The Patrick Melrose Novels: Never Mind, Bad News, Some Hope, and Mother's Milk (51 page)

‘What about some genuine ones?’ said Anne.

‘What impresses me more than the repulsive superstition that I should turn the other cheek, is the intense unhappiness my father lived with. I ran across a diary his mother wrote during the First World War. After pages of gossip and a long passage about how marvellously they’d managed to keep up the standards at some large country house, defying the Kaiser with the perfection of their cucumber sandwiches, there are two short sentences: “Geoffrey wounded again”, about her husband in the trenches, and “David has rickets”, about her son at his prep school. Presumably he was not just suffering from malnutrition, but being assaulted by paedophiliac schoolmasters and beaten by older boys. This very traditional combination of maternal coldness and official perversion helped to make him the splendid man he turned into, but to forgive someone, one would have to be convinced that they’d made some effort to change the disastrous course that genetics, class, or upbringing proposed for them.’

‘If he’d changed the course he wouldn’t need forgiving,’ said Anne. ‘That’s the whole deal with forgiving. Anyhow, I don’t say you’re wrong not to forgive him, but you can’t stay stuck with this hatred.’

‘There’s no point in staying stuck,’ Patrick agreed. ‘But there’s even less point in pretending to be free. I feel on the verge of a great transformation, which may be as simple as becoming interested in other things.’

‘What?’ said Anne. ‘No more father-bashing? No more drugs? No more snobbery?’

‘Steady on,’ gasped Patrick. ‘Mind you, this evening I had a brief hallucination that the world was real…’

‘“An hallucination that the world was real” – you oughta be Pope.’

‘Real,’ Patrick continued, ‘and not just composed of a series of effects – the orange lights on a wet pavement, a leaf clinging to the windscreen, the sucking sound of a taxi’s tyres on a rainy street.’

‘Very wintery effects,’ said Anne.

‘Well, it is February,’ said Patrick. ‘Anyway, for a moment the world seemed to be solid and out there and made up of things.’

‘That’s progress,’ said Anne. ‘You used to belong to the the-world-is-a-private-movie school.’

‘You can only give things up once they start to let you down. I gave up drugs when the pleasure and the pain became simultaneous and I might as well have been shooting up a vial of my own tears. As to the naive faith that rich people are more interesting than poor ones, or titled people more interesting than untitled ones, it would be impossible to sustain if people didn’t also believe that they became more interesting by association. I can feel the death throes of that particular delusion, especially as I patrol this room full of photo opportunities and feel my mind seizing up with boredom.’

‘That’s your own fault.’

‘As to my “father-bashing”,’ said Patrick, ignoring Anne’s comment, ‘I thought of him this evening without thinking about his influence on me, just as a tired old man who’d fucked up his life, wheezing away his last years in that faded blue shirt he wore in the summer. I pictured him sitting in the courtyard of that horrible house, doing
The Times
’ crossword, and he struck me as more pathetic and more
ordinary
, and in the end less worthy of attention.’

‘That’s what I feel about my dreadful old mother,’ said Anne. ‘During the Depression, which for some of us never ended, she used to collect stray cats and feed them and look after them. The house would be full of cats. I was just a kid, so naturally I’d get to love them, and play with them, but then in the autumn my crazy old mother would start muttering, “They’ll never make it through the winter, they’ll never make it through the winter.” The only reason they weren’t going to make it through the winter was that she’d soak a towel in ether and drop it in the old brass washing machine and pile the cats in afterward, and when they’d “fallen asleep” she’d turn on the washing machine and drown the poor buggers. Our whole garden was a cat cemetery, and you couldn’t dig a hole or play a game without little cat skeletons turning up. There was a terrible scratching sound as they tried to get out of the washing machine. I can remember standing by the kitchen table – I was only as high as the kitchen table – while my mother loaded them in and I’d say, “Don’t, please don’t,” and she’d be muttering, “They’ll never make it through the winter.” She was ghastly and quite mad, but when I grew up I figured that her worst punishment was to be herself and I didn’t have to do anything more.’

‘No wonder you get nervous in the English countryside when people start talking about killing animals. Perhaps that’s all identity is: seeing the logic of your own experience and being true to it. If only Victor was with us now!’

‘Oh, yes, poor Victor,’ said Anne. ‘But he was looking for a non-psychological approach to identity,’ she reminded Patrick with a wry smile.

‘That always puzzled me,’ he admitted. ‘It seemed like insisting on an overland route from England to America.’

‘If you’re a philosopher, there is an overland route from England to America,’ said Anne.

‘Oh, by the way, did you hear that George Watford had a stroke?’

‘Yeah, I’m sorry to hear that. I remember meeting him at your parents.’

‘It’s the end of an era,’ said Patrick.

‘It’s the end of a party as well,’ said Anne. ‘Look, the band is going home.’

*   *   *

When Robin Parker asked Sonny if they could have ‘a private word’ in the library, Sonny not only felt that he’d spent his entire birthday party having difficult interviews in that wretched room, but also that, as he’d suspected (and he couldn’t help pausing here to congratulate himself on his perspicacity), Robin was going to blackmail him for more money.

‘Well, what is it,’ he said gruffly, once again sitting at his library desk.

‘It isn’t a Poussin,’ said Robin, ‘so I really don’t want to authenticate it. Other people, including experts, might think it was, but I
know
it isn’t.’ Robin sighed. ‘I’d like my letter back and of course I’ll return the … fee,’ he said, placing two thick envelopes on the table.

‘What are you blathering about?’ asked Sonny, confused.

‘I’m not blathering,’ said Robin. ‘It’s not fair on Poussin, that’s all,’ he added with unexpected passion.

‘What’s Poussin got to do with it?’ thundered Sonny.

‘Nothing, that’s just what I object to.’

‘I suppose you want more money.’

‘You’re wrong,’ said Robin. ‘I just want some part of my life not to be compromised.’ He held out his hand for the certificate of authentication.

Furious, Sonny took a key out of his pocket and opened the top drawer of his desk, and tossed the letter over to Robin. Robin thanked him and left the room.

‘Tiresome little man,’ muttered Sonny. It really wasn’t his day. He’d lost his wife, his mistress, and his Poussin. Buck up, old boy, he thought to himself, but he had to admit that he felt decidedly wobbly.

*   *   *

Virginia was sitting on a frail gold chair by the drawing-room door, waiting anxiously for her daughter and granddaughter to come downstairs and start the long drive back to Kent. Kent was ever such a long way, but she completely understood Bridget’s wanting to get out of this bad atmosphere, and she’d encouraged her to bring Belinda along. She couldn’t hide from herself, although she felt a little guilty about it, that she quite liked being
needed
, and having Bridget close to her again, even if it took a crisis like this one. She’d already got her overcoat and her essentials; it didn’t matter about her suitcase, Bridget had said they could send for that later. She didn’t want to draw attention to herself: the overcoat was suspicious enough.

The party was thinning out and it was important to leave before there were too few people, or Sonny might start badgering Bridget. Bridget’s nerves had never been strong, she’d always been a little frightened as a girl, never wanted to put her head under water, that sort of thing, things only a mother could know. Bridget might be intimidated and lose her resolve if Sonny was there booming at her, but she knew that what her daughter needed, after this Cindy Smith affair, was a good rest and a good think. She’d already asked Bridget if she wanted her old room back – it was a marvel how the human mind worked, as Roddy had been fond of remarking – but it had only seemed to annoy Bridget, who’d said, ‘Honestly, Mummy, I don’t know, we’ll think about that later.’ On reflection, it was probably better to give that room to Belinda, and put Bridget in the nice spare room with the bathroom en suite. There was plenty of room now that she was alone.

Sometimes a crisis was good for a marriage, not all the time of course, or it wouldn’t really be a crisis. There’d been that one time with Roddy. She hadn’t said anything, but Roddy had known she knew, and she’d known he knew she knew, and that had been enough to end it. He’d bought her that ring and said it was their second engagement ring. He was such an old softie, really. Oh dear, there was a man bearing down on her. She had no idea who he was but he was obviously going to talk to her. That was the last thing she needed.

Jacques d’Alantour was too tormented to go to sleep and, although Jacqueline had warned him that he’d had enough to drink, too melancholy to resist another glass of champagne.

Charm was his speciality, everyone knew that, but since ‘
l’affaire Alantour
’, as he now called it, he had entered a diplomatic labyrinth which seemed to require more charm and tact than it was reasonable to ask of a single human being. Virginia, who was, after all, his hostess’s mother, played a relatively clear role in the campaign he was launching to regain Princess Margaret’s favour.

‘Good evening, dear lady,’ he said with a deep bow.

Foreign manners, thought Virginia. What Roddy used to call ‘a hand-kissing sell-your-own-mother type’.

‘Am I right in assuming that you are the mother of our charming hostess?’

‘Yes,’ said Virginia.

‘I am Jacques d’Alantour.’

‘Oh, hello,’ said Virginia.

‘May I get you a glass of champagne?’ asked the ambassador.

‘No, thank you, I don’t like to have more than two. Anyway, I’m on a diet.’

‘A diet?’ asked Monsieur d’Alantour, seeing an opportunity to prove to the world that his diplomatic skills were not dead. ‘A diet?’ he repeated with bewilderment and incredulity. ‘But w-h-y?’ he lingered on the word, to emphasize his astonishment.

‘The same reason as everyone else, I suppose,’ said Virginia drily.

Monsieur d’Alantour sat down next to her, grateful to get the weight off his legs. Jacqueline was right, he’d drunk too much champagne. But the campaign must continue!

‘When a lady tells me she is on a diet,’ he said, his gallantry a little slurred, but his fluency, from years of making the same speech (which had been a great success with the German Ambassador’s wife in Paris) undiminished, ‘I always clasp her breast so,’ he held his cupped hand threateningly close to Virginia’s alarmed bosom, ‘and say, “But now I think you are exactly the right weight!” If I were to do this to you,’ he continued, ‘you would not be shocked, would you?’

‘Shocked,’ gulped Virginia, ‘isn’t the word. I’d be—’

‘You see,’ Monsieur d’Alantour interrupted, ‘it’s the most natural thing in the world!’

‘Oh, goodness,’ said Virginia, ‘there’s my daughter.’

‘Come on, Mummy,’ said Bridget, ‘Belinda’s already in the car, and I’d rather not run into Sonny.’

‘I know, darling, I’m just coming. I can’t say it’s been a pleasure,’ she said to the ambassador stiffly, hurrying after her daughter.

Monsieur d’Alantour was too slow to catch up with the hastening women, but stood mumbling, ‘I can’t express sufficiently … my deepest sentiments … a most distinguished gathering.’

Bridget moved so much faster than her guests that they had no time to compliment her or waylay her. Some thought that she was following George Watford to hospital, everyone could tell that she was on important business.

When she got into the car, a four-wheel-drive Subaru that Caroline Porlock had persuaded her to buy, and saw Belinda asleep and seatbelted in the back, and her mother sitting beside her with a warm and reassuring smile, Bridget felt a wave of relief and remorse.

‘I’ve treated you dreadfully sometimes,’ she suddenly said to her mother. ‘Snobbishly.’

‘Oh no, darling, I understand,’ said her mother, moved but practical.

‘I don’t know what came over me sending you to dinner with those dreadful people. Everything gets turned upside down. I’ve been so anxious to fit in with Sonny’s stupid, pompous life that everything else got squeezed out. Anyway, I’m glad the three of us are together.’

Virginia glanced back at Belinda to make sure she was asleep.

‘We can have a good long talk tomorrow,’ she said, squeezing Bridget’s hand, ‘but we should probably get started now, we’ve got a long way to go.’

‘You’re right,’ said Bridget who suddenly felt like crying but busied herself with starting the car and joining the queue of departing guests who choked up her drive.

*   *   *

There was still a gentle snowfall as Patrick left the house behind him, steaming breath twisting around the upturned collar of his overcoat. Footprints crisscrossed his path, and the gravel’s black and brown chips shone wetly among the bright patches of snow. Patrick’s ears rang from the noise of the party and his eyes, bloodshot from smoke and tiredness, watered in the cold air, but when he reached his car he wanted to go on walking a little longer, and so he climbed over a nearby gate and jumped into a field of unbroken snow. A pewter-coloured ornamental lake lay at the end of the field, its far bank lost in a thick fog.

His thin shoes grew wet as he crunched across the field and his feet soon felt cold, but with the compelling and opaque logic of a dream the lake drew him to its shore.

As he stood in front of the reeds which pierced the first few yards of water, shivering and wondering whether to have his last cigarette, he heard the sound of beating wings emerging from the other side of the lake. A pair of swans rose out of the fog, concentrating its whiteness and giving it shape, the clamour of their wings muffled by the falling snow, like white gloves on applauding hands.