The Illustrated Gormenghast Trilogy

‘Babies?’ said Mrs Slagg in the most animated tone that she had so far used. ‘I could eat the little darlings, sir, I could eat them up!’

‘Quite,’ said Doctor Prunesquallor, ‘quite so, my good woman. You could eat them up. That will be unnecessary. In fact it would be positively injurious, my dear Mrs Slagg, and especially under the circumstances about which I must now enlighten you. A child will be placed in your keeping. Do not devour him Nannie Slagg. It is for you to bring him up, that is true, but there will be no need for you to swallow him first. You would be, ha, ha, ha, ha – swallowing a Groan.’

This news filtered by degrees through Nannie Slagg’s brain and all at once her eyes looked very wide indeed.

‘No, oh no, sir!’

‘Yes, oh yes, sir!’ replied the physician. ‘Although the Countess has of late banished you from her presence, yet, Nannie Slagg, you will of necessity be restored, ha, ha, ha, be restored to a very important state. Sometime today, if I am not mistaken, my wide-eyed Nannie Slagg, I shall be delivering a brand new Groan. Do you remember when I delivered the Countess of Lady Fuchsia?’

Nannie Slagg began to shake all over and a tear ran down her cheek as she clasped her hands between her knees, very nearly overbalancing from her precarious perch.

‘I can remember every little thing sir – every little thing. Who would have thought?’

‘Exactly,’ interrupted Doctor Prunesquallor. ‘Who would have thought. But I must be going, ha, ha, ha, I must dislodge you, Nannie Slagg, from my patella – but tell me, did you know nothing of her ladyship’s condition?’

‘Oh, sir,’ said the old lady, biting her knuckle and shifting her gaze. ‘Nothing! nothing! No one ever tells me anything.’

‘Yet all the duties will devolve on you,’ said Doctor Prunesquallor. ‘Though you will doubtless enjoy yourself. There is no doubt at all about that. Is there?’

‘Oh, sir, another baby, after all this time! Oh, I could smack him already.’

‘Him?’ queried the doctor. ‘Ha, ha, ha, you are very sure of the gender, my dear Mrs Slagg.’

‘Oh yes, sir, it’s a him, sir. Oh, what a blessing that it is. They will let me have him, sir? They will let me won’t they?’

‘They have no choice,’ said the doctor somewhat too briskly for a gentleman and he smiled a wide inane smile, his thin nose pointing straight at Mrs Slagg. His grey hayrick of hair removed itself from the wall. ‘What of my Fuchsia? Has she an inkling?’

‘Oh, no, not an inkling. Not an inkling, sir, bless her. She hardly ever leaves her room except at night, sir. She don’t know nothing, sir, and never talks to no one but me.’

The doctor, removing Nannie Slagg from his knee, rose to his feet. ‘The rest of Gormenghast talks of nothing else, but the western wing is in darkness. Very, very, very strange. The child’s nurse and the child’s sister are in darkness, ha, ha, ha. But not for long, not for long. By all that’s enlightened, very much not so!’

‘Sir?’ queried Nannie Slagg as the doctor was about to move away.

‘What?’ said Doctor Prunesquallor, scrutinizing his fingernails. ‘What is it my dear Mrs Slagg? Be quick.’

‘Er – how is she, sir? How is her ladyship?’

‘Tough as behemoth,’ said Prunesquallor, and was around the corner in an instant, and Nannie Slagg, with her mouth and eyes wide open, could, as she lifted up the cold tray, hear his feet in a far passage tapping an elegant tattoo as he moved like a bird towards the bedroom of the Countess of Groan.

As Mrs Slagg knocked at Fuchsia’s door, her heart was beating very fast. It was always a long time before she realized the import of whatever she were told, and it was only now that the full measure of what the doctor had divulged was having its effect. To be again, after all these years, the nurse of an heir to the house of Groan – to be able to bathe the helpless limbs, to iron out the little garments and to select the wet nurse from the outer dwellings! To have complete authority in anything connected with the care of the precious mite – all this was now weighing with a great load of painful pride across her heart that was beating rapidly.

So overpowered was she by this emotion that she had knocked twice before she noticed that there was a note pinned upon the outside of the door. Peering at it she at last made out what Fuchsia had scrawled in her invariable charcoal.

Can’t wait until the doomsday – you’re so SLOW!

Mrs Slagg tried the door handle although she knew that the door would be locked. Leaving the tray and the apples on the mat outside she retreated to her own room where she might indulge herself in halcyon glimpses of the future. Life, it seemed, was not over for her.

THE ATTIC