The day drew on, minute after raining minute; hour after raining hour, until the trees of the steep hanger were filled with figures. They were to be found on practically every branch that was strong enough to support them. A great oak was filled with the kitchen staff. A beech, with the gardeners, Pentecost sitting majestically in the main dividing fork of the slippery trunk. The stable lads were perching themselves precariously among the branches of a dead walnut and, cat-calling and whistling, were pulling each other’s hair at every opportunity or kicking out with their feet. For every tree or group of trees, its trade or status.
Only a few officials moved about at the water’s edge, awaiting the arrival of the principal figures. Only a few
There was a woman by the shore. She stood a little apart from a group. Her face was young and it was old: the structure youthful, the expression, broken by time – the bane of the Dwellers. In her arms was an infant with flesh like alabaster.
The rain came down on all. It was warm rain. Warm melancholy and perpetual. It laved the little alabaster body of the child and still it laved it. There was no ending, and the great lake swelled. In the high branches of the dead walnut tree the whistling and scuffling had ceased, for horses were moving through the conifers of the adjacent shore. They had reached the water’s edge and were being tethered to the low sweeping arms of the cedars.
On the first horse, a great grey hunter by any normal standard, was seated, side-saddle, the Countess. She had been hidden among leaves, only the horse showing itself; but immediately she became exposed to view her mount became a pony.
The symbolic sacking hung about her in vast, dripping folds. Behind her, a roan bore Fuchsia, with her legs astride. She was patting its neck as she came through the trees. It was like patting soaked velvet. Its black mane was like a repetition of Fuchsia’s hair. Lank with the rain, it clung to the forehead and the throat.
The aunts were in a pony trap. That they were not in purple seemed extraordinary. Their dresses had always been as indigenous and inevitable a part of them as their faces. They seemed uncomfortable in the sacking and kept plucking at it with their limp hands. The thin man who led the pony brought it to a halt at the lake side, and at the same moment another trap, of similar design but painted a dark and unpleasant orange, trundled through the pines, and there was Mrs Slagg, sitting as upright as she could, her proud attitude (as she supposed it) nullified by the terrified look of her face, which protruded like some kind of wizened fruit from the coarse folds of the garment. She could remember the Earling of Sepulchrave. He had been in his teens. He had swum out to the raft, and there had been no rain. But – oh, her poor heart! – this was so different. It would never have rained at an ‘Earling’ when she was a young girl. Things were so different then.
On her lap was Titus – drenched. Even so the smock she had been so carefully ironing looked miraculously white, as though it gave forth light instead of receiving it. He sucked his thumb as he stared about him. He saw the figures peering down at him from the trees. He did not smile: he simply stared, turning his face from one to another. Then he became interested in a golden bangle which the Countess had sent him the same morning, pulling it as far up his arm as he could, then down to his plump, wrinkled wrist, studying it seriously all the while.
The Doctor and his sister had a sycamore to themselves. Irma took some time being hoisted, and was not at all happy about the whole business. She disliked having her hips wedged between rough branches even in the cause of symbolism. The Doctor, seated a little above her, looked like some form of bird, possibly a plucked crane.
Steerpike had followed Nannie Slagg in order to impress the crowd. Although he should have been in a pine-for-four, he now selected a small ash, where he could both be seen and could see with equal advantage to himself and the rest of Gormenghast.
