by Gisèle Baxter
During the long course of Fuchsia's pregnancy, neither she nor Steerpike had given any consideration at all to being parents. Parenthood was merely a biological fact. He had no conscious memory of being "brought up" (or even of his parents) and she had been looked after by servants. Yet after Magnus's birth, when Gertrude casually mentioned the necessity of a nurse, Fuchsia promptly replied that she would look after her own child. Against expectation, her husband did not raise the objection that she had to return to public life, and so she remained excused from all but the most essential of her public duties. To those she did attend, she invariably brought Magnus, and held him herself, rocking him on her shoulder through the long invocations, handing him over to his reluctant grandmother if there was anything she actually had to do.
She found an ally in Prunesquallor in this decision to undertake hands-on motherhood. First, the doctor argued, despite her difficult delivery, she was perfectly capable of breastfeeding the child herself, and second, the degree of responsibility might lure her out of this daydream state she had lapsed into. To himself, though less certainly, the doctor wondered if it might not humanize the secretary a little. Fortunately Magnus was a good-natured baby and did not scream in public (he reserved this occasional tendency for at night when his parents were trying to sleep). And so, in spite of herself, Fuchsia became publicly visible: not just the daughter of the House of Groan, but the wife of the Master of Ritual. Her appearance began more and more to suggest the latter role. Ironically, having been at last given the right and opportunity to undress her, Steerpike discovered that he enjoyed dressing Fuchsia, even more than he enjoyed designing his household. He moved her out of the opulent but fraying gowns that reminded him too much of her mother, and into more streamlined, elegant costumes, in rich fabrics and dark jewel colours: garnet, sapphire, emerald.
What would be the habitation of most of Magnus's youth was a big room in the upper part of the house. As a nursery, it was painted a deep ochre, actually the colour of those tiny flecks in his garnet eyes, so that in bright weather, with its large windows, it seemed to glow. Some of its furniture came from Fuchsia's old attic, also a tree, an enormous stuffed toy giraffe, and a giant map of the castle. It seemed the least completed room in this carefully planned, aesthetically sound house: it was full of possibility; it was latent.
Steerpike took to fatherhood more than he had expected possible. Not that he was as effusive about being a parent as Fuchsia, who at home was frequently reading stories to the child with lots of dramatic embellishments or picking him up and admiring him. And the actual care he regarded as strictly her province. But when he had the opportunity to return to his house in the daytime, and Fuchsia might be napping, leaving Magnus in the care of one of her maids, he would drape a large towel over one shoulder of his black uniform and walk around the nursery or around his dressing room/office with the baby, mostly thinking to himself, but sometimes addressing his son. He liked the fact that infants seemed to grow to a reasonable size fairly quickly; at birth, Magnus had seemed so tiny that he had dreaded inadvertantly crushing or smothering him, though Fuchsia seemed to have no such fears.
"So what are you thinking about, Magnus Steerpike, of the House of Groan?" he asked the child one afternoon, when the visible meadows were getting their first flush of spring green. They stood at a window which gave a good view of the mountains, but also of a large extension of the castle wall. The baby opened his eyes and seemed to follow his father's level, solemn gaze. Steerpike returned his attention to the child, and while he did not smile (he rarely did; it came too unnaturally to him), he arched an eyebrow and stroked a fingertip against the child's face, which was increasingly in structure like his own (though the eyes, despite their colour, were Fuchsia's as much as the black hair), minus the hideous scars, of course. "Do you think about the future yet? Did I when I was your age, I wonder. I must have; I can only remember not wanting to be where I was born. Well, this is what you're born to: you are entitled to this house, to your mother's royal name, and to be, eventually, by hereditary right, Secretary of the Castle and Master of Ritual and Ceremony. That's what I have, and a long climb up it has been. I wonder if I'll tell you about it. So will this be enough for you? Is it enough for me yet?" The baby extended a hand towards his father's face and made small undecipherable noises. Steerpike let Magnus grab at his nose (it was as close to a game as they had) and found himself smiling involuntarily. "What else is there," he went on. "Magnus Steerpike, seventy-ninth earl of Gormenghast. What about that? Or -- " and his voice dropped to a whisper, "Magnus Steerpike, second president-for-life of the first republic of Gormenghast."
This treasonous statement provoked only another grab at the nose, and Steerpike resumed his gaze out the window, meanwhile rocking the baby on his shoulder in a way he had unconsciously absorbed by watching his wife in public.
Meredith had come into the household with Fuchsia after the wedding, and found herself promoted from general maid to lady in waiting. She wore very plain black dresses, with high collars, closely fitted bodices and sleeves, and unornamented full skirts. Her appearance itself was relatively plain, though she was remarkable for her short straight dark hair; she was small and compactly built, and had very pale eyes with short lashes. She was probably somewhere in her twenties. As one of the senior servants, she was entitled to a small room of her own in the servants' hall on the ground floor of the house. Meredith had very little in the way of what people call personality, though she was efficient, and she had a rich secret life. She had been profoundly disappointed at the news that she was to leave the Groan family quarters, not because she had any great love for the Groans, but she had been having an affair with one of the principal servants there. (This was one of Meredith's primary forms of recreation. The other was reading.) The male staff in this new household seemed surly and reticent, though she did approve of their well-tailored, unornamented attire. She herself was no longer required to wear a uniform, and could have dressed almost as opulently as her mistress, but chose not to.
She liked Fuchsia well enough, especially after she discovered while sorting through the tangled layer of abandoned garments in her room early that year the first evidence that the countess's daughter was no longer a virgin. Sometimes she wished they could simply talk to each other as women. However, she felt no sentiment towards her and none towards the child, although she had assisted in its delivery and was involved in several aspects of its daily care. The household was not as rigidly managed as she would have expected. Insofar as it had a schedule, it was the schedule of the castle. Otherwise, there were no fixed times for anything, no formal meals or family rituals. People slept when tired, ate when hungry. The point of having a staff seemed more to keep everything in order. Unlike the rest of Gormenghast, this place was polished, free of dust and clutter. Its inhabitants wore new clothes that had to be kept in repair. There were certain concerns about privacy and security. Mistakes were not tolerated. Otherwise, it was a reasonably good place to work. Theoretically, Fuchsia was in charge of the staff, but Meredith did most of the practical work of running it, largely because Fuchsia could never bring herself to confront anyone: the effort of having done so with her mother over her marriage seemed to have drained the ability from her.
Magnus was a perfect amalgamation of both his parents. And yet even people who had begrudged and suspected this marriage regarded him as a beautiful child with a good disposition. He was not indulged but was not disciplined either, and while he was dressed as plainly as anyone in his household once out of swaddling clothes, his wild black hair was permitted to grow out into a perpetually tangled mop. He had to spend a lot of time in public, with people he scarcely had opportunity to get to know, witnessing the various rituals of the castle his parents had to participate in. But his world essentially consisted of his parents, Meredith, Dr. Prunesquallor, and the vague formidable presence of his grandmother. By the time he realized his father's appearance was unusual, he was too accustomed to it to mind; his odd parents never struck him as odd. Not did he think of himself as privileged or anyone else as inferior. The world simply existed for him to grow up in, and to learn from.
The issue of his formal education came up fairly early, during one of the long conversations his parents had taken to having in bed. Despite the ordeal of delivery and the dread of conceiving again, despite the demands of the castle and the adjustment to Magnus, the memory of those breathtaking months of the secret life persisted, and both wondered whether or when desire would manifest itself again. That question was answered one afternoon in late winter, when they happened to be in the house together, and a glance across the parlour had immediately led to a dash up the stairs. Sometimes they remembered what the doctor had said; at others they wilfully risked disaster. But in the darkness of this solemn room, they talked freely.
"I suppose Magnus will have to go to the school," said Fuchsia, with a small sigh of regret.
"That abysmal school? Not likely." Steerpike lay on his back with one arm behind his head, the other around her shoulders. He stared at the ceiling, where one bar of white light was visible, reflected moonlight from where the drapes parted.
"Are you allowed to say that? My brother went there. It's part of your job to inspect it. Maybe we have to send Magnus there."
"No we don't," Steerpike said patiently. "I have to ensure that Magnus is trained to inherit my position. There is no requirement of method. Your brother gained nothing in the way of an education in that place, and it's precisely because I inspect it that I'm determined our son won't go there."
"I don't think anyone should go to school," said Fuchsia.
"I agree. Neither of us had any formal education. We're entirely self-taught. That requires far greater discipline."
"So we're just letting him forage for himself?"
"Not quite. There are certain things you could see that he learns, and I have to teach him the history and law of the castle, but he should have a more general education than that. He should have a tutor, someone well read in a variety of subjects."
Fuchsia considered this. "What about Meredith?"
The idea did not immediately appeal to Steerpike, who held to a notion that males should be educated by their own gender, and who regarded Meredith largely as someone who ran the staff. And yet she could do this because as Fuchsia's lady in waiting she had almost nothing to do. And her reading, he had observed, was extensive; she had already made her way through much of the household library. She could at receptions speak knowledgeably on a variety of subjects with well-educated people like the doctor and his sister. She was unsentimental and untemperamental. And there was a precision about her that suited this place and its inhabitants. Consequently, one day Meredith found herself summoned to Steerpike's office in the house.
She had marked the appointment in the calendar she kept in her room. And yet, she found herself suddenly reminded of the time when, taking advantage of a break in the day, she had gone to visit a young stablehand who had caught her eye at a ceremony the week before. Pushing herself up from his drowsy embrace after several minutes of frantic exertion, she yanked down her skirt and brushed bits of hay from it, kissed him violently on the mouth, then ran all the way back to the east wing apartments, arriving breathless and flushed. She stopped in her room, dunked her face in a basin of cold water, brushed her dress, combed her hair, composed herself and reached the office at precisely the required moment.
She found the Master of Ritual seated at his desk; this dressing room that had become an office was as plainly furnished as his castle headquarters, and since its one window never admitted sunlight, it was cool even on this relatively mild day. Steerpike was uncharacteristically in his shirtsleeves, polishing one of what had become an impressive collection of swords. He knew the history and uses of all these weapons; Fuchsia pretended to be interested in these accounts, and Magnus probably actually was, but Meredith found them excruciatingly dull. But then Steerpike was one of the few people she actually disliked: not because he was her employer, and certainly not for his appearance, and not because she knew his origins (although she did) and considered him inferior in caste. Insofar as she could explain her distaste, it would be because she found him morally inferior, or perhaps morally dishonest.
At her entrance, he nodded at her brief curtsey and told her to sit down. Keeping her back perfectly straight, she lowered herself into a chair facing the desk.
"It has occured to us that your talents are being wasted," he began, glancing straight at her, then redipping the cloth in the tin of polish and resuming his job.
Meredith's mind raced: was she being fired? had Gertrude requested her return to the Groan apartments? Since there seemed no appropriate answer to this she said nothing.
"I am not complaining about the quality of your work or about your loyalty," Steerpike went on. "However, you're unusually well-read for a servant and you must be dreadfully bored confined to what is essentially domestic work."
Again, this was the sort of statement that could be a trap, and Meredith had become exceptionally skilled at avoiding traps. So she simply said, in her toneless voice, "I'm sorry if I've given that impression, sir. I actually consider myself quite fortunate in my position here."
Steerpike arched an eyebrow, applied himself briefly to a stubborn bit of tarnish, then asked, "What sorts of things have you learned in the course of all this reading you do? What sorts of things interest you?"
Meredith considered this. "History, of course. Literature, especially poetry and classical epic. Some theoretical mathematics. Natural sciences. Astronomy. If I may be permitted to say so, you have built an impressive library. The doctor has also let me make use of his."
"And what use do you intend to make of all this material?"
She had a secret ambition, of seeing the Gormenghast school opened to female students, and of becoming a teacher there. However, she could not say this, so she replied, "The knowledge is important for its own sake. It lets me talk to people. I'm not sure beyond that what practical use I could make of it."
More close attention had to be paid to tarnish, and then some scrutiny of the hallmark was needed. Meredith was genuinely bored by now, to the extent that she did not care whether she gave this impression or not. She wished this meeting would get to its point.
And so it did. "Lady Fuchsia and I have decided that Magnus will be educated within our household," said Steerpike. "We would like you to tutor him."
There seemed to Meredith to be a vast distance between the two statements. "Do you mean you want me to be his governess rather than your wife's lady in waiting?" she asked, wondering if she was to consider this a demotion. "I may know a great deal about many subjects, but I know almost nothing of children. I'm not even sure I like them." She decided she might as well be candid. In her daydreams concerning the school, she had always envisioned herself teaching adolescents, and generally classes of girls.
"But you do like Magnus," Steerpike observed, screwing the lid back on the polish tin and going over his work with a dry cloth. "I don't like the word governess; it implies some talentless person hired on the assumption that anyone can look after children, and also implies someone responsible for discipline, and you are not responsible for disciplining my son. Nor are you responsible for the whole of his education: a great deal of that falls to me, and some to his mother. Your role in the household will alter; you will now spend the greater part of your working time with Magnus. You will continue to manage the staff. The terms of your remuneration will be reconsidered, and you will be entitled to a second room in the household. As you know, Magnus will be our only child. When he reaches sixteen or seventeen, he'll begin his apprenticeship. At that point, you will remain in the household as a companion to my wife."
"How long may I think about this," Meredith asked, since she assumed this was expected of her.
"It's not a request," Steerpike replied. "This is now your job. Look upon it as a sort of reward."
Something in his voice made her eyes narrow shrewdly. "What for," she demanded.
He stood up, and made a few passes with the sword, and pointed it directly at her while smiling enigmatically. Then he tested the edge against a finger, winced and sucked away the blood, and eased the blade into the scabbard that leaned against a filing cabinet. He rolled down his sleeves, refastened the cuffs and put on his jacket. "I know who you are," he said at last, in answer to her question. "You've climbed quite a distance, by your fingernails all the way. Now you're going to make a significant contribution to the future of Gormenghast. In return, I will keep your secret."
Meredith rose and bowed, and looked directly at her employer: I know who you are too, she thought.
Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Sequel | Table of Contents
Copyright 2000-04 by Gisèle Baxter; all rights to original narrative, characters and characterizations reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Last updated 2 August 2003 by G.M. Baxter.