The Illustrated Gormenghast Trilogy - Mervyn Peake [32]
She had pulled at the long black pigtail of a chord which hung from the ceiling in one corner of her bedroom and had set a bell jangling in the remote apartment which Mrs Slagg had inhabited for two decades.
The sunlight was streaming through the eastern turrets and was lighting the Carvers’ Battlement and touching the sides of the mountain beyond. As the sun rose, thorn tree after thorn tree on Gormenghast Mountain emerged in the pale light and became a spectre, one following another, now here, now there, over the huge mass until the whole shape was flattened into a radiant jagged triangle against the darkness. Seven clouds like a group of naked cherubs or sucking-pigs, floated their plump pink bodies across a sky of slate. Fuchsia watched them through her window sullenly. Then she thrust her lower lip forward. Her hands were on her hips. Her bare feet were quite still on the floorboards.
‘Seven’, she said, scowling at each. ‘There’s seven of them. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Seven clouds.’
She drew a yellow shawl more tightly around her shoulders for she was shivering in her nightdress, and pulled the pigtail again for Mrs Slagg. Rummaging in a drawer, she found a stick of black chalk and approaching an area of wall that was comparatively vacant she chalked a vicious 7 and drew a circle round it with the word ‘CLOWDS’ written beneath in heavy, uncompromising letters.
As Fuchsia turned away from the wall she took an awkward shuffling step towards the bed. Her jet black hair hung loosely across her shoulders. Her eyes, that were always smouldering, were fixed on the door. Thus she remained with one foot forward as the doorknob turned and Mrs Slagg entered.
Seeing her, Fuchsia continued her walk from where she had left off, but instead of going towards the bed, she approached Mrs Slagg with five strides, and putting her arms quickly around the old woman’s neck, kissed her savagely, broke away, and then beckoning her to the window, pointed towards the sky. Mrs Slagg peered along Fuchsia’s outstretched arm and finger and inquired what there was to look at.
‘Fat clouds,’ said Fuchsia. ‘There’s seven of them.’
The old woman screwed up her eyes and peered once more but only for a moment. Then she made a little noise which seemed to indicate that she was not impressed.
‘Why seven?’ said Fuchsia. ‘Seven is for something. What’s seven for? One for a glorious golden grave – two for a terrible torch of tin; three for a hundred hollow horses; four for a knight with a spur of speargrass; five for a fish with fortunate fins, six – I’ve forgotten six, and seven – what’s seven for? Eight for a frog with eyes like marbles, nine, what’s nine? Nine for a nine, nine – ten for a tower of turbulent toast – but what is seven. What is seven?’
Fuchsia stamped her foot and peered into the poor old nurse’s face.
Nannie Slagg made little noises in her throat which was her way of filling in time and then said, ‘Would you like some hot milk, my precious? Tell me now because I’m busy, and must feed your mother’s white cats, dear. Just because I’m of the energetic system, my dear heart, they give me everything to do. What did you ring for? Quickly, quickly my caution. What did you ring for?’
Fuchsia bit her big red lower lip, tossed a mop of midnight from her brow and gazed out of the window, her hands grasping her elbows behind her. Very stiff she had become and angular.
‘I want a big breakfast,’ said Fuchsia at last. ‘I want a lot to eat, I’m going to think today.’
Nannie Slagg was scrutinizing a wart on her left forearm.
‘You don’t know where I’m going, but I’m going somewhere where I can think.’
‘Yes, dear,’ said the old nurse.
‘I want hot milk and eggs and lots of toast done only on one side,’ Fuchsia frowned as she paused; ‘and I want a bag of apples to take along with me for the whole of the day, for I get hungry when I think.’