Titus pulled at brambles, pushing aside overhanging bushes. ‘What was his name? May? Day? Clay? Hay? Say? Jay? Pray – pray, pray – oh, Mr Flay – yes, Mr Flay with the creaking knee-joints. How you would despise me. Titus the traitor – but also a traitor to himself. And now I want to live, as I have never lived before. I want to see everything this new world has to offer me.’
Titus relished the freedom that was his – not looking further ahead than the next step. As he rounded a corner in the downward path he spied a hut, built from hacked-down trees, primitive but inviting. He sang and he ran. The dog bounded joyfully beside him.
The signs of a human activity hung outside the hut. Animal skins stretched pathetically, their lives stripped from them. Small flowers clung to life as the winter advanced.
He could not pass the hut without his curiosity being assuaged – he called out ‘Hello’ in every pitch of voice he could manage, from the deep bassoon to the shrill shriek of a cockatoo. From inside the hut he heard movements and he smelled the richness of some animal cooking. The door of the hut was suddenly opened.
What Titus saw was not what he expected. He had thought to see a figure unkempt and old, a shadow, but he saw a youngish man, in clothes that were particularly clean with the well-washed, scrubbed paleness of sun and water. The man had shoulder-length hair, beard, moustache; he was hirsute but immaculate.
At the door to his hut he bowed to Titus with the delicacy of one who had lived in another world. He bade him enter, and with added grace bowed to Titus’s companion, the titanic canine. Titus had expected confusion. He had expected distaste for a stranger, but what he saw was something of infinite charm. A room, whitewashed and rich in what it had to offer. Sitting cross-legged on a floor covered by reed matting was a girl. Then she stood as eminently as any hostess in a palace holding in her arms a baby, with the same flaxen hair that was hers. The baby cried at the sight of his dog. Titus felt ungainly and ugly, but he took the girl’s hand and kissed it with a courtesy that he had long since forsaken. There was no awkward silence. The warmth of fulfilled love permeated the hut.
‘I am Titus, 77th Earl of Gormenghast,’ he said, ‘and this is the companion of my wanderings.’
‘I am Elystan and this is my wife Meirag, and this is my son, John Donne.’
The child was put down on the floor, and it crawled across the room to where the giant dog lay, with its tail hitting rhythmically the rush matting. It made no move as the infant came nearer, but looked on curiously. Titus was frightened as the little creature put its hand out to caress, but he need not have been, as the huge tongue emerged from its cream-furry mouth, and licked the baby’s hand, then its face, and the mutual delight cast all fear from the adults.
11
Titus Learns of Other Loves
AS THE MIST descended on the hut, so did tranquillity on the home in which he found himself. Oil lamps were kindled and a log fire glowed, and a harmony he knew would never be his suffused Titus until he slept beside the sleeping child and his dog and his desire to be at one with nothingness.
When he awoke it was to the sound of a flute, mellow, melancholy and sweet. Tears, which he had thought gone for ever, flooded his eyes. Elystan was playing what Titus was later to discover was a recorder, which he had made himself and which he held vertically in front of him as he played, both hands making games on the candlelit whitewashed walls. He played simple music, all that the instrument allowed, and he heard another voice, that of the girl who sang in harmony, almost as a second instrument.
Mutual happiness and love are together so rare that Titus lay quietly savouring it at second hand, wishing it could last, and holding it in his mind, so that when the ugliness of life usurped this beauty he would see it ever after as a miniature, something to be carried with care into the unknown worlds that lay ahead of him.
Both the man and the girl became aware that he was awake, and their music ended.
‘Well, Titus, did you sleep the sleep of the just, like your faithful hound?’
‘I slept, but I cannot say if justice is the word I would use. It was mercifully blank until I became aware of the music of the gods. Perhaps that was their justice. I awoke in heaven and it looks as though I am still there.’
‘We must fall short of heaven,’ said Meirag. ‘You must be hungry, Titus. We have been waiting for you to wake, before we do anything so mundane as eating.’
Titus sprang up, eager to taste the delights with which the rough-hewn table was laden.
Titus wished to make recompense – he wanted to thank his hostess and his host, and without warning he chanted:
How fly the birds of heaven save by their wings?
How tread the stags, those huge and hairy Kings
Save by their feet? How do the fishes turn
In the wet pinkness where the mermaids yearn
Save by their tails? How does the plantain sprout
Save by that root it cannot do without?
‘This is my contribution. A nonsense rhyme from one whom I knew long ago, in another world. The verses belong to a dead man, silent in his grave, but those are his words and I offer them to you, as a thanksgiving for the shelter, the warmth, the love that is generated here. One day, when I am alone again, I will talk of your kindness to people whom I have yet to meet.’
The baby was put to bed in a cot made of clay and covered by the fleece of lambs. ‘Titus,’ said Elystan, ‘let’s eat now, and then tell us your story, a story as yet without an end.’
Titus took his place at the table to eat the flesh of the animal whose stretched skin he had noticed outside the hut. ‘Oh, this is good food and cooked so well.’
The wife, with an intuition sometimes common to women, placed her hand on Titus’s, at the same time looking at her husband. ‘Come now, Titus, tell us your story. We will believe it, and remember it, when you have gone. Let’s go by the fire.’
Titus, with the cream dog at his knee, began his tale. He spoke for hours, until the fire no longer lit his face or those of his listeners. Names and memories emerged from the mist of time – Gertrude, Sepulchrave, Fuchsia, Juno, Cheetah. Was it fairy tale? Was it truth?
‘Titus, it is too much. I am overwhelmed. I know that you, truth or no truth, can never be a part of any world but your own,’ said Meirag.
‘I must not live in the past,’ he cried, ‘but how else can I live? I can never stand still again. This is your present and your future, and your past. I envy you.’
The fire no longer sent shadows on to the walls. The quiet was broken by the tiny tap of branches on the window. Titus could see in the half-light the man and woman, arms and bodies so closely locked that they made but one shadow. His hand felt a warmth, not of human flesh, but of canine fur, beside him.
‘It is time for us to go, my friend.’
So Titus lifted himself, as silently as he could so as not to disturb his new friends. The girl almost in her sleep pointed to a package on the table. Food, that only and most valuable possession of a wanderer, was there, with a note, which said, ‘Goodbye, Titus. We will always remember you.’
‘I will always be a traitor. Dog, dog, stay here, where you will be warm and fed.’ He stumbled, feeling like a blind man his way to the table. He could not do without food, but he could do without his dog. With the food were placed garments of such warmth that he knew only a woman would think of it. He made his way to the door of the hut and, opening it so that the cold should not enter, he closed it upon the sleeping figures and the dog.
Titus heard the pitiful whines, the scratching at the door, the torment of being left behind, and before his conscience could decide what it should do he heard the latch open and close, and the panting of the creature who wished to share his exile. As Titus stumbled towards the sound of water, he turned and saw at the window a pair of eyes, and a hand raised in farewell.