The Illustrated Gormenghast Trilogy - Mervyn Peake [278]
Deadyawn dropped one of his arms over the side of the high chair and wriggled a languid forefinger. ‘The Fly’ (as the freckled midget was called) pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket, but instead of passing it up to the Headmaster he climbed, with extraordinary agility, up a dozen rungs of the chair and cried into Deadyawn’s ear: ‘Not yet! not yet! Only three of them here!’
‘What’s that?’ said Deadyawn, in a voice of emptiness.
‘Only three of them here!’
‘Which ones,’ said Deadyawn, after a long silence.
‘Bellgrove, Perch-Prism and Fluke,’ said The Fly in his penetrating, fly-like voice. He winked at the three gentlemen through the smoke.
‘Won’t they do?’ murmured Deadyawn, his eyes shut. ‘They’re on my staff, aren’t … they …?’
‘Very much so,’ said The Fly, ‘very much so. But your Edict, sir, is addressed to the whole staff.’
‘I’ve forgotten what it’s all about. Remind … me …’
‘It’s all written down,’ said The Fly. ‘I have it here, sir. All you have to do is to read it, sir.’ And again the small red-headed man honoured the three masters with a particularly intimate wink. There was something lewd in the way the wax-coloured petal of his eyelid dropped suggestively over his bright eye and lifted itself again without a flutter.
‘You can give it to Bellgrove. He will read it when the time comes,’ said Deadyawn, lifting his hanging hand on to the tray before him and languidly stroking the hot-water bottle … ‘Find out what’s keeping them.’
The Fly pattered down the rungs of the chair and emerged from its shadow. He crossed the room with quick, impudent steps, his head and rump well back. But before he reached the door it had opened and two Professors entered – one of them, Flannelcat, with his arms full of exercise-books and his mouth full of seedcake, and his companion, Shred, with nothing in his arms, but with his head full of theories about everyone’s subconscious except his own. He had a friend, by name Shrivell, due to arrive at any moment, who, in contrast to Shred, was stiff with theories about his own subconscious and no one else’s.
Flannelcat took his work seriously and was always worried. He had a poor time from the boys and a poor time from his colleagues. A high proportion of the work he did was never noticed, but do it he must. He had a sense of duty that was rapidly turning him into a sick man. The pitiful expression of reproach which never left his face testified to his zeal. He was always too late to find a vacant chair in the Common-room, and always too early to find his class assembled. He was continually finding the arms of his gown tied into knots when he was in a hurry, and that pieces of soap were substituted for his cheese at the masters’ table. He had no idea who did these things, nor any idea how they could be circumvented. Today, as he entered the Common-room, with his arms full of books and the seedcake in his mouth, he was in as much of a fluster as usual. His state of mind was not improved by finding the Headmaster looming above him like Jove among the clouds. In his confusion the seedcake got into his windpipe, the concertina of school books in his arms began to slip and, with a loud crash, cascaded to the floor. In the silence that followed there was a moan of pain, but it was only Bellgrove with his hands at his jaw. His noble head was rolling from side to side.
Shred ambled forward from the door and, after bowing slightly in Deadyawn’s direction, he buttonholed Bellgrove.
‘In pain, my dear Bellgrove? In pain?’ he inquired, but in a hard, irritating, inquisitive voice – with as much sympathy in it as might be found in a vampire’s breast.
Bellgrove bridled up his lordly head, but did not deign to reply.
‘Let us take it that you are in pain,’ continued