‘Everything’s wrong. Everything. Everything,’ said Fuchsia. Again she went to the window and peered down at the group in the quadrangle. By now it had grown until it filled all that was visible of the stone square. Through a flying buttress to the left of her she could command a view of four distant alleys in a poor district of Gormenghast. These alley-ways were pranked with little knots of folk, and Fuchsia believed that she could hear the far sound of their voices rising through the air. It was not that Fuchsia felt any particular interest in ‘occasions’ or festivities which might cause excitement below, but that this morning she felt acutely aware that something in which she would become involved was taking place.

On the table lay a big coloured book of verses and pictures. It was always ready for her to open and devour. Fuchsia would turn over the pages and read the verses aloud in a deep dramatic voice. This morning she leaned forward and turned over the pages listlessly. As she came upon a great favourite she paused and read it through slowly, but her thoughts were elsewhere.

The Frivolous Cake

THE FRIVOLOUS CAKE

A freckled and frivolous cake there was

That sailed on a pointless sea,

Or any lugubrious lake there was

In a manner emphatic and free.

How jointlessly, and how jointlessly

The frivolous cake sailed by

On the waves of the ocean that pointlessly

Threw fish to the lilac sky.

Oh, plenty and plenty of hake there was

Of a glory beyond compare,

And every conceivable make there was

Was tossed through the lilac air.

Up the smooth billows and over the crests

Of the cumbersome combers flew

The frivolous cake with a knife in the wake

Of herself and her curranty crew.

Like a swordfish grim it would bounce and skim

(This dinner knife fierce and blue),

And the frivolous cake was filled to the brim

With the fun of her curranty crew.

Oh, plenty and plenty of hake there was

Of a glory beyond compare –

And every conceivable make there was

Was tossed through the lilac air.

Around the shores of the Elegant Isles

Where the cat-fish bask and purr

And lick their paws with adhesive smiles

And wriggle their fins of fur,

They fly and fly ’neath the lilac sky –

The frivolous cake, and the knife

Who winketh his glamorous indigo eye

In the wake of his future wife.

The crumbs blow free down the pointless sea

To the beat of a cakey heart

And the sensitive steel of the knife can feel

That love is a race apart.

In the speed of the lingering light are blown

The crumbs to the hake above,

And the tropical air vibrates to the drone

Of a cake in the throes of love.