The Illustrated Gormenghast Trilogy - Mervyn Peake [371]
This time as he angled his arm he knew she would take it. She did. Her fingers on his forearm set his old heart pounding and then, without a word they stepped forward together into the moonlit garden.
It was not easy for Bellgrove to know in which direction to escort his hostess. Little did he know that it was he who was being steered. And this was natural, for Irma knew every inch of the hideous place.
For some while they stood by the fishpond in which the reflection of the moon shone with a fatuous vacancy. They stared at it. Then they looked up at the original. It was no more interesting than its watery ghost, but they both knew that to ignore the moon on such an evening would be an insensitive, almost a brutish thing to do.
That Irma knew of an arbour in the garden was not her fault. And it was not her fault that Bellgrove knew it not. Yet she blushed inwardly, as casually turning to left and right at the corners of paths, or under flower-loaded trellises, she guided the headmaster circuitously yet firmly in its direction.
Bellgrove, who had in his mind’s eye just such a place as he was now unwittingly approaching, had felt it better that they should perambulate together in silence, so that when he had a chance to sit and rest his feet, his deep voice, when he brought it forth again from the depths of his chest, should have its full value.
On rounding a great moon-capped lilac bush and coming suddenly upon the arbour, Irma started, and drew back. Bellgrove came to a halt beside her. Finding her face was turned away from him, he gazed absently at the hard boulder-like bun of iron-grey hair which, with not a hair out of place, shone in the moonlight. It was nothing, however, for a man to dwell upon, and turning from her to the arbour which had caused her trepidation, he straightened himself, and turning his right foot out at a rather more aggressive angle, he struck an attitude, which he knew nothing about, for it was the unconscious equivalent of what was going on in his mind.
He saw himself as the type of man who would never take advantage of a defenceless woman, greathearted, and understanding. Someone a damsel might trust in a lonely wood. But he also saw himself as a buck. His youth had been so long ago that he could remember nothing of it but he presumed, erroneously, that he had tasted the purple fruit, had broken hearts and hymens, had tossed flowers to ladies on balconies, had drunk champagne out of their shoes and generally been irresistible.
He allowed her fingers to fall from his arm. It was at moments like this that he must give her a sense of freedom only to draw her further into the rich purdah of his benevolence.
He held the tabs of his white gown near the shoulders.
‘Can you not smell the lilac, madam,’ he said – ‘the moon-lit lilac?’
Irma turned.
‘I must be honest with you, mustn’t I, Mr Bellgrove?’ she said. ‘If I said I could smell it, when I couldn’t, I would be false to you, and false to myself. Let us not start that way. No, Mr Bellgrove, I cannot smell it. I have a bit of a cold.’
Bellgrove had the sense of having to start life all over again.
‘You women are delicate creatures,’ he said after a long pause. ‘You must take care of yourselves.’
‘Why are you talking in the plural, Mr Bellgrove?’
‘My dear madam,’ he replied slowly, and then, after a pause, ‘my … dear … madam,’ he said again. As he heard his voice repeat the three words for the second time, it struck him that to leave them as they were – inconsequent, rudderless, without preface or parenthesis, was by far the best thing he could do. He lapsed into silence