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

‘I know,’ said Cindy, ‘that’s a valuable item.’

‘You realize you’ll have to pretend to be my wife,’ said David.

‘How far am I meant to go?’

David, quivering, sweating, and blushing at the same time, took refuge in the bluffness for which he was well known. ‘Only until we get past the security people,’ he said.

‘Anything you say,’ Cindy replied meekly. ‘You’re the boss.’

‘Where shall we meet?’ asked David.

‘I’ve got a suite in the Little Soddington House Hotel. That’s in Gloucestershire, right?’

‘I certainly hope so, unless it’s moved,’ said David, more pompously than he’d intended.

Cindy giggled. ‘Sonny didn’t tell me you were so funny,’ she said. ‘We could have dinner together at my hotel, if you’d like.’

‘Splendid,’ said David, already scheming to get out of the dinner party Bridget had put him in. ‘About eight?’

* * *

Tom Charles had ordered a car to take him down to the country. It was extravagant, but he was too old to fool around with trains and suitcases. He was staying at Claridge’s, as usual, and one of the nicest things about it was the wood fire that was subsiding brightly in the grate while he finished his frugal breakfast of tea and grapefruit juice.

He was on his way to stay with Harold Greene, an old friend from the IMF days. Harold had said to bring a dinner jacket because they were going to a neighbour’s birthday party. He’d got the low-down on the neighbour, but all Tom could remember was that he was one of those Englishmen with plenty of ‘background’ and not a hell of a lot going on in the foreground. If you weren’t unduly impressed by these ‘background’ types they said you were ‘chippy’, but in fact nothing could make you feel less ‘chippy’ than contemplating a lifetime wasted in gossip, booze, and sexual intrigue.

Harold was not like that at all; he was a mover and shaker. He was on the Christmas-card lists of grateful presidents and friendly senators – as was Tom – but like everybody else on this rainy island he liked the ‘background’ types too much.

Tom picked up the phone to ring Anne Eisen. Anne was an old friend and he was looking forward to driving down with her to Harold’s, but he had to know what time to send the car to collect her. Her number was engaged and so Tom hung up crisply and continued reading the pile of English and American newspapers he’d ordered with his breakfast.

TONY FOWLES WAS WHAT Bridget called an ‘absolute genius’ when it came to colours and fabrics. He confessed to ‘having a crush on ash colours at the moment,’ and she had agreed to have the interior of the tent done in grey. Her initial misgivings about this bold idea were swept aside by Tony’s remark that Jacqueline d’Alantour, the French Ambassador’s wife, was ‘so correct that she’s never really right ’.

Bridget wondered how far one could be incorrect without being wrong, and it was in this grey area that Tony had become her guide, increasing her dependency on him until she could hardly light a cigarette without his assistance, and had already had a row with Sonny about wanting to have him at her side during dinner.

‘That appalling little man shouldn’t be coming at all,’ said Sonny, ‘let alone sitting next to you. I need hardly remind you that we’re having Princess Margaret for dinner and that every one of the men has a better claim to be by your side than that…’ Sonny spluttered, ‘that popinjay.’

What was a popinjay anyway? Whatever it was, it was so unfair, because Tony was her guru and her jester. People who knew how funny he was – and one only had to hear his story about hurrying through the streets of Lima clutching bolts of fabric during a bread riot to practically die laughing – didn’t perhaps realize how wise he was also.

But where was Tony? He was supposed to meet her at eleven o’clock. One could worship him for all sorts of things, but punctuality wasn’t one of them. Bridget looked around at the wastes of grey velvet that lined the inside of the tent; without Tony, her confidence faltered. One end of the tent was dominated by a hideous white stage on which a forty-piece band, flown over from America, would later play the ‘traditional New Orleans jazz’ favoured by Sonny. The industrial heaters that roared in every corner still left the atmosphere numbingly cold.

‘Obviously, I’d rather that my birthday was in June instead of gloomy old February,’ Sonny was fond of saying, ‘but one can’t choose when one’s born.’

The shock of not having planned his own birth had given Sonny a fanatical desire to plan everything else. Bridget had tried to keep him out of the tent on the grounds that it should be a ‘surprise’, but since this word was for him roughly equivalent to ‘terrorist outrage’, she had failed. She had, on the other hand, managed to keep secret the astonishing cost of the velvet, communicated to her by a honking Sloane with a laugh like a death rattle, who had said that it came to ‘forty thousand, plus the dreaded’. Bridget had thought ‘the dreaded’ was a technical decorating term until Tony explained that it was VAT.

He had also said that the orange lilies would make a ‘riot of colour’ against the soft grey background, but now that they were being arranged by a team of busy ladies in chequered blue overalls, Bridget could not help thinking they looked more like dying embers in a huge heap of ash.

Just as this heretical thought was entering her mind, Tony swept into the tent dressed in a baggy earth, ash, and grape sweater, a pair of beautifully ironed jeans, white socks, and brown moccasins with surprisingly thick soles. He had wrapped a white silk scarf around his throat after he felt, or thought he felt, a tickle. ‘Tony! At last,’ Bridget dared to point out.

‘I’m sorry,’ croaked Tony, laying his hand on his chest and frowning pathetically. ‘I think I’m coming down with something.’

‘Oh, dear,’ said Bridget, ‘I hope you won’t be too ill for tonight.’

‘Even if they had to wheel me in on a life-support machine,’ he replied, ‘I wouldn’t miss it for the world. I know the artist is supposed to stand outside his creation, paring his fingernails,’ he said, looking down at his fingernails with affected indifference, ‘but I don’t feel my creation is finished until it’s filled with living fabric.’

He paused and stared at Bridget with hypnotic intensity, like Rasputin about to inform the Tsarina of his latest inspiration. ‘Now, I know what you’re thinking,’ he assured her. ‘Not enough colour!’

Bridget felt a searchlight shining into the recesses of her soul. ‘The flowers haven’t changed it as much as I thought they would,’ she confessed.

‘And that’s why I’ve brought you these,’ said Tony, pointing to a group of assistants who had been waiting meekly until they were called forward. They were surrounded by large cardboard boxes.

‘What are they?’ asked Bridget, apprehensive.

The assistants started to open the tops of the boxes. ‘I thought tents, I thought poles, I thought ribbons,’ said Tony, who was always ready to explain his imaginative processes. ‘And so I had these specially made. It’s a sort of regimental-maypole theme,’ he explained, no longer able to contain his excitement. ‘It’ll look stunning against the pearly texture of the ash.’

Bridget knew that ‘specially made’ meant extremely expensive. ‘They look like ties,’ she said, peering into a box.

‘Exactly,’ said Tony triumphantly. ‘I saw Sonny wearing a rather thrilling green and orange tie. He told me it was a regimental tie and I thought, that’s it: the orange will pick up the lilies and lift the whole room.’ Tony’s hands flowed upward and outward. ‘We’ll tie the ribbons to the top of the pole and bring them over to the sides of the tent.’ This time his hands flowed outwards and downward.