The Illustrated Gormenghast Trilogy - Mervyn Peake [526]
One of this group, a slender creature, thin as a switch, swathed in black, her hair as black as her dress and her eyes as black as her hair, turned to the newcomer.
‘Do join us,’ she said. ‘Do talk to us. We need your steady brain. We are so pitifully emotional. Such babies.’
‘Well I would hardly –’
‘Be quiet, Leonard. You have been talking quite enough,’ said the slender, doe-eyed Mrs Grass to her fourth husband. ‘It is Mr Acreblade or nothing. Come along dear Mr Acreblade. There … we are … there … we are.’
The sapless Mr Acreblade thrust his jaw forward, a sight to be wondered at, for even when relaxed his chin gave the impression of a battering ram; something to prod with; in fact a weapon.
‘Dear Mrs Grass,’ he said, ‘you are always so unaccountably kind.’
The attenuate Mr Spill had been beckoning a waiter, but now he suddenly crouched down so that his ear was level with Acreblade’s mouth. He did not face Mr Acreblade as he crouched there, but swivelling his eyes to their eastern extremes, he obtained a very good view of Acreblade’s profile.
‘I’m a bit deaf,’ he said. ‘Will you repeat yourself? Did you say “unaccountably kind”? How droll.’
‘Don’t be a bore,’ said Mrs Grass.
Mr Spill rose to his full working height, which might have been even more impressive were his shoulders not so bent.
‘Dear lady,’ he said. ‘If I am a bore, who made me so?’
‘Well who did darling?’
‘It’s a long story –’
‘Then we’ll skip it, shall we?’
She turned herself slowly, swivelling on her pelvis until her small conical breasts, directed at Mr Kestrel, were for all the world like some kind of delicious threat. Her husband, Mr Grass, who had seen this manoeuvre at least a hundred times, yawned horribly.
‘Tell me,’ said Mrs Grass, as she let loose upon Mr Kestrel a fresh broadside of naked eroticism, ‘tell me, dear Mr Acreblade, all about yourself.’
Mr Acreblade, not really enjoying being addressed in this off-hand manner by Mrs Grass, turned to her husband.
‘Your wife is very special. Very rare. Conducive to speculation. She talks to me through the back of her head, staring at Kestrel the while.’
‘But that is as it should be!’ cried Kestrel, his eyes swimming over with excitement, ‘for life must be various, incongruous, vile and electric. Life must be ruthless and as full of love as may be found in a jaguar’s fang.’
‘I like the way you talk, young man,’ said Grass, ‘but I don’t know what you’re saying.’
‘What are you mumbling about?’ said the lofty Spill, bending one of his arms like the branch of a tree and cupping his ear with a bunch of twigs.
‘You are somewhat divine,’ whispered Kestrel, addressing Mrs Grass.
‘I think I spoke to you, dear,’ said Mrs Grass over her shoulder to Mr Acreblade.
‘Your wife is talking to me again,’ said Acreblade to Mr Grass. ‘Let’s hear what she has to say.’
‘You talk about my wife in a very peculiar way,’ said Grass. ‘Does she annoy you?’
‘She would if I lived with her,’ said Acreblade. ‘What about you?’
‘O, but my dear chap, how naïve you are! Being married to her I seldom see her. What is the point of getting married if one is always bumping into one’s wife? One might as well not be married. Oh no dear fellow, she does what she wants. It is quite a coincidence that we found each other here tonight. You see? And we enjoy it – it’s like first love all over again without the heartache – without the heart in fact. Cold love’s the loveliest love of all. So clear, so crisp, so empty. In short, so civilized.’
‘You are out of a legend,’ said Kestrel, in a voice that was so muffled with passion that Mrs Grass was quite unaware that she had been addressed.
‘I’m as hot as a boiled turnip,’ said Mr Spill.
‘But tell me, you horrid man, how do I feel?’ cried Mrs Grass as she saw a newcomer, lacerating her beauty with the edge of her voice. ‘I’m looking so well these days, even my husband said so, and