A GOLD RING FOR TITUS

Nannie Slagg entered, bearing in her arms the heir to the miles of rambling stone and mortar; to the Tower of Flints and the stagnant moat; to the angular mountains and the lime-green river where twelve years later he would be angling for the hideous fishes of his inheritance.

She carried the child towards the bed and turned the little face to the mother, who gazed right through it and said:

‘Where’s that doctor? Where’s Prunesquallor? Put the child down and open the door.’

Mrs Slagg obeyed, and as her back was turned Lady Groan bent forward and peered at the child. The little eyes were glazed with sleep and the candlelight played upon the bald head, moulding the structure of the skull with shifting shade.

‘H’m,’ said Lady Groan, ‘what d’you want me to do with him?’

Nannie Slagg, who was very grey and old, with red rims around her eyes and whose intelligence was limited, gazed vacantly at her ladyship.

‘He’s had his bath,’ she said. ‘He’s just had his bath, bless his little lordship’s heart.’

‘What about it?’ said Lady Groan.

The old nurse picked the baby up dexterously and began to rock him gently by way of an answer.

‘Is Prunesquallor there?’ repeated Lady Groan.

‘Down,’ whispered Nannie, pointing a little wrinkled finger at the floor, ‘d-downstairs: oh yes, I think he is still downstairs taking punch in the Coldroom. Oh dear, yes, bless the little thing.’

Her last remark presumably referred to Titus and not to Doctor Prunesquallor. Lady Groan raised herself in bed and looking fiercely at the open door, bellowed in the deepest and loudest voice, ‘SQUALLOR!’

The word echoed along the corridors and down the stairs, and creeping under the door and along the black rug in the Coldroom, just managed, after climbing the doctor’s body, to find its way into both his ears simultaneously, in a peremptory if modified condition. Modified though it was, it brought Doctor Prunesquallor to his feet at once. His fish eyes swam all round his glasses before finishing at the top, where they gave him an expression of fantastic martyrdom. Running his long, exquisitely formed fingers through his mop of grey hair, he drained his glass of punch at a draught and started for the door, flicking small globules of the drink from his waistcoat.

Before he had reached her room he had begun a rehearsal of the conversation he expected, his insufferable laughter punctuating every other sentence whatever its gist.

‘My lady,’ he said, when he had reached her door and was showing the Countess and Mrs Slagg nothing except his head around the door-post in a decapitated manner, before entering. ‘My lady, ha, ha, he he. I heard your voice downstairs as I er – was –’

‘Tippling,’ said Lady Groan.

‘Ha, ha – how very right you are, how very very right you are, ha, ha, ha, he, as I was, as you so graphically put it, ha, ha, tippling. Down it came, ha, ha – down it came.’

‘What came?’ interrupted the Countess loudly.

‘Your voice,’ said Prunesquallor, raising his right hand and deliberately placing the tips of his thumb and little finger together, ‘your voice located me in the Coldroom. Oh yes, it did!’

The Countess stared at him heavily and then dug her elbows into the pillow.

Mrs Slagg had rocked the baby to sleep.

Doctor Prunesquallor was running a long tapering forefinger up and down a stalactite of wax and smiling horribly.

‘I called you’, said the Countess, ‘to tell you, Prunesquallor, that tomorrow I get up.’

‘Oh, he, ha, ha, oh ha, ha, my ladyship, oh, ha, ha, my ladyship – tomorrow?’

‘Tomorrow,’ said the Countess, ‘why not?’

‘Professionally speaking –’ began Doctor Prunesquallor.

‘Why not?’ repeated the Countess interrupting him.

‘Ha, ha, most abnormal, most unusual, ha, ha, ha, most unique, so very soon.’

‘So you would docket me, would you, Prunesquallor? I thought you would; I guessed it. I get up tomorrow – tomorrow at dawn.’

Doctor Prunesquallor shrugged his narrow shoulders and raised his eyes. Then placing the tips of his fingers together and addressing the dark ceiling above him, ‘I advise, but never order,’ he said, in a tone which implied that he could have done any amount of ordering had he thought it necessary. ‘Ha ha, ha, oh no! I only advise.’

‘Rubbish,’ said the Countess.

‘I do not think so,’ replied Prunesquallor, still gazing upwards. ‘Ha, ha, ha, ha, oh no! not at all.’ As he finished speaking his eyes for a second travelled downwards at great speed and took in the image of the Countess in bed and then even more rapidly swam up the glasses. What he had seen disquieted him, for he had found in her expression such a concentration of distaste that as he deflected his gaze away from her he found that his feet were moving backwards one after the other and that he was at the door before he knew that he had decided what to do. Bowing quickly he withdrew his body from the bedroom.

‘Isn’t he sweet, oh isn’t he the sweetest drop of sugar that ever was?’ said Mrs Slagg.

‘Who?’ shouted the Countess so loudly that a string of tallow wavered in the shifting light.

The baby awoke at the sound and moaned, and Nannie Slagg retreated.

‘His little lordship,’ she whimpered weakly, ‘his pretty little lordship.’

‘Slagg,’ said the Countess, ‘go away! I would like to see the boy when he is six. Find a wet nurse from the Outer Dwellings. Make him green dresses from the velvet curtains. Take this gold ring of mine. Fix a chain to it. Let him wear it around his wry little neck. Call him Titus. Go away and leave the door six inches open.’

The Countess put her hand under the pillow and drew forth a small reed, placed it in her vast mouth and gave it breath. Two long sweet notes sang out through the dark air. At the sound, Mrs Slagg, grabbing the gold ring from the bedclothes, where the Countess had thrown it, hurried as fast as her old legs could carry her from the room as though a werewolf were at her heels. Lady Groan was leaning forward in bed, her eyes were like a child’s: wide, sweet and excited. They were fixed upon the door. Her hands were gripping the edges of her pillow. She became rigid.

In the distance, a vibration was becoming louder and louder until the volume seemed to have filled the chamber itself, when suddenly there slid through the narrow opening of the door and moved into the fumid atmosphere of the room an undulation of whiteness, so that, within a breath, there was no shadow in all the room that was not blanched with cats.