The Illustrated Gormenghast Trilogy

‘He needs me,’ she would mutter in a kind of golden growl. ‘It is for me to give him joy – to give him direction – to give him love. Let the world say what it likes – he is my mission. I will be always at his side. He may not know it, but I will be there. In body or in spirit always, near him when he most needs me. My child from Gormenghast. My Titus Groan.’

And then, at that moment, the light across her features would darken, and a shadow of doubt would take its place – for who was this youth? What was he? Why was he? What was it about him? Who were those people he spoke of? This inner world? Those memories? Were they true? Was he a liar – a cunning child? Some kind of wild misfit? Or was he mad? No! No! It couldn’t be. It mustn’t be.

FORTY-TWO

It was now four months since Titus first set foot in Juno’s house. A watery light filled the sky. There were voices in the distance. A rustle of leaves – an acorn falling – the barking of a distant hound.

Juno leaned her superb, tropical head against the window in her sitting-room and gazed at the falling leaves or to speak more truly, she gazed through them, as they fell, fluttering and twisting, for her mind was elsewhere. Behind her in her elegant room a fire burned and cast a red glow across the marble cheek of a small head on a pedestal.

Then, all at once, there he was! A creature far from marble, waving to her from the statue’d garden, and the sight of him swept cogitation from her face as though a web were snatched from her features.

Seeing this happen, this change in her aspect, and the movement of her marvellous bosom, young Titus experienced, all in a flash, a number of simultaneous emotions. A pang of greed, green-carnal to the quick, sang, rang like a bell, his scrotum tightening; skidaddled through his loins and qualming tissues and began to burn like ice, the trembling fig on fire. And yet at the same time there was an aloofness in him – even a kind of suspicion, a perversity quite uncalled for. Something that Juno had always felt was there – something she feared beyond failure; this thing she could not compass with her arms.

Yet even worse than this, there was mixed up in him a pity for her. Pity that punctures love. She had given him everything, and he pitied her for it. He did not know that this was lethal and infinitely sad.

And there was the fear in him of being caught – caught in the generous folds of her love – her helpless love: fierce and loyal.

They gazed at one another. Juno with a quite incredible tenderness, something not easily associated with a lady in the height of fashion, and Titus with his greed returning as he watched her, flung out his arms in a wild, expansive gesture, quite false; quite melodramatic; and he knew it to be so, and so did she; but it was right at the moment, for his lust was real enough and lust is an arrogant and haughty beast and far from subtle.

So quickly did they flow one into another, these sensations of pity, physical greed, revulsion, excitement and tenderness, that they became blurred in an overriding impetus, a desire to hold all this in his outflung arms; to bring the total of their relationship to a burning focus. To bring it all to an end. That was the sadness of it. Not to create the deed that should set glory in motion but to bring glory to an end – to stab sweet love: to stab it to death. To be free of it.

None of this was in his mind. It was far away, in another pocket of his being. What was important, now, with her eyes bent upon him, and the shadow of a branch trembling across her breast, was the immemorial game of love: no less a game for being grave. No less grave for being wild. Grave as a great green sky. Grave as a surgeon’s knife.

‘So you thought you’d come back, my wicked one. Where have you been?’

‘In hell,’ said Titus. ‘Swigging blood and munching scorpions.’

‘That must have been great fun, my darling.’

‘Not so,’ said Titus, ‘hell is overrated.’

‘But you escaped?’

‘I caught a plane. The slenderest thing you ever saw. A million years slid by in half a minute. I sliced the sky in half. And all for what?’

‘Well … what?’

‘To batten on you.’

‘What of the slender plane?’

‘I pressed a button and away she flew.’

‘Is that good or bad?’

‘It is very good. We don’t want to be watched, do we? Machines are so inquisitive. You’re rather far away. May I come up?’

‘Of course, or you’ll disjoint yourself.’

‘Stay, stay where you are. Don’t go – I’m on my way,’ and with a mad and curious tilt of the head he disappeared from the statue’d garden and a few minutes later Juno could hear his feet on the stairs.

He was no longer entangled in a maze of moods. Whatever was happening to his subconscious, it made no attempt to break surface. His mind fell asleep. His wits fell awake. His cock trembled like a harp-string.

As he flung open the door of her room he saw her at once; proud, monumental, relaxed; one elbow on the mantelpiece, a smile on her lips, an eyebrow raised a little. His eyes were so fixed upon her that it was not surprising that he tripped up on a footstool that stood directly in his path, and trying to recover his balance tripped again and fell headlong.

Before he could recover she was already sitting on the floor beside him.

‘This is your second time to crash at my feet. Have you hurt yourself, darling? Is it symbolic?’ said Juno.

‘Bound to be,’ said Titus – ‘absolutely bound to be.’

Had he known her less well this absurd fall might well have distracted him from his somewhat unoriginal purpose, but with Juno hovering above him and smelling like paradise, his passion, far from being quenched, took on