The Illustrated Gormenghast Trilogy - Mervyn Peake [360]
It was true that he had only seen her from a distance and it is possible that the distance lent an enchantment self-engendered. No doubt, his sight was not as sharp as it used to be – and the fact that he could not remember having seen any other woman for many years gave Irma a flying start.
But he had obtained a general picture, as he peered through a narrow chasm of light that shone between Throd’s and Spiregrain’s bodies.
And he had seen how proudly she held herself. Stiff as a soldier, and yet how feminine! That is what he would like to have about him in the evening. A stately type. He could imagine her, sitting bolt upright, at his side, her face twitching a little from gentle breeding, her snow-white hands darning away at his socks while he pondered on this and that, turning his eyes from time to time to see whether it was really true, that she was really there, his wife, his wife, on the chocolate-coloured couch.
And then suddenly he had found himself alone. The big face was peering for him from the door. ‘Name?’ it whispered hoarsely, for its voice was almost gone.
‘I’m the headmaster, you idiot,’ barked Bellgrove. He was in no mood for fools. Something was in his blood. Whether it was love or not he must find out soon. There was an impatient streak in him – and this was no moment in which to suffer the man gladly.
The creature with the big face, seeing that Bellgrove was the last to be announced, took a deep breath and to get rid of his pent-up irritability (for he was an hour late for his appointment with a blacksmith’s wife) gathered all the forces of his throat together and yelled – but his voice collapsed after the first syllable and only Bellgrove heard the guttering sound that was intended for ‘master’.
But there was something rather fine, rather impressive in the abbreviation. Something less formal, it is true, but more penetrating in the first simple syllable.
‘The Head –!’
The short hammer blow of the monosyllable reverberated along the room like a challenge.
It struck like a drumstick on the membranes of Irma’s ear and Bellgrove, peering forward as he took his first paces into the room, had the impression of his hostess rearing herself up on her hips, tossing her head before it froze into a motionless carving.
His heart, that was already beating wildly, had leapt at the sight. Her attention was riveted upon him. Of that there was no doubt. Not only her attention, but the attention of all those present. He became aware of a lethal hush. Soft as the carpet was, his feet could be heard as they lowered themselves one after another into the grey-green of the pile.
For a moment, as he moved with that fantastic solemnity which the urchins of Gormenghast were so fond of mimicking, he gave his eyes the run of his staff. There they stood, three deep, a solid wine-red phalanx that completely obscured the side-tables. Yes, he could see Perch-Prism, his eyebrows raised, and Opus Fluke with his horse’s mouth half open in a grin so inane that for a moment it was difficult for Bellgrove to regain that composure necessary to the advancement of his immediate interests. So they were waiting to see in what way he would try to evade the ‘predatory’ Irma, were they? So they expected him to back away from her immediately after he had received his formal reception, did they? So they looked for an evening of hide and seek between their hostess and their headmaster, the low curs! By the light of a militant heaven, he would show the dogs! He would show them. And, by the powers, he would surprise them too.
By now he was about halfway along the carpet, already trodden into a recognizable highway, the pile of the carpet throwing out a greener sheen than elsewhere, the pile pressed forward by a hundred feet.
Irma, her eyes weak with peering, could just see him. As he approached and the blurred edges of