admirer, for she knew that it was 'she' who should be stared at; she who should be poured upon.
Had she spent the best part of a day in titivating herself in order that she might sit plunged in darkness, with nothing but her feet and her nose revealed?
It was insufferable. The visual relationship was wrong; quite, quite wrong.
Bellgrove had suffered a shock when for a moment he had seen ahead of him, in quick succession, a moonlit nose and then a moonlit eye. They were obviously Irma's. There was no other nose in all Gormenghast so knifelike - and no eye so weak and worried - except its colleague. To have seen these features ahead of him when the lady to whom they belonged sat shrouded yet most palpable upon his right hand, unnerved the old man, and it was some while after he had caught sight of the mirror glinting on its return to Irma's reticule that he realized what had happened.
The darkness was as deep and black as water.
'Mr Bellgrove,' said Irma, 'can you hear me, Mr Bellgrove?'
'Perfectly, my dear lady. Your voice is high and clear.'
'I would have you sit upon my right, Mr Headmaster - I would have you exchange places with me.'
'Whatever you would have I am here to have it given,' said Bellgrove. For a moment he winced as the grammatical chaos of his reply wounded what was left of the scholar in him.
'Shall we rise together, Mr Headmaster?'
'Dear lady', he replied, 'let that be so.'
'I can hardly see you, Mr Headmaster.'
'Nevertheless, dear lady, I am at your side. Would my arm assist you at our interchange? It is an arm that, in earlier days...'
'I am quite able to get to my own feet. Mr Bellgrove - 'quite' able, thank you.'
Bellgrove rose, but in rising his gown was caught in some rustic contortion of the garden seat, and he found himself squatting in mid-air. 'Hell!' he muttered savagely, and jerking at his gown, tore it badly. A nasty whiff of temper ran through him. His face felt hot and prickly.
'What did you say?' said Irma. 'I said, what did you say?'
For a moment Bellgrove, in the confusion of his irritation, had unknowingly projected himself back into the Masters' Common room, or into a classroom, or into the life he had led for scores of years...
His old lips curled back from his neglected teeth. 'Silence!' he said. 'Am your headmaster for nothing!'
Directly he had spoken, and had taken in what he had said, his neck and forehead burned.
Irma, transfixed with excitement, could make no move. Had Bellgrove possessed any kind of telepathic instinct he must have known that he had beside him a fruit which, at a touch, might have fallen into his hands, so ripe it was. He had no knowledge of this, but luckily for him, his embarrassment precluded any power on his part to utter a word. And the silence was on his side.
It was Irma who was the first to speak.
'You have mastered me,' she said. Her words, simple and sincere, were more proud than humble. They were proud with surrender.
Bellgrove's brain was not quick - but it was by no means moribund. His mood was now trembling at the opposite pole of his temperament.
This by no means helped to clarify his brain. But he sensed the need for extreme caution. He sensed that his position though delicate was lofty. To find that his act of rudeness in demanding silence from his hostess had raised him rather than lowered him in her eyes, appealed to something in him quite shameless - a kind of glee. Yet this glee, though shameless, was yet innocent. It was the glee of the child who had not been found out.
They were both standing. This time he did not offer Irma his arm. He groped in the darkness and found hers. He found it at the elbow. Elbows are not romantic, but Bellgrove's hand shook as he held the joint, and the joint shook in his grasp. For a moment they stood together. Her pineapple perfume was thick and powerful.
'Be seated,' he said. He spoke a little louder than before. He spoke as one in authority. He had no need to 'look' stem, magnetic or masculine. The blessed darkness precluded any exertion in that direction. He made faces in the safety of the night. Putting out his tongue; blowing out his cheeks - there was so much glee in him.
He took a deep breath. It steadied him. 'Are you seated, Miss Prunesquallor?'
'O yes... O yes indeed,' came the answering whisper.
'In comfort, madam?'
'In comfort, Mr Headmaster, and in peace.'
'Peace, my dear lady? What kind of peace?'
'The peace, Mr Headmaster, of one who has no fear. Of one who has faith in the strong am of her loved one. The peace of heart and mind and spirit that belong to those who have found what it is to offer themselves without reserve to something august and tender.'
There was a break in Irma's voice, and then as though to prove what she had said, she cried out into the night, 'Tender! that's what I said. Tender and Unattached!'
Bellgrove shifted himself; they were all but touching.
