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

‘And the fridge?’

‘It could go in the cupboard next to the washing machine.’

‘It won’t fit.’

‘How do you know?’

‘I just know.’

‘Anyway … we’ll work it out. I’m just trying to be practical. Everything changes when you have a baby.’

His father leant closer, whispering, ‘There’s always Scotland.’

He had come to be practical. He knew that his wife and son were drowning in a puddle of confusion and sensitivity and he was going to save them. Robert could feel what he was feeling.

‘God, his hands are so tiny,’ said his father. ‘Just as well, really.’

He raised Robert’s hand with his little finger and kissed it. ‘Can I hold him?’

She lifted him towards his father. ‘Watch out for his neck, it’s very floppy. You have to support it.’

They all felt nervous.

‘Like this?’ His father’s hand edged up his spine, took over from his mother, and slipped under Robert’s head. Robert tried to keep calm. He didn’t want his parents to get upset.

‘Sort of. I don’t really know either.’

‘Ahh … how come we’re allowed to do this without a licence? You can’t have a dog or a television without a licence. Maybe we can learn from the maternity nurse – what’s her name?’

‘Margaret.’

‘By the way, where is Margaret going to sleep on the night before we go to my mother’s?’

‘She says she’s perfectly happy on the sofa.’

‘I wonder if the sofa feels the same way.’

‘Don’t be mean, she’s on a “chemical diet”.’

‘How exciting. I hadn’t seen her in that light.’

‘She’s had a lot of experience.’

‘Haven’t we all?’

‘With babies.’

‘Oh, babies.’ His father scraped Robert’s cheek with his stubble and made a kissing sound in his ear.

‘But we adore him,’ said his mother, her eyes swimming with tears. ‘Isn’t that enough?’

‘Being adored by two trainee parents with inadequate housing? Thank goodness he’s got the backup of one grandmother who’s on permanent holiday, and another who’s too busy saving the planet to be entirely pleased by this additional strain on its resources. My mother’s house is already too full of shamanic rattles and “power animals” and “inner children” to accommodate anything as grown-up as a child.’

‘We’ll be all right,’ said his mother. ‘We’re not children any more, we’re parents.’

‘We’re both,’ said his father, ‘that’s the trouble. Do you know what my mother told me the other day? A child born in a developed nation will consume two hundred and forty times the resources consumed by a child born in Bangladesh. If we’d had the self-restraint to have two hundred and thirty-nine Bangladeshi children, she would have given us a warmer welcome, but this gargantuan Westerner, who is going to take up acres of landfill with his disposable nappies, and will soon be clamouring for a personal computer powerful enough to launch a Mars flight while playing tic-tac-toe with a virtual buddy in Dubrovnik, is not likely to win her approval.’ His father paused. ‘Are you all right?’ he asked.

‘I’ve never been happier,’ said his mother, wiping her glistening cheeks with the back of her hand. ‘I just feel so empty.’

She guided the baby’s head towards her nipple and he started to suck. A thin stream from his old home flooded his mouth and they were together again. He could sense her heartbeat. Peace shrouded them like a new womb. Perhaps this was a good place to be after all, just difficult to get into.

* * *

That was about all that Robert could remember from the first few days of his life. The memories had come back to him last month when his brother was born. He couldn’t be sure that some of the things hadn’t been said last month, but even if they had been, they reminded him of when he was in hospital; so the memories really belonged to him.

Robert was obsessed with his past. He was five years old now. Five years old, not a baby like Thomas. He could feel his infancy disintegrating, and among the bellows of congratulation that accompanied each little step towards full citizenship he heard the whisper of loss. Something had started to happen as he became dominated by talk. His early memories were breaking off, like slabs from those orange cliffs behind him, and crashing into an all-consuming sea which only glared back at him when he tried to look into it. His infancy was being obliterated by his childhood. He wanted it back, otherwise Thomas would have the whole thing.

Robert had left his parents, his little brother and Margaret behind, and he was wobbling his way across the rocks towards the clattering stones of the lower beach, holding in one of his outstretched hands a scuffed plastic bucket decorated with vaulting dolphins. Brilliant pebbles, fading as he ran back to show them off, no longer tricked him. What he was looking for now were those jelly beans of blunted glass buried under the fine rush of black and gold gravel on the shore. Even when they were dry they had a bruised glow. His father told him that glass was made of sand, so they were halfway back to where they came from.

Robert had arrived at the shoreline now. He left his bucket on a high rock and started the hunt for wave-licked glass. The water foamed around his ankles and as it rushed down the beach he scanned the bubbling sand. To his astonishment he could see something under the first wave, not one of the pale green or cloudy white beads, but a rare yellow gem. He pulled it out of the sand, washed the grit from it with the next wave and held it up to the light, a little amber kidney between his finger and thumb. He looked up the beach to share his excitement, but his parents were huddled around the baby, while Margaret rummaged in a bag.

He could remember Margaret very well now that she was back. She had looked after him when he was a baby. It was different then because he had been his mother’s only child. Margaret liked to say that she was a ‘general chatterbox’ but in fact her only subject was herself. His father said that she was an expert on ‘the theory of dieting’. He was not sure what that was but it seemed to have made her very fat. To save money his parents weren’t going to have a maternity nurse this time but they had changed their minds just before coming to France. They almost changed them back when the agency said that Margaret was the only one available at such short notice. ‘I suppose she’ll be an extra pair of hands,’ his mother had said. ‘If only they didn’t come with the extra mouth,’ said his father.

Robert had first met Margaret when he came back from the hospital after being born. He woke up in his parents’ kitchen, jiggling up and down in her arms.

‘I’ve changed His Majesty’s nappy so he’ll have a nice dry botty,’ she said.

‘Oh,’ said his mother, ‘thank you.’

He immediately felt that Margaret was different from his mother. Words drained out of her like an unplugged bath. His mother didn’t really like talking but when she did talk it was like being held.

‘Does he like his little cot?’ said Margaret.

‘I don’t really know, he was with us in the bed last night.’

A quiet growl came out of Margaret. ‘Hmmm,’ she said, ‘bad habits.’

‘He wouldn’t settle in his cot.’

‘They never will if you take them into the bed.’

‘“Never” is a long time. He was inside me until Wednesday evening; my instinct is to have him next to me for a while – do things gradually.’

‘Well, I don’t like to question your instincts, dear,’ said Margaret, spitting the word out the moment it formed in her mouth, ‘but in my forty years of experience I’ve had mothers thank me again and again for putting the baby down and leaving it in the cot. I had one mother, she’s an Arab lady, actually, nice enough, rang me only the other day in Botley and said, “I wish I’d listened to you, Margaret, and not taken Yasmin into the bed with me. I can’t do anything with her now.” She wanted me back, but I said, “I’m sorry, dear, but I’m starting a new job next week, and I shall be going to the south of France for July to stay with the baby’s grandmother.”’