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

‘You can tell him yourself,’ said Patrick as he saw the ambassador approaching from behind.

‘ Mon cher Jacques,’ said Nicholas, spinning lightly round, ‘I thought you were absolutely brilliant! The way you handled that tiresome woman was faultless: by giving in to her ridiculous demands you showed just how ridiculous they were. Do you know my young friend Patrick Melrose? His father was a very good friend of mine.’

* * *

‘René Bollinger was such heaven,’ sighed the Princess. ‘He was a really great ambassador, we all absolutely adored him. It makes it all the harder to put up with the mediocrity of these two,’ she added, waving her cigarette holder towards the Alantours, to whom Patrick was saying goodbye.

* * *

‘I hope we didn’t dr-rive away your young friend,’ said Jacqueline. ‘He seemed very nervous.’

‘We can do without him even if I am a great advocate of diversity,’ said Nicholas.

‘You?’ laughed Jacqueline.

‘Absolutely, my dear,’ Nicholas replied. ‘I firmly believe that one should have the widest possible range of acquaintances, from monarchs right down to the humblest baronet in the land. With, of course, a sprinkling of superstars,’ he added, like a great chef introducing a rare but pungent spice into his stew, ‘before they turn, as they inevitably do, into black holes.’

‘ Mais il est vraiment too much,’ said Jacqueline, delighted by Nicholas’s performance.

‘One’s better off with a title than a mere name,’ Nicholas continued. ‘Proust, as I’m sure you’re aware, writes very beautifully on this subject, saying that even the most fashionable commoner is bound to be forgotten very quickly, whereas the bearer of a great title is certain of immortality, at least in the eyes of his descendants.’

‘Still,’ said Jacqueline a little limply, ‘there have been some very amusing people without titles.’

‘My dear,’ said Nicholas, clasping her forearm, ‘what would we do without them?’

They laughed the innocent laughter of two snobs taking a holiday from that need to appear tolerant and open-minded which marred what Nicholas still called ‘modern life’, although he had never known any other kind.

‘I feel the royal presence bearing down on us,’ said Jacques uncomfortably. ‘I think the diplomatic course is to explore the depths of the party.’

‘My dear fellow, you are the depths of the party,’ said Nicholas. ‘But I quite agree, you shouldn’t expose yourself to any more petulance from that absurd woman.’

‘ Au revoir ,’ whispered Jacqueline.

‘ A bientôt ,’ said Jacques, and the Alantours withdrew and separated, taking the burden of their glamour to different parts of the room.

Nicholas had hardly recovered from the loss of the Alantours when Princess Margaret and Kitty Harrow came over to his side.

‘Consorting with the enemy,’ scowled the Princess.

‘They came to me for sympathy, ma’am,’ said Nicholas indignantly, ‘but I told them they’d come to the wrong place. I pointed out to him that he was a clumsy fool. And as to his absurd wife, I said that we’d had quite enough of her petulance for one evening.’

‘Oh, did you?’ said the Princess, smiling graciously.

‘Good for you,’ chipped in Kitty.

‘As you saw,’ boasted Nicholas, ‘they slunk off with their tails between their legs. “I’d better keep a low profile,” the ambassador said to me. “You’ve got a low enough profile already,” I replied.’

‘Oh, how marvellous,’ said the Princess. ‘Putting your sharp tongue to good use, I approve of that.’

‘I suppose this’ll go straight into your book,’ said Kitty. ‘We’re all terrified, ma’am, by what Nicholas is going to say about us in his book.’

‘Am I in it?’ asked the Princess.

‘I wouldn’t dream of putting you in, ma’am,’ protested Nicholas. ‘I’m far too discreet.’

‘You’re allowed to put me in it as long as you say something nice,’ said the Princess.

* * *

‘I remember you when you were five years old,’ said Bridget. ‘You were so sweet, but rather standoffish.’

‘I can’t imagine why,’ said Patrick. ‘I remember seeing you kneeling down on the terrace just after you arrived. I was watching from behind the trees.’

‘Oh God,’ squealed Bridget. ‘I’d forgotten that.’

‘I couldn’t work out what you were doing.’

‘It was very shocking.’

‘I’m unshockable,’ said Patrick.

‘Well, if you really want to know, Nicholas had told me it was something your parents did: your father making your mother eat figs off the ground, and I was rather naughtily acting out what he’d told me. He got frightfully angry with me.’

‘It’s nice to think of my parents having fun,’ said Patrick.

‘I think it was a power thing,’ said Bridget, who seldom dabbled in deep psychology.

‘Sounds plausible,’ said Patrick.

‘Oh God, there’s Mummy, looking terribly lost,’ said Bridget. ‘You wouldn’t be an angel and talk to her for a second, would you?’

‘Of course,’ said Patrick.

Bridget left Patrick with Virginia, congratulating herself on solving her mother problem so neatly.

‘So how was your dinner here?’ said Patrick, trying to open the conversation on safe ground. ‘I gather Princess Margaret got showered in brown sauce. It must have been a thrilling moment.’

‘I wouldn’t have found it thrilling,’ said Virginia. ‘I know how upsetting it can be getting a stain on your dress.’

‘So you didn’t actually see it,’ said Patrick.

‘No, I was having dinner with the Bossington-Lanes,’ said Virginia.

‘Really? I was supposed to be there. How was it?’

‘We got lost on the way there,’ sighed Virginia. ‘All the cars were busy collecting people from the station, so I had to go by taxi. We stopped at a cottage that turned out to be just at the bottom of their drive and asked the way. When I said to Mr Bossington-Lane, “We had to ask the way from your neighbour in the cottage with the blue windows,” he said to me, “That’s not a neighbour, that’s a tenant, and what’s more he’s a sitting tenant and a damned nuisance.”’

‘Neighbours are people you can ask to dinner,’ said Patrick.

‘That makes me his neighbour, then,’ laughed Virginia. ‘And I live in Kent. I don’t know why my daughter told me they needed spare ladies, there were nothing but spare ladies. Mrs Bossington-Lane told me just now that she’s had apologies from all four gentlemen who didn’t turn up, and they all said they’d broken down on the motorway. She was very put out, after all the trouble she’d been to, but I said, “You’ve got to keep your sense of humour.”’

‘I thought she looked unconvinced when I told her I’d broken down on the motorway,’ said Patrick.

‘Oh,’ said Virginia, clapping her hand over her mouth. ‘You must have been one of them. I’d forgotten you said you were supposed to have dinner there.’

‘Don’t worry,’ smiled Patrick. ‘I just wish we’d compared stories before all telling her the same one.’

Virginia laughed. ‘You’ve got to keep your sense of humour,’ she repeated.

* * *

‘What is it, darling?’ asked Aurora Donne. ‘You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ sighed Bridget. ‘I just saw Cindy Smith with Sonny – and I remember saying that we couldn’t ask her because we didn’t know her, and thinking it was odd of Sonny to make a thing of it – and now she’s here and there was something familiar about the way they stood together, but I’m probably just being paranoid.’

Aurora, presented with the choice of telling a friend a painful truth which could do her no possible good, or reassuring her, felt no hesitation in taking the first course for the sake of ‘honesty’, and the pleasure of seeing Bridget’s enjoyment of her expensive life, which Aurora had often told herself she would have handled better, spoiled.