The Illustrated Gormenghast Trilogy - Mervyn Peake [107]
Would they have anything to drink? Cognac, sherry, brandy, a liqueur, cherry wine …?
They shook their heads profoundly.
‘We only came for a moment,’ said Cora.
‘Because we were passing,’ said Clarice. ‘That’s the only reason.’
But although they refused on those grounds to indulge in a drink of any sort, yet they gave no indication of being in a hurry to go, nor had they for a long time anything to say, but were quite content to sit and stare at Steerpike.
But after a long interval, halfway through which the Doctor and his sister had given up all attempts to make conversation, Cora turned her face to Steerpike.
‘Boy,’ she said, ‘what are you here for?’
‘Yes,’ echoed Clarice, ‘that’s what we want to know.’
‘I want,’ said Steerpike, choosing his words, ‘only your gracious patronage, your Ladyships. Only your favour.’
The twins turned their faces towards each other and then at the same moment they returned them to Steerpike.
‘Say that again,’ said Cora.
‘All of it,’ said Clarice.
‘Only your gracious patronage, your Ladyships. Only your favour. That is what I want.’
‘Well, we’ll give it you,’ said Clarice. But for the first time the sisters were at variance for a moment.
‘Not yet,’ said Cora. ‘It’s too soon for that.’
‘Much too soon,’ agreed Clarice. ‘It’s not time yet to give him any favour at all. What’s his name?’
This was addressed to Steerpike.
‘His name is Steerpike,’ was the youth’s reply.
Clarice leaned forward in her chair and whispered to Cora across the hearthrug: ‘His name is Steerpike.’
‘Why not?’ said her sister flatly. ‘It will do.’
Steerpike was, of course, alive with ideas and projects. These two half-witted women were a gift. That they should be the sisters of Lord Sepulchrave was of tremendous strategic value. They would prove an advance on the Prunesquallors, if not intellectually at any rate socially, and that at the moment was what mattered. And in any case, the lower the mentality of his employers the more scope for his own projects.
That one of them had said his name ‘Steerpike’ would ‘do’ had interested him. Did it imply that they wished to see more of him? That would simplify matters considerably.
His old trick of shameless flattery seemed to him the best line to take at this critical stage. Later on, he would see. But it was another remark that had appealed to his opportunist sense even more keenly, and that was the reference to Lady Groan.
These ridiculous twins had apparently a grievance, and the object of it was the Countess. This when examined further might lead in many directions. Steerpike was beginning to enjoy himself in his own dry, bloodless way.
Suddenly as in a flash he remembered two tiny figures the size of halma players, dressed in the same crude purple. Directly he had seen them enter the room an echo was awakened somewhere in his subconscious, and although he had put it aside as irrelevant to the present requirements, it now came back with redoubled force and he recalled where he had seen the two minute replicas of the twins.
He had seen them across a great space of air and across a distance of towers and high walls. He had seen them upon the lateral trunk of a dead tree in the summer, a tree that grew out at right angles from a high and windowless wall.
Now he realized why they had said ‘Our Tree that grows from the wall that is so much more important than anything Gertrude has.’ But then Clarice had added: ‘But she steals our birds.’ What did that imply? He had, of course, often watched the Countess from points of vantage with her birds or her white cats. That was something he must investigate further. Nothing must be let fall from his mind unless it were first turned to and fro and proved to be useless.
Steerpike bent forward, the tips of his fingers together. ‘Your Ladyships,’ he said, ‘are you enamoured of the feathered tribe? – Their beaks, their feathers, and the way they fly?’
‘What?’ said Cora.
‘Are you in love with birds,