The Illustrated Gormenghast Trilogy - Mervyn Peake [241]
‘So it’s come to this.’ Nannie was talking to herself. ‘So it’s come to this. The tiniest thing in the world to be an Earl today. Today! Oh, my weak heart, how cruel they are to make a tiny thing have such responsiverity! Cruel. Cruel. It isn’t righteousness! No, it isn’t. But he is. He is the Earl, the naughty mite. The only one – and no one can say he isn’t. Oh, my poor heart! they’ve never been to see him. It’s only now they want to see him because the day has come.’
Her miniature screwed-up face was skirmishing with tears. Her mouth worked itself in and out of its own dry wrinkles between every sentence. ‘They expect him to come, the new little Earl, for their homage and everything, but it’s me who baths him and gets him ready, and irons out his white smock, and gives him his breakfast. But they won’t think of all that – and then … and then …’ (Nannie suddenly sat down on the edge of a chair and began to cry) ‘they’ll take him away from me, Oh, justlessness – and I’ll be all alone – all alone to die … and –’
‘I’ll be with you,’ said Fuchsia from the door. ‘And they won’t take him away from you. Of course, they won’t.’
Nannie Slagg ran up to her and clung to her arm. ‘They will!’ she cried. ‘Your huge mother said she would. She said she would.’
‘Well, they haven’t taken me away, have they?’ said Fuchsia.
‘But you’re only a girl!’ cried Nannie Slagg louder than ever.
‘You don’t matter. You’re not going to be anything.’
Fuchsia dislodged the old woman’s hand and walked heavily to the window. The rain poured down. It poured down.
The voice behind her went on: ‘As though I haven’t poured my love out every day – every day. I’ve poured it all away until I’m hollowed out. It’s always me. It always has been. Toil after toil. Moil after moil; with no one to say “God bless you”. No one to understand.’
Fuchsia could stand it no longer. Much as she loved her nurse, she could not hear that melancholy, peevish voice and watch the doleful rain and keep herself calm. Unless she left the room she would break something – the nearest breakable thing. She turned and ran, and in her own room once more, fell upon her bed, the skirt of a sacking costume rucked up about her thighs.
* * *
Of the Castle’s countless breakfasts that dark morning there were few that tasted well. The steady monotone of the pattering rain was depressing enough, but for it to descend on such a day was sheer gloom. It was as though it defied the Castle’s inmost faith; taunted it with a dull, ignorant descent of blasphemy, as though the undrainable clouds were muttering: ‘What is an Earling to us? It is immaterial.’
It was well that there was much to do before the hour of twelve, and there were few who were not occupied with some task or another relevant to the Day. The Great Kitchen was in an uproar of activity before eight o’clock had struck.
The new chef was in great contrast to the old; a bow-legged, mule-faced veteran of the ovens, with a mouthful of brass teeth and tough, dirty grey hair. His head appeared to sprout the stuff rather than grow it. There was something ferocious about it. In the kitchen it was said that he had his head cropped every other day – indeed, there were some who held that they had seen it on the move at the speed of the minute hand of a great clock.
Out of his mule face and from between the glintings of his teeth a slow, resonant voice would make its way from time to time. But he was not communicative, and for the most part gave his orders by means of gesturing with his heavy hands.
The activities in the Great Kitchen, where everything relating to the