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

With a father like his (sob, sob), Authority Figures and Role Models had always been a problem, but in Pierre he had at last found someone whose example he could follow with unqualified enthusiasm, and whose advice he could bear to take. At least until Pierre had tried to limit him to two grams of coke a day instead of the seven Patrick regarded as indispensable.

‘You’re fucking crazy, man,’ Pierre had shouted at him, ‘you go for the rush every time. You kill yourself that way.’

This argument had marred the end of the summer, but in any case it had been time to get rid of the inflamed rashes that covered Patrick’s entire body and the burning white ulcers that had suddenly sprouted throughout his mouth, throat, and stomach, and so he had returned to England a few days later to check into his favourite clinic.

‘ Oh, les beaux jours ,’ he sighed, wolfing down his raw salmon in a few breathless mouthfuls. He drank the last of the white wine, indifferent now to its taste.

Who else was in this ghastly restaurant? Extraordinary that he hadn’t looked before; or not so extraordinary, in fact. They wouldn’t be calling him in to solve the Problem of Other Minds, although of course the people, like Victor, who thought it was a problem in the first place were famous for being entirely absorbed in the workings of their own minds. Strange coincidence.

He swivelled his eyes around the room with reptilian coldness. He hated them all, every single one, especially that incredibly fat man sitting with the blonde. He must have paid her to mask her disgust at being in his company.

‘God, you’re repulsive,’ muttered Patrick. ‘Have you ever considered going on a diet? Yes, that’s right, a diet, or hasn’t it crossed your mind that you’re quite appallingly fat?’ Patrick felt vindictively and loutishly aggressive. Alcohol is such a crude high, he thought, remembering the sage pronouncement of his first hash dealer from his schooldays, a zonked-out old hippie bore called Barry.

‘If I looked like you,’ he sneered at the fat man, ‘I’d commit suicide. Not that one needs an incentive.’ There was no doubt about it, he was a fattist and a sexist and an ageist and a racist and a straightist and a druggist and, naturally, a snob, but of such a virulent character that nobody satisfied his demands. He defied anyone to come up with a minority or a majority that he did not hate for some reason or another.

‘Is everything OK, sir?’ asked one of the waiters, mistaking Patrick’s mutterings for an attempt to order.

‘Yes, yes,’ said Patrick. Well, not absolutely everything, he thought, you can’t seriously expect anyone to agree to that. In fact the idea of everything being OK made him feel dangerously indignant. Affirmation was too rare a commodity to waste on such a ludicrous statement. He felt like calling the waiter back to correct any false impression of happiness he might have created. But here was another waiter – would they never leave him alone? Could he bear it if they did? – bringing his Steak Tartare. He wanted it spicy, very spicy.

A couple of minutes later, his mouth seared with Tabasco and cayenne pepper, Patrick had already devoured the mound of raw meat and pommes allumettes on his plate.

‘That’s right, dear,’ he said in his Nanny voice, ‘you get something solid inside you.’

‘Yes, Nanny,’ he replied obediently. ‘Like a bullet, or a needle, eh, Nanny?’

‘A bullet, indeed,’ he huffed and puffed, ‘a needle! Whatever next? You always were a strange boy. No good’ll come of it, you mark my words, young man.’

Oh, God, it was starting. The endless voices. The solitary dialogues. The dreadful jabbering that poured out uncontrollably. He gulped down an entire glass of red wine with an eagerness worthy of Lawrence of Arabia, as interpreted by Peter O’Toole, polishing off his glass of lemonade after a thirsty desert crossing. ‘We’ve taken Aqaba,’ he said, staring madly into space and twitching his eyebrows expertly.

‘Would you care for a dessert, sir?’

At last, a real person with a real question, albeit a rather bizarre question. How was he supposed to ‘care for’ a dessert? Did he have to visit it on Sundays? Send it a Christmas card? Did he have to feed it?

‘Yeah,’ said Patrick, smiling wildly, ‘I’ll have a crème brûlée.’

Patrick stared at his glass. The red wine was definitely beginning to unfold. Pity he had already drunk it all. Yes, it had been beginning to unfold, like a fist opening slowly. And in its palm … In its palm, what? A ruby? A grape? A stone? Perhaps similes just shunted the same idea back and forth, lightly disguised, to give the impression of a fruitful trade. Sir Sampson Legend was the only honest suitor who ever sang the praises of a woman. ‘Give me your hand, Odd, let me kiss it; ’tis as warm and as soft – as what? Odd, as t’other hand.’ Now there was an accurate simile. The tragic limitations of comparison. The lead in the heart of the skylark. The disappointing curvature of space. The doom of time.

Christ, he was really quite drunk. Not drunk enough, though. He poured the stuff in, but it didn’t reach the root-confusions, the accident by the roadside, still trapped in the buckling metal after all these years. He sighed loudly, ending in a kind of grunt, and bowing his head hopelessly.

The crème brûlée arrived and he gobbled it down with the same desperate impatience he showed towards all food, but now edged with weariness and oppression. His violent way of eating always left him in a state of speechless sadness at the end of a meal. After several minutes during which he could only stare at the foot of his glass, he summoned enough passion to order some marc de Bourgogne and the bill.

Patrick closed his eyes and let the cigarette smoke drift out of his mouth and up into his nose and out through his mouth again. This was recycling at its best. Of course he could still go to the party Anne had invited him to, but he knew that he wouldn’t. Why did he always refuse? Refuse to participate. Refuse to agree. Refuse to forgive. Once it was too late he would long to have gone to this party. He glanced at his watch. Only nine thirty. The time had not yet come, but the moment it did, refusal would turn into regret. He could even imagine loving a woman if he had lost her first.

With reading it was the same thing. As soon as he was deprived of books, his longing to read became insatiable, whereas if he took the precaution of carrying a book with him, as he had this evening, slipping The Myth of Sisyphus yet again into his overcoat pocket, then he could be sure that he would not be troubled by a desire for literature.

Before The Myth of Sisyphus he had carried round The Unnamable and Nightwood for at least a year, and for two years before that the ultimate overcoat book, Heart of Darkness. Sometimes, driven on by horror at his own ignorance and a determination to conquer a difficult book, or even a seminal text, he would take a copy of something like Seven Types of Ambiguity or The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire out of his bookshelves only to find that its opening pages were already covered in spidery and obscure annotations in his own handwriting. These traces of an earlier civilization would have reassured him if he had any recollection at all of the things he had obviously once read, but this forgetfulness made him panic instead. What was the point of an experience if it eluded him so thoroughly? His past seemed to turn to water in his cupped hands and to slip irretrievably through his nervous fingers.

Patrick heaved himself up and walked across the thick red carpet of the restaurant, his head thrown back precariously and his eyes so nearly closed that the tables were dark blurs through the mesh of his eyelashes.