Edward Aubyn - The Patrick Melrose Novels - Never Mind, Bad News, Some Hope, and Mother's Milk

Under the bruise of feeling there was a brutal instinct to stay alive, like a run-over snake thrashing on a hot road, or blind roots pumping sap into a bleeding stump.

Why was she being tortured? They had sewn her into a sack and thrown her into the bottom of a boat, chains wrapped around her feet. She must have done something very bad to be teased by the oarsmen as they rowed her out into the bay. Something very bad which she couldn’t remember.

He tried to break off. It was too much. He didn’t let go of her hand, he just tried to close down, but it was impossible to break the connection completely.

He noticed that his grandmother was crying. She gave his hand a squeeze.

‘I am … no.’ She couldn’t say it. A carefully threaded thought unstrung itself and scattered across the floor. She couldn’t get it back. Something opaque clung to her all the time. Her head had been sealed in a dirty plastic bag; she wanted to tear it off but her hands were tied.

‘I … am,’ she tried again. ‘Brave. Yes.’

The evening light was on the other side of the building and the room was growing dimmer. They were all lost for words, except for Thomas who had none to lose. He leant against his grandmother’s arms, looking at her with his cool objective gaze. His example balanced the atmosphere. They sat in the fading light of the almost peaceful room, feeling sympathetic and a little bored. Robert’s grandmother sank into a quieter anguish, like someone deep in the broken springs of a chair, watching a dust storm coat the world in a blunt grey film.

After knocking on the door and not waiting for a reply, a nurse squeaked in with a trolley of food and slid a clattering tray onto the mobile table next to the bed. Robert’s mother lifted Thomas back into her arms, while his father wheeled the table into position and removed the tin hood from the main dish. The sweaty grey fish and leaky ratatouille might have made a greedy man pause, but for his grandmother, who would rather have starved to death anyway, all food was equally unwelcome, and so she gave Robert’s hand a last squeeze and broke the circuit which had introduced so many violent pictures into his imagination, and picked up her fork with the strange flat obedience of despair. She manoeuvred a flake of fish onto her fork and began to lift it towards her mouth. Then she stopped and lowered the fork again, staring at his father.

‘I can’t … find my mouth,’ she said with emergency precision.

His father looked frustrated, as if his mother had found a trick to stop him from being angry with her, but Robert’s mother immediately picked up the fork and smiled and said, ‘Can I help you, Eleanor?’ in the most natural way.

His grandmother’s shoulders crumpled a little further at the thought that it had come to that. She nodded and his mother started to feed her, still holding Thomas on her other arm. His father, temporarily frozen, came to his senses and took Thomas from Robert’s mother.

After a few more mouthfuls his grandmother shook her head and said, ‘No,’ and leant back in her chair exhausted. In the silence that followed, his father handed Thomas back to his mother and sat down next to his grandmother.

‘I hesitate to mention this,’ said his father, pulling a letter out of his pocket.

‘I think you should keep on hesitating,’ said his mother quickly.

‘I can’t,’ he said to her, ‘hesitate any longer.’ He turned back to Robert’s grandmother. ‘Brown and Stone have written to me saying that you intend to make an outright gift of Saint-Nazaire to the Foundation. I just want to say that I think that leaves you very exposed. You can barely afford to stay here and if you needed any more medical care you would go broke very quickly.’

Robert hadn’t thought his grandmother could look any more unhappy, but somehow her features managed to yield a fresh impression of horror.

‘I … really … I … really … no.’

She covered her face with her hands and screamed.

‘I really do object…’ she wailed.

His mother put her arm around his grandmother without glancing at his father. His father put the letter back in his pocket and looked at his shoes with perfect contempt.

‘It’s all right,’ said his mother. ‘Patrick just wants to help you, he’s worried that you may give too much away too soon, but nobody’s questioning that you can do what you like with the Foundation. The lawyers only told him because you’ve asked him to help you in the past.’

‘I … need … to rest now,’ said his grandmother.

‘We’ll leave, then,’ said his mother.

‘Yes.’

‘I’m sorry I’ve upset you,’ sighed his father. ‘I just don’t see what the hurry is: Saint-Nazaire is going to the Foundation in your will anyway.’

‘I think we should drop this subject,’ said his mother.

‘Fine,’ he agreed.

Robert’s grandmother allowed herself to be kissed by each of them in turn. Robert was the last to say goodbye to her.

‘Don’t … leave me,’ she said.

‘Now?’ he asked, confused.

‘No … don’t … no.’ She gave up.

‘I won’t,’ he said.

Any discussion of their visit to the nursing home seemed too hazardous, and they started the drive home in silence. Soon enough, though, his father’s determination to talk took over. He tried to keep things general, he tried to keep away from the subject of his mother.

‘Hospitals are very shocking places,’ he said, ‘full of poor deluded fools who aren’t looking for groundless celebrity or obscene quantities of money, but think the point of life is to help other people. Where do they get these ideas from? We must send them on an empowerment weekend workshop with the Packers.’

Robert’s mother smiled.

‘I’m sure Seamus could organize it, give it a shamanic angle,’ said his father, dragged irresistibly out of his orbit. ‘Mind you, although hospitals may be awash with cheerful saints, I would rather shoot myself in the head than experience the erosion of self we witnessed this afternoon.’

‘I thought Eleanor did very well,’ said his mother. ‘I was very moved when she said that she was brave.’

‘What can drive a man mad is being forced to have the emotion which he is forbidden to have at the same time,’ said his father. ‘My mother’s treachery forced me to be angry, but then her illness forced me to feel pity instead. Now her recklessness makes me angry again but her bravery is supposed to smother my anger with admiration. Well, I’m a simple sort of a fellow, and the fact is that I remain fucking angry ,’ he shouted, banging the steering wheel.

‘Who is King Lear?’ asked Robert from the back seat.

‘Did you overhear our conversation this morning?’ asked his mother.

‘Yes.’

‘Eavesdropping,’ said his father.

‘No I wasn’t,’ he objected. ‘You left the monitor on.’

‘Oh, yes,’ said his mother, ‘so I did. Anyway, it hardly matters now, does it, darling?’ she asked his father sweetly. ‘Since you’re screaming that you’re “fucking angry” at the top of your voice.’

‘King Lear,’ said his father, ‘is a petulant tyrant in Shakespeare who gives everything away and is then surprised when Goneril and Regan – or Seamus Dourke, as I prefer to think of them – refuse him the care he requires and boot him out.’

‘And who’s Mrs Jellybean?’

‘Jellyby. She’s a compulsive do-gooder who writes indignant letters about orphans in Africa, while her own children fall into the fireplace at the other end of the drawing room.’

‘And what’s a rut?’

‘Well, the idea is that if you combined these two characters you would get someone like Eleanor.’

‘Oh,’ said Robert, ‘it’s quite complicated.’