Edward Aubyn - At Last

‘Fuck,’ he said as he answered the phone.

‘Are you all right?’ said Mary.

‘Oh, hi, sorry, it’s you. I just got impaled on this fucking matador chair. I can’t see anything in this hotel. They ought to hand out miner’s helmets at the reception.’

‘Listen, I’ve got some bad news.’ She paused.

Patrick lay back on the pillows with a clear intuition of what she was going to say.

‘Eleanor died last night. I’m sorry.’

‘What a relief,’ said Patrick defiantly. ‘Amongst other things…’

‘Yes, other things as well,’ said Mary and she gave the impression of accepting them all in advance.

They agreed to talk in the morning. Patrick had a fervent desire to be left alone matched only by his fervent desire not to be left alone. He opened the minibar and sat on the floor cross-legged, staring at the wall of miniatures on the inside of the door, shining in the dazzling light of the little white fridge. On shelves next to the tumblers and wine glasses were chocolates, jellybeans, salted nuts, treats and bribes for tired bodies and discontented children. He closed the fridge and closed the cupboard door and climbed carefully onto the red velvet sofa, avoiding the matador chair as best he could.

He must try not to forget that only a year ago hallucinations had been crashing into his helpless mind like missiles into a besieged city. He lay down on the sofa, clutching a heavily embroidered cushion to his already aching stomach, and slipped effortlessly into the delirious mentality of his little room in the Priory. He remembered how he used to hear the scratch of a metal nib, or the flutter of moth wings on a screen door, or the swish of a carving knife being sharpened, or the pebble clatter of a retreating wave, as if they were in the same room with him, or rather as if he was in the same place as them. There was a broken rock streaked with the hectic glitter of quartz that quite often lay at the foot of his bed. Blue lobsters explored the edges of the skirting board with their sensitive antennae. Sometimes it was whole scenes that took him over. He would picture, for instance, brake lights streaming across a wet road, the smoky interior of a car, the throb of familiar music, a swollen drop of water rushing down the windscreen, consuming the other drops in its path, and feel that this atmosphere was the deepest thing he had ever known. The absence of narrative in these compulsory waking dreams ushered in a more secretive sense of connection. Instead of trudging across the desert floor of ordinary succession, he was plunged into an oceanic night lit by isolated flares of bioluminescence. He surfaced from these states, unable to imagine how he could describe their haunting power to his Depression Group and longing for his breakfast oxazepam.

He could have all that back with a few months of hard drinking, not just the quicksilver swamps of early withdrawal with their poisonous, fugitive, shattering reflections, and the discreet delirium of the next two weeks, but all the group therapy as well. He could still remember, on his third day in the Alcohol and Addiction Group, wanting to dive out of the window when an old-timer had dropped in to share his experience, strength and hope with the trembling foals of early recovery. A well-groomed ex-meths drinker, with white hair and a smoker’s orange fingers, he had quoted the wisdom of an even older-timer who was ‘in the rooms’ when he first ‘came round’: ‘Fear knocked at the door!’ (Pause) ‘Courage answered the door!’ (Pause) ‘And there was nobody there!’ (Long pause). He could also have more of the Scottish moderator from the Depression Group, with his cute mnemonic for the power of projection: ‘you’ve got what you spot and you spot what you’ve got’. And then there were the ‘rock bottoms’ of the other patients to reconsider, the man who woke next to a girlfriend he couldn’t remember slashing with a kitchen knife the night before; the weekend guest surrounded by the hand-painted wallpaper he couldn’t remember smearing with excrement; the woman whose arm was amputated when the syringe she picked up from the concrete floor of a friend’s flat turned out to be infected with a flesh-eating superbug; the mother who abandoned her terrified children in a remote holiday cottage in order to return to her dealer in London and countless other stories of less demonstrative despair — moments of shame that precipitated ‘moments of clarity’ in the pilgrim’s progress of recovery.

All in all, the minibar was out. His month in the Priory had worked. He knew as deeply as he knew anything that sedation was the prelude to anxiety, stimulation the prelude to exhaustion and consolation the prelude to disappointment, and so he lay on the red velvet sofa and did nothing to distract himself from the news of his mother’s death. He stayed awake through the night feeling unconvincingly numb. At five in the morning, when he calculated that Mary would be back from the school run in London, he called her flat and they agreed that she would take over the arrangements for the funeral.

The organ fell silent, interrupting Patrick’s daydream. He picked up the booklet again from the narrow shelf in front of him, but before he had time to look inside, music burst out from the speakers in the corners of the room. He recognized the song just before the deep black cheerful voice rang out over the crematorium.

Oh, I got plenty o’ nuthin’,

An’ nuthin’s plenty fo’ me.

I got no car, got no mule, I got no misery.

De folks wid plenty o’ plenty

Got a lock on dey door,

’Fraid somebody’s a-goin’ to rob ’em

While dey’s out a-makin’ more.

What for?

Patrick looked round and smiled mischievously at Mary. She smiled back. He suddenly felt irrationally guilty that he hadn’t yet told her about the trust, as if he were no longer entitled to enjoy the song, now that he didn’t have quite as much nuthin’ as before. More. / What for? was a rhyme that deserved to be made more often.

Oh, I got plenty o’ nuthin’,

An’ nuthin’s plenty fo’ me.

I got de sun, got de moon,

Got de deep blue sea.

De folks wid plenty o’ plenty,

Got to pray all de day.

Seems wid plenty you sure got to worry

How to keep de debble away,

A-way.

Patrick was entertained by Porgy’s insistence on the sinfulness of riches. He felt that Eleanor and aunt Virginia would have approved. After all, before they became masters of the universe, usurers were consigned to the seventh circle of Hell. Under a rain of fire, their perpetually restless hands were a punishment for hands that had made nothing useful or good in their lifetime, just exploited the labour of others. Even from the less breezy position of being one of the folks wid plenty o’ plenty , and at the cost of buying into the fantasy that folks with plenty o’ nuttin’ didn’t also have to worry about keeping the Debble away, Eleanor would have endorsed Porgy’s views. Patrick renewed his concentration for the final part of the song.

Never one to strive

To be good, to be bad—

What the hell! I is glad

I’s alive!

Oh, I got plenty o’ nuthin’,

An’ nuthin’s plenty fo’ me.

I got my gal, got my song,

Got Hebben de whole day long.

(No use complainin’!)

Got my gal, got my Lawd, got my song!

‘Great choice,’ Patrick whispered to Mary with a grateful nod. He picked up the order of service again, finally ready to look inside.