FORTY-THREE

‘My dear,’ said Bellgrove, ‘it is surely not for your betrothed to be kept waiting quite so long even though he is only the Headmaster of Gormenghast. Why on earth must you always be so late? Good grief, Irma, it isn’t as though I’m a green youth who finds it romantic to be drizzled on by the stinking sky. Where have you been for pity’s sake?’

‘I am inclined not to answer you!’ cried Irma. ‘The humiliation of it! Is it nothing to you that I should take a pride in my appearance – that I should make myself beautiful for you? You man, you. It breaks one’s heart.’

‘I do not complain lightly, my love,’ replied Bellgrove. ‘As I say, I cannot stand bad weather like a younger man. This was your idea of a place of rendezvous. It could hardly have been worse chosen, with not so much as a shrub to squat under. Rheumatism is on its way. My feet are soaked. And why? Because my fiancée, Irma Prunesquallor, a lady of quite exceptional talents in other directions – they always are in other directions – who has the entire day in which to pluck at her eyebrows, harvest her sheaves of long grey hair, and so on, cannot organize herself – or else has grown shall we say casual in regard to her suitor? Shall we say casual, my dear?’

‘Never!’ cried Irma. ‘O never! my dear one. It is only my longing that you should find me worthy that keeps me at my toilet. O my dearest, you must forgive me. You must forgive me.’

Bellgrove gathered his gown about him in great swathes. He had been staring into the gloomy sky while he had spoken but now, at last he turned his noble face to her. The landscape all about them was hazy with rain. The nearest tree was a grey blur two fields away.

‘You ask me to forgive you,’ said Bellgrove. He closed his eyes. ‘And so I do, and so I do. But remember, Irma, that a punctual wife would please me. Perhaps you could practise a little so that when the time comes I will have nothing to complain of. And now, we will forget about it, shall we?’

He turned his head from her, for he had not yet learned to admonish her without grinning weakly with the joy of it. And so, with his face averted, he bared his rotten teeth at a distant hedgerow.

She took his arm and they began to walk.

‘My dear one,’ she said.

‘My love?’ said Bellgrove.

‘It is my turn to complain, is it not?’

‘It is your turn, my love!’ (He lifted his leonine head and shook the rain happily from his mane.)

‘You won’t be cross, dear?’

He raised his eyebrows and closed his eyes.

‘I will not be cross, Irma. What is it that you wish to say?’

‘It’s your neck, dearest.’

‘My neck? What of it!’

‘It is very dirty, dear one. It has been for weeks … do you think …’

But Bellgrove had stiffened at her side. He bared his teeth in a snarl of impotence.

‘O stinking hell,’ he muttered. ‘O stinking, rotten hell.’