The Illustrated Gormenghast Trilogy

moons, made the seven hundred and thirty-seventh to be scored into the iron. According to the temperaments of the deceased Earls of Gormenghast the half moons were executed with precision or with carelessness. It was not certain what significance the ceremony held, for unfortuately the records were lost, but the formality was no less sacred for being unintelligible.

Old Sourdust had closed the iron door of the ugly, empty cupboard with great care, turning the key in the lock, and but for the fact that while inserting the key a few strands of his beard had gone in with it and been turned and caught, he would have felt the keen professional pleasure that all ritual gave him. It was in vain for him to pull, for not only was he held fast, but the pain to his chin brought tears to his eyes. To bring the key out and the hairs of his beard with it would ruin the ceremony, for it was laid down that the key must remain in the lock for twenty-three hours, a retainer in yellow being posted to guard the cupboard for that period. The only thing to do was to sever the strands with the knife, and this is eventually what the old man did, after which he set fire to the grey tufts of his alienated hairs that protruded from the keyhole like a fringe around the key. These flamed a little, and when the sizzling had ceased Sourdust turned apologetically to find that his Lordship had gone.

When Lord Sepulchrave reached his bedroom he found Flay laying out the black costume that he habitually wore. The Earl had it in his mind to dress more elaborately this evening. There had been a slight but perceptible lifting of his spirit ever since he had conceived this Breakfast for his son. He had become aware of a dim pleasure in having a son. Titus had been born during one of his blackest moods, and although he was still shrouded in melancholia, his introspection had, during the last few days, become tempered by a growing interest in his heir, not as a personality, but as the symbol of the Future. He had some vague presentiment that his own tenure was drawing to a close and it gave him both pleasure when he remembered his son, and a sense of stability amid the miasma of his waking dreams.

Now that he knew he had a son he realized how great had been the unspoken nightmare which had lurked in his mind. The terror that with him the line of Groan should perish. That he had failed the castle of his forebears, and that rotting in his sepulchre the future generations would point at his, the last of the long line of discoloured monuments and whisper: ‘He was the last. He had no son.’

As Flay helped him dress, neither of them speaking a word, Lord Sepulchrave thought of all this, and fastening a jewelled pin at his collar he sighed, and within the doomed and dark sea-murmur of that sigh was the plashing sound of a less mournful billow. And then, as he gazed absently past himself in the mirror at Flay, another comber of far pleasure followed the first, for his books came suddenly before his eyes, row upon row of volumes, row upon priceless row of calf-bound Thought, of philosophy and fiction, of travel and fantasy; the stern and the ornate, the moods of gold or green, of sepia, rose, or black; the picaresque, the arabesque, the scientific – the essays, the poetry and the drama.

All this, he felt, he would now re-enter. He could inhabit the world of words, with, at the back of his melancholy, a solace he had not known before.

‘Then next,’ said Mrs Slagg, counting on her fingers, ‘there’s your mother, of course. Your father and your mother – that makes Two.’ Lady Gertrude had not thought of changing her dress. Nor had it occurred to her to prepare for the gathering.

She was seated in her bedroom. Her feet were planted widely apart as though for all time. Her elbows weighed on her knees, from between which the draperies of her skirt sagged in heavy U-shaped folds. In her hands was a paper-covered book, with a coffee-stain across its cover and with as many dogs’ ears as it had pages. She was reading aloud in a deep voice that rose above the steady drone of a hundred cats. They filled the room. Whiter than the tallow that hung from the candelabra or lay broken on the table of birdseed. Whiter than the pillows on the bed. They sat everywhere. The counterpane was hidden with them. The table, the cupboards, the couch, all was luxuriant with harvest, white as death, but the richest crop was all about her feet where a cluster of white faces stared up into her own. Every luminous, slit-pupilled eye was upon her. The only movement lay in the vibration in their throats. The voice of the Countess moved on like a laden ship upon a purring tide.

As she came to the end of every right hand page and was turning it over her eyes would move around the room with an expression of the deepest tenderness, her pupils filling with the minute white reflections of her cats.

Then her eyes would turn again to the printed page. Her enormous face had about it the wonderment of a child as she read. She was re-living the story, the old story which she had so often read to them.

‘And the door closed, and the latch clicked, but the prince with stars for his eyes and a new-moon for his mouth didn’t mind, for he was young and strong, and though he wasn’t handsome, he had heard lots of doors close and click before this one, and didn’t feel at all frightened. But he would have been if he had known who had closed the door. It was the Dwarf with brass teeth, who was more dreadful than the most spotted of all things, and whose ears were fixed on backwards.

‘Now when the prince had finished brushing his hair …’

While the Countess was turning the page Mrs Slagg was ticking off the third and fourth fingers of her left hand.

‘Dr Prunesquallor and Miss Irma will come as well, dear: they always come to nearly everything – don’t they, though I can’t see why – they aren’t ancestral. But they always come. Oh, my poor conscience! it’s always I who have to bear with them, and do everything, and I’ll have to go in a moment, my caution, to remind your mother, and she’ll shout at me and make me so nervous; but I’ll have to go for she won’t remember, but that’s just how it always happens. And the Doctor and Miss Irma make another two people, and that makes four altogether.’ Mrs Slagg gasped for breath. ‘I don’t like Dr Prunesquallor, my baby; I don’t like his proud habits,’ said Nannie. ‘He makes me feel so silly and small when I’m not. But he’s always asked, even when his vain and ugly sister isn’t; but she’s been asked this time so they’ll both be there, and you must stay next to me, won’t you? Won’t you? Because I’ve got his little Lordship to care for. Oh, my dear heart! I’m not well – I’m not; I’m not. And nobody cares – not even you.’ Her wrinkled hand gripped at Fuchsia’s. ‘You will look after me?’

‘Yes,’ said Fuchsia. ‘But I like the Doctor.’

Fuchsia lifted up the end of her mattress and burrowed beneath the feather-filled weight until she found a small box. She turned her back on her nurse for a moment and fastened something around her neck, and when she turned again Mrs Slagg saw the solid fire of a great ruby hung beneath her throat.

‘You must wear it today!’ Mrs Slagg almost screamed. ‘Today, today, you naughty thing, when everyone’s there. You will look as pretty as a flowering lamb, my big, untidy thing.’

‘No, Nannie, I won’t wear it like that. Not when it’s a day like today. I shall wear it only when I’m alone or when I meet a man who reverences me.’

The Doctor, meanwhile, lay in a state of perfect contentment in a hot bath filled with blue crystals. The bath was veined marble and was long enough to allow the Doctor to lie at full length. Only his quill-like face emerged above the perfumed surface of the water. His hair was filled with winking lather-bubbles; and his eyes were indescribably roguish. His face and neck were bright pink as though direct from a celluloid factory.