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

David hoisted his other leg over the side of the bath and plunged it into the water, in the hope that the additional pain would stimulate him to think of the right revenge to take on Nicholas during dinner.

‘Why the hell did you have to do that? I’m sure David saw you,’ Nicholas snapped at Bridget, as soon as he had heard David’s bedroom door close.

‘Saw what?’

‘You, down on all fours.’

‘I didn’t have to,’ said Bridget sleepily from the bed. ‘I only did it because you were so keen to tell me the story, and I thought it might turn you on. It obviously did the first time.’

‘Don’t be so absurd.’ Nicholas stood with his hands on his hips, a picture of disapproval. ‘As to your effusive remarks – “What a perfect life you have here”,’ he simpered, ‘“What a wonderful view” – they made you sound even more vulgar and stupid than you are.’

Bridget still had trouble in taking Nicholas’s rudeness seriously.

‘If you’re going to be horrid,’ she said, ‘I’ll elope with Barry.’

‘And that’s another thing,’ gasped Nicholas, removing his silk jacket. There were dark sweat rings under the arms of his shirt. ‘What was going through your mind – if mind is the right word – when you gave that yob the telephone number here?’

‘When I said that we must keep in touch, he asked me for the number of the house I was staying in.’

‘You could have lied, you know,’ yelped Nicholas. ‘There’s such a thing as dishonesty.’ He paced up and down shaking his head. ‘Such a thing as a broken promise.’

Bridget rolled off the bed and crossed the room. ‘Just fuck off,’ she said, slamming the bathroom door and locking it. She sat on the edge of the bath and remembered that her copy of Tatler and, worse, her make-up were in the room next door.

‘Open the door, you stupid bitch,’ said Nicholas swivelling the doorknob.

‘Fuck off,’ she repeated. At least she could prevent Nicholas from using the bathroom for as long as possible, even if she only had a bubble bath to amuse her.

WHILE HE WAS LOCKED out of the bathroom Nicholas unpacked and filled the most convenient shelves with his shirts; in the cupboard his suits took up rather more than half the space. The biography of F. E. Smith that he had already carried with him to half a dozen houses that summer was placed again on the table on the right-hand side of the bed. When he was finally allowed access to the bathroom, he distributed his possessions around the basin in a familiar order, his badger brush to one side and his rose mouthwash to the other.

Bridget refused to unpack properly. She pulled out a frail-looking dress of dark-red crushed velvet for tonight, tossed it on the bed, and abandoned her suitcase in the middle of the floor. Nicholas could not resist kicking it over, but he said nothing, conscious that if he was rude to her again straight away she might cause him difficulties during dinner.

Silently, Nicholas put on a dark-blue silk suit and an old pale-yellow shirt, the most conventional one he had been able to find at Mr Fish, and was now ready to go downstairs. His hair smelt faintly of something made up for him by Trumper’s, and his cheeks of a very simple extract of lime he considered clean and manly.

Bridget sat at the dressing table, very slowly applying too much black eyeliner.

‘We must get downstairs, or we’ll be late,’ said Nicholas.

‘You always say that and then there’s nobody there.’

‘David is even more punctual than I am.’

‘So go down without me.’

‘I would rather we went down together,’ said Nicholas, with menacing weariness.

Bridget continued to admire herself in the inadequately lit mirror, while Nicholas sat on the edge of the bed and gave his shirtsleeves a little tug to reveal more of his royal cufflinks. Made of thick gold and engraved with the initials E.R., they might have been contemporary, but had in fact been a present to his rakish grandfather, the Sir Nicholas Pratt of his day and a loyal courtier of Edward VII’s. Unable to think how he could further embellish his appearance, he got up and wandered around. He drifted back into the bathroom and stole another glance at himself in the mirror. The softening contours of his chin, where the flab was beginning to build up, would undoubtedly profit from yet another suntan. He dabbed a little more lime extract behind his ears.

‘I’m ready,’ said Bridget.

Nicholas came over to the dressing table and quickly pressed Bridget’s powder puff to his cheekbones, and ran it coyly over the bridge of his nose. As they left the room, he glanced at Bridget critically, unable to approve fully of the red velvet dress he had once praised. It carried with it the aura of an antique stall in Kensington Market, and showed up its cheapness glaringly in the presence of other antiques. The red emphasized her blonde hair, and the velvet brought out the glassy blue of her eyes, but the design of the dress, which seemed to have been made for a medieval witch, and the evidence of amateur repairs in the worn material struck him as less amusing than the first time he had seen Bridget in this same dress. It had been at a half Bohemian party in Chelsea given by an ambitious Peruvian. Nicholas and the other social peaks that the host was trying to scale stood together at one end of the room insulting the mountaineer as he scrambled about them attentively. When they had nothing better to do they allowed him to bribe them with his hospitality, on the understanding he would be swept away by an avalanche of invective if he ever treated them with familiarity at a party given by people who really mattered.

Sometimes it was great festivals of privilege, and at other times it was the cringing and envy of others that confirmed one’s sense of being at the top. Sometimes it was the seduction of a pretty girl that accomplished this important task and at other times it was down to one’s swanky cufflinks.

‘All roads lead to Rome,’ murmured Nicholas complacently, but Bridget was not curious to know why.

As she had predicted, there was nobody waiting for them in the drawing room. With its curtains drawn, and lit only by pools of urine-coloured light splashed under the dark-yellow lampshades, the room looked both dim and rich. Like so many of one’s friends, reflected Nicholas.

‘Ah, Extraits de Plantes Marines ,’ he said, sniffing the burning essence loudly, ‘you know it’s impossible to get it now.’ Bridget did not answer.

He moved over to the black cabinet and lifted a bottle of Russian vodka out of a silver bucket full of ice cubes. He poured the cold viscous fluid into a small tumbler. ‘They used to sell it with copper rings which sometimes overheated and spat burning essence onto the light bulbs. One evening, Monsieur et Madame de Quelque Chose were changing for dinner when the bulb in their dining room exploded, the lampshade caught fire, and the curtains burst into flames. After that, it was taken off the market.’

Bridget showed no surprise or interest. In the distance the telephone rang faintly. Eleanor so disliked the noise of telephones that there was only one in the house, at a small desk under the back stairs.

‘Can I get you a drink?’ asked Nicholas, knocking back his vodka in what he considered the correct Russian manner.

‘Just a Coke,’ said Bridget. She didn’t really like alcohol, it was such a crude high. At least that was what Barry said. Nicholas opened a bottle of Coke and poured himself some more vodka, this time in a tall glass packed with ice.

There was a clicking of high heels on the tiles and Eleanor came in shyly, wearing a long purple dress.

‘There’s a phone call for you,’ she said, smiling at Bridget, whose name she had somehow forgotten between the telephone and the drawing room.