The apprentices edged themselves forward, tripping and treading upon each other’s feet, the foremost of them being wedged against the wine-barrel itself.
‘Thatsh the way. Thatsh jusht the way,’ said Swelter, leering down at them. ‘Now we’re quite a happly little family. Mosht shelect and advanced.’
He then slid a fat hand through a slit in his white garment of office and removed from a deep pocket a bottle. Plucking out the cork with his lips, that had gripped it with an uncanny muscularity, he poured half a pint down his throat without displacing the cork, for he laid a finger at the mouth of the bottle, so dividing the rush of wine into two separate spurts that shot adroitly into either cheek, and so, making contact at the back of his mouth, down his throat in one dull gurgle to those unmentionable gulches that lay below.
The apprentices screamed and stamped and tore at each other in an access of delight and of admiration.
The chef removed the cork and twisted it around between his thumb and forefinger and satisfying himself that it had remained perfectly dry during the operation, recorked the bottle and returned it through the slit into his pocket.
Again he put up his hand and silence was restored save for the heavy, excited breathing.
‘Now tell me thish, my stenching cherubs. Tell me this and tell me exshtra quickly, who am I? Now tell me exshtra quickly.’
‘Swelter,’ they cried, ‘Swelter, sir! Swelter!’
‘Is that all you know?’ came the voice. ‘Is that all you know, my little sea of faces? Silence now! and lishen well to me, chief chef of Gormenghast, man and boy forty years, fair and foul, rain or shine, sand and sawdust, hags and stags and all the resht of them done to a turn and spread with sauce of aloes and a dash of prickling pepper.’
‘With a dash of prickling pepper,’ yelled the apprentices hugging themselves and each other in turn. ‘Shall we cook it, sir? We’ll do it now, sir, and slosh it in the copper, sir, and stir it up. Oh! what a tasty dish, Sir. Oh! what a tasty dish!’
‘Shilence,’ roared the chef. ‘Silensh, my fairy boys. Silence, my belching angels. Come closer here, come closer with your little creamy faces and I’ll tell you who I am.’
The high-shouldered boy, who had taken no part in the excitement, pulled out a small pipe of knotted worm-wood and filled it deliberately. His mouth was quite expressionless, curving neither up nor down, but his eyes were dark and hot with a mature hatred. They were half closed but their eloquence smouldered through the lashes as he watched the figure on the barrel lean forward precariously.
‘Now lishen well,’ continued the voice, ‘and I’ll tell you exactly who I am and then I’ll shing to you a shong and you will know who’s shinging to you, my ghastly little ineffectual fillets.’
‘A song! A song!’ came the shrill chorus.
‘Firshtly,’ said the chef leaning forward and dropping each confidential word like a cannon ball smeared with syrup. ‘Firshtly. I am none other than Abiatha Swelter, which meansh, for you would not know, that I am the shymbol of both excellence and plenty. I am the father of exchellence and plenty. Who did I shay I was?’
‘Abafer Swelter,’ came the scream.
The chef leaned back on his swollen legs and drew the corners of his mouth down until they lost themselves among the shadows of his hot dewlaps.
‘Abiatha,’ he repeated slowly, stressing the central ‘A’. ‘Abiatha. What did I shay my name wash?’
‘Abiatha,’ came the scream again.
‘Thatsh right, thatsh right. Abiatha. Are you lishening, my pretty vermin, are you lishening?’
The apprentices gave him to understand that they were listening very hard.
Before the chef continued he applied himself to the bottle once again. This time he held the glass neck between his teeth and tilting his head back until the bottle was vertical, drained it and spat it out over the heads of the fascinated throng. The sound of black glass smashing on the flagstones was drowned in screams of approval.
‘Food,’ said Swelter, ‘is shelestial and drink is mosht entrancing – such flowers of flatulence. Sush gaseous buds. Come closer in, steal in, and I will shing. I will lift my sweetest heart into the rafters, and will shing to you a shong. An old shong of great shadness, a most dolorous piece. Come closer in.’
It was impossible for the apprentices to force themselves any closer to the chef, but they struggled and shouted for the song, and turned their glistening faces upwards.
‘Oh what a pleasant lot of little joints you are,’ said Swelter, peering at them and wiping his hands up and down his fat hips. ‘What a very drippy lot of little joints. Oh yesh you are, but so underdone. Lishen cocks, I’ll twisht your grandmas so shweetly in their graves. We’ll make them turn, my dears, we’ll make them turn – and what a turn for them, my own, and for the worms that nibble. Where’s Steerpike?’
‘Steerpike! Steerpike!’ yelled the youths, the ones in front twisting their heads and standing upon their toes, the ones in the rear craning forward and peering about them. ‘Steerpike! Steerpike! He’s somewhere here, sir! Oh there he is sir! There he is sir! Behind the pillar sir!’
‘Silence,’ bellowed the chef, turning his gourd of a head in the direction of the pointed hands as the high-shouldered boy was pushed forward.
‘Here he is, sir! Here he is, sir!’
The boy Steerpike looked impossibly small as he stood beneath the monstrous monument.
‘I shall shing to you, Steerpike, to you,’ whispered the cook, reeling and supporting himself with one hand against the stone pillar that was glistening with condensed heat, little trickles of moisture moving down its fluted sides. ‘To you, the newcomer, the blue mummer and the slug of summer – to you the hideous, and insidious, and appallingly cretinous goat in a house of stenches.’
The apprentices rocked with joy.
‘To you, only to you, my core of curdled cat-bile. To you alone, sho hearken diligentiums. Are you sharkening? Are you all lishening for this his how’s it goesh. My shong of a hundred yearsh ago, my plaintivly mosht melancholic shong.’
Swelter seemed to forget he was about to sing, and after wiping the sweat from his hands on the head of a youth below him, peered for Steerpike again.
‘And why to you, my ray of addled sunshine? Why to you aslone? Shtaking it for granted, my dear little Steerpike – taking it for more than for mosht granted, that you, a creature of lesh consequence than stoat’s-blood, are sho far removal’d from anything approaching nature – yet tell me, more rather, don’t tell me why your ears which musht originally have been deshigned for fly-papers, are, for shome reason butter known to yourself, kept imodeshtly unfurled. What do you proposhe to do next in thish batter? You move here and there on your little measly legs, I have sheen you at it. You breathe all over my kitchen. You look at thingsh with your insholent animal eyes. I’ve sheen you doing it. I have sheen you look at me. Your looking at me now. Shteerpike, my impatient love-bird, what doesh it all mean, and why should I shing for you?’
Swelter leaned back and seemed to be considering his own question a moment as he wiped his forehead with the sleeve of his forearm. But he waited for no reply and flung his pendulent arms out sideways and somewhere on the orbit of an immense arc something or other gave way.
Steerpike was not drunk. As he stood below Mr Swelter, he had nothing but contempt for the man who had but yesterday struck him across the head. He could do nothing, however, except stay where he was, prodded and nudged from behind by the excited minions, and wait.