SEVENTY-FOUR

He started to his feet.

‘O hell!’ he cried. ‘Do you have to keep on hopping out of nothing? Like that damn’ Phoenix bird. Half blood, half ashes. I don’t like it. I’m tired of it. Tired of opening my eyes to find odd women peering at me from a great height. How did you get here? How did you know? I thought I’d slipped you.’

Cheeta ignored his questions.

‘Did you say “women”?’ she whispered. Her voice was like dry leaves in a tree.

‘I did,’ said Titus. ‘There was Juno.’

‘I am not interested in Juno,’ said Cheeta. ‘I’ve heard all about her … too often.’

‘You have?’

‘I have.’

‘How foolish of me,’ said Titus, curling his lip. ‘Great God, you must have plundered my subconscious. Entrails ’n all. What’ll you do with such a foul cargo? How far did I go? What did I tell you? Of how I raped her in a bed of parsley?’

‘Who?’ said the scientist’s daughter.

‘My great grand-dam. The one with pointed teeth.’

‘Now that,’ said Cheeta, ‘I don’t remember!’

‘Your face,’ said Titus, ‘is quite wonderful. But it spells disaster. To have you would be like holding a time bomb. Not that you mean to be dangerous. Oh no! But your features carry a danger of their own. You cannot help it, nor can they.’

Cheeta stared at her companion for a long time. At last she said …

‘What is it, Titus, that isolates us? You seem to do all you can to belittle our friendship. You are so very difficult. I could be happy talking to you, hour after hour, but you are never serious, never. Heaven knows, I am no talker. But a word here and there would be something. All you seem to think of is either to make love to me, or to be facetious.’

‘I know what you mean,’ said Titus. ‘I know exactly what you mean.’

‘Then … why …?’

‘It is more difficult than I can tell you. I have to form a barrier against you. A barrier of foolery. I cannot, I must not take it seriously, this land of yours, this land of factories, this you. I have been here long enough to know it is not for me. You are no help with your peculiar wealth and beauty. It leads nowhere. It keeps me like a dancing bear on the end of a rope. Ah … you are a rare one. You spend your time with me, showing me off to your father. But why? Why? To shock him and his friends. You throw off your suitors one by one, and leave them hopping mad. This jealousy whipped up is like a stink. What is it?’

Titus, reaching out for her hand as she stood above him, pulled her down to the ground.

‘Careful,’ she said. Her eyebrows were raised as she lay beside him.

A dragonfly cruised above them with a thin vibration of transparent wings, and then the silence settled again.

‘Take your hand away,’ said Cheeta. ‘I don’t like it. To be touched makes me sick. You understand, don’t you?’

‘No, I bloody well don’t,’ said Titus, jumping to his feet. ‘You’re as cold as meat.’

‘Do you mean that it has always been my body and only my body that has attracted you? Do you mean that there is no other reason why you should want to be near me?’

Her voice took on a new tone. It was dry and remote but it carried with it an edge.

‘The strange thing is,’ she said, ‘that I should love you. You. A young man who has harboured nothing but lust for me. An enigmatic creature from somewhere that is not to be found in an atlas. Can’t you understand? You are my mystery. Sex would spoil it. There’s nothing mysterious about sex. It is your mind that matters, and your stories, Titus, and the way you are different from any other man I have ever seen. But you are cruel, Titus, cruel.’

‘Then the sooner I’m gone, the better,’ he shouted, and as he swung round upon her, he found himself closer than he imagined himself to be, for he was staring down at a little face, bizarre, utterly feminine, and delicious. His arms were at once about her, and he drew her to him. There was no response. As for her head it was turned away so that he could not kiss her.

‘Hello, hello!’ he shouted, letting her go. ‘This is the end.’

He let her go and she at once began to brush her riding clothes.

‘I’m finished with you,’ said Titus. ‘Finished with your marvellous face and your warped brain. Go back to your clutch of virgins and forget me as I shall forget you.’

‘You beast,’ she cried. ‘You ungrateful beast. Am I nothing in myself that you desert me? Is coupling so important? There are a million lovers making love in a million ways, but there is only one of me.’ Her hands trembled. ‘You have disappointed me. You’re cheap. You’re shoddy. You’re weak. You’re probably mad. You and your Gormenghast! You make me sick.’

‘I make myself sick,’ said Titus.

‘I’m glad,’ said the scientist’s daughter, ‘long may you remain so.’

Now that Cheeta knew that she was in no way loved by Titus, the harshness that had crept into her voice was transferring itself to her thoughts. Never before in her life had she been thwarted. There was not one of all her panting admirers who had ever dared to talk to her in the way that Titus had talked. They were prepared to wait a hundred years for a smile from those lips of hers, or the lift of an eyebrow. She stared at him now, as though for the first time, and she hated him. In some peculiar way she had been humbled by him, although it was Titus who had been stopped short in his advances. The harshness that had crept into her voice and mind was turning into native cunning. She had given herself to him in every way short of the actual act of love and she had been flouted; brushed aside.

What did she care whether or not he was Lord of Gormenghast? Whether he was sane or deranged? All she knew was that something miraculous had been snatched from her grasp, and that she would stop at nothing short of absolute revenge.