Mervyn Peake: Titus Alone (Abridged)
To north, south, east or west, turning at will…
The city was beginning to turn in its sleep…
Muzzlehatch had rolled out of the driver's seat…
Sickened but thrilled, Titus took a step…
He made his way back across the quadrangle…
Bewildered, startled as he was, Titus began to laugh…
It was very lucky for all concerned…
Inspector Acreblade was trying very hard to follow them…
'Then to hell with you child,' said Muzzlehatch.
In the late afternoon of the next day…
The magistrate leaned forward on his elbows…
The magistrate leaned forward and stared at the boy.
At first, what was it but an apprehension…
As he flung open the door of her room…
The days moved by in a long, sweet sequence of light…
So Titus fled from Juno.
'There's something else, Mr. Muzzlehatch.'
For all the noise of water overhead, there was silence also.
Here, in this fern-hung chamber…
'Now we can talk,' he said.
Where Titus leaned against the wall…
Now, with a corner of his gaze fixed on Titus…
Titus got to his feet and turned to Muzzlehatch.
They had to wait until dark before they dared to venture…
Titus stamped his foot with anger…
Juno had been sitting in her vine arbour for a long while…
So Juno returned to her home…
Meanwhile Titus, whose journeyings in search of his home…
There he lay in the dusk of the green room…
One morning, not very long after he had fully recovered…
As Titus thundered after her, he suddenly felt foolish.
The violent death of Veil in the Under-River…
Cheeta sat motionlessly at her peerless mirror…
'We have been following you,' said Crack-Bell.
When Cheeta and Titus came abreast, they stopped dead.
'You cannot go,' she said.
Juno has left her house by the river…
Out of the fermentations of her brain…
'I've got a feeling,' said Juno…
The sky above the Black House was, of a sudden, filled…
Titus was no longer in any mood for collaboration…
Titus, who was about to have risen to his feet…
Opening one eye as his body ached…
Something was emerging from the forgotten room.
While she was speaking, three major things took place.
Then, suddenly, like something released…
Titus was appalled at the scene.
Sure enough it was taking on a life of its own.
The dawn was now beginning to pick out the leaves…
Muzzlehatch turned his great hewn face to the sky.
Then a great hush came down upon the Black House…
Juno was motionless.
Hungry, weary, he made his solitary way…
