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

His defiance was soon rewarded with the vivid fantasy that a hoof was trying to kick its way out of his stomach. He remembered, when he was eighteen, writing to his father from a psychiatric ward, trying to explain his reasons for being there, and receiving a short note in reply. Written in Italian, which his father knew he could not understand, it turned out, after some research, to be a quotation from Dante’s Inferno : ‘Consider your descent / You were not made to live among beasts / But to pursue virtue and knowledge.’ What had seemed a frustratingly sublime response at the time, struck him with a fresh sense of relevance now that he was listening to the sound of howling, snuffling cattle and felt, or thought he felt, another blow on the inner wall of his stomach.

As his heart rate increased again and a new wave of sweat prickled his skin, Patrick realized that he was going to be sick.

‘Excuse me,’ he said, getting up abruptly.

‘Are you all right, my dear?’ said George.

‘I feel rather sick.’

‘Perhaps we should get you a doctor.’

‘I have the best doctor in New York,’ said Ballantine. ‘Just mention my name and…’

Patrick tasted a bitter surge of bile from his stomach. He swallowed stubbornly and, without time to thank Ballantine for his kind offer, hurried out of the dining room.

On the stairs Patrick forced down a second mouthful of vomit, more solid than the first. Time was running out. Wave after wave of nausea heaved the contents of his stomach into his mouth with increasing velocity. Feeling dizzy, his vision blurred by watering eyes, he fumbled down the corridor, knocking one of the hunting prints askew with his shoulder. By the time he reached the cool marble sanctuary of the lavatories, his cheeks were as swollen as a trumpeter’s. A member of the club, admiring himself with that earnestness reserved for mirrors, found that the ordinary annoyance of being interrupted was soon replaced by alarm at being so close to a man who was obviously about to vomit.

Patrick, despairing of reaching the loo, threw up in the basin next to him, turning the taps on at the same time.

‘Jesus,’ said the member, ‘you could have done that in the john.’

‘Too far,’ said Patrick, throwing up a second time. ‘Jesus,’ repeated the man, leaving hastily.

Patrick recognized traces of last night’s dinner and, with his stomach already empty, knew that he would soon be bringing up that sour yellow bile which gives vomiting its bad name.

To encourage the faster disappearance of the vomit he twirled his finger in the plughole and increased the flow of water with his other hand. He longed to gain the privacy of one of the cubicles before he was sick again. Feeling queasy and hot, he abandoned the not yet entirely clean basin and staggered over to one of the mahogany cubicles. He hardly had time to slide the brass lock closed before he was stooped over the bowl of the loo convulsing fruitlessly. Unable to breathe or to swallow, he found himself trying to vomit with even more conviction than he had tried to avoid vomiting a few minutes earlier.

Just when he was about to faint from lack of air he managed to bring up a globule of that yellow bile he had been anticipating with such dread.

‘Fucking hell,’ he cursed, sliding down the wall. However often he did it, being sick never lost its power to surprise him.

Shaken by coming so close to choking, he lit a cigarette and smoked it through the bitter slime that coated his mouth. The question now, of course, was whether to take some heroin to help him calm down.

The risk was that it would make him feel even more nauseous.

Wiping the sweat from his hands, he gingerly opened the packet of heroin over his lap, dipped his little finger into it, and sniffed through both nostrils. Not feeling any immediate ill effects, he repeated the dose.

Peace at last. He closed his eyes and sighed. The others could just fuck off. He wasn’t going back. He was going to fold his wings and (he took another sniff) relax. Where he took his smack was his home, and more often than not that was in some stranger’s bog.

He was so tired; he really must get some sleep. Get some sleep. Fold his wings. But what if George and the others sent somebody to look for him and they found the sick-spattered basin and hammered on the door of the cubicle? Was there no peace, no resting place? Of course there wasn’t. What an absurd question.

‘I’M HERE TO COLLECT the remains of David Melrose,’ said Patrick to the grinning young man with the big jaw and the mop of shiny chestnut hair.

‘Mr … David … Melrose,’ he mused, as he turned the pages of a large leather register.

Patrick leaned over the edge of the counter, more like a grounded pulpit than a desk, and saw, next to the register, a cheap exercise book marked ‘Almost Dead’. That was the file to get on; might as well apply straight away.

Escaping from the Key Club had left him strangely elated. After passing out for an hour in the loo, he had woken refreshed but unable to face the others. Bolting past the doorman like a criminal, he had dashed round the corner to a bar, and then walked on to the funeral parlour. Later he would have to apologize to George. Lie and apologize as he always did or wanted to do after any contact with another human being.

‘Yes, sir,’ said the receptionist brightly, finding the page. ‘Mr David Melrose.’

‘I have come not to praise him, but to bury him,’ Patrick declared, thumping the table theatrically.

‘Bu-ry him?’ stammered the receptionist. ‘We under-stood that party was to be cre-mated.’

‘I was speaking metaphorically.’

‘Metaphorically,’ repeated the young man, not quite reassured. Did that mean the customer was going to sue or not?

‘Where are the ashes?’ asked Patrick.

‘I’ll go fetch them for you, sir,’ said the receptionist. ‘We have you down for a box,’ he added, no longer as confident as he’d sounded at first.

‘That’s right,’ said Patrick. ‘No point in wasting money on an urn. The ashes are going to be scattered anyway.’

‘Right,’ said the receptionist with uncertain cheerfulness.

Glancing sideways he quickly rectified his tone. ‘I’ll attend to that right away, sir,’ he said in an unctuous and artificially loud singsong, setting off promptly towards a door concealed in the panelling.

Patrick looked over his shoulder to find out what had provoked this new eagerness. He saw a tall figure he recognized without immediately being able to place him.

‘We’re in an industry where the supply and the demand are bound to be identical,’ quipped this half-familiar man.

Behind him stood the bald, moustachioed director who had led Patrick to his father’s corpse the previous afternoon. He seemed to wince and smile at the same time.

‘We’ve got the one resource that’s never going to run out,’ said the tall man, obviously enjoying himself.

The director raised his eyebrows and flickered his eyes in Patrick’s direction.

Of course, thought Patrick, it was that ghastly man he’d met on the plane.

‘Goddamn,’ whispered Earl Hammer, ‘I guess I still got something to learn about PR.’ Recognizing Patrick, he shouted ‘Bobby!’ across the chequered marble hall.

‘Patrick,’ said Patrick.

‘Paddy! Of course. That eyepatch was unfamiliar to me. What happened to you anyway? Some lady give you a black eye?’ Earl guffawed, pounding over to Patrick’s side.

‘Just a little inflammation,’ said Patrick. ‘Can’t see properly out of that eye.’

‘That’s too bad,’ said Earl. ‘What are you doing here anyhow? When I told you on the plane that I had been diversifying my business interests, I bet you never guessed that I was in the process of acquiring New York’s premier funeral parlour.’