Edward Aubyn - At Last

‘So, have you been working out especially hard on your Inner StairMaster today?’

‘I’ve felt a strange mixture of elation and free-fall. There’s something cool and objective about death compared to the savage privacy of dying which my mother’s illness forced me to imagine over the last four years. In a sense I can think about her clearly for the first time, away from the vortex of an empathy that was neither compassionate nor salutary, but a kind of understudy to her own horror.’

‘Wouldn’t it be even better not to think about her at all?’ said Julia with a second languorous gulp of cigarette smoke.

‘No, not today,’ said Patrick, suddenly repelled by Julia’s enamelled surface.

‘Oh, of course, not today — of all days,’ said Julia, sensing his defection. ‘I just meant eventually.’

‘The people who tell us to “get over it” and “get on with it” are the least able to have the direct experience that they berate navel-gazers for avoiding,’ said Patrick, in the prosecuting style he adopted when defending himself. ‘The “it” they’re “getting on with” is a ghostly re-enactment of unreflecting habits. Not thinking about something is the surest way to remain under its influence.’

‘It’s a fair cop, guv,’ said Julia, disconcerted by Patrick’s sincerity.

‘What would it mean to be spontaneous, to have an unconditioned response to things — to anything? Neither of us is in a position to know, but I don’t want to die without finding out.’

‘Hmm,’ said Julia, clearly not tempted by Patrick’s obscure project.

‘Excuse me,’ said a voice behind them.

Patrick looked round and saw the beautiful waitress. He had forgotten that he was in love with her, but now it all came back to him.

‘Oh, hi,’ he said.

She scarcely acknowledged him, but kept her eyes fixed on Julia.

‘I’m sorry but you’re not allowed to smoke out here,’ she said.

‘Oh, dear,’ said Julia, taking a drag on her cigarette, ‘I didn’t know. It’s funny, because it is outside.’

‘Well, technically it’s still part of the club and you can’t smoke anywhere in the club.’

‘I understand,’ said Julia, continuing to smoke. ‘Well, I’d better put it out then.’ She took another long suck on her almost finished cigarette, dropped it on the balcony and ground it underfoot before stepping back indoors.

Patrick waited for the waitress to look at him with complicity and amusement, but she returned to her post behind the long table without glancing in his direction.

The waitress was useless. Julia was useless. Eleanor was useless. Even Mary in the end was useless and would not prevent him from returning to his bedsit alone and without any consolation whatever.

It was not the women who were at fault; it was his omnipotent delusion: the idea that they were there to be useful to him in the first place. He must make sure to remember that the next time one of the pointless bitches let him down. Patrick let out another bark of laughter. He was feeling a little bit mad. Casanova, the misogynist; Casanova, the hungry baby. The inadequacy at the rotten heart of exaggeration. He watched a modest veil of self-disgust settle on the subject of his relations with women, trying to prevent him from going deeper. Self-disgust was the easy way out, he must cut through it and allow himself to be unconsoled. He looked forward to the austere demands of that word, like a cool drink after the dry oasis of consolation. Back in his bedsit unconsoled, he could hardly wait.

It was getting cold on the balcony and Patrick wanted to get back indoors, but he was prevented by his reluctance to join Kettle and Mary, who were standing just the other side of the French windows.

‘I see that you and Thomas are still practically glued to each other,’ said Kettle, casting an envious glance at her grandson draped comfortably around his mother’s neck.

‘Nobody can hope to ignore their children as completely as you did,’ sighed Mary.

‘What do you mean? We always…communicated.’

‘Communicated! Do you remember what you said to me when you telephoned me at school to tell me that Daddy had died?’

‘How awful it all was, I suppose.’

‘I couldn’t speak I was so upset, and you told me to cheer up. To cheer up ! You never had any idea who I was and you still don’t.’

Mary turned away with a growl of exasperation and walked towards the other end of the room. Kettle greeted the inevitable outcome of her spite with an expression of astonished incomprehension. Patrick hovered on the balcony waiting for her to move away, but watched instead as Annette came up to engage her in conversation.

‘Hello, dear,’ said Annette, ‘how are you?’

‘Well, I’ve just had my head bitten off by my daughter, and so just for the moment I’m in a state of shock.’

‘Mothers and children,’ said Annette wisely, ‘maybe we should have a workshop on that dynamic and tempt you back to the Foundation.’

‘A workshop on mothers and children would tempt me to stay away,’ said Kettle. ‘Not that I need much encouragement to stay away; I think I’ve finished with shamanism.’

‘Bless you,’ said Annette. ‘I won’t feel that I’ve finished until I’m totally connected to the source of unconditional love that inhabits every soul on this planet.’

‘Well, I’ve set my sights rather lower,’ said Kettle. ‘I think I’m just relieved not to be shaking a rattle, with my eyes watering from all that wretched wood smoke.’

Annette let out a peal of tolerant laughter.

‘Well, I know Seamus would love to see you again and that he thought you’d especially benefit from our “Walking with the Goddess” workshop, “stepping into the power of the feminine”. I’m going to be participating myself.’

‘How is Seamus? I suppose he’s moved into the main house now.’

‘Oh, yes, he’s in Eleanor’s old bedroom, lording it over all of us.’

‘The bedroom Patrick and Mary used to be in, with the view of the olive groves?’

‘Oh, that’s a glorious view, isn’t it? Mind you, I love my room, looking out on the chapel.’

‘That’s my room,’ said Kettle. ‘I always used to stay in that room.’

‘Isn’t it funny how we get attached to things?’ laughed Annette. ‘And yet, in the end, even our bodies aren’t really our own; they belong to the Earth — to the Goddess.’

‘Not yet,’ said Kettle firmly.

‘I tell you what,’ said Annette, ‘if you come to the Goddess workshop, you can have your old room back. I don’t mind moving out; I’m happy anywhere. Anyway, Seamus is always talking about “moving from the property paradigm to the participation paradigm”, and if the facilitators at the Foundation don’t do it, we can’t expect anyone else to.’

Patrick’s primary objective was to get off the balcony without drawing attention to himself, and so he suppressed the desire to point out that Seamus had been moving in the opposite direction, from participating in Eleanor’s charity to occupying her property.

Kettle was clearly confused by Annette’s kind offer of her old bedroom. Her loyalty to her bad mood was not easily shaken and yet it was hard to see what she could do except thank Annette.

‘That’s unusually kind of you,’ she said dismissively.

Patrick seized his chance and bolted off the balcony, passing behind Kettle’s back with such decisiveness that he knocked her into Annette’s clattering cup of tea.

‘Mind out,’ snapped Kettle before she could see who had barged into her. ‘Honestly, Patrick,’ she added when she saw the culprit.

‘Oh, dear, you’re covered in tea,’ said Annette.