by Mervyn Peake
‘Well, that’s what you were thinking. Why do you try to deceive me?’
‘I wasn’t. I only wanted to know.’
‘Well, now you do know.’
‘Do know what?’
‘You do know, that’s all. I’m not going any deeper for you.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because you can’t go as deep as I can. You never could.’
‘I’ve never tried, I don’t suppose. It’s not worth it, I shouldn’t think. I know when things are worth it.’
‘Well, when are they, then?’
‘When are they what?’
‘When are they worth something?’
‘When you’ve bought something wonderful with your wealth, then it’s always worth it.’
‘Unless you don’t want it, Clarice, you always forget that. Why can’t you be less forgetful?’
There is a long silence while they study each other’s faces.
‘They’ll look at us, you know,’ says Cora flatly. ‘We’re going to be looked at at the Breakfast.’
‘Because we’re of the original blood,’ says Clarice. ‘That’s why.’
‘And that’s why we’re important, too.’
‘Two what?’
‘To everyone, of course.’
‘Well, we’re not yet, not to everyone.’
‘But we will be soon.’
‘When the clever boy makes us. He can do anything.’
‘Anything. Anything at all. He told me so.’
‘Me, too. Don’t think he only tells you, because he doesn’t.’
‘I didn’t say he did, did I?’
‘You were going to.’
‘Two what?’
‘To exalt yourself.’
‘Oh, yes, yes. We will be exalted when the time is ripe.’
‘Ripe and rich.’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘Of course.’
There is another silence. Their voices have been so flat and expressionless that when they cease talking the silence seems no new thing in the room, but rather a continuation of flatness in another colour.
‘Turn your head now, Cora. When I’m looked at at the Breakfast I want to know how they see me from the side and what exactly they are looking at; so turn your head for me and I will for you afterwards.’
Cora twists her white neck to the left.
‘More,’ says Clarice.
‘More what?’
‘I can still see your other eye.’
Cora twists her head a fraction more, dislodging some of the powder from her neck.
‘That’s right, Cora. Stay like that. Just like that. Oh, Cora!’ (the voice is still as flat), ‘I am perfect.’
She claps her hands mirthlessly, and even her palms meet with a dead sound.
Almost as though this noise were a summons the door opens and Steerpike moves rapidly across the room. There is a fresh piece of plaster across his cheek. The twins rise and edge towards him, their shoulders touching as they advance.
He runs his eyes over them, takes his pipe out of his pocket and strikes a light. For a moment he holds the flame in his hand, but only for a moment, for Cora has raised her arm with the slow gesture of a somnabulist and has let it fall upon the flame, extinguishing it.
‘What in plague’s name are you up to?’ shouts Steerpike, for once losing his control. Seeing an Earl as an owl on a mantelpiece, and having part of one’s face removed by a cat, both on the same morning, can temporarily undermine the self-control of any man.
‘No fire,’ says Cora. ‘We don’t have fires any more.’
‘We don’t like them any more. No. Not any more.’
‘Not after we –’
Steerpike breaks in, for he knows how their minds have turned, and this is no moment just before the Breakfast for them to start reminiscing. ‘You are awaited! Breakfast table is agog for you. They all want to know where you are. Come along, my lovely brace of ladies. Let me escort you some of the way, at least. You are looking most alluring – but what can have been keeping you? Are you ready?’
The twins nod their heads.
‘May I be so honoured as to give you my right arm, Lady Cora? And, Lady Clarice, my dear, if you will take my left …?’
Steerpike, bending his elbows, waits for the Aunts to split apart to take his either arm.
‘The right’s more important than the left,’ says Clarice. ‘Why should you have it?’
‘Why shouldn’t I?’
‘Because I’m as good as you.’
‘But not as clever, are you, dear?’
‘Yes, I am, only you’re favoured.’
‘That’s because I’m alluring, like he says I am.’
‘He said we both were.’
‘That was just to please you. Didn’t you know?’
‘Dear ladies,’ says Steerpike, breaking in, ‘will you please be quiet! Who is in control of your destinies? Who is it you promised you would trust and obey?’
‘You.’ They speak together.
‘I think of you as co-equals, and I want you to think of yourselves as of similar status, for when your thrones arrive they will be of equal glory. Now, will you take my arms, if you please?’
Cora and Clarice take an arm each. The door of their room had been left open and the three of them make their exit, the youth’s thin black figure walking between the stiff purple bodies of the Aunts, who are gazing over his head at each other, so that as they recede down the half-lit corridor and diminish in size as they move into the long perspective, the last that can be seen, long after Steerpike in his black and the purple of the twins has become swallowed in the depths, are the tiny, pallid pattern of the two identical profiles facing one another and floating, as it were, in the mid-air shadows, diminishing and diminishing as they drift away, until the last mote of light has crumbled from them.
THE DARK BREAKFAST
Barquentine is unaware that there have been grave and sinister happenings in the Castle on this historic morning. He knows, of course, that the Earl has, since the burning of the library, been in a critical state of health, but of his dreadful transformation upon the mantelpiece he is ignorant. Since the early hours he has been studying the finer points of ritual to be observed at the Breakfast. Now, as he stumps his way to the dining-hall, his crutch clanking ominously on the flagstones, he sucks at a hank of his beard, which curls up and into his mouth through long training, and mutters irritably.
He still lives in the dusty, low-ceilinged room which he has had for over sixty years. With his new responsibilities bringing with them the necessity for interviewing numerous servants and officials has come no desire to establish himself in any of the numerous suites of rooms which are his to occupy if he so desires. The fact that those who are obliged to come either to consult him or for orders are forced to contort themselves painfully in order to negotiate a passage through his rabbit hutch doorway, and when inside to move about in a doubled-up condition, has no effect on him at all. Banquentine is not interested in the comfort of others.
Fuchsia, approaching the dining-hall in company with Mrs Slagg who is carrying Titus, hears the rattle of Barquentine’s crutch following them down the corridor. At a normal time she would have shuddered at the sound, but the horrifying and tragic minutes which she had spent with her father have filled her with so violent an alarm and so nameless a foreboding as to expel all other fears. She has on the immemorial crimson which is worn by the first daughter of the House of Groan at the christening of a brother, and around her neck are the so called Daughter’s Doves, a necklace of white sandstone doves carved by the 17th Earl of Gormenghast, strung together on a cord of plaited grass.
There is no sound from the infant, who is encased in the lilac roll. Fuchsia carries the black sword at one side, although the golden chain is still attached to Titus. Nannie Slagg beside herself with trepidation and excitement, peers now at her bundle and now at Fuchsia, sucking at her wrinkled lips as her little feet shuffle along belo
w her best sepia-coloured skirt.
‘We won’t be late, my caution, will we? Oh no, because we mustn’t, must we?’ She peers into one end of the lilac roll. ‘Bless him that he’s so good, with all this horrible thunder; yis, he’s been as good as gold.’
Fuchsia does not hear; she is moving in a nightmare world of her own. Who can she turn to? Who can she ask? ‘Doctor Prune, Doctor Prune,’ she says to herself, ‘… he will tell me; he will know that I can make him well again. Only I can make him well again.’
Before them, as they turn a corner, the door of the Dining-hall looms up and, obliterating most of it, with his hand on the brass handle, is Swelter. He swings open the door for them and they enter the Dining-Hall. They are the last to arrive, and more through coincidence than design this is as it should be – Titus being the guest of honour, or perhaps the host of honour, for it is today that, as the Heir of Gormenghast, he Enters upon the Realms, having braved the cycle of four seasons.
Fuchsia climbs the seven wooden steps which lead up to the rostrum and the long table. Away to her right spreads the cold, echoing hall, with the pool of rain-drips spreading on the stone floor. The drumming of the thick vertical rain on the roof is a background to everything that happens. Reaching down with her right hand Fuchsia helps Mrs Slagg up the last two steps. The assemblage, perfectly silent at the long table, have turned their heads towards Nannie with her momentous bundle, and when both her feet are well established upon the level of the rostrum the company rise and there is a scraping of chair-legs on the board. It seems to Fuchsia that high, impenetrable forests have risen before her, great half-lit forms of a nature foreign to her own – belonging to some other kingdom. But though for a moment she thinks of this, she is not feeling it, for she is subjugated beneath the weight of her fear for her father.
It is with a shock of indefinable emotion that she sees him as she lifts her head. She had never for a moment contemplated his being able to attend the Breakfast, imagining that the Doctor would be with him in his bedroom. So vivid in her mind is the picture of her father in his room as she had last seen him, that to find him in this so different atmosphere gives her for a moment a gush of hope – hope that she had been dreaming – that she had not been to his room – that he had not been upon the mantelpiece with his round, loveless eyes; for now as she stares at him he is so gentle and sad and thin and she can see that there is a weak smile of welcome upon his lips.
Swelter, who has followed them in, is now ushering Mrs Slagg into a chair on whose back-rest is painted the words: ‘FOR A SERVANT’. There is a space cleared before her on the table in the shape of a half-circle, in which has been laid a long cushion. When Mrs Slagg sits down she finds that her chin is on a level with the table-edge, and it is with difficulty that she lifts the lilac bundle high enough to place it on the cushion. On her left is Gertrude Groan. Mrs Slagg glances at her apprehensively. She is gazing at an expanse of darkness, for the black clothes of the Countess seem to have no ending. She lifts her eyes a little and there is still darkness. She lifts them more, and still the darkness climbs. Raising her whole head and staring almost vertically above her she imagines that, near the zenith of her vision, she can descry a warmth of colour in the night. To think that an hour earlier she had been helping to plait those locks that now appear to be brushing the flaking cherubs of the ceiling.
On her right is the Earl. He leans back in his chair, very listless and weak, but he still smiles wanly at his daughter, who is on the opposite side of the table and facing her mother. On Fuchsia’s right and left sit Irma Prunesquallor and her brother respectively, The Doctor and Fuchsia have their little fingers interlocked under the table. Cora is sitting opposite to the Earl her brother, and on the left of the Countess, and facing Irma, is Clarice. A fine, succulent ham, lit by a candle, takes up most of the space at the Earl’s and Cora’s end of the table, where Swelter presides and has now taken up his official duties armed with carving-knife and steel. At the other end of the table Barquentine smoulders on a high chair.
The eating is done spasmodically whenever a gap of time appears between the endless formalities and ornate procedures which Barquentine sets in motion at the correct time-honoured moments. Tiresome in the extreme for all those present, it would be hardly less tedious for the reader to be obliged to suffer the long catalogue of Breakfast ritual, starting with the smashing of the central Vase, whose shattered fragments are gathered together in two heaps, one at the head and the other at the feet of Titus, and ending with the extraordinary spectacle of Barquentine trampling (apparently as a symbol of the power invested in his hands as warder of the unbroken laws of Gormenghast), up and down the length of the Breakfast table seven times amidst the débris of the meal, his wooden leg striking at the dark oak.
Unknown to any who sit there at the long table there are not nine of them upon the daïs – but ten. All through the meal there have been ten.
The tenth is Steerpike. In the late afternoon of the previous day, when the dining-hall had swum in a warm haze of motes and every movement had bred its hollow echo through the silence, he had moved swiftly up to the platform from the doorway with a black, stumpy roll of cloth and what appeared to be a bundle of netting under his arm. After satisfying himself that he was quite alone, he half unrolled the cloth, slipped up the wooden steps of the daïs, and in a flash has slithered under the table.
For a few moments there were only some scrabbling sounds and the occasional clinking of metal, but the noise mounted, and for two minutes there was intense activity. Steerpike believed in working fast, especially in nefarious matter. When at last he emerged he dusted himself carefully and it might have been noticed, had there been anyone there to notice it, that although he still carried the lumpy roll of cloth, the netting was no longer with him. Had this same hypothetical watcher glanced under the table from any part of the room he would have noticed nothing extraordinary, for there would have been nothing to see; but had he taken the trouble to have crawled between the table legs and then gazed upwards, he would have noticed that, stretching down the centre of the low ‘roof’ was a very comfortable hammock.
And it is in this hammock that Steerpike is now reclining at full length, in semi-darkness, hedged in with a close up panorama of seventeen legs and one wooden stump, or to be exact with sixteen, for Fuchsia is sitting with one of hers curled up under her. He had left the Twins hurriedly on his way down with them and had managed to be the first to slip into the hall. The oak of the table is within a few inches of his face. He has had very little satisfaction, so much of the time having been spent above him in fantastic dumb shows invisible to him. There is, in fact, no conversation and all he has heard during the seemingly interminable meal is the loveless, didactic voice of Barquentine, reeling out the time-worn, legendary phrases; the irritating, and apologetic coughing of Irma, and the slight creaking of Fuchsia’s chair every time she moves. Occasionally the Countess mutters something which no one can hear, which is invariably followed by Nannie rubbing her ankles nervously together. Her feet are at least twenty inches from the floor and it is a great temptation to Steerpike to give them a twitch.
Finding he is going to gain no advantage at all by having secreted himself so cunningly, and yet seeing also that it is impossible to get away, he begins to think like a machine, over-hauling in his mind his position in the Castle.
Saving Sepulchrave and Titus, whose cardinal interests are still limited to the worlds of whiteness and blackness – of milk and sleep – there is very little for the remainder of the company to do other than to brood, for there is no conversation, and there is very little chance of eating the breakfast so lavishly spread before them, for no one passes anything along the table. And so the company brood through the wasted meal. The dry, ancient voice at the end of the table has had an almost hypnotic effect, even at this early hour, and as their minds move to and fro and in and out the rain continues to beat upon the high roof overhead, and to drip, drip, drip, into the pool in the fa
r centre of the long dining-hall.
No one is listening to Barquentine. The rain has drummed for ever. His voice is in the darkness – and the darkness in his voice, and there is no end at all.
THE REVERIES
THE REVERIE OF CORA
… and it’s so cold, hands and cold feet but nice ones mine are nicer than Clarice’s which she pricks with her embroidery clumsy thing but hers are also cold I hope but I want Gertrude’s to be colder than the ice in dreadful places she’s so fat and proud and far too big and I desire her frozen with her stupid bosom and when we’re stronger in power we will tell her so Clarice and I when he lets us with his cleverness which is more clever than all the Castle and our thrones will make us regal but I’m the one to sit highest and I wonder where he is and stupid Gertrude thinks I’m frightened and I am but she doesn’t know and I wish she would die and I’d see her big ugly body in a coffin because I’m of the blood and poor Sepulchrave looks different which she’s done to him ugly woman with fat bosom and carrots hair the vegetable thing so cold here cold and my hands and feet which is what Clarice is feeling like I suppose she’s so slow compared with me she looks so silly with her mouth open not like me my mouth isn’t open yes it is I’ve left it open but now I’ve shut it and it’s closed up and my face must be perfect like I’ll be when I get my power and the West Wing is raging with glory why was the fire so big when I don’t understand and we are made to be in darkness and one day perhaps I will banish Steerpike when he’s done everything for us and perhaps I won’t for it’s not time to know yet and I’ll wait and see because he isn’t really of good stock like us and ought to be a servant but he’s so clever and sometimes treats me with reverence which is due to me of course for I’m Lady Cora of Gormenghast I am and there’s only me and my sister who are like that and she’s not got the character I have and must take advice from me it is so cold and Barquentine is so long and he is so nasty but I will bow a little to him not too much but about an inch to show that he’s done his work adequately not well but adequately with his voice and his wooden crutch which is so unnecessarily stupid to have instead of a leg and perhaps I’ll look at it so that he sees me while I look just for a little moment to show him I am me and he mustn’t forget my blood and what is poor Sepulchrave looking like that for with his mouth slipping down on one side and upon the other while he looks at her and she looks so frightened poor stupid Fuchsia who is still too young to understand anything yet she never comes to visit us when she could be taught but her cruel mother has turned her against us with her evil I feel hungry but nobody will pass me anything for the narrow squeaky. Doctor is asleep or very nearly and Swelter never notices nor does anyone except the clever boy.
