‘
SEVENTY-TWO
When Titus saw her first he imagined her to be yet another of the crowding images, but as he continued to stare at her he knew that this was no face in the clouds.
She had not seen him open his eyes, and so Titus was afforded the opportunity of watching, for a moment or two, the ice in her features. When she turned her head and saw him staring at her she made no effort to soften her expression, knowing that he had taken her unawares. Instead, she stared at Titus in return, until the moment came when, as though they had been playing the game of staring-one-another-out, she made as though she could keep her features set no longer and the ice melted away and her face broke into an expression that was a mixture of the sophisticated, the bizarre, and the exquisite.
‘You win,’ she said. Her voice was as light and as listless as thistledown.
‘Who are you?’ said Titus.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said. ‘As long as I know who you are … or does it?’
‘Who am I then?’
‘Lord Titus of Gormenghast, Seventy-Seventh Earl.’ The words fluttered like autumn leaves.
Titus shut his eyes.
‘Thank God,’ he said.
‘For what?’ said Cheeta.
‘For knowing. I’d grown to almost doubt the bloody place. Where am I? My body’s on fire.’
‘The worst is over,’ said Cheeta.
‘Is it? What kind of worst?’
‘The search. Drink this and lie back.’
‘What a face you have,’ said Titus. ‘It’s paradise on edge. Who are you? Eh? Don’t answer, I know it all. You are a woman! That’s what you are. So let me suck your breasts, like little apples, and play upon your nipples with my tongue.’
‘You are obviously feeling better,’ said the scientist’s daughter.
SEVENTY-THREE
One morning, not very long after he had fully recovered from his fever, Titus rose early, and dressed himself with a kind of gaiety. It was a sensation somewhat foreign to his heart. There had been a time, and not so long ago, when a whim of ludicrous thought could bend him double; when he could laugh at everything and anything as though it were nothing … for all the darkness of his early days. But now it seemed had come a time when there was more darkness than light.
But a time had been reached in his life when he found himself laughing in a different kind of way and at different things. He no longer yelled his laughter. He no longer shouted his joy. Something had left him.
Yet on this particular morning, something of his younger self seemed to be with him as he rolled out of bed and on to his feet. An inexplicable bubble; a twinge of joy.
As he let fly the blinds, and disclosed a landscape, he screwed up his face with pleasure, stretched his arms and legs. Yet there was nothing for him to be so pleased about. In fact it was more the other way. He was entangled. He had made new enemies. He had compromised himself irremediably with Cheeta who was dangerous as black water.
Yet this morning Titus was happy. It was as though nothing could touch him. As though he bore a charmed life. Almost as though he lived in another dimension, un-enterable to others, so that he could risk anything, dare everything. Just as he had revelled in his shame and felt no fear on that day when he lay recovering from his fever … so now he was in a world equally on his side.
So he ran down the elegant stairs this early morning, and galloped to the stables as though he were himself one of the ponies. In a few moments she was saddled and away … the grey mare, away to the lake in whose motionless expanse lay the reflection of the factory.
Out of the slender, tapering chimneys arose, like incense, thin columns of green smoke. Beyond these chimneys the dawn sky lay like an expanse of crumpled linen. As she galloped, the lake growing closer and closer with each stride, he did not know that there was someone following him. Someone else had woken early. Someone else had been to the stables, saddled a pony and raced away. Had Titus turned his head he would have seen as lovely a sight as could be encountered. For the scientist’s daughter could ride like a leaf in the wind.
When Titus reached the shore of the lake he made no effort to rein in his grey, who, plunging ever deeper into the lake, sent up great spurts of water, so that the perfect reflection of the factory was set in motion, wave following wave, until there was no part of the lake that was not rippled.
From the motionless building there came a kind of rumour; an endless impalpable sound that, had it been translated into a world of odours, might have been likened to the smell of death: a kind of sweet decay.
When the water had climbed to the throat of the grey horse, and had all but brought the animal to a standstill, Titus lifted his head, and in the softness of the dawn he heard for the first time the full, vile softness of the sound.
Yet, for all this it looked anything but mysterious and Titus ran his eye along the great facade, as though it were the flank of a colossal liner, alive with countless portholes.
Letting his eye dwell for a moment on a particular window, he gave a start of surprise, for in its minute centre was a face; a face that stared out across the lake. It was no larger than the head of a pin.
