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

‘I don’t have to stand for these insults,’ said Seamus. ‘Eleanor and I created this Foundation, and I know that she wouldn’t want anything to undermine its success. What’s so tragic, in my opinion, is that you don’t see how central the Foundation is to your mother’s life’s purpose, and you don’t realize what an extraordinary woman she is.’

‘You’re so wrong,’ said Patrick. ‘I couldn’t wish for a more extraordinary mother.’

‘It’s fairly obvious where all this is heading,’ said Mary. ‘Let’s take some time to cool off. I don’t see any point in more acrimony.’

‘But, darling,’ said Patrick, ‘acrimony is all we’ve got left.’

It was certainly all he had left. She knew that it would fall on her to rescue a holiday from the wreckage left by Patrick’s disdain. The expectation that she would be tirelessly resourceful and at the same time completely sympathetic to Patrick was not one she could either put up with or disappoint.

As she hoisted Thomas into her arms, she felt again the extent to which motherhood had destroyed her solitude. Mary had lived alone through most of her twenties and stubbornly kept her own flat until she was pregnant with Robert. She had such a strong need to distance herself from the flood of others. Now she was very rarely alone, and if she was, her thoughts were commandeered by her family obligations. Neglected meanings piled up like unopened letters. She knew they contained ever more threatening reminders that her life was unexamined.

Solitude was something she had to share with Thomas for the moment. She remembered a phrase Johnny once quoted about the infant being ‘alone in the presence of its mother’. That had stayed with her, and sitting with Thomas after the row between Patrick and Seamus, while he played with his favourite hose, holding it sideways and watching the silvery arc of water splash to the ground, Mary could feel the pressure to encourage him to be useful, to water the plants and to keep the mud from splattering his trousers, but she didn’t give in to it, seeing a kind of freedom in the uselessness of his play. He had no outcome in mind, no project or profit, he just liked watching the water flow.

It would have made perfect sense for her to make room for nostalgia now that the departure she had longed for seemed inevitable, but she found herself looking at the garden and the view and the cloudless sky with a cold eye. It was time to go.

Back in the house, she went to her own room for a moment’s rest, and found Patrick already sprawled on the bed with a glass of red wine beside him.

‘You weren’t very friendly this morning,’ he said.

‘What do you mean?’ said Mary. ‘I wasn’t unfriendly. You were wrapped up in arguing with Seamus.’

‘Well, the Thermopylae buzz is wearing off,’ said Patrick.

She sat down on the edge of the bed and stroked his hand absently.

‘Do you remember, back in the Olden Days, when we used to go to bed together in the afternoon?’ asked Patrick.

‘Thomas has only just gone to sleep.’

‘You know that’s not the real reason. We’re not grinding our teeth with frustration, promising we’ll jump into bed the moment we get the chance: it isn’t even a possibility.’ Patrick closed his eyes. ‘I feel as if we’re shooting down a gleaming white tunnel…’ he said.

‘That was yesterday, on the way from the airport,’ said Mary.

‘A bone with the marrow sucked out,’ Patrick persevered. ‘Nothing is ever the same again, however often you repeat that magical phrase to the waitress in the cocktail bar.’

‘Never, in my case,’ said Mary.

‘Congratulations,’ said Patrick, falling abruptly silent, his eyes still closed.

Was she being unsympathetic? Should she be giving him a charity blow job? She felt that these pleas for attention were timed to be impossible, so as to keep him self-righteously unfaithful. Patrick would have been horrified if she had started to make love to him. Or would he? How could she find out while she was incapable of taking any sexual initiative? The whole thing had died for her, and she couldn’t blame his affair for the collapse. It had happened the moment Thomas was born. She couldn’t help marvelling at the strength of the severance. It had the authority of an instinct, redirecting her resources from the spent, enfeebled, damaged Patrick to the thrilling potential of her new child. The same thing had happened with Robert, but only for a few months. This time her erotic life was subsumed in intimacy with Thomas. Her relationship with Patrick was dead, not without guilt and duty turning up at the funeral. She sank down on the bed next to him, stared at the ceiling for a few seconds of empty intensity and then closed her eyes as well. They lay on the bed together, floating in shallow sleep.

‘Oh, God,’ said Mary to Robert, getting up from the floor where she had been kneeling next to the open suitcase, ‘I still haven’t cancelled Granny and Sally.’

‘I must say it’s frightfully disappointing,’ said Robert in his Kettle voice.

‘Let’s see if you’re right,’ said Mary, sitting down next to him to dial her mother’s number.

‘Well, I must say it is disappointing,’ said Kettle, making Mary cover the mouthpiece while she tried to suppress her laughter. ‘Perfect,’ she whispered to Robert. He raised his arms in triumph.

‘Why don’t you come anyway?’ said Mary to her mother. ‘Seamus seems to enjoy your company even more than we do. Which is saying a lot,’ she added after too long a pause.

Sally said she would come to see them all in London instead, and then took the view that it was ‘great news’.

‘To an outsider that place looks like a beautiful bell jar with the air being sucked out. You have to get out before you blow up.’

‘She’s happy for us,’ said Mary.

‘Well, gee,’ said Robert, ‘I hope she loses her house so we can be happy for her.’

When Patrick returned, he put a piece of paper on top of the suitcase Mary was struggling to close and sank down onto the chair by the door. She picked the paper up and saw that it was one of Eleanor’s faint pencil-written notes.

My work here is over. I want to come home. Please find a nursing home in Kensingston?

She gave the note to Robert.

‘It’s difficult to know which sentence gave me most pleasure,’ said Patrick. ‘Eleanor’s tiny store of unshamanic capital will be dismembered in rather less than a year if she moves to Kensington. After that, if she has the bad taste to stay alive, guess who will be expected to keep her vegetating in the Royal Borough?’

‘I like the question mark,’ said Mary.

‘Eleanor’s real genius is for putting our emotional and moral impulses into total conflict. Again and again she makes me hate myself for doing the right thing, she makes virtue into its own punishment.’

‘I suppose we have to protect her from the horror of knowing that Seamus was really only interested in her money.’

‘Why?’ said Robert. ‘It serves her right.’

‘Listen,’ said Patrick, ‘what I saw today was someone who is terrified. Terrified of dying alone. Terrified that her family will abandon her, as Seamus has done. Terrified that she’s fucked up, that she’s been sleepwalking through a replica of her mother’s behaviour. Terrified by the impotence of her convictions in the face of real suffering, terrified of everything. If we agree to her request, she can switch from philanthropy to family. Essentially, neither of them works any more, but the switch might give her a little relief before she settles back into hell.’

Nobody spoke.

‘Let’s hope that it’s purgatory rather than hell,’ said Mary.