Peake, Mervyn - 02 Gormenghast

The pellet was retrieved and passed to Titus who got up from his desk. And then suddenly when he had approached to within a few feet of the headmaster's desk he put the screwed-up drawing into his mouth, and with a gulp, swallowed it.

I've swallowed it, sir.'

Bellgrove frowned, and an expression of pain flitted across his noble face. 'You will stand on your desk,' he said. 'I am ashamed of you, Titus Groan. You will have to be punished.'

When Titus had been standing on his desk for a few minutes he received another tap upon the back. He had already been in trouble through the stupidity of the boy behind and in a flash of anger 'Shut up!' he cried, and swinging around at the same instant found himself staring at Steerpike.

The young Master of Ritual had come silently through the door of the schoolroom. It was his duty to make a periodic round of the classes, and it was an understood thing that in this official capacity it was not for him to knock before he entered - only a few boys had noticed Steerpike's arrival - but the whole class turned at the sound of Titus' voice.

Gradually it dawned upon the class that the reason for the stiff, frozen position that Titus was in, his head turned sharply over his shoulder, his body swivelled around on the narrow pivot of his hips, his hands clenched, his head lowered angrily - that the reason for his tenseness was that his 'shut-up' must have been addressed to none other than the man with the skewbald face, Steerpike himself.

Standing upon the lid of his desk Titus was in the unusual position of looking down at the face of this authority who had suddenly appeared as though out of the floor, like an apparition. The face looked up at him, a wry smile upon the lips, the eyebrows raised a little, and a certain expectancy in the features, as though denoting that although Steerpike realized that it was impossible for the boy to have guessed who it was that had tapped him on the back, and was therefore guiltless of insolence, yet, an apology was called for. It was unthinkable that the Master of Ritual should be spoken to in this way by anyone - let alone a small boy - whatever his lineage.

But no apology came. For Titus, directly he realized what had happened - that he had cried ''shut-up'' to the arch-symbol of all the authority and repression which he loathed - knew instinctively that this was a moment in which to dare the blackest hell.

To apologize would be to submit.

He knew in the darkness of his heart's blood that he must not climb down.

In the face of peril, in the presence of officialdom, age-old and vile, with its scarlet hands, and its hunched shoulders, he must not climb down. He must cling to his dizzy crag until, trembling but triumphant in the enormous knowledge of his victory, he stood once more upon solid ground, secure in the knowledge that as a creature of different clay he had not sold his birthright out of terror.

But he could not move. His face had gone white as the paper on the desk. His brow was sticky with sweat and he was heavy with a ghastly tiredness. To cling to his crag was enough. He had not the courage to stare into the dark red eyes that, with the lids narrowed across them, were fixed upon his face. He had not the courage to do this. He stared over the man's shoulder, and then he closed his eyes. To refuse to say he was sorry was all that his courage could stand.

And then, all at once he felt himself to be standing at a strange angle, and opening his eyes he saw the rows of desks begin to circle in formation through the air and then a far voice shouted as though from miles away as he fell heavily to the floor in a dead faint.

FORTY-EIGHT

'I am having the most moving time, Alfred. I said I am having the most moving time - are you listening or not? O it's too galling the way a woman can be courted so splendidly, so nobly by her lover, only to find that her own brother is about as interested as a fly upon the wall. Alfred, I said a fly upon a wall!'

'Flesh of my flesh,' said the Doctor after a pause (he had been lost in rumination) 'what is it that you want to know?'

''Know',' answered Irma, with superb scorn. 'Why should I want to know anything?'

Her fingers smoothed the back of her iron-grey hair, and then of a sudden, pounced upon the bun at the nape of her neck where they fiddled with an uncanny dexterity. It might have been supposed that her long nervous fingers had an eye apiece so effortlessly did they flicker to and fro across the contours of the hirsute knob.

'I was not asking you a question, Alfred. I sometimes have thoughts of my own. I sometimes make 'statements'. I know you think very little of my intellect. But not everyone is like you - I can assure you. You can have no idea, Alfred, of what is being done to me. I am being drawn out. I am finding treasures in myself. I am like a rich mine, Alfred. I know it, I know it. And I have brains I haven't even used yet.'

'Conversation with you, Irma', said her brother, 'is peculiarly difficult. You leave no loops, dear one, at the end of your sentences, nothing to help your loving brother, nothing for his ever willing, ever eager, ever shining hook. I always have to start afresh, sweet trout. I have to work my passage. But I will try again. Now, you were saying...?'

'O Alfred. Just for one moment, do something to please me. Talk 'normally.' I am so tired of your way of saying things with all its figures of eight.'

'Figures of 'speech'! speech! speech!' cried the Doctor, rising to his feet and wringing his hands, 'why do you always say figure of 'eight'? O bless my soul, what is the matter with my nerves? Yes, of course I'll do something to please you. What shall it be?'

But Irma was in tears, her head buried in a soft grey cushion. At last she raised it and taking off her dark glasses, 'It's too 'much',' she sobbed. 'When even one's brother snaps one up. I did trust you!' she shouted, 'and now 'you're' letting me down too. I only wanted your advice.'

'Who has let you down?' said the Doctor sharply. 'Not the Headmaster...?' Irma dabbed her eyes with an embroidered handkerchief the size of a playing card.

'It's because I told him his neck was dirty, the dear, sweet lord...'

''Lord'!' cried Prunesquallor, 'you don't call him 'that', do you?'

'Of course not, Alfred... only to myself... after all he is my lord, isn't he?'

'If you say so,' said her brother, passing his hand across his brow. 'I suppose he could be anything.'

'O he is. He is. He's anything - or rather, Alfred, he's everything.'

'But you have shamed him, and he feels wounded - proud and wounded, is that it, Irma, my dear?'

'Yes, O yes. It is that exactly. But what can I 'do'? What can I 'do'?' The doctor placed the tips of his fingers together.

'You are experiencing already, my dear Irma,' he said, 'the stuff of marriage. And so is he. Be patient, sweet flower. Learn all you can. Use what tact God gave you, and remember your mistakes and what led up to them. Say nothing about his neck. You can only make things worse. His resentment will fade. His wound will heal in time. If you love him, then simply love him and never fuss about what's dead and gone. After all you love him in spite of all your 'faults', not 'his'. Other people's faults can be fascinating. One's own are dreary. Be quiet for a bit. Don't talk too much and can't you walk a little less like a buoy in a swell?'

Irma got up from her chair and moved to the door. 'Thank you, Alfred,' she said and disappeared.

Doctor Prunesquallor sank back on the couch by the window, and with an ease, quite astonishing, dismissed his sister's problem from his mind and was once more in the cogitative reverie from which she had interrupted him.

He had been thinking of Steerpike's accession to the key position that he now occupied. He had also been reflecting upon the way he had behaved as a patient. His fortitude had been matchless and his will to live quite savage. But for the most part, the Doctor was turning over in his mind something that was quite different. It was a phrase, which, at the height of Steerpike's delirium, had broken loose from the chaos of his ravings - ''And the Twins will make it five,'' the young man had shouted - ''and the Twins will make it five.''