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

‘I don’t know how you put up with those meetings,’ said Patrick. ‘Aren’t they full of ghastly people?’

‘Of course they are, but so is any crowded room,’ said Johnny.

‘But at least I’m not required to believe in God to go to this party tonight.’

‘I’m sure if you were you’d find a way,’ laughed Johnny. ‘What is a strain is being forced into the lobster pot of good behaviour while being forced to sing its praises.’

‘Doesn’t the hypocrisy get you down?’

‘Luckily, they have a slogan for that: “Fake it to make it.”’

Patrick made a vomiting sound. ‘I don’t think that dressing the Ancient Mariner as a wedding guest is the solution to the problem, do you?’

‘It’s not like that, more like a roomful of Ancient Mariners deciding to have a party of their own.’

‘Christ!’ said Patrick. ‘It’s worse than I thought.’

‘You’re the one who wants to dress as a wedding guest,’ said Johnny. ‘Didn’t you tell me that the last time you were banging your head against the wall and begging to be released from the torment of your addiction, you couldn’t get that sentence about Henry James out of your mind: “He was an inveterate diner-out and admitted to accepting one hundred and fifty invitations in the winter of 1878,” or something like that?’

‘Hmm,’ said Patrick.

‘Anyhow, don’t you find it hard not to take drugs?’ asked Johnny.

‘Of course it’s hard, it’s a fucking nightmare,’ said Patrick. Since he was representing stoicism against therapy, he wasn’t going to lose the chance to exaggerate the strain he was under.

‘Either I wake up in the Grey Zone,’ he whispered, ‘and I’ve forgotten how to breathe, and my feet are so far away I’m not sure I can afford the air fare; or it’s the endless reel of lazy decapitations, and kneecaps stolen by passing traffic, and dogs fighting over the liver I quite want back. If they made a film of my inner life, it would be more than the public could take. Mothers would scream, “Bring back The Texas Chainsaw Massacre , so we can have some decent family entertainment!” And all these joys accompanied by the fear that I’ll forget everything that’s ever happened to me, and all the things I’ve seen will be lost, as the Replicant says at the end of Blade Runner , “like tears in rain”.’

‘Yeah, yeah,’ said Johnny, who’d often heard Patrick rehearse fragments of this speech. ‘So why don’t you just go ahead?’

‘Some combination of pride and terror,’ said Patrick, and then, changing the subject quickly, he asked when Johnny’s meeting ended. They agreed to leave from Patrick’s flat at five o’clock.

Patrick lit another cigarette. The conversation with Johnny had made him nervous. Why had he said, ‘Some combination of pride and terror’? Did he still think it was uncool to admit to any enthusiasm, even in front of his greatest friend? Why did he muzzle new feelings with old habits of speech? It might not have been obvious to anyone else, but he longed to stop thinking about himself, to stop strip-mining his memories, to stop the introspective and retrospective drift of his thoughts. He wanted to break into a wider world, to learn something, to make a difference. Above all, he wanted to stop being a child without using the cheap disguise of becoming a parent.

‘Not that there’s much danger of that,’ muttered Patrick, finally getting out of bed and putting on a pair of trousers. The days when he was drawn to the sort of girl who whispered, ‘Be careful, I’m not wearing any contraception,’ as you came inside her, were almost completely over. He could remember one of them speaking warmly of abortion clinics. ‘It’s quite luxurious while you’re there. A comfortable bed, good food, and you can tell all your secrets to the other girls because you know you’re not going to meet them again. Even the operation is rather exciting. It’s only afterwards that you get really depressed.’

Patrick ground his cigarette into the ashtray and walked through to the kitchen.

And why did he have to attack Johnny’s meetings? They were simply places to confess. Why did he have to make everything so harsh and difficult? On the other hand, what was the point of going somewhere to confess if you weren’t going to say the one thing that mattered? There were things he’d never told anyone and never would.

NICHOLAS PRATT, STILL WEARING his pyjamas, waddled back to the bedroom of his house in Clabon Mews, squeezing the letters he had just collected from the doormat and scrutinizing the handwriting on the envelopes to see how many ‘serious’ invitations they might contain. At sixty-seven his body was as ‘well preserved’ as his memoirs were ‘long awaited’. He had met ‘everybody’, and had a ‘fund of marvellous stories’, but discretion had placed its gallant finger on his half-opened lips and he had never started the book which he was widely known to be working on. It was not unusual in what he called the ‘big world’, namely among the two or three thousand rich people who recognized his name, to hear anxious men and women ‘dreading to think’ how they had turned out in ‘Nicholas’s book’.

Collapsing on his bed, where he nowadays slept alone, he was about to test his theory that he had only received three letters that were really worth opening, when he was interrupted by the ringing of the phone.

‘Hello,’ he yawned.

‘Ni-ko-la?’ said a brisk woman’s voice, pronouncing the name as if it were French. ‘It’s Jacqueline d’Alantour.’

‘ Quel honneur ,’ simpered Nicholas in his appalling French accent.

‘How are you, darling? I r-ring because Jacques and I are staying at Cheet-lai for Sonny’s birthday, and I thought you might be going there too.’

‘Of course I am,’ said Nicholas sternly. ‘In fact, as the patron saint of Bridget’s social triumph, I’m meant to be there already. It was I, after all, who introduced little Miss Watson-Scott, as she was then, into the beau monde, as it was then, and she has not forgotten her debt to Uncle Nicholas.’

‘R-remind me,’ said Jacqueline, ‘was she one of the ladies you married?’

‘Don’t be absurd,’ said Nicholas, pretending to take offence. ‘Just because I’ve had six failed marriages, there’s no need to invent more.’

‘But Ni-ko-la, seriously, I r-ring in case you want to come with us in the car. We have a driver from the embassy. It will be more fun – no? – to go down together, or up together – this English “up” and “down” c’est vraiment too much.’

Nicholas was enough of a man of the world to know that the French ambassador’s wife was not being entirely altruistic. She was offering him a lift so as to arrive at Cheatley with an intimate friend of Bridget’s. Nicholas, for his part, would bring fresh glamour to that intimacy by arriving with the Alantours. They would enhance each other’s glory.

‘Up or down,’ said Nicholas, ‘I’d adore to come with you.’

* * *

Sonny Gravesend sat in the library at Cheatley dialling the familiar digits of Peter Porlock’s number on his radio telephone. The mystical equation between property and person which had so long propped up Sonny’s dim personality was worshipped nowhere more ardently than at Cheatley. Peter, George Watford’s eldest son, was Sonny’s best friend and the only person he really trusted when he wanted sound advice about farming or sex. Sonny sat back in his chair and waited for Peter to wade through the vast rooms of Richfield to the nearest telephone. He looked at the fireplace, above which hung the painting that Robin Parker was taking so long to authenticate as a Poussin. It had been a Poussin when the fourth Earl bought it and, as far as Sonny was concerned, it still was. Nevertheless, one had to get an ‘expert opinion’.