The Patrick Melrose Novels: Never Mind, Bad News, Some Hope, and Mother's Milk (13 page)

Bridget refused to unpack properly. She pulled out a frail-looking dress of dark-red crushed velvet for tonight, tossed it on the bed, and abandoned her suitcase in the middle of the floor. Nicholas could not resist kicking it over, but he said nothing, conscious that if he was rude to her again straight away she might cause him difficulties during dinner.

Silently, Nicholas put on a dark-blue silk suit and an old pale-yellow shirt, the most conventional one he had been able to find at Mr Fish, and was now ready to go downstairs. His hair smelt faintly of something made up for him by Trumper’s, and his cheeks of a very simple extract of lime he considered clean and manly.

Bridget sat at the dressing table, very slowly applying too much black eyeliner.

‘We must get downstairs, or we’ll be late,’ said Nicholas.

‘You always say that and then there’s nobody there.’

‘David is even more punctual than I am.’

‘So go down without me.’

‘I would rather we went down together,’ said Nicholas, with menacing weariness.

Bridget continued to admire herself in the inadequately lit mirror, while Nicholas sat on the edge of the bed and gave his shirtsleeves a little tug to reveal more of his royal cufflinks. Made of thick gold and engraved with the initials E.R., they might have been contemporary, but had in fact been a present to his rakish grandfather, the Sir Nicholas Pratt of his day and a loyal courtier of Edward VII’s. Unable to think how he could further embellish his appearance, he got up and wandered around. He drifted back into the bathroom and stole another glance at himself in the mirror. The softening contours of his chin, where the flab was beginning to build up, would undoubtedly profit from yet another suntan. He dabbed a little more lime extract behind his ears.

‘I’m ready,’ said Bridget.

Nicholas came over to the dressing table and quickly pressed Bridget’s powder puff to his cheekbones, and ran it coyly over the bridge of his nose. As they left the room, he glanced at Bridget critically, unable to approve fully of the red velvet dress he had once praised. It carried with it the aura of an antique stall in Kensington Market, and showed up its cheapness glaringly in the presence of other antiques. The red emphasized her blonde hair, and the velvet brought out the glassy blue of her eyes, but the design of the dress, which seemed to have been made for a medieval witch, and the evidence of amateur repairs in the worn material struck him as less amusing than the first time he had seen Bridget in this same dress. It had been at a half Bohemian party in Chelsea given by an ambitious Peruvian. Nicholas and the other social peaks that the host was trying to scale stood together at one end of the room insulting the mountaineer as he scrambled about them attentively. When they had nothing better to do they allowed him to bribe them with his hospitality, on the understanding he would be swept away by an avalanche of invective if he ever treated them with familiarity at a party given by people who really mattered.

Sometimes it was great festivals of privilege, and at other times it was the cringing and envy of others that confirmed one’s sense of being at the top. Sometimes it was the seduction of a pretty girl that accomplished this important task and at other times it was down to one’s swanky cufflinks.

‘All roads lead to Rome,’ murmured Nicholas complacently, but Bridget was not curious to know why.

As she had predicted, there was nobody waiting for them in the drawing room. With its curtains drawn, and lit only by pools of urine-coloured light splashed under the dark-yellow lampshades, the room looked both dim and rich. Like so many of one’s friends, reflected Nicholas.

‘Ah,
Extraits de Plantes Marines
,’ he said, sniffing the burning essence loudly, ‘you know it’s impossible to get it now.’ Bridget did not answer.

He moved over to the black cabinet and lifted a bottle of Russian vodka out of a silver bucket full of ice cubes. He poured the cold viscous fluid into a small tumbler. ‘They used to sell it with copper rings which sometimes overheated and spat burning essence onto the light bulbs. One evening, Monsieur et Madame de Quelque Chose were changing for dinner when the bulb in their dining room exploded, the lampshade caught fire, and the curtains burst into flames. After that, it was taken off the market.’

Bridget showed no surprise or interest. In the distance the telephone rang faintly. Eleanor so disliked the noise of telephones that there was only one in the house, at a small desk under the back stairs.

‘Can I get you a drink?’ asked Nicholas, knocking back his vodka in what he considered the correct Russian manner.

‘Just a Coke,’ said Bridget. She didn’t really like alcohol, it was such a crude high. At least that was what Barry said. Nicholas opened a bottle of Coke and poured himself some more vodka, this time in a tall glass packed with ice.

There was a clicking of high heels on the tiles and Eleanor came in shyly, wearing a long purple dress.

‘There’s a phone call for you,’ she said, smiling at Bridget, whose name she had somehow forgotten between the telephone and the drawing room.

‘Oh, wow,’ said Bridget, ‘for me?’ She got up, making sure not to look at Nicholas. Eleanor described the route to the phone, and Bridget eventually arrived at the desk under the back stairs. ‘Hello,’ she said, ‘
hello
?’ There was no answer.

By the time she returned to the drawing room Nicholas was saying, ‘Well, one evening, the Marquis and Marquise de Quelque Chose were upstairs changing for a big party they were giving, when a lampshade caught fire and their drawing room was completely gutted.’

‘How marvellous,’ said Eleanor, with not the faintest idea of what Nicholas had been talking about. Recovering from one of those blank patches in which she could not have said what was going on around her, she knew only that there had been an interval since she was last conscious. ‘Did you get through all right?’ she said to Bridget.

‘No. It’s really weird, there was no one there. He must have run out of money.’

The phone rang again, more loudly this time through all the doors that Bridget had left open. She doubled back eagerly.

‘Imagine wanting to talk to someone on the phone,’ said Eleanor. ‘I dread it.’

‘Youth,’ said Nicholas tolerantly.

‘I dreaded it even more in my youth, if that’s possible.’

Eleanor poured herself some whisky. She felt exhausted and restless at the same time. It was the feeling she knew better than any other. She returned to her usual seat, a low footstool wedged into the lampless corner beside the screen. As a child, when the screen had belonged to her mother, she had often squatted under its monkey-crowded branches pretending to be invisible.

Nicholas, who had been sitting tentatively on the edge of the Doge’s chair, rose again nervously. ‘This is David’s favourite seat, isn’t it?’

‘I guess he won’t sit in it if you’re in it already,’ said Eleanor.

‘That’s just what I’m not so sure of,’ said Nicholas. ‘You know how fond he is of having his own way.’

‘Tell me about it,’ said Eleanor flatly.

Nicholas moved to a nearby sofa and sucked another mouthful of vodka from his glass. It had taken on the taste of melted ice, which he disliked, but he rolled it around his mouth, having nothing in particular to say to Eleanor. Annoyed by Bridget’s absence and apprehensive about David’s arrival, he waited to see which would come through the door. He felt let down when Anne and Victor arrived first.

Anne had replaced her simple white dress with a simple black one and she already held a lighted cigarette. Victor had conquered his anxiety about what to wear and still had on the thick speckled sweater.

‘Hi,’ said Anne to Eleanor, and kissed her with real affection.

When the greetings were over, Nicholas could not help remarking on Victor’s appearance. ‘My dear chap, you look as if you’re about to go mackerel fishing in the Hebrides.’

‘In fact, the last time I wore this sweater,’ said Victor, turning around and handing a glass to Anne, ‘was when I had to see a student who was floundering badly with his D.Phil. It was called “Abelard, Nietzsche, Sade, and Beckett”, which gives you some idea of the difficulties he was running into.’

Does it? thought Eleanor.

‘Really, people will stop at nothing to get a doctorate these days.’ Victor was warming up for the role he felt was required of him during dinner.

‘But how did
your
writing go today?’ asked Eleanor. ‘I’ve been thinking all day of you taking a non-psychological approach to identity,’ she lied. ‘Have I got that right?’

‘Absolutely,’ said Victor. ‘Indeed, I was so haunted by your remark, that if anything is in the mind it’s who you are, that I was unable to think of anything else.’

Eleanor blushed. She felt she was being mocked. ‘It sounds to me as if Eleanor is quite right,’ said Nicholas gallantly. ‘How can you separate who we are from who we think we are?’

‘Oh, I dare say you can’t,’ replied Victor, ‘once you have decided to consider things in that fashion. But I’m not attempting psychoanalysis, an activity, incidentally, which will seem as quaint as medieval map-making when we have an accurate picture of how the brain works.’

‘Nothing a don likes more than bashing another chap’s discipline,’ said Nicholas, afraid that Victor was going to be a crashing bore during dinner.

‘If you can call it a discipline,’ chuckled Victor. ‘The Unconscious, which we can only discuss when it
ceases
to be unconscious, is another medieval instrument of enquiry which enables the analyst to treat denial as evidence of its opposite. Under these rules we hang a man who denies that he is a murderer, and congratulate him if he says he is one.’

‘Are you rejecting the idea that there is an unconscious?’ said Anne.

‘Are you rejecting the idea that there is an unconscious?’ simpered Nicholas to himself in his hysterical American female voice.

‘I am saying,’ said Victor, ‘that if we are controlled by forces we do not understand, the term for that state of affairs is ignorance. What I object to is that we turn ignorance into an inner landscape and pretend that this allegorical enterprise, which might be harmless or even charming, if it weren’t so expensive and influential, amounts to a science.’

‘But it helps people,’ said Anne.

‘Ah, the therapeutic promise,’ said Victor wisely.

Standing in the doorway, David had been observing them for some time, unnoticed by anyone, except Eleanor.

‘Oh, hello, David,’ said Victor.

‘Hi,’ said Anne.

‘My dear, so lovely to see you as always,’ David answered, turning away from her instantly and saying to Victor, ‘Do tell us more about the therapeutic promise.’

‘But why don’t
you
tell us?’ said Victor. ‘You’re the doctor.’

‘In my rather brief medical practice,’ said David modestly, ‘I found that people spend their whole lives imagining they are about to die. Their only consolation is that one day they’re right. All that stands between them and this mental torture is a doctor’s authority. And that is the only therapeutic promise that works.’

Nicholas was relieved to be ignored by David, whereas Anne watched with detachment the theatrical way the man set about dominating the room. Like a slave in a swamp full of bloodhounds, Eleanor longed to disappear and she cowered still closer to the screen.

David strode majestically across the room, sat in the Doge’s chair and leaned towards Anne. ‘Tell me, my dear,’ he said, giving a little tug on the stiff silk of his dark-red trousers and crossing his legs, ‘have you recovered from your quite unnecessary sacrifice, in going to the airport with Eleanor?’

‘It wasn’t a sacrifice, it was a pleasure,’ said Anne innocently. ‘And that reminds me, I’ve also had the pleasure of bringing back
The Twelve Caesars.
What I mean is that I had the pleasure of reading it and now you have the pleasure of getting it back.’

‘So much pleasure in one day,’ said David, letting one of the yellow slippers dangle from his foot.

‘Right,’ said Anne. ‘Our cup overfloweth.’

‘I’ve had a delightful day as well,’ said David, ‘there must be magic in the air.’

Nicholas glimpsed an opportunity to join the conversation without provoking David. ‘So what did you think of
The Twelve Caesars
?’ he asked Anne.

‘Together they would have made a great jury,’ said Anne, ‘if you like your trials fast.’ She turned her thumb towards the floor.

David let out an abrupt, ‘Ha,’ which showed he was amused. ‘They’d have to take turns,’ he said, pointing his thumbs down too.

‘Absolutely,’ said Anne. ‘Imagine what would happen if they tried to choose a foreman.’

‘And think of the Imperial Thumbache,’ said David, twisting his aching thumbs up and down with childish enjoyment.

This happy vein of fantasy was interrupted by Bridget’s return. After talking to Barry on the phone, Bridget had smoked another little joint and the colours around her had become very vivid. ‘
Love
those kinky yellow slippers,’ she said to David brightly.

Nicholas winced.

‘Do you really like them?’ asked David, fixing her genially. ‘I’m so pleased.’

David knew intuitively that Bridget would be embarrassed by discussing her phone call, but he had no time to interrogate her now because Yvette came in to announce dinner. Never mind, thought David, I can get her later. In the pursuit of knowledge, there was no point in killing the rabbit before one found out whether its eyes were allergic to shampoo, or its skin inflamed by mascara. It was ridiculous to ‘break a butterfly upon a wheel’. The proper instrument for a butterfly was a pin. Stimulated by these consoling thoughts, David rose from his chair and said expansively, ‘Let’s have dinner.’

Disturbed by a draught from the opening door, the candles in the dining room flickered and animated the painted panels around the walls. A procession of grateful peasants, much appreciated by David, edged a little further along the twisting road that led to the castle gates, only to slip back again as the flames shifted the other way. The wheels of a cart which had been stuck in a roadside ditch, seemed to creak forward, and for a moment the donkey pulling it swelled with dark new muscles.