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

Patrick could remember wandering around the rooms and gardens of his grandmother’s half-dozen exemplary houses. He had watched a world-class fortune collapse into the moderate wealth that his mother and his aunt Nancy enjoyed from a relatively minor inheritance they received before their mother caved in to the lies and bullying of her second husband. Eleanor and Nancy looked rich to some people, living at good addresses, one in London and one in New York, each with a place in the country, and neither of them needing to work, or indeed shop, wash, garden or cook for themselves, but in the history of their own family they were surviving on loose change. Nancy, who still lived in New York, combed the catalogues of the world’s auction houses for images of the objects she should have owned. On the last occasion Patrick visited her on 69th Street, she had scarcely offered him a cup of tea before getting out a sleek black catalogue from Christie’s, Geneva. It had just arrived and inside was a photograph of two lead jardinières, decorated with gold bees almost audibly buzzing among blossoming silver branches. They had been made for Napoleon.

‘We didn’t even used to comment on them,’ said Nancy bitterly. ‘Do you know what I’m saying? There were so many beautiful things. They used to just sit on the terrace in the rain. A million and a half dollars, that’s what the little nephew got for Mummy’s garden tubs. I mean, wouldn’t you like to have some of these things to give to your children?’ she asked, carrying over a new set of photograph albums and catalogues, to syncopate the sale price with the sentimental significance of what had been lost.

She went on decanting the poison of her resentment into him for the next two hours.

‘It was thirty years ago,’ he would point out from time to time.

‘But the little nephew sells something of Mummy’s every week,’ she growled in defence of her obsession.

The continuing drama of deception and self-deception made Patrick violently depressed. He was only really happy when Thomas first greeted him with a burst of uncomplicated love, throwing open his arms in welcome. Earlier that morning, he had carried Thomas around the terrace, looking for geckos behind the shutters. Thomas grabbed every shutter as they passed, until Patrick unhooked it and creaked it open. Sometimes a gecko shot up the wall towards the shelter of a shutter on the upper floor. Thomas pointed, his mouth rounded with surprise. The gecko was the trigger to the real event, the moment of shared excitement. Patrick tilted his head until his eyes were level with Thomas’s, naming the things they came across. ‘Valerian … Japonica … Fig tree,’ said Patrick. Thomas stayed silent until he suddenly said, ‘Rake!’ Patrick tried to imagine the world from Thomas’s point of view, but it was a hopeless task. Most of the time, he couldn’t even imagine the world from his own point of view. He relied on nightfall to give him a crash course in the real despair that underlay the stale, remote, patchily pleasurable days. Thomas was his antidepressant, but the effect soon wore off as Patrick’s lower back started to ache and he caved in to his terror of early death, of dying before the children were old enough to earn a living, or old enough to handle the bereavement. He had no reason to believe that he would die prematurely; it was just the most flagrant and uncontrollable way of letting his children down. Thomas had become the great symbol of hope, leaving none for anyone else.

Thank goodness Johnny was coming later in the month. Patrick felt sure that he was missing something which Johnny could illuminate for him. It was easy to see what was sick, but it was so difficult to know what it meant to be well.

‘Patrick!’

They were after him. He could hear Julia calling his name. Perhaps she could come and join him behind the olive tree, give him a very quick blow job, so that he felt a little lighter and calmer during lunch. What a great idea. Standing outside her door last night. The tangle of shame and frustration. He clambered to his feet. Knees going. Old age and death. Cancer. Out of his private space into the confusion of other people, or out of the confusion of his private space into the effortless authority of his engagement with others. He never knew which way it would go.

‘Julia. Hi, I’m over here.’

‘I’ve been sent to find you,’ said Julia, walking carefully over the rougher ground of the olive grove. ‘Are you hiding?’

‘Not from you,’ said Patrick. ‘Come and sit here for a few seconds.’

Julia sat down next to him, their backs against the forking trunk.

‘This is cosy,’ she said.

‘I’ve been hiding here since I was a child. I’m surprised there isn’t a dent in the ground,’ said Patrick. He paused and weighed up the risks of telling her.

‘I stood outside your door last night at four in the morning.’

‘Why didn’t you come in?’ said Julia.

‘Would you have been pleased to see me?’

‘Of course,’ she said, leaning over and kissing him briefly on the lips.

Patrick felt a surge of excitement. He could imagine pretending to be young, rolling around among the sharp stones and the fallen twigs, laughing manfully as mosquitoes fed on his naked flesh.

‘What stopped you?’ asked Julia.

‘Robert. He found me hesitating in the corridor.’

‘You’d better not hesitate next time.’

‘Is there going to be a next time?’

‘Why not? You’re bored and lonely; I’m bored and lonely.’

‘God,’ said Patrick, ‘if we got together, there would be a terrifying amount of boredom and loneliness in the room.’

‘Or maybe they have opposite electrical charges and they’d cancel each other out.’

‘Are you positively or negatively bored?’

‘Positively,’ said Julia. ‘And I’m absolutely and positively lonely.’

‘You may have a point, then,’ smiled Patrick. ‘There’s something very negative about my boredom. We’re going to have to conduct an experiment under strictly controlled conditions to see whether we achieve a perfect elimination of boredom or an overload of loneliness.’

‘I really should drag you back to lunch now,’ said Julia, ‘or everyone will think we’re having an affair.’

They kissed. Tongues. He’d forgotten about tongues. He felt like a teenager hiding behind a tree, experimenting with real kissing. It was bewildering to feel alive, almost painful. He felt his pent-up longing for closeness streaming through his hand as he placed it carefully on her belly.

‘Don’t get me going now,’ she said, ‘it’s not fair.’

They climbed groaning to their feet.

‘Seamus had just arrived when I came to get you,’ said Julia, brushing the dust off her skirt. ‘He was explaining to Kettle what went on during the rest of the year.’

‘What did Kettle make of that?’

‘I think she’s decided to find Seamus charming so as to annoy you and Mary.’

‘Of course she has. It’s only because you’ve got me all flustered that I hadn’t worked that out already.’

They made their way towards the stone table, trying not to smile too much or to look too solemn. Patrick felt himself sliding back under the microscope of his family’s attention. Mary smiled at him. Thomas threw out his arms in welcome. Robert gazed at him with his intimidating, knowledgeable eyes. He picked up Thomas and smiled at Mary, thinking, ‘A man may smile and smile and be a villain.’ Then he sat down next to Robert, feeling as he did when he defended an obviously guilty client in front of a famously difficult judge. Robert noticed everything. Patrick admired his intelligence, but far from short-circuiting his depression as Thomas did, Robert made him more aware of the subtle tenacity of the destructive influence that parents had on their children – that he had on his children. Even if he was an affectionate father, even if he wasn’t making the gross mistakes his parents had made, the vigilance he invested in the task created another level of tension, a tension which Robert had picked up. With Thomas he would be different – freer, easier, if one could be free and easy while feeling unfree and uneasy. It was all so hopeless. He really must get a decent night’s sleep. He poured himself a glass of red wine.