The Illustrated Gormenghast Trilogy

The Doctor winked at her, his magnified right eye closing enormously. ‘A little later, perhaps,’ said Prunesquallor, opening his eyelid again like some sort of sea creature, ‘when the night is a little further advanced, a little longer in the molar, ha, ha, ha!’ He straightened himself. ‘When the world has swung through space a further hundred miles or so, ha, ha! then – ah, yes, … then –’ and for the second time he looked knowing and winked. Then he swung round upon his heel.

‘And now,’ he said, ‘what will you have? And what, in the name of hosiery, are you wearing?’

Steerpike got to his feet. ‘I am wearing what I am forced to wear until clothes can be found which are more appropriate,’ he said. ‘These rags, although an official uniform, are as absurd upon me as they are insulting. Sir,’ he continued, ‘you asked me what I would take. Brandy, I thank you, sir, brandy.’ Mrs Slagg, staring her poor old eyes practically out of their hot sockets, peered at the Doctor as the speech ended, to hear what he could possibly say after so many words. Fuchsia had not been listening. Something to wear, he had said. Something to lie heavily on her bosom. A stone. Tired as she was she was all excitement to know what it could be. Dr Prunesquallor had always been kind to her, if rather above her, but he had never given her a present before. What colour would the heavy stone be? What would it be? What would it be?

The Doctor was for a moment nonplussed at the youth’s self-assurance, but he did not show it. He simply smiled like a crocodile. ‘Am I mistaken, dear boy, or is that a kitchen jacket you’re wearing?’

‘Not only is this a kitchen jacket, but these are kitchen trousers and kitchen socks and kitchen shoes and everything is kitchen about me, sir, except myself, if you don’t mind me saying so, Doctor.’

‘And what’, said Prunesquallor, placing the tips of his fingers together, ‘are you? Beneath your foetid jacket, which I must say looks amazingly unhygienic even for Swelter’s kitchen. What are you? Are you a problem case, my dear boy, or are you a clear-cut young gentleman with no ideas at all, ha, ha, ha?’

‘With your permission, Doctor, I am neither. I have plenty of ideas, though at the moment plenty of problems, too.’

‘Is that so?’ said the Doctor. ‘Is that so? How very unique! Have your brandy first, and perhaps some of them will fade gently away upon the fumes of that very excellent narcotic. Ha, ha, ha! Fade gently and imperceptibly away …’ And he fluttered his long fingers in the air.

At this moment a knock upon the door panels caused the Doctor to cry out in his extraordinary falsetto:

‘Make entry! Come along, come along, my dear fellow! Make entry! What in the name of all that’s rapid are you waiting for?’

The door opened and the servant entered, balancing a tray upon which stood a bottle of elderberry wine and a small white cardboard box. He deposited the bottle and the box upon the table and retired. There was something sullen about his manner. The bottle had been placed upon the table with perhaps too casual a movement. The door had clicked behind him with rather too sharp a report. Steerpike noticed this, and when he saw the Doctor’s gaze return to his face, he raised his eyebrows quizzically and shrugged his shoulders the merest fraction.

Prunesquallor brought a brandy bottle to the table in the centre of the room, but first poured out a glass of elderberry wine which he gave to Fuchsia with a bow.

‘Drink, my Fuchsia dear,’ he said. ‘Drink to all those things that you love best. I know. I know,’ he added with his hands folded at his chin again. ‘Drink to everything that’s bright and glossy. Drink to the Coloured Things.’

Fuchsia nodded her head unsmilingly at the toast and took a gulp. She looked up at the Doctor very seriously. ‘It’s nice,’ she said. ‘I like elderberry wine. Do you like your drink, Nannie?’

Mrs Slagg very nearly spilt her port over the arm of the chair when she heard herself addressed. She nodded her head violently.

‘And now for the brandy,’ said the Doctor. ‘The brandy for Master … Master …’

‘Steerpike,’ said the youth. ‘My name is Steerpike, sir.’

‘Steerpike of the Many Problems,’ said the Doctor. ‘What did you say they were? My memory is so very untrustworthy. It’s as fickle as a fox. Ask me to name the third lateral blood vessel from the extremity of my index finger that runs east to west when I lie on my face at sundown, or the percentage of chalk to be found in the knuckles of an average spinster in her fifty-seventh year, ha, ha, ha! – or even ask me, my dear boy, to give details of the pulse rate of frogs two minutes before they die of scabies – these things are no tax upon my memory, ha, ha, ha! but ask me to remember exactly what you said your problems were, a minute ago, and you will find that my memory has forsaken me utterly. Now why is that, my dear Master Steerpike, why is that?’

‘Because I never mentioned them,’ said Steerpike.

‘That accounts for it,’ said Prunesquallor. ‘That, no doubt, accounts for it.’

‘I think so, sir,’ said Steerpike.

‘But you have problems,’ said the Doctor.

Steerpike took the glass of brandy which the Doctor had poured out.

‘My problems are varied,’ he said. ‘The most immediate is to impress you with my potentialities. To be able to make such an unorthodox remark is in itself a sign of some originality. I am not indispensable to you at the moment, sir, because you have never made use of my services; but after a week’s employment under your roof, sir, I could become so. I would be invaluable. I am purposely precipitous in my remarks. Either you reject me here and now or you have already at the back of your mind a desire to know me further. I am seventeen, sir. Do I sound like seventeen? Do I act like seventeen? I am clever enough to know I am clever. You will forgive my undiplomatic approach, sir, because you are a gentleman of imagination. That then, sir, is my immediate problem. To impress you with my talent, which would be put to your service in any and every form.’ Steerpike raised his glass. ‘To you, sir, if you will allow my presumption.’

The Doctor all this while had had his glass of cognac raised, but it had remained motionless an inch from his lips, until now, as Steerpike ended and took a sip at his brandy, he sat down suddenly in a chair beside the table and set down his own glass untasted.

‘Well, well, well, well,’ he said at last. ‘Well, well, well, well, well! By all that’s intriguing this is really the quintessential. What maladdress, by all that’s impudent! What an enormity of surface! What a very rare frenzy indeed!’ And he began to whinny, gently at first, but after a little while his high pitched laughter increased in volume