The Patrick Melrose Novels: Never Mind, Bad News, Some Hope, and Mother's Milk (48 page)

‘Will you excuse us?’ Sonny asked Robin, still ignoring David. ‘I have to have a word with Peter in private.’ Sonny and Peter went into the library and closed the door.

‘I’ve been a bloody fool,’ said Sonny. ‘Not least for trusting David Windfall. That’s the last time I’m having him under my roof. And now I’ve got a wife crisis on my hands.’

‘Don’t be too hard on yourself,’ said Peter needlessly.

‘Well, you know, I was driven to it,’ said Sonny, immediately taking up Peter’s suggestion. ‘I mean, Bridget’s not having a son and everything has been frightfully hard. But when it comes to the crunch I’m not sure I’d like life here without the old girl running the place. Cindy has got some very peculiar ideas. I’m not sure what they are, but I can sense it.’

‘The trouble is it’s all become so complicated,’ said Peter. ‘One doesn’t really know where one stands with women. I mean, I was reading about this sixteenth-century Russian marriage-guidance thing, and it advises you to beat your wife lovingly so as not to render her permanently blind or deaf. If you said that sort of thing nowadays they’d string you up. But, you know, there’s a lot in it, obviously in a slightly milder form. It’s like the old adage about native bearers: “Beat them for no reason and they won’t give you a reason to beat them.”’

Sonny looked a little bewildered. As he later told some of his friends, ‘When it was all hands on deck with the Bridget crisis, I’m afraid Peter didn’t really pull his weight. He just waffled on about sixteenth-century Russian pamphlets.’

*   *   *

‘It was that lovely judge Melford Stevens,’ said Kitty, ‘who said to a rapist, “I shall not send you to prison but back to the Midlands, which is punishment enough.” I know one isn’t meant to say that sort of thing, but it is rather marvellous, isn’t it? I mean England used to be full of that sort of wonderfully eccentric character, but now everybody is so grey and goody-goody.’

*   *   *

‘I frightfully dislike this bit,’ said Sonny, struggling to keep up the appearance of a jovial host. ‘Why does the band leader introduce the musicians, as if anyone wanted to know their names? I mean, one’s given up announcing one’s own guests, so why should these chaps get themselves announced?’

‘Couldn’t agree with you more, old bean,’ said Alexander Politsky. ‘In Russia, the grand families had their own estate band, and there was no more question of introducing them than there was of presenting your scullion to a grand duke. When we went shooting and there was a cold river to cross, the beaters would lie in the water and form a sort of bridge. Nobody felt they had to know their names in order to walk over their heads.’

‘I think that’s going a bit far,’ said Sonny. ‘I mean, walking over their heads. But, you see, that’s why we didn’t have a revolution.’

‘The reason you didn’t have a revolution, old bean,’ said Alexander, ‘is because you had two of them: the Civil War and the Glorious one.’

*   *   *

‘And on cornet,’ said Joe Martin, the band leader, ‘“Chilly Willy” Watson!’

Patrick, who had been paying almost no attention to the introductions, was intrigued by the sound of a familiar name. It certainly couldn’t be the Chilly Willy he’d known in New York. He must be dead by now. Patrick glanced round anyway to have a look at the man who was standing up in the front row to play his brief solo. With his bulging cheeks and his dinner jacket he couldn’t have been less reminiscent of the street junkie whom Patrick had scored from in Alphabet City. Chilly Willy had been a toothless, hollow-cheeked scavenger, shuffling about on the edge of oblivion, clutching on to a pair of trousers too baggy for his cadaverous frame. This jazz musician was vigorous and talented, and definitely black, whereas Chilly, with his jaundice and his pallor, although obviously a black man, had managed to look yellow.

Patrick moved towards the edge of the bandstand to have a closer look. There were probably thousands of Chilly Willys and it was absurd to think that this one was ‘his’. Chilly had sat down again after playing his solo and Patrick stood in front of him frowning curiously, like a child at the zoo, feeling that talking was a barrier he couldn’t cross.

‘Hi,’ said Chilly Willy, over the sound of a trumpet solo.

‘Nice solo,’ said Patrick.

‘Thanks.’

‘You’re not … I knew someone in New York called Chilly Willy!’

‘Where’d he live?’

‘Eighth Street.’

‘Uh-huh,’ said Chilly. ‘What did he do?’

‘Well, he … sold … he lived on the streets really … that’s why I knew it couldn’t be you. Anyway, he was older.’

‘I remember you!’ laughed Chilly. ‘You’re the English guy with the coat, right?’

‘That’s right!’ said Patrick. ‘It is you! Christ, you look well. I practically didn’t recognize you. You play really well too.’

‘Thanks. I was always a musician, then I…’ Chilly made a diving motion with his hand, glancing sideways at his fellow musicians.

‘What happened to your wife?’

‘She OD’d,’ said Chilly sadly.

‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ said Patrick, remembering the horse syringe she had carefully unwrapped from the loo paper and charged him twenty dollars for. ‘Well, it’s a miracle you’re alive,’ he added.

‘Yeah, everything’s a miracle, man,’ said Chilly. ‘It’s a fuckin’ miracle we don’t melt in the bath like a piece of soap.’

*   *   *

‘The Herberts have always had a weakness for low life,’ said Kitty Harrow. ‘Look at Shakespeare.’

‘They were certainly scraping the barrel with him,’ said Nicholas. ‘Society used to consist of a few hundred families all of whom knew each other. Now it just consists of one: the Guinnesses. I don’t know why they don’t make an address book with an especially enlarged G spot.’

Kitty giggled.

‘Oh, well, I can see that you’re an entrepreneur
manqué
,’ said Ali to Nicholas.

*   *   *

‘That dinner at the Bossington-Lanes’ was beyond anything,’ said Ali Montague to Laura and China. ‘I knew we were in trouble when our host said, “The great thing about having daughters is that you can get them to fag for you.” And when that great horsy girl of his came back she said, “You can’t argue with Daddy, he used to have exactly the same vital statistics as Muhammad Ali, except he was a foot and a half shorter.”’

Laura and China laughed. Ali was such a good mimic.

‘The mother’s absolutely terrified,’ said Laura, ‘because some friend of Charlotte’s went up to “the Metrop” to share a flat with a couple of other county gals, and the first week she fell in with someone called “Evil John”!’

They all howled with laughter.

‘What really terrifies Mr Bossington-Lane,’ said Ali, ‘is Charlotte getting an education.’

‘Fat chance,’ said Laura.

‘He was complaining about a neighbour’s daughter who had “a practically unheard of number of Os”.’

‘What, three?’ suggested China.

‘I think it was five and she was going on to do an A level in history of art. I asked him if there was any money in art, just to get him going.’

‘And what did he say?’ asked China.

Ali thrust out his chin and pushed a hand into his dinner jacket pocket with a thumb resting over the edge.

‘“Money?” he boomed. “Not for most of them. But you know, one’s dealing with people who are too busy struggling with the meaning of life to worry about that sort of thing. Not that one isn’t struggling a bit oneself!” I said I thought the meaning of life included a large income. “And capital,” he said.’

‘The daughter is impossible,’ grinned Laura. ‘She told me a really boring story that I couldn’t be bothered to listen to, and then ended it by saying, “Can you imagine anything worse than having your barbecue sausage stolen?” I said, “Yes, easily.” And she made a dreadful honking sound and said, “Well, obviously, I didn’t mean
literally.
”’

‘Still, it’s nice of them to have us to stay,’ said China provocatively.

‘Do you know how many of those horrid porcelain knick-knacks I counted in my room?’ Ali asked with a supercilious expression on his face to exaggerate the shock of the answer he was about to give.

‘How many?’ asked Laura.

‘One hundred and thirty-seven.’

‘A hundred and thirty-seven,’ gasped China.

‘And, apparently, if one of them moves, she knows about it,’ said Ali.

‘She once had everyone’s luggage searched because one of the knick-knacks had been taken from the bedroom to the bathroom or the bathroom to the bedroom, and she thought it was stolen.’

‘It’s quite tempting to try and smuggle one out,’ said Laura.

‘Do you know what’s rather fascinating?’ said Ali, hurrying on to his next insight. ‘That old woman with the nice face and the ghastly blue dress was Bridget’s mother.’

‘No!’ said Laura. ‘Why wasn’t she at dinner here?’

‘Embarrassed,’ said Ali.

‘How awful,’ said China.

‘Mind you, I do see what she means,’ said Ali. ‘The mother
is
rather Surrey Pines.’

*   *   *

‘I saw Debbie,’ said Johnny.

‘Really? How was she looking?’ asked Patrick.

‘Beautiful.’

‘She always looked beautiful at big parties,’ said Patrick. ‘I must talk to her one of these days. It’s easy to forget that she’s just another human being, with a body and a face and almost certainly a cigarette, and that she may well no longer be the same person that I knew.’

‘How have you been feeling since dinner?’ asked Johnny.

‘Pretty weird to begin with, but I’m glad we talked.’

‘Good,’ said Johnny. He felt awkward not knowing what more to say about their earlier conversation, but not wanting to pretend it had never happened. ‘Oh, I thought of you during my meeting,’ he said with artificial brightness. ‘There was this man who had to switch off his television last night because he thought he was putting the presenters off.’

‘Oh, I used to get that,’ said Patrick. ‘When my father died in New York one of the longest conversations I had (if I is the right pronoun in this case) was with the television set.’

‘I remember you telling me,’ said Johnny.

The two men fell silent and stared at the throng that struggled under wastes of grey velvet with the same frantic but restricted motion as bacteria multiplying under a microscope.

‘It takes about a hundred of these ghosts to precipitate one flickering and disreputable sense of identity,’ said Patrick. ‘These are the sort of people who were around during my childhood: hard dull people who seemed quite sophisticated but were in fact as ignorant as swans.’

‘They’re the last Marxists,’ said Johnny unexpectedly. ‘The last people who believe that class is a total explanation. Long after that doctrine has been abandoned in Moscow and Peking it will continue to flourish under the marquees of England. Although most of them have the courage of a half-eaten worm,’ he continued, warming to his theme, ‘and the intellectual vigour of dead sheep, they are the true heirs to Marx and Lenin.’

‘You’d better go and tell them,’ said Patrick. ‘I think most of them were expecting to inherit a bit of Gloucestershire instead.’

*   *   *

‘Every man has his price,’ said Sonny tartly. ‘Wouldn’t you agree, Robin?’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Robin, ‘but he must make sure that his price isn’t too low.’

‘I’m sure most people are very careful to do that,’ said Sonny, wondering what would happen if Robin blackmailed him.

‘But it’s not just money that corrupts people,’ said Jacqueline d’Alantour. ‘We had the most wonder-fool driver called Albert. He was a very sweet, gentle man who used to tell the most touching story you could imagine about operating on his goldfish. One day, when Jacques was going shooting, his loader fell ill and so he said, “I’ll have to take Albert.” I said, “But you can’t, it will kill him, he adores animals, he won’t be able to bear the sight of all that blood.” But Jacques insisted, and he’s a very stubborn man, so there was nothing I could do. When the first few birds were shot, poor Albert was in agony,’ Jacqueline covered her eyes theatrically, ‘but then he started to get interested,’ she parted her fingers and peeped out between them. ‘And now,’ she said, flinging her hands down, ‘he subscribes to the
Shooting Times
, and has every kind of gun magazine you can possibly imagine. It’s become quite dangerous to drive around with him because every time there’s a pigeon, which in London is every two metres, he says, “Monsieur d’Alantour would get that one.” When we go through Trafalgar Square, he doesn’t look at the road at all, he just stares at the sky, and makes shooting noises.’

‘I shouldn’t think you could eat a London pigeon,’ said Sonny sceptically.

*   *   *

‘Patrick Melrose? You’re not David Melrose’s son, by any chance?’ asked Bunny Warren, a figure Patrick could hardly remember, but a name that had floated around his childhood at a time when his parents still had a social life, before their divorce.

‘Yes.’

Bunny’s creased face, like an animated sultana, raced through half a dozen expressions of surprise and delight. ‘I remember you as a child, you used to take a running kick at my balls each time I came to Victoria Road for a drink.’

‘I’m sorry about that,’ said Patrick. ‘Oddly enough, Nicholas Pratt was complaining about the same sort of thing this morning.’

‘Oh, well, in his case…’ said Bunny with a mischievous laugh.

‘I used to get to the right velocity,’ Patrick explained, ‘by starting on the landing and running down the first flight of stairs. By the time I reached the hall I could manage a really good kick.’

‘You don’t have to tell me,’ said Bunny. ‘Do you know, it’s a funny thing,’ he went on in a more serious tone, ‘hardly a day passes without my thinking of your father.’

‘Same here,’ said Patrick, ‘but I’ve got a good excuse.’

‘So have I,’ said Bunny. ‘He helped me at a time when I was in an extremely wobbly state.’

‘He helped to put me
into
an extremely wobbly state,’ said Patrick.

‘I know a lot of people found him difficult,’ admitted Bunny, ‘and he may have been at his most difficult with his children – people usually are – but I saw another side of his personality. After Lucy died, at a time when I really couldn’t cope at all, he took care of me and stopped me drinking myself to death, listened with enormous intelligence to hours of black despair, and never used what I told him against me.’