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

These graceful balletic gestures were enough to convince Bridget that she had no choice.

‘It sounds wonderful,’ she said. ‘But put them up quickly, we haven’t much time.’

‘Leave it to me,’ said Tony serenely.

A maid came to tell Bridget that there was a phone call for her. Bridget waved goodbye to Tony, and hurried out of the tent through the red-carpeted tunnel that led back to the house. Smiling florists arranged wreaths of ivy around the green metal hoops that supported the canvas.

It was strange, in February, not to give the party in the house, but Sonny was convinced that his ‘things’ would be imperilled by what he called ‘Bridget’s London friends’. He was haunted by his grandfather’s complaint that his grandmother had filled the house with ‘spongers, buggers, and Jews’, and, while he recognized the impossibility of giving an amusing party without samples from all these categories, he wasn’t about to trust them with his ‘things’.

Bridget walked across the denuded drawing room, and picked up the phone.

‘Hello?’

‘Darling, how are you?’

‘Aurora! Thank God it’s you. I was dreading another virtual stranger begging to bring their entire family to the party.’

‘Aren’t people awful ?’ said Aurora Donne in that condescending voice for which she was famous. Her large liquid eyes and creamy complexion gave her the soft beauty of a Charolais cow, but her sniggering laughter, reserved for her own remarks, was more reminiscent of a hyena. She had become Bridget’s best friend, instilling her with a grim and precarious confidence in exchange for Bridget’s lavish hospitality.

‘It’s been a nightmare,’ said Bridget, settling down in the spindly caterer’s chair that had replaced one of Sonny’s things. ‘I can’t believe the cheek of some of these people.’

‘You don’t have to tell me,’ said Aurora. ‘I hope you’ve got good security.’

‘Yes,’ said Bridget. ‘Sonny’s got the police, who were supposed to be at a football match this afternoon, to come here instead and check everything. It makes a nice change for them. They’re going to form a ring around the house. Plus, we’ve got the usual people at the door, in fact, someone called “Gresham Security” has left his walkie-talkie by the phone.’

‘They make such a fuss about royalty,’ said Aurora.

‘ Don’t ,’ groaned Bridget. ‘We’ve had to give up two of our precious rooms to the private detective and the lady-in-waiting. It’s such a waste of space.’

Bridget was interrupted by the sound of screaming in the hall.

‘You’re a filthy little girl! And nothing but a burden to your parents!’ shouted a woman with a strong Scottish accent. ‘What would the Princess say if she knew that you dirtied your dress? You filthy child!’

‘Oh dear,’ said Bridget to Aurora, ‘I do wish Nanny wasn’t quite so horrid to Belinda. It’s rather terrible, but I never dare say anything to her.’

‘I know,’ said Aurora sympathetically, ‘I’m absolutely terrified of Lucy’s nanny. I think it’s because she reminds one of one’s own nanny.’

Bridget, who had not had a ‘proper’ nanny, wasn’t about to reveal this fact by disagreeing. She had made a special effort, by way of compensation, to get a proper old-fashioned nanny for seven-year-old Belinda. The agency had been delighted when they found such a good position for the vicious old bag who’d been on their books for years.

‘The other thing I dread is my mother coming tonight,’ said Bridget.

‘Mothers can be so critical, can’t they?’ said Aurora.

‘Exactly,’ said Bridget, who in fact found her mother tiresomely eager to please. ‘I suppose I ought to go off and be nice to Belinda,’ she added with a dutiful sigh.

‘Sweet!’ cooed Aurora.

‘I’ll see you tonight, darling.’ Bridget was grateful to get rid of Aurora. She had a million and one things to do and besides, instead of giving her those transfusions of self-confidence for which she was, well, almost employed (she didn’t have a bean), Aurora had recently taken to implying that she would have handled the arrangements for the party better than Bridget.

Given that she had no intention of going up to see Belinda it was quite naughty to have used her as an excuse to end the conversation. Bridget seldom found the time to see her daughter. She could not forgive her for being a girl and burdening Sonny with the anxiety of having no heir. After spending her early twenties having abortions, Bridget had spent the next ten years having miscarriages. Successfully giving birth had been complicated enough without having a child of the wrong gender. The doctor had told her that it would be dangerous to try again, and at forty-two she was becoming resigned to having one child, especially in view of Sonny’s reluctance to go to bed with her.

Her looks had certainly deteriorated over the last sixteen years of marriage. The clear blue eyes had clouded over, the candlelit glow of her skin had sputtered out and could only be partially rekindled with tinted creams, and the lines of her body, which had shaped so many obsessions in their time, were now deformed by accumulations of stubborn fat. Unwilling to betray Sonny, and unable to attract him, Bridget had allowed herself to go into a mawkish physical decline, spending more and more time thinking of other ways to please her husband – or rather not to displease him, since he took her efforts for granted but lavished his attention on the slightest failure.

She ought to get on with the arrangements, which, in her case, meant worrying, since all the work had been delegated to somebody else. The first thing she decided to worry about was the walkie-talkie on the table beside her. It had clearly been lost by some hopeless security man. Bridget picked the machine up and, curious, switched it on. There was a loud hissing sound and then the whinings of an untuned radio.

Interested to see if she could make anything intelligible emerge from this melee of sound, Bridget got up and walked around the room. The noises grew louder and fainter, and sometimes intensified into squeals, but as she moved towards the windows, darkened by the side of the marquee that reared up wet and white under the dull winter sky, she heard, or thought she heard, a voice. Pressing her ear close to the walkie-talkie she could make out a crackling, whispering conversation.

‘The thing is, I haven’t had conjugal relations with Bridget for some time…’ said the voice at the other end, and faded again. Bridget shook the walkie-talkie desperately, and moved closer to the window. She couldn’t understand what was going on. How could it be Sonny she was listening to? But who else could claim that he hadn’t had ‘conjugal relations’ with her for some time?

She could make out words again, and pressed the walkie-talkie to her ear with renewed curiosity and dread.

‘To chuck Bridget at this … it’s bound to be … but one does feel some responsibility towards…’ Interference drowned the conversation again. A prickling wave of heat rushed over her body. She must hear what they were saying, what monstrous plan they were hatching. Who was Sonny talking to? It must be Peter. But what if it wasn’t? What if he talked like this to everyone, everyone except her?

‘All the things are in trust,’ she heard, and then another voice saying: ‘Lunch … next week.’ Yes, it was Peter. There was more crackling, and then, ‘Happy birthday.’

Bridget sank down in the window seat. She raised her arm and almost flung the walkie-talkie against the wall, but then lowered it again slowly until it hung loosely by her side.

JOHNNY HALL HAD BEEN going to Narcotics Anonymous meetings for over a year. In a fit of enthusiasm and humility he found hard to explain, he had volunteered to make the tea and coffee at the Saturday three o’clock meeting. He recognized many of the people who took one of the white plastic cups he had filled with a tea bag or a few granules of instant coffee, and struggled to remember their names, embarrassed that so many of them remembered his.