The Illustrated Gormenghast Trilogy - Mervyn Peake [127]
‘You tell me you have been treated badly for this and for that, but only listen now to the latest scandal that is being repeated below stairs. “They aren’t being asked,” everyone is saying, “They haven’t been asked.”’
‘Asked what?’ said Clarice.
‘Or where?’ said Cora.
‘To the Great Gathering which your brother is calling. At this Great Gathering the details for a party for the New Heir to Gormenghast, your nephew Titus, will be discussed. Everyone of importance is going. Even the Prunesquallors are going. It is the first time for many years that your brother has become so worldly as to call the members of his family together. He has, it is said, many things which he wishes to talk of in connexion with Titus, and in my opinion this Great Gathering in a week’s time will be of prime importance. No one knows exactly what Lord Sepulchrave has in mind, but the general idea is that preparations must be begun even now for a party on his son’s first Birthday.
‘Whether you will even be invited to that Party I would not like to say, but judging from the remarks I have heard about how you two have been thrust aside and forgotten like old shoes, I should say it was very unlikely.
‘You see,’ said Steerpike, ‘I have not been idle, I have been listening and taking stock of the situation, and one day my labours will prove themselves to have been justified – when I see you, my dear Ladyships, sitting at either end of a table of distinguished guests, and when I hear the glasses clinking and the rounds of applause that greet your every remark I shall congratulate myself that I had long ago enough imagination and ruthless realism to proceed with the dangerous work of raising you to the level to which you belong.
‘Why should you not have been invited to the party? Why? Why? Who are you to be spurned thus and derided by the lowest menials in Swelter’s kitchen?’
Steerpike paused and saw that his words had produced a great effect. Clarice had gone over to Cora’s chair where now they both sat bolt upright and very close together.
‘When you suggested so perspicaciously just now that the solution to this insufferable state of affairs lay in the destruction of your brother’s cumbersome library, I felt that you were right and that only through a brave action of that kind might you be able to lift up your heads once more and feel the slur removed from your escutcheon. That idea of yours spelt genius. I appeal to your Ladyships to do what you feel to be consistent with your honour and your pride. You are not old, your Ladyships, oh no, you are not old. But are you young? I should like to feel that what years you have left will be filled with glamorous days and romantic nights. Shall it be so? Shall we take the step towards justice? Yes or no, my dear ladies, yes or no.’
They got up together. ‘Yes,’ they said, ‘we want Power back.’
‘We want our servants back and justice back and everything back,’ Cora said slowly, a counterpoint of intense excitement weaving through the flat foreground of her voice.
‘And romantic nights,’ said Clarice. ‘I’d like that. Yes, yes. Burn! Burn,’ she continued loudly, her flat bosom beginning to heave up and down like a machine. ‘Burn! burn! burn!’
‘When?’ said Cora. ‘When can we burn it up?’
Steerpike held up his hand to quieten them. But they took no notice, only leaning forward, holding each other’s hands and crying in their dreadful emotionless voices:
‘Burn! Burn! Burn! Burn! Burn!’ until they had exhausted themselves.
Steerpike had not flinched under this ordeal. He now realized more completely than before why they were ostracized from the normal activities of the castle. He had known they were slow, but he had not known that they could behave like this.
He changed his tone.
‘Sit down!’ he rapped out. ‘Both of you. Sit down!’
They complied at once, and