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

The bottle was soon empty and he held it under the water, watching the bubbles run out of the neck and then moving it around the bottom of the bath like a submarine stalking enemy ships.

Looking down, he caught sight of his arms and drew in his breath sharply and involuntarily. Among the fading yellow bruises, and the pink threads of old scars, a fresh set of purple wounds clustered around his main veins and at odd points along his arm. At the centre of this unhealthy canvas was the black bulge produced by the missed shot of the night before. The thought that this was his own arm ambushed Patrick quite suddenly, and made him want to cry. He closed his eyes and sank under the surface of the water, breathing out violently from his nose. It didn’t bear thinking about.

As he surged out of the water, flicking his head from side to side, Patrick was surprised to hear the phone ring again.

He got out of the bath, and picked up the phone beside the loo. These bathroom phones were really quite useful – perhaps it was China asking him to dinner, begging him to reconsider.

‘Yes?’ he drawled.

‘Hey, Patrick?’ said an unmistakable voice on the other end.

‘Marianne! How sweet of you to ring.’

‘I’m so sorry to hear about your father,’ said Marianne in a voice that was hesitating but deeply self-assured, whispering but husky. It seemed not to be projected from her body into the world, but to draw the world inside her body; she did not speak so much as swallow articulately. Anyone who listened to her was forced to imagine her long smooth throat, and the elegant S of her body, exaggerated by the extraordinary curve of her spine that made her breasts swell further forward and her bottom further back.

Why had he never been to bed with her? The fact that she had never shown any signs of desire for him had played an unhelpful role, but that might be attributed to her friendship with Debbie. How could she resist him after all, thought Patrick, glancing in the mirror.

Fucking hell. He was going to have to rely on her pity.

‘Well, you know how it is,’ he drawled sarcastically. ‘Death, where is thy sting?’

‘Of all the evils in the world which are reproached with an evil character, death is the most innocent of its accusation.’

‘Bang on in this case,’ said Patrick. ‘Who said that anyhow?’

‘Bishop Taylor in The Correct Rules for Holy Dying ,’ Marianne disclosed.

‘Your favourite book?’

‘It’s so great,’ she gasped hoarsely; ‘I swear to God, it’s the most beautiful prose I’ve ever read.’

She was clever too. It was really intolerable; he had to have her.

‘Will you have dinner with me?’ Patrick asked.

‘Oh, God, I wish…’ gasped Marianne, ‘but I’ve got to have dinner with my parents. Do you want to come along?’

‘That would be wonderful,’ said Patrick, annoyed not to have her to himself.

‘Good. I’ll let my parents know,’ she purred. ‘Come on over to their apartment around seven o’clock.’

‘Perfect,’ said Patrick, and then, unguardedly, ‘I adore you.’

‘Hey!’ said Marianne ambiguously. ‘See you later.’

Patrick hung up the phone. He had to have her, he definitely had to have her. She was not merely the latest object on which his greedy desire to be saved had fixed itself; no, she was the woman who was going to save him. The woman whose fine intelligence and deep sympathy and divine body, yes, whose divine body would successfully deflect his attention from the gloomy well shaft of his feelings and the contemplation of his past.

If he got her he would give up drugs forever, or at least have someone really attractive to take them with. He giggled wildly, wrapping a towel around himself and striding back into his bedroom with renewed vigour.

He looked like shit, it was true, but everybody knew that what women really valued, apart from a great deal of money, was gentleness and humour. Gentleness was not his speciality, and he wasn’t feeling especially funny, but this was a case of destiny: he had to have her or he would die.

It was time to get practical, to take a Black Beauty and lock the coke in his suitcase. He fished a capsule out of his jacket and swallowed it with impressive efficiency. As he tidied away the coke he could see no reason not to have one last fix. After all, he hadn’t had one for almost forty minutes and he would not be having another for a couple of hours. Too lazy to go through the entire ritual, he stuck the needle into an easily accessible vein in the back of his hand and administered the injection.

The effects were certainly growing weaker, he noted, still able to walk around, if a little shakily, with his shoulders hunched high up beside his ears, and his jaw tightly clenched.

It was really unbearable to contemplate being separated from the coke for so long, but he couldn’t control himself if he carried supplies with him. The sensible thing to do was to prepare a couple of fixes, one in the rather tired old syringe he had been using all night, its rubber plunger now tending to stick to the sides of the barrel, and the other in the precious untouched syringe. Just as some men wore a handkerchief in their breast pockets to cope with the emergency of a woman’s tears, or a sneeze, he often tucked away a couple of syringes into the same pocket to cope with the endlessly renewed emptiness that invaded him. Pip! Pip! Be prepared!

Suffering from yet another aural hallucination, Patrick overheard a conversation between a policeman and a member of the hotel staff.

‘Was this guy a regular?’

‘Na, he was the holiday-of-a-lifetime type.’

‘Ya, ya,’ muttered Patrick impatiently. He wasn’t that easily intimidated.

He put on a clean white shirt, slipped into his second suit, a dark grey herringbone, stepping into his shoes at the same time as he did up his gold cufflinks. His silver and black tie, unfortunately the only one he had, was flecked with blood, but he managed, by tying it rather too short, to disguise the fact, although he had to tuck the longer strip into his shirt, a practice he despised.

Less easily solved was the problem of his left eye, which had now completely closed, except for an occasional nervous fluttering. He could, with great effort, open it up but only by raising his eyebrows to a position of high indignation. On his way to the Key Club, he would have to go to the pharmacy and get himself an eyepatch.

His breast pocket was deep enough to conceal the raised plungers of the two syringes, and the bag of smack fitted neatly into the ticket pocket of his jacket. Everything was completely under control, except that he was sweating like a stuck pig and couldn’t shake off the sense that he had forgotten something crucial.

Patrick took the chain off the door and glanced back nostalgically at the fetid dark chaos he was leaving behind. The curtains were still closed, the bed unmade, pillows and clothes on the floor, the lamp overturned, the trolley of food rotting in the warm atmosphere, the bathroom flooded and the television, where a man was shouting, ‘Come to Crazy Eddie’s! The prices are insane,’ still flickering.

Stepping out into the corridor, Patrick could not help noticing a policeman standing outside the next-door room.

His overcoat! That was what he had forgotten. But if he doubled back wouldn’t it look guilty?

He hovered in the doorway, and then muttered loudly, ‘Oh yes, I must…’ drawing the policeman’s attention to himself as he strode back appalled into his room. What were the police doing there? Could they tell what he’d been doing?

His overcoat felt heavy and less reassuring than usual. He mustn’t take too long or they would wonder what he was up to.