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

Virginia Watson-Scott glanced nervously at her suitcase, knowing it was in everybody’s way. The last time she’d been on a train, a kind young man had hoisted it into the luggage rack without sparing a thought for how she was going to get it down again. She’d been too polite to say anything, but she could remember tottering under the weight as the train drew in to Paddington. Even so, the funny-looking gentleman opposite might at least have offered.

In the end she’d decided not to pack the burgundy velvet dress she’d bought for the party. She had lost her nerve, something that would never have happened when Roddy was alive, and fallen back on an old favourite that Sonny and Bridget had seen a hundred times before, or would have seen a hundred times if they asked her to Cheatley more often.

She knew what it was, of course: Bridget was embarrassed by her. Sonny was somehow gallant and rude at the same time, full of old-fashioned courtesies that failed to disguise his underlying contempt. She didn’t care about him, but it did hurt to think that her daughter didn’t want her around. Old people were always saying that they didn’t want to be a burden. Well, she did want to be a burden. It wasn’t as if she would be taking the last spare room, just one of Sonny’s cottages. He was always boasting about how many he had and what a terrible responsibility they were.

Bridget had been such a nice little girl. It was that horrible Nicholas Pratt who had changed her. It was hard to describe, but she had started to criticize everything at home, and look down her nose at people she’d known all her life. Virginia had only met Nicholas once, thank goodness, when he had taken her and Roddy to the opera. She had said to Roddy afterwards that Nicholas wasn’t her cup of tea at all, but Roddy had said that Bridget was a sensible girl and she was old enough now to make her own decisions.

* * *

‘Oh, do come on,’ said Caroline Porlock. ‘We promised to arrive early and lend moral support.’

Moral support, thought Peter Porlock, still dazed from his conversation with Sonny that morning, was certainly what Cheatley needed.

They headed down the drive past placid deer and old oaks. Peter reflected that he was one of those Englishmen who could truly claim that his home was his castle, and wondered whether that was the sort of thing to say during one’s famous television appearances. On balance, he decided, as Caroline whizzed the Subaru through the honey-coloured gateposts, probably not.

* * *

Nicholas Pratt lounged in the back of the Alantours’ car. This is how the world should be seen, he thought: through the glass partition of a limousine.

The rack of lamb had been excellent, the cheeses flown in from France that morning, delicious, and the 1970 Haut Brion, ‘ très buvable ’, as the ambassador had modestly remarked.

‘ Et la comtesse, est-elle bien née? ’ asked Jacqueline, returning to the subject of Bridget, so that her husband could savour the details of her background.

‘ Pas du tout ,’ answered Nicholas in a strong English accent.

‘Not quite from the top basket!’ exclaimed Jacques d’Alantour, who prided himself on his command of colloquial English.

Jacqueline was not quite from the top basket herself, reflected Nicholas, which was what gave that rather hungry quality to her fascination with social standing. Her mother had been the daughter of a Lebanese arms dealer, and had married Phillipe du Tant, a penniless and obscure baron who had neither been able to spoil her like her father, nor to save her from being spoilt. Jacqueline had not been born so much as numbered, somewhere in the Union des Banques Suisses. With the slightly sallow complexion and downturned mouth she had inherited from her mother, she could have done without the frighteningly prominent nose that her father had settled on her; but already famous as an heiress from an early age, she appeared to most people as a photograph come to life, a name made flesh, a bank account personified.

‘Is that why you didn’t marry her?’ teased Jacqueline.

‘I’m quite bien né enough for two,’ replied Nicholas grandly. ‘But, you know, I’m not the snob I used to be.’

The ambassador raised his finger in judgement. ‘You are a better snob!’ he declared, with a witty expression on his face.

‘There are so many varieties of snobbism,’ said Jacqueline, ‘one cannot admire all of them.’

‘Snobbery is one of the things one should be most discriminating about,’ said Nicholas.

‘Some things, like not tolerating stupid people, or not having pigs at one’s table, are not snobbish at all, they are simply common sense,’ said Jacqueline.

‘And yet,’ said the wily ambassador, ‘sometimes it is necessary to have pigs at one’s table.’

Diplomats, thought Nicholas, long made redundant by telephones, still preserved the mannerisms of men who were dealing with great matters of state. He had once seen Jacques d’Alantour fold his overcoat on a banister and declare with all the emphasis of a man refusing to compromise over the Spanish Succession, ‘I shall put my coat here. ’ He had then placed his hat on a nearby chair and added with an air of infinite subtlety, ‘But my hat I shall put here. Otherwise it may fall!’ as if he were hinting that on the other hand some arrangement could be reached over the exact terms of the marriage.

‘If they are at one’s table,’ concluded Jacqueline tolerantly, ‘they are no longer pigs.’

* * *

Obeying the law that people always loathe those they have wronged, Sonny found himself especially allergic to Bridget after his conversation with Peter Porlock, and went as far as the nursery to avoid her.

‘Dada! What are you doing here?’ asked Belinda.

‘I’ve come to see my favourite girl,’ boomed Sonny.

‘What a lucky girl you are,’ cooed Nanny, ‘a busy man like your father coming to see you on a day like this!’

‘That’s all right, Nanny,’ said Sonny. ‘I’ll take over.’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Nanny unctuously.

‘Well,’ said Sonny, rubbing his hands together, ‘what have you been up to?’

‘We were reading a book!’

‘What’s the story about?’ asked Sonny.

‘It’s a school trip,’ said Belinda rather shyly.

‘And where do they go?’

‘To the wax museum.’

‘Madame Tussaud’s?’

‘Yes, and Tim and Jane are very naughty and they stay behind and hide, and when it’s night-time all the wax people come to life, and then they start to dance with each other like real people, and they make friends with the children. Will you read it to me, Dada, please?’

‘But you’ve just read it,’ said Sonny, puzzled.

‘It’s my favourite story, and it’s better if you read it. Please ,’ pleaded Belinda.

‘Of course I will. I’d be delighted,’ said Sonny with a little bow, as if he’d been asked to address an agricultural fair. Since he was in the nursery he might as well create a good impression. Besides, he was jolly fond of Belinda and there was no harm in underlining the fact. It was awful to think this way, but one had to be practical and plan ahead and think of Cheatley. Nanny would be a useful character witness if there was a fuss about custody. One could be sure that this unexpected swoop into the nursery would be branded on her memory. Sonny installed himself in an old battered armchair and Belinda, hardly believing her luck, sat in his lap and rested her head against the soft cashmere of his bright red sweater.

‘All the children in Tim and Jane’s class were very excited,’ boomed Sonny. ‘They were going on a trip to London…’

* * *

‘It’s too bad your not being able to come,’ said David Windfall to his wife, slipping a couple of condoms into the inside pocket of his dinner jacket, just in case.