accretion. Two figures: two creatures: two humans: two worlds of loneliness. Their lives up to this moment contrasted, and what was amorphous became like a heavy boulder in their breasts.
Yet in Cheeta’s bearing, as she moved down the avenue, there was no sign of passion or of the ice in her heart and Titus could only marvel at the way she moved, inevitably, smoothly, like the approach of a phantom.
The merest shred she was: slender as an eyelash, erect as a little soldier. But O the danger of it! To fill her clay with something that leaps higher and throws its wild and flickering shadow further than the blood’s wisdom knows. How dangerous, how desperate and how explosive for such a little vessel.
As for Titus, she held him steadily in her eye. She saw it all and at once, his somewhat arrogant, loose-jointed walk, his way of tossing his nondescript hair out of his eyes, his bloody-mindedness, implicit in the slouch of his shoulders, and that general air of detachment which had been so great a stumbling block to the young ladies in his past, who saw no fun in the way he could become abstracted at the oddest moments. That was the irritating thing about him. He could not force a feeling, or bring himself to love. His love was always elsewhere. His thoughts were fastidious. Only his body was indiscriminate.
Behind him, whenever he stood, or slept, were the legions of Gormenghast … tier upon cloudy tier, with the owls calling through the rain, and the ringing of the rust-red bells.
EIGHTY-FOUR
When Cheeta and Titus came abreast, they stopped dead, for the idea of cutting one another would have been ludicrously dramatic. In any event, as far as Cheeta was concerned, there was never any question of letting the young man go by like a cloud, never to return. She was not finished with him. She had hardly started. She recognized in the sliding moments, a quality that set this day apart from others. It was a febrile day, not to be gainsaid; a day, perhaps of insight and heightened apprehension.
And yet at the same time there was, in spite of the tension, a feeling in both of them that there was nothing new in what was happening; that they had shared in years gone by, an identical situation, and that there was no escape from the fate that overhung them.
‘Thank you for stopping,’ said Cheeta, in her slow and listless way. (Titus was always reminded when she spoke of dry leaves rustling.)
‘What else could I do?’ said Titus. ‘After all, we know each other.’
‘Do you think so?’ said Cheeta. ‘Perhaps that would be a good reason to
‘Perhaps,’ said Titus. The avenue hummed with silence.
‘Who were they?’ said Cheeta at last. The three short syllables of her question drifted away one by one.
‘Who do you mean?’ said Titus. ‘I’m in no mood for riddles.’
‘The three beggars.’
‘Oh them! Old friends of mine.’
‘Friends?’ whispered Cheeta, as though to herself. ‘What are they doing in Father’s grounds?’
‘They came to save me,’ said Titus.
‘From what?’
‘From myself I suppose. And from women. They are wise. Wise men are the beggars. They think you are too luscious for me. Ha, ha, ha, ha! But I told them not to worry. I told them you were frozen at the very tap-root. That your sex is bolted from the inside; that you are as prim as the mantis, that gobbles up the heads of her admirers. Love’s so disgusting, isn’t it?’
Had Titus not been ranting with his head thrown back, he might for a split second have seen, between the narrowing eyelids of the scientist’s daughter, a fleck of terrible light.
But he did not see it. All he saw when he looked down at her was something rare and flawless, as a rose or a bird.
The eyes that had blazed for a moment were now as luminous with love as the eyes of a monkey-eating eagle.
‘And yet you said you loved me. That is the spice of it.’
‘Of course I love you,’ said Cheeta, throwing the words away like dead petals. ‘Of course I do, and I always will. That is why you must go.’ She drew her pencilled eyebrows together, and at once became another creature, a creature in every way as unique and bizarre as before. She turned her head away, and there she was again, or was she someone else?
‘Because I love you, Titus; so much, I can hardly bear it.’
‘Then tell me something,’ said Titus in so casual a voice that it was all that Cheeta could do to control a spurt of rage, which, had she given vent to it, might have ruined her carefully laid plans. For above all Titus must not be allowed to leave as he intended on the evening of this very day.
‘What is it you want to ask me?’ She drew herself close to him.
‘Your father …’
‘What about him?’
‘Why does he dress like a mute? Why is he so dreary? What’s in his factory? Why is his brow like a melon? Are you sure he
‘I never asked him. Why should I?’ said Cheeta.
‘Has he not told you anything at all? And what about your mother?’
‘She’s … What’s that?’
There was a faint sound of footsteps, and they drew into the hem of the woods together, and were only just in
