country. The golden cornfields; the amethyst mountains.
‘Anchor, my friend,’ says Juno in a whisper.
‘Yes, what is it?’
His face is in profile. Juno has never seen a face so completely relaxed, and without strain.
‘I am so happy,’ says Juno, ‘although there is so much to be sad about. It will take its turn, I suppose … the sadness. But
‘Love?’
‘Love. Love for everything. Love for those purple hills; love for your rusty forelock.’
She sinks back against the cushions and closes her eyes, and as she does so the Anchor turns his lolling head in her direction. She is indeed handsome with a handsomeness beyond the scope of her wisdom. Majestic beyond the range of her knowledge.
‘The world goes by,’ says Juno, ‘and we go with it. Yet I feel young today; young in spite of everything. In spite of my mistakes. In spite of my age.’ She turns to the Anchor … ‘I’m over forty,’ she whispers. ‘Oh my dear friend, I’m over forty!’
‘So am I,’ says the Anchor.
‘What shall we do?’ says Juno. She clutches his forearm with her jewelled hands, and squeezes him.
‘There is nothing we can do, except live.’
‘Is that why you thought I should leave my home? My possessions? My memories? Everything? Is that why?’
‘I have told you so.’
‘Yes, yes. Tell me again.’
‘We are beginning. Incongruous as we are. You with your mellow beauty that out-glows a hundred damsels, and me with …’
‘With what?’
‘With a kind of happiness.’
Juno turns to him but she says nothing. The only movement comes from the black silk at her bosom where a great ruby rises and sinks like a buoy on a midnight bay.
At last Juno says, ‘The sunlight’s lovelier than it’s ever been, because we have decided to begin. We will pass the days together as they pass. But … Oh …’
‘What is it?’
‘It’s Titus.’
‘What about him?’
‘He is gone. Gone. I disappointed him.’
The Anchor moving with a kind of slow, lazy deliberation takes his place at the wheel. But before the swordfish whips away he says …
‘I thought it was the
‘But O, but O, it
‘Then let us catch it by its tail and fly!’
Juno, her face radiant, leans forward in the padded swordfish, and away they go, soundless save for the breath of their own speed.
EIGHTY-SEVEN
Shambling his way from the west, came Muzzlehatch. Once upon a time there was no shambling in his gait or in his mind. Now it was different. The arrogance was still there, redolent in every gesture, but added to it was something more bizarre. The rangy body was now a butt for boys to copy. His rangy mind played tricks with him. He moved as though oblivious of the world. And so he was, save for one particular. Just as Titus ached for Gormenghast, ached to embrace its crumbling walls, so Muzzlehatch had set himself the task of discovering the centre of destruction.
Always his brain returned to that mere experiment; the liquidation of his zoo. There was no shape in all that surrounded him, whether branch or boulder, but revived in him the memory of one or other of his beloved creatures. Their death had quickened in him something which he had never felt in early days; the slow-burning, unquenchable lust for revenge.
Somewhere he would find it; the ghastly hive of horror; a hive whose honey was the grey and ultimate slime of the pit. Day after day he slouched from dawn until dusk. Day after day he turned this way and that.
It was as though his obsession had in some strange manner directed his feet. It was as though it followed a path known only to itself.
EIGHTY-EIGHT
Out of the fermentations of her brain; out of the chronic hatred she bore him, Cheeta, the virgin, slick as a needle to the outward eye, foul in the inward, had at last conceived a way to bring young Titus to the dust; a way to hurt him.
That there was some part of her which could not do without him, she refused to believe. What might once upon a time have turned to some sort of love, was now an abhorrence. How could a wisp contain such a gall as this? She smarted beneath the humiliation of his obvious boredom … his casual evasion. What did he want from her? The act and nothing else? Her tiny figure trembled with detestation.
Yet her voice was as listless as ever. Her words wandered away. She was all sophistication; desirable, intelligent, remote. Who could have told that joined in deadly grapple beneath her ribs were the powers of fear and evil?
