The Illustrated Gormenghast Trilogy

For the second time Mrs Slagg and Fuchsia turned about to discover the object of the Doctor’s inquiry, and found that Steerpike was immediately behind them.

He bowed, and with his eye on the Doctor. ‘At your service,’ he said.

‘Ha, ha, ha! but I don’t want anyone at my service,’ said Dr Prunesquallor, folding his long white hands around each other as though they were silk scarves. ‘I’d rather have somebody “in” my service perhaps. But not at it. Oh, no. I wouldn’t have any service left if every young gentleman who arrived through my door was suddenly at it. It would soon be in shreds. Ha, ha, ha! absolutely in shreds.’

‘He’s come,’ said Fuchsia in her slow voice, ‘because he wants to work because he’s clever, so I brought him.’

‘Indeed,’ said Prunesquallor. ‘I have always been fascinated by those who want to work, ha ha. Most absorbing to observe them. Ha, ha, ha! most absorbing and uncanny. Walk along, dear ladies, walk along. My very dear Mrs Slagg, you look a hundred years younger every day. This way, this way. Mind the corner of that chair, my very dear Mrs Slagg, and oh! my dear woman, you must look where you’re going, by all that’s circumspect, you really must. Now, just allow me to open this door and then we can make ourselves comfortable. Ha, ha, ha! that’s right, Fuchsia, my dear, prop her up! prop her up!’

So saying, and shepherding them in front of him and at the same time rolling his magnified eyes all over Steerpike’s extraordinary costume, the Doctor at last arrived within his own room and closed the door behind himself sharply with a click. Mrs Slagg was ushered into a chair with soft wine-coloured upholstery, where she looked particularly minute, and Fuchsia into another of the same pattern. Steerpike was waved to a high backed piece of oak, and the Doctor himself set about bringing bottles and glasses from a cupboard let into the wall.

‘What is it to be? What is it to be? Fuchsia, my dear child! what do you fancy?’

‘I don’t want anything, thank you,’ said Fuchsia. ‘I feel like going to sleep, Dr Prune.’

‘Aha! aha! A little stimulant, perhaps. Something to sharpen your faculties, my dear. Something to tide you over until – ha, ha, ha! you are snug within your little bed. What do you think? what do you think?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Fuchsia.

‘Aha! but I do. I do,’ said the Doctor, and whinnied like a horse; then, pulling back his sleeves so that his wrists were bare, he advanced like some sort of fastidious bird towards the door where he pulled a cord in the wall. Lowering his sleeves again neatly over his cuffs, he waited, on tip-toe, until he heard a sound without, at which he flung open the door, uncovering, as it were, a swarthy-skinned creature in white livery whose hand was raised as though to knock upon the panels. Before the Doctor had said a word Nannie leaned forward in her chair. Her legs, unable to reach the floor, were dangling helplessly.

‘It’s elderberry wine that you love best, isn’t it?’ she queried in a nervous, penetrating whisper to Fuchsia. ‘Tell the Doctor that. Tell him that, at once. You don’t want any stimulant, do you?’

The Doctor tilted his head slightly at the sound but did not turn, merely raising his forefinger in front of the servant’s eyes and wagging it, and his thin, rasping voice gave an order, for a powder to be mixed and for a bottle of elderberry wine to be procured. He closed the door, and, dancing up to Fuchsia, ‘Relax, my dear, relax,’ he said. ‘Let your limbs wander wherever they like, ha, ha, ha, as long as they do not stray too far, ha, ha, ha! as long as they don’t stray too far. Think of each of them in turn until they’re all as limp as jellyfish, and you’ll be ready to run to the Twisted Wood and back before you know where you are.’

He smiled and his teeth flashed. His mop of grey hair glistened like twine in the strong lamplight. ‘And what for you, Mrs Slagg? What for Fuchsia’s Nannie? A little port?’

Mrs Slagg ran her tongue between her wrinkled lips and nodded as her fingers went to her mouth on which a silly little smile hovered. She watched the Doctor’s every movement as he filled up the wine glass and brought it over to her.

She bowed in an old-fashioned way from her hips as she took the glass, her legs pointing out stiffly in front of her for she had edged herself further back in the chair and might as well have been sitting on a bed.

Then all at once the Doctor was back at Fuchsia’s chair, and bending over her. His hands, wrapped about each other in a characteristic manner, were knotted beneath his chin.

‘I’ve got something for you, my dear; did your nurse tell you?’ His eyes rolled to the side of his glasses giving him an expression of fantastic roguery which on his face would have been, for one who had never met him, to say the least, unsettling.

Fuchsia bent forward, her hands on the red bolster-like arms of the chair.

‘Yes, Dr Prune. What is it, thank you, what is it?’

‘Aha! ha, ha, ha, ha! Aha, ha, ha! It is something for you to wear, ha, ha! If you like it and if it’s not too heavy. I don’t want to fracture your cervical vertebrae, my little lady. Oh no, by all that’s most healthy I wouldn’t care to do that; but I’ll trust you to be careful. You will, won’t you? Ha, ha.’

‘Yes, yes, I will,’ said Fuchsia.

He bent even closer to Fuchsia. ‘Your baby brother has hurt you. I know, ha, ha. I know,’ the Doctor whispered, and the sound edged between his rows of big teeth, very faintly, but not so faintly as to escape Steerpike’s hearing. ‘I have a stone for your bosom, my dear child, for I saw the diamonds within your tear-ducts when you ran from your mother’s door. These, if they come again, must be balanced by a heavier if less brilliant stone, lying upon your bosom.’

Prunesquallor’s eyes remained quite still for a moment. His hands were still clasped at his chin.

Fuchsia stared. ‘Thank you, Dr Prune,’ she said at last.

The physician relaxed and straightened himself. ‘Ha, ha, ha! Ha, ha, ha!’ he trilled, and then bent forward to whisper again. ‘So I have decided to give you a stone from another land.’

He put his hand into his pocket, but kept it there as he glanced over his shoulder.

‘Who is your friend of the fiery eyes, my Fuchsia? Do you know him well?’

Fuchsia shook her head and stuck her lower lip out as though with instinctive distaste.