The Illustrated Gormenghast Trilogy - Mervyn Peake [326]
They looked this great gift-lion in the mouth. It snarled in its weakness, for its teeth were aching. It trod the immemorial corridors. It dozed fitfully at its desk through the terms of sun and ice. And now, it was a Headmaster and lonelier than ever. But there was pride. The claws were blunt, but they were ready. But not so, now. For at the moment his vulnerable heart was swollen with love.
‘My young friend,’ he said, his eyes still on the ceiling of the fort and his chin tucked into the pit of his neck. ‘I propose to talk to you as man to man. Now the thing is …’ (he lingered over the last word) … ‘the thing … is … what shall we talk about?’ He lowered his rather dull eyes and saw that Titus was frowning at him thoughtfully.
‘We could, you see, young man, talk of so many things, could we not, as man to man. Or even as boy to boy. H’m. Quite so. But what? That is the paramount consideration – isn’t it?’
‘Yes, sir. I suppose so,’ said Titus.
‘Now, if you are twelve, my boy, and I am eighty-six, let us say, for I think that ought to cover me, then let us take twelve from eighty-six and halve the result. No, no. I won’t make you do it because that would be most unfair. Ah yes, indeed it would – for what’s the good of being a prisoner and then being made to do lessons too? Eh? Eh? Might as well not be punished, eh? … Let me see, where were we, where were we? Yes, yes, yes, twelve from eighty-six, that’s about seventy-four, isn’t it? Well, what is half seventy-four? I wonder … h’m, yes, twice three are six, carry one, and twice seven are fourteen … thirty-seven, I do believe. Thirty-seven. And what is thirty-seven? Why, it’s just exactly the halfway age between us. So if I tried to be thirty-seven years young – and you tried to be thirty-seven years old – but that would be very difficult, wouldn’t it? Because you’ve never been thirty-seven, have you? But then, although your old headmaster has been thirty-seven, long ago, he can’t remember a thing about it except that it was somewhere about that time that he bought a bag of glass marbles. O yes he did. And why? Because he became tired of teaching grammar and spelling and arithmetic. O yes, and because he saw how much happier the people were who played marbles than the people were who didn’t. That’s a bad sentence, my boy. So I used to play in the dark after the other young professors were asleep. We had one of the old Gormenghast tapestry-carpets in the room and I used to light a candle and place my marbles on the corners of patterns in the carpet, and in the middle of crimson and yellow flowers. I can remember the carpet perfectly as though it was here in this old fort, and there, every night by the glow of a candle, I would practise until I could flick a marble along the floor so that when it struck another it spun round and round but stayed exactly where it was, my boy, while the one it had struck shot off like a rocket to land at the other end of the room in the centre of a crimson carpet flower (if I was successful), or if not, near enough to couch itself at the next flick. And the sounds of the glass marbles in the still of the night when they struck was like the sound of tiny crystal vases breaking on stone floors – but I am getting too poetic, my boy, aren’t I? And boys don’t like poetry, do they?’
Bellgrove took off his mortar-board, placed it on the floor and wiped his brow with the biggest and grubbiest handkerchief Titus had ever seen come out of a grown-up’s pocket.
‘Ah me, my young friend, the sound of those marbles … the sound of those silly marbles. Forlorn, it is, my, boy, to remember the little glass notes – forlorn as the tapping of a