The Illustrated Gormenghast Trilogy

Steerpike, who seemed able to interpret this sort of shorthand talk, answered.

‘Last month. I want to leave that dreadful Swelter,’ he added, replaying his only possible card and glancing up at the candlelit head.

‘Lost, were you?’ said Flay after a pause, but with perhaps less darkness in his tone. ‘Lost in the Stone Lanes, were you? One of Swelter’s little rats, lost in the Stone Lanes, eh?’ and Mr Flay raised his gaunt shoulders again.

‘Swelter fell like a log,’ said Steerpike.

‘Quite right,’ said Flay, ‘doing honours. What have you done?’

‘Done, sir?’ said Steerpike, ‘when?’

‘What Happiness?’ said Flay, looking like a death’s-head. The candle was beginning to fail. ‘How much Happiness?’

‘I haven’t any happiness,’ said Steerpike.

‘What! no Great Happiness? Rebellion. Is it rebellion?’

‘No, except against Mr Swelter.’

‘Swelter! Swelter! Leave his name in its fat and grease. Don’t talk of that name in the Stone Lanes. Swelter, always Swelter! Hold your tongue. Take this candle. Lead the way, put it in the niche. Rebellion is it? Lead the way, left, left, right, keep to the left, now right … I’ll teach you to be unhappy when a Groan is born … keep on … straight on …’

Young Steerpike obeyed these instructions from the shadows behind him.

‘A Groan is born’, said Steerpike with an inflection of voice which might be interpreted as a question or a statement.

‘Born,’ said Flay. ‘And you mope in the Lanes. With me, Swelter’s boy. Show you what it means. A male Groan. New, eh? Seventeen? Ugh! Never understand. Never. Turn right and left again – again … through the arch. Ugh! A new body under the old stones – one of Swelter’s, too … don’t like him, eh?’

‘No, sir.’

‘H’m,’ said Flay. ‘Wait here.’

Steerpike waited as he was told and Mr Flay, drawing a bunch of keys from his pocket and selecting one with great care as though he were dealing with objects of rarity inserted it into the lock of an invisible door, for the blackness was profound. Steerpike heard the iron grinding in the lock.

‘Here!’ said Flay out of the darkness. ‘Where’s that Swelter boy? Come here.’

Steerpike moved forward towards the voice, feeling with his hands along the wall of a low arch. Suddenly he found himself next to the dank smelling garments of Mr Flay and he put forward his hand and held Lord Groan’s servant by a loose portion of the long jacket. Mr Flay brought down his bony hand suddenly over the boy’s arm, knocking it away and a t’ck, t’ck, t’ck, sounded in the tall creature’s throat, warning him against any further attempts at intimacy.

‘Cat room,’ said Flay, putting his hand to the iron knob of the door.

‘Oh,’ said Steerpike, thinking hard and repeating ‘Cat room’ to fill in time, for he saw no reason for the remark. The only interpretation he could give to the ejaculation was that Flay was referring to him as a cat and asking to be given more room. Yet there had been no irritation in the voice.

‘Cat room,’ said Flay again, ruminatively, and turned the iron doorknob. He opened the door slowly and Steerpike, peering past him, found no longer any need for an explanation.

A room was filled with the late sunbeams. Steerpike stood quite still, a twinge of pleasure running through his body. He grinned. A carpet filled the floor with blue pasture. Thereon were seated in a hundred decorative attitudes, or stood immobile like carvings, or walked superbly across their sapphire setting, interweaving with each other like a living arabesque, a swarm of snow-white cats.

As Mr Flay passed down the centre of the room, Steerpike could not but notice the contrast between the dark rambling figure with his ungainly movements and the monotonous cracking of his knees, the contrast between this and the superb elegance and silence of the white cats. They took not the slightest notice of either Mr Flay or of himself save for the sudden cessation of their purring. When they had stood in the darkness, and before Mr Flay had removed the bunch of keys from his pocket, Steerpike had imagined he had heard a heavy, deep throbbing, a monotonous sea-like drumming of sound, and he now knew that it must have been the pullulation of the tribe.

As they passed through a carved archway at the far end of the room and had closed the door behind them he heard the vibration of their throats, for now that the white cats were once more alone it was revived, and the deep unhurried purring was like the voice of an ocean in the throat of a shell.

‘THE SPY-HOLE’