The Illustrated Gormenghast Trilogy - Mervyn Peake [324]
‘Ah. There you are. There you are, indeed. How are you, my friend?’
‘All right. Thank you, sir.’
‘H’m. Not much light in here, eh, young man? What have you been doing to pass the time away?’
Bellgrove approached the table behind which Titus was standing. His noble, leonine head was weak with sympathy for the child, but he was doing his best to play the rôle of headmaster. He had to inspire confidence. That was one of the things that headmasters had to do. He must be Dignified and Strong. He must evoke Respect. What else had he to be? He couldn’t remember.
‘Give me your chair, young fellow,’ he said in a deep and solemn voice. ‘You can sit on the table, can’t you? Of course you can. I seem to remember being able to do things like that when I was a boy!’
Had he been at all amusing? He gave Titus a sidelong glance in the faint hope that he had been, but the boy’s face showed no sign of a smile, as he placed the chair for his headmaster and then sat with his knees crossed on the table. Yet his expression was anything but sullen.
Bellgrove, holding his gown at the height of his shoulders and at the same time both leaning backwards from the hips and thrusting his head forward and downwards so that the blunt end of his long chin rested in the capacious pit of his neck like an egg in an egg-cup, raised his eyes to the ceiling.
‘As your headmaster,’ he said, ‘I felt it my bounden duty, in loco parentis, to have a word with you, my boy.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And to see how you were getting along. H’m.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ said Titus.
‘H’m,’ said Bellgrove. There were a few moments of rather awkward silence and then the headmaster, finding that the attitude which he had struck was putting too great a strain upon those muscles employed for its maintenance, sat down upon the chair and began unconsciously to work his long, proud jawbone to and fro, as though to test it for the toothache that had been so strangely absent for over five hours. Perhaps it was the unwonted relief of his long spell of normal health that caused a sudden relaxing of Bellgrove’s body and brain. Or perhaps it was Bellgrove’s innate simplicity, which sensed that in this particular situation (where a boy and a Headmaster equally ill at ease with the Adult Mind, sat opposite one another in the stillness) there was a reality, a world apart, a secret place to which they alone had access. Whatever it was, a sudden relaxing of the tension he had felt made itself manifest in a long, wheezing, horse-like sigh, and he stared across at Titus contemplatively, without wondering in the least whether his relaxed, almost slumped position in the chair, was of the kind that headmasters adopt. But when he spoke, he had, of course, to frame his sentences in that threadbare, empty way to which he was now a slave. Whatever is felt in the heart or the pit of the stomach, the old habits remain rooted. Words and gestures obey their own dictatorial, unimaginative laws; the ghastly ritual, that denies the spirit.
‘So your old headmaster has come to see you, my boy …’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Titus.
‘… Leaving his classes and his duties to cast his eye on a rebellious pupil. A very naughty pupil. A terrible child who, from what I can remember of his scholastic progress, has little cause to absent himself from the seats of learning.’
Bellgrove scratched his long chin ruminatively.
‘As your headmaster, Titus, I can only say that you make things a little difficult. What am I to do with you? H’m. What indeed? You have been punished. You are being punished: so I am glad to say that there is no need for us to trouble any more about that side of it; but what am I to say to you in loco parentis. I am an old man, you would say, wouldn’t you, my small friend? You would say I was an old man, wouldn’t you?’
‘I suppose so, sir.’
‘And as an old man, I should by now be very wise and deep, shouldn’t I, my boy? After all I have long white hair and a long black gown, and that’s a good start, isn’t it?’
‘I don’t know, sir.’
‘Oh, well it is, my, boy. You can take it from