFTY- SEVEN

I

When Flay heard the door open quietly below him he held his breath. For a few moments no one appeared and then a shape still darker than the darkness stepped out into the corridor and began to walk rapidly away to the south. When he heard the door close again he lowered himself from the great stone shelf that stretched above Steerpike’s doorway and with his long bony arms outstretched to their full extent he dropped the odd few inches to the ground.