The Illustrated Gormenghast Trilogy

and in tempo, and within a few minutes he was helpless with the shrill gale of his own merriment. How so great a quantity of breath and noise managed to come from lungs that must have been, in that tube of a chest wedged uncomfortably close together, it is difficult to imagine. Keeping, even at the height of his paroxysms, an extraordinary theatrical elegance, he rocked to and fro in his chair, helpless for the best part of nine minutes after which with difficulty he drew breath thinly through his teeth with a noise like the whistling of steam; and eventually, still shaking a little, he was able to focus his eyes upon the source of his enjoyment.

‘Well, Prodigy, my dear boy! you have done me a lot of good. My lungs have needed something like that for a long time.’

‘I have done something for you already, then,’ said Steerpike with the clever imitation of a smile on his face. During the major part of the Doctor’s helplessness he had been taking stock of the room and had poured himself out another glass of brandy. He had noted the objets d’art, the expensive carpets and mirrors, and the bookcase of calf-bound volumes. He had poured out some more port for Mrs Slagg and had ventured to wink at Fuchsia, who had stared emptily back, and he had turned the wink in to an affection of his eye.

He had examined the labels on the bottles and their year of vintage. He had noticed that the table was of walnut and that the ring upon the Doctor’s right hand was in the form of a silver serpent holding between his gaping jaw a nugget of red gold. At first the Doctor’s laughter had caused him a shock, and a certain mortification, but he was soon his cold, calculating self, with his ordered mind like a bureau with tabulated shelves and pigeon-holes of reference, and he knew that at all costs he must be pleasant. He had taken a risky turning in playing such a boastful card, and at the moment it could not be proved either a failure or a success; but this he did know, that to be able to take risks was the key note of the successful man.

Prunesquallor, when his strength and muscular control were restored sufficiently, sipped at his cognac in what seemed a delicate manner, but Steerpike was surprised to see that he had soon emptied the glass.

This seemed to do the Doctor a lot of good. He stared at the youth.

‘You do interest me, I must admit that much, Master Steerpike,’ he said. ‘Oh yes, I’ll go that far, ha, ha, ha! You interest me, or rather you tantalize me in a pleasant sort of way. But whether I want to have you hanging around my house is, as you with your enormous brain will readily admit, quite a different kettle of fish.’

‘I don’t hang about, sir. It is one of those things I never do.’

Fuchsia’s voice came slowly across the room.

‘You hung about in my room,’ she said. And then, bending forward, she looked up at the Doctor with an almost imploring expression. ‘He climbed there,’ she said. ‘He’s clever.’ Then she leaned back in her chair. ‘I am tired; and he saw my own room that nobody ever saw before he saw it, and it is worrying me. Oh, Dr Prune.’

There was a pause.

‘He climbed there,’ she said again.

‘I had to go somewhere,’ said Steerpike. ‘I didn’t know it was your room. How could I have known? I am sorry, your Ladyship.’

She did not answer.

Prunesquallor had looked from one to the other.

‘Aha! aha! Take a little of this powder, Fuchsia dear,’ he said, bringing across to her the white cardboard box. He removed the lid and tilted a little into her glass which he filled again with elderberry wine. ‘You won’t taste anything at all, my dear girl; just sip it up and you will feel as strong as a mountain tiger, ha, ha! Mrs Slagg you will take this box away with you. Four times a day, with whatever the dear child happens to be drinking. It is tasteless. It is harmless, and it is extremely efficacious. Do not forget, my good woman, will you? She needs something and this is the very something she needs, ha, ha, ha! this is the very something!’

Nannie received the box on which was written ‘Fuchsia. One teaspoonful to be taken 4 times a day.’

‘Master Steerpike,’ said the Doctor, ‘is that the reason you wanted to see me, to beard me in my den, and to melt my heart like tallow upon my own hearth-rug?’ He tilted his head at the youth.

‘That is so, sir,’ said Steerpike. ‘With Lady Fuchsia’s permission I accompanied her. I said to her: “Just let me see the Doctor, and put my case to him, and I am confident he will be impressed”.’

There was a pause. Then in a confidential voice Steerpike added: ‘In my less ambitious moments it is as a research scientist that I see myself, sir, and in my still less ambitious, as a dispenser.’

‘What knowledge of chemicals have you, if I may venture to remark?’ said the Doctor.

‘Under your initial guidance my powers would develop as rapidly as you could wish,’ said Steerpike.

‘You are a clever little monster,’ said the Doctor, tossing off another cognac and placing the glass upon the table with a click. ‘A diabolically clever little monster.’

‘That is what I hoped you would realize, Doctor,’ said Steerpike. ‘But haven’t all ambitious people something of the monstrous about them? You, sir, for instance, if you will forgive me, are a little bit monstrous.’

‘But, my pooryouth,’ said Prunesquallor, beginning to pace the room, ‘there is not the minutest molecule of ambition in my anatomy, monstrous though it may appear to you, ha, ha, ha!’

His laughter had not the spontaneous, uncontrollable quality that it usually possessed.

‘But, sir,’ said Steerpike, ‘there has been.’

‘And why do you think so?’

‘Because of this room. Because of the exquisite furnishings you possess; because of your calf-bound books; your glassware; your violin. You could not have collected together such things without ambition.’

‘That is not ambition, my poor confused boy,’ said the Doctor: ‘it is a union between those erstwhile