The Illustrated Gormenghast Trilogy - Mervyn Peake [184]
‘That Steerpike?’ the Countess adds.
‘Long ago,’ says Nannie, and closed her eyes as she waits for the next question. She feels pleased with herself.
‘Where is what I said: where, not when,’ booms the voice.
Mrs Slagg tries to gather her thoughts together. Where? Oh, where was it? she wondered. It was long ago … And then she recalled how he had appeared with Fuchsia suddenly at the door of her room.
‘With Fuchsia … Oh, yis … yis, it was with my Fuchsia, your Ladyship.’
‘Where does he come from? Answer me, Slagg, and then finish my hair.’
‘I never do know … No, not ever … I have never been told. Oh, my poor heart, no. Where could the boy come from?’ She peers at the dark bulk above her.
Lady Gertrude wipes the palm of her hand slowly across her brow. ‘You are the same Slagg,’ she says, ‘the same brilliant Slagg.’
Nannie begins to cry, wishing desperately that she were clever.
‘No use crying,’ says the Countess. ‘No use. No use. My birds don’t cry. Not very often. Were you at the fire?’
The word ‘fire’ is terrible to Mrs Slagg. She clutches her hands together. Her bleary eyes grow wild. Her lips tremble, for in her imagination she can see the great flames rising about her.
‘Finish my hair, Nannie Slagg. Stand on a chair and do it.’
Nannie turns to find a chair. The room is like a shipwreck. The red walls glower in the candle-light. The old woman patters her way between stalactites of tallow, boxes and old sofas. The Countess whistles and a moment later the room is alive with wings. By the time Mrs Slagg has dragged a chair to the dressing-table and climbed upon it, the Countess is deep in conversation with a magpie. Nannie disapproves of birds altogether and cannot reconcile the habits of the Countess with the House of Groan, but she is used to such things, not being over seventy years old for nothing. Bending a little over her ladyship’s locks she works with difficulty to complete the hirsute cornice, for the light is bad.
‘Now then, darling, now then,’ says the heavy voice below her, and her old body thrills, for she has never known the Countess speak to her in such a way before; but glancing over the mountainous shoulder she sees that the Countess is talking to a bedraggled finch and Nannie Slagg is desolate.
‘So Fuchsia was the first to find him, was she?’ says the Countess, rubbing her finger along the finch’s throat.
Mrs Slagg, startled, as she always is when anyone speaks, fumbles with the red hank in her hand. ‘Who? Oh, who do you mean … your Ladyship? … Oh, she’s always a good girl, Fuchsia is, yis, yis, always.’
The Countess gets to her feet in a monumental way, brushing several objects from the dressing-table to the floor with her elbow. As she rises she hears the sound of sobbing and turns her head to the lavender roll. ‘Go away, Slagg – go away, and take him with you. Is Fuchsia dressed?’
‘Yis … oh, my poor heart, yis … Fuchsia is all ready, yis, quite ready, and waiting in her room. Oh yis, she is …’
‘His Breakfast will soon be beginning,’ says the Countess, turning her eyes from a brass clock to her infant son. ‘Very soon.’
Nannie, who has recovered Titus from the fastnesses of the bed, stops at the door before pattering out into the dawn-lit corridor. Her eyes stare back almost triumphantly and a little pathetic smile works at the crinkled corners of her mouth, ‘His Breakfast,’ she whispers. ‘Oh, my weak heart, his first Breakfast.’
Steerpike has been found at last, Fuchsia colliding with him as he rounds a corner of the staircase on his way down from the aunts. He is very sprucely dressed, his high shoulders without a speck of dust upon them, his fingernails pared, his hair smoothed down over his pasty-coloured forehead. He is surprised to see Fuchsia, but he does not show it, merely raising his eyebrows in an expression both inquiring and deferential at the same time.
‘You are up very early, Lady Fuchsia.’
Fuchsia, her breast heaving from her long run up the stairs, cannot speak for a moment or two; then she says: ‘Doctor Prune wants you.’
‘Why