The Illustrated Gormenghast Trilogy полностью

Mrs Slagg ran her tongue between her wrinkled lips and nodded as her fingers went to her mouth on which a silly little smile hovered. She watched the Doctor’s every movement as he filled up the wine glass and brought it over to her.

She bowed in an old-fashioned way from her hips as she took the glass, her legs pointing out stiffly in front of her for she had edged herself further back in the chair and might as well have been sitting on a bed.

Then all at once the Doctor was back at Fuchsia’s chair, and bending over her. His hands, wrapped about each other in a characteristic manner, were knotted beneath his chin.

‘I’ve got something for you, my dear; did your nurse tell you?’ His eyes rolled to the side of his glasses giving him an expression of fantastic roguery which on his face would have been, for one who had never met him, to say the least, unsettling.

Fuchsia bent forward, her hands on the red bolster-like arms of the chair.

‘Yes, Dr Prune. What is it, thank you, what is it?’

‘Aha! ha, ha, ha, ha! Aha, ha, ha! It is something for you to wear, ha, ha! If you like it and if it’s not too heavy. I don’t want to fracture your cervical vertebrae, my little lady. Oh no, by all that’s most healthy I wouldn’t care to do that; but I’ll trust you to be careful. You will, won’t you? Ha, ha.’

‘Yes, yes, I will,’ said Fuchsia.

He bent even closer to Fuchsia. ‘Your baby brother has hurt you. I know, ha, ha. I know,’ the Doctor whispered, and the sound edged between his rows of big teeth, very faintly, but not so faintly as to escape Steerpike’s hearing. ‘I have a stone for your bosom, my dear child, for I saw the diamonds within your tear-ducts when you ran from your mother’s door. These, if they come again, must be balanced by a heavier if less brilliant stone, lying upon your bosom.’

Prunesquallor’s eyes remained quite still for a moment. His hands were still clasped at his chin.

Fuchsia stared. ‘Thank you, Dr Prune,’ she said at last.

The physician relaxed and straightened himself. ‘Ha, ha, ha! Ha, ha, ha!’ he trilled, and then bent forward to whisper again. ‘So I have decided to give you a stone from another land.’

He put his hand into his pocket, but kept it there as he glanced over his shoulder.

‘Who is your friend of the fiery eyes, my Fuchsia? Do you know him well?’

Fuchsia shook her head and stuck her lower lip out as though with instinctive distaste.

The Doctor winked at her, his magnified right eye closing enormously. ‘A little later, perhaps,’ said Prunesquallor, opening his eyelid again like some sort of sea creature, ‘when the night is a little further advanced, a little longer in the molar, ha, ha, ha!’ He straightened himself. ‘When the world has swung through space a further hundred miles or so, ha, ha! then – ah, yes, … then –’ and for the second time he looked knowing and winked. Then he swung round upon his heel.

‘And now,’ he said, ‘what will you have? And what, in the name of hosiery, are you wearing?’

Steerpike got to his feet. ‘I am wearing what I am forced to wear until clothes can be found which are more appropriate,’ he said. ‘These rags, although an official uniform, are as absurd upon me as they are insulting. Sir,’ he continued, ‘you asked me what I would take. Brandy, I thank you, sir, brandy.’ Mrs Slagg, staring her poor old eyes practically out of their hot sockets, peered at the Doctor as the speech ended, to hear what he could possibly say after so many words. Fuchsia had not been listening. Something to wear, he had said. Something to lie heavily on her bosom. A stone. Tired as she was she was all excitement to know what it could be. Dr Prunesquallor had always been kind to her, if rather above her, but he had never given her a present before. What colour would the heavy stone be? What would it be? What would it be?

The Doctor was for a moment nonplussed at the youth’s self-assurance, but he did not show it. He simply smiled like a crocodile. ‘Am I mistaken, dear boy, or is that a kitchen jacket you’re wearing?’

‘Not only is this a kitchen jacket, but these are kitchen trousers and kitchen socks and kitchen shoes and everything is kitchen about me, sir, except myself, if you don’t mind me saying so, Doctor.’

‘And what’, said Prunesquallor, placing the tips of his fingers together, ‘are you? Beneath your foetid jacket, which I must say looks amazingly unhygienic even for Swelter’s kitchen. What are you? Are you a problem case, my dear boy, or are you a clear-cut young gentleman with no ideas at all, ha, ha, ha?’

‘With your permission, Doctor, I am neither. I have plenty of ideas, though at the moment plenty of problems, too.’

‘Is that so?’ said the Doctor. ‘Is that so? How very unique! Have your brandy first, and perhaps some of them will fade gently away upon the fumes of that very excellent narcotic. Ha, ha, ha! Fade gently and imperceptibly away …’ And he fluttered his long fingers in the air.

At this moment a knock upon the door panels caused the Doctor to cry out in his extraordinary falsetto: