The Illustrated Gormenghast Trilogy - Mervyn Peake [552]
‘What a time to sleep!’ she repeated. ‘Were you so anxious to escape, my chicken-child? So determined to evade me that you sneak upstairs and waste a summer afternoon? But you know you are free in my house to do exactly what you please, don’t you? To live as you please, how you please, where you please, you know this don’t you, my spoiled one?’
‘Yes,’ said Titus, ‘I remember you saying so.’
‘And you will, won’t you?’
‘O yes, I will,’ said Titus, ‘I will.’
‘Darling, you look so adorable.’
Titus took a deep breath. How sumptuous, how monumental and enormous she was as she sat there close to him, her wonderful hat almost touching, so it seemed, the ceiling. Her scent hung in the air between them. Her soft, yet strong white hand lay on his knee – but something was wrong – or lost; because his thoughts were of how his responses to her magnetism grew vaguer and something had changed or was changing with every passing day and he could only think of how he longed to be alone again in this great tree-filled city of the river – alone to wander listless through the sunbeams.
FORTY-FIVE
‘You are a strange young man,’ said Juno. ‘I can’t quite make you out. Sometimes I wonder why I take so much trouble over you, dear. But then of course I know, a moment later, that I have no choice. Now have I? You touch me so, my cruel one. You know it, don’t you?’
‘You say I do,’ said Titus ‘– though why God only knows.’
‘Fishing?’ said Juno. ‘Fishing again? Shall I tell you what I mean?’
‘Not now,’ said Titus, ‘please.’
‘Am I boring you? Just tell me if I am. Always tell me. And if you are angry with me, don’t hide it. Just shout at me. I will understand. I want you to be yourself – only yourself. That’s how you flower best. O my mad one! My bad one!’
The plume of her hat swayed in the golden darkness. Her proud black eyes shone wetly.
‘You have done so much for me,’ said Titus. ‘Don’t think I am callous. But perhaps I must go. You give me too much. It makes me ill.’
There was a sudden silence as though the house had stopped breathing.
‘Where could you go? You do not belong outside. You are my own, my discovery, my … my … can’t you understand, I love you darling. I know I’m twice your – O Titus, I adore you. You are my mystery.’
Outside her window the sun shone fiercely on the honey-coloured stone of the tall house. The wall fell featurelessly down to a swift river.
On the other side of the house was the great quadrangle of prawn-coloured bricks and the hideous moss-covered statues of naked athletes and broken horses.
‘There is nothing I can say,’ said Titus.
‘Of course there is nothing you can say. I understand. Some things can never be expressed. They lie too deep.’
She rose from beside him and turning away, tossed her proud handsome head. Her eyes were shut.
Something fell and struck the floor with a faint sound. It was her right earring, and she knew that the proud flinging gesture of her head had dislodged it, but she also knew that this was not the moment to pay any attention to so trivial a disturbance. Her eyes remained shut and her nostrils remained dilated.
Her hands came slowly together and then she lifted them to her up-flung chin.
‘Titus,’ she said, and her voice was little more than a whisper, a whisper less affected than one would expect to emerge from a lady in the stance she was adopting, with the plumes of her hat reaching down between her shoulder blades.
‘Yes,’ said Titus, ‘What is it?’
‘I am losing you, Titus. You are dissolving away. What is it I am doing wrong?’
At a bound Titus was off the bed and with his hands grasping her elbows had turned her about so that they faced one another in the warm dust of the high room. And then his heart grew sick, for he saw that her cheeks were wet and there in the wetness that wandered down her cheek a stain from her lashes appeared to float and thinly spread so that her heart became naked to him.
‘Juno! Juno! This is too much for me. I cannot bear it.’
‘There is no