The Illustrated Gormenghast Trilogy - Mervyn Peake [327]
‘I’ve got some marbles, sir,’ said Titus, sliding off the table and diving his hand into his trouser pocket.
Bellgrove dropped his hands to his sides where they hung like dead weights. It was as though his joy at finding his little plan maturing so successfully was so all-absorbing that he had no faculties left over to control his limbs. His wide, uneven mouth was ajar with delight. He rose to his feet and turning his back on Titus made his way to the far end of the small fort. He was sure that his joy was written all over his face and that it was not for headmasters to show that sort of thing to any but their wives, and he had no wife … no wife at all.
Titus watched him. What a funny way he put his big flat feet on the ground, as though he were smacking it slowly with the soles of his boots – not so much to hurt it, as to wake it up.
‘My boy,’ said Bellgrove at last when he had returned to Titus, having fought the smile away from his face – ‘this is an extraordinary coincidence, you know. Not only do you like marbles, but I …’ and he drew from the decaying darkness of a pocket like a raw-lipped gulch, exactly six globes.
‘O sir!’ said Titus. ‘I never thought you’d have marbles.’
‘My boy,’ said Bellgrove. ‘Let it be a lesson to you. Now where shall we play. Eh? Eh? Good grief, my young friend, what a long way down it is to the floor and how my poor old muscles creak …’
Bellgrove was lowering himself by degrees to the dusty ground.
‘We must examine the terrain for irregularities, h’m, yes, that’s what we must do, isn’t it, my boy? Examine the terrain, like generals, eh? And find our battle ground.’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Titus, dropping to the knees and crawling alongside the old, pale lion. ‘But it looks flat enough to me, sir, I’ll make one of the squares here, and …’
But at this moment the door of the fort opened again and Doctor Prunesquallor stepped out of the sunlight and into the grey gloom of the small fort.
‘Well! well! well! well! well!’ he trilled, peering into the shadows. ‘Well, well, well! What a dreadful place to gaol an earl in, by all that’s merciless. And where is he, this fabulous little wrong-doer – this breaker of bounds, this flouter of unwritten laws, this thoroughly naughty boy? God bless my shocked spirit if I don’t see two of them – and one much bigger than the other – or is there someone with you, Titus, and if so, who can it be, and what in the name of dust and ashes can you find so absorbing on the earth’s bosom, that you must crawl about on it, belly to stubble, like beasts that stalk their prey?’
Bellgrove rose, creaking, to his knees and then catching his feet in the swathes of his gown, tore a great rent in its threadbare material as he struggled into an upright position. He straightened his back and struck the attitude of a headmaster, but his old face had coloured.
‘Hullo, Doctor Prune,’ said Titus. ‘We were just going to play marbles.’
‘Marbles! eh? By all that’s erudite, and a very fine invention too, God bless my spherical soul,’ cried the physician. ‘But, if your accomplice isn’t Professor Bellgrove, your headmaster, then my eyes are behaving in a very peculiar manner.’
‘My dear Doctor,’ said Bellgrove, his hands clasping his gown near the shoulders, its torn portion trailing the floor at his feet like a fallen sail – ‘It is indeed I. My pupil, the young earl, having misbehaved himself, I felt it my bounden duty, in loco parentis, to bring what wisdom I have at my command to bear upon his predicament. To help him, if I can, for, who knows, even the old may have experience; to succour him, for, who knows, even the old may have mercy in their bones; and to lead him back into the current of wise living – for, who knows, even the old may …’
‘I don’t like “current of wise living”, Bellgrove – a beastly phrase for a headmaster, if I may make so damnably bold,’ said Prunesquallor. ‘But I see what you mean. By all that smacks of insight, I most probably do. But what a place for incarcerating a child! Let’s have a look at you, Titus. How are you, my little