Two-thirty by the village church, that’s what Barry had said on the phone before dinner. She dropped her suitcase into a clump of rosemary, letting out a petulant sigh to show herself she was more irritated than frightened. What if the village didn’t have a church? What if her suitcase was stolen? How far was it to the village anyway? God, life was so complicated. She had run away from home once when she was nine, but doubled back because she couldn’t bear to think what her parents might say while she was away.
As she joined the small road that led down to the village, Bridget found herself walled in by pines. The shadows thickened until the moonlight no longer shone on the road. A light wind animated the branches of the tall trees. Full of dread, Bridget suddenly came to a stop. Was Barry really a fun person when it came down to it? After making their appointment he had said, ‘Be there or be square!’ At the time she was so infatuated by the idea of escaping Nicholas and the Melroses that she had forgotten to be annoyed, but now she realized just how annoying it was.
* * *
Eleanor was wondering whether to get another bottle of cognac (cognac was for the car because it was so stimulating), or go back to bed and drink whisky. Either way she had to return to the house. When she was about to open the car door she saw Bridget again. This time she was staggering up the drive, dragging her suitcase. Eleanor felt cool and detached. She decided that nothing could surprise her any longer. Perhaps Bridget did this every evening for the exercise. Or maybe she wanted a lift somewhere. Eleanor preferred to watch her than to get involved, so long as Bridget got back into the house quickly.
Bridget thought she heard the sound of a radio, but she lost it again amid the rustle of leaves. She was shaken and rather embarrassed by her escapade. Plus her arms were about to drop off. Well, never mind, at least she had asserted herself, sort of. She opened the door of the house. It squeaked. Luckily, she could rely on Nicholas to be sleeping like a drugged elephant, so that no sound could possibly reach him. But what if she woke David? Freak-ee. Another squeak and she closed the door behind her. As she crept down the corridor she could hear a sort of moaning and then a yelping shout, like a cry of pain.
David woke up with a shout of fear. Why the hell did people say, ‘It’s only a dream’? His dreams exhausted and dismembered him. They seemed to open onto a deeper layer of insomnia, as if he was only lulled to sleep in order to be shown that he could not rest. Tonight he had dreamed that he was the cripple in Athens airport. He could feel his limbs twisted like vine stumps, his wobbling head burrowing this way and that as he tried to throw himself forward, and his unfriendly hands slapping his own face. In the waiting room at the airport all the passengers were people he knew: the barman from the Central in Lacoste, George, Bridget, people from decades of London parties, all talking and reading books. And there he was, heaving himself across the room one leg dragging behind him, trying to say, ‘Hello, it’s David Melrose, I hope you aren’t deceived by this absurd disguise,’ but he only managed to moan, or as he grew more desperate, to squeal, while he tossed advertisements for roasted nuts at them with upsetting inaccuracy. He could see the embarrassment in some of their faces, and feigned blankness in others. And he heard George say to his neighbour, ‘What a perfectly ghastly man.’
David turned on the light and fumbled for his copy of Jorrocks Rides Again. He wondered whether Patrick would remember. There was always repression, of course, although it didn’t seem to work very well on his own desires. He must try not to do it again, that really would be tempting fate. David could not help smiling at his own audacity.
* * *
Patrick did not wake up from his dream, although he could feel a needle slip under his shoulder blade and push out through his chest. The thick thread was sewing his lungs up like an old sack until he could not breathe. Panic like wasps hovering about his face, ducking and twisting and beating the air.
He saw the Alsatian that had chased him in the woods, and he felt he was running through the rattling yellow leaves again with wider and wider strides. As the dog drew closer and was about to get him, Patrick started adding up numbers out loud, and at the last moment his body lifted off the ground until he was looking down on the tops of the trees, as if at seaweed over the side of a boat. He knew that he must never allow himself to fall asleep. Below him the Alsatian scrambled to a halt in a flurry of dry leaves and picked up a dead branch in its mouth.
BAD NEWS
1
PATRICK PRETENDED TO SLEEP, hoping the seat next to him would remain empty, but he soon heard a briefcase sliding into the overhead compartment. Opening his eyes reluctantly, he saw a tall snub-nosed man.
‘Hi, I’m Earl Hammer,’ said the man, extending a big freckled hand covered in thick blond hair, ‘I guess I’m your seating companion.’
‘Patrick Melrose,’ said Patrick mechanically, offering a clammy and slightly shaking hand to Mr Hammer.
* * *
Early the previous evening, George Watford had telephoned Patrick from New York.
‘Patrick, my dear,’ he said in a strained and drawling voice, slightly delayed by its Atlantic crossing, ‘I’m afraid I have the most awful news for you: your father died the night before last in his hotel room. I’ve been quite unable to get hold of either you or your mother – I believe she’s in Chad with the Save the Children Fund – but I need hardly tell you how I feel; I adored your father, as you know. Oddly enough, he was supposed to be having lunch with me at the Key Club on the day that he died, but of course he never turned up; I remember thinking how unlike him it was. It must be the most awful shock for you. Everybody liked him, you know, Patrick. I’ve told some of the members there and some of the servants, and they were very sorry to hear about his death.’
‘Where is he now?’ asked Patrick coldly.
‘At Frank E. MacDonald’s in Madison Avenue: it’s the place everyone uses over here, I believe it’s awfully good.’
Patrick promised that as soon as he arrived in New York he would call George.
‘I’m sorry to be the bringer of such bad news,’ said George. ‘You’re going to need all your courage during this difficult time.’
‘Thanks for calling,’ said Patrick, ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’
‘Goodbye, my dear.’
Patrick put down the syringe he had been flushing out, and sat beside the phone without moving. Was it bad news? Perhaps he would need all his courage not to dance in the street, not to smile too broadly. Sunlight poured in through the blurred and caked windowpanes of his flat. Outside, in Ennismore Gardens, the leaves of the plane trees were painfully bright.
He suddenly leaped out of his chair. ‘You’re not going to get away with this,’ he muttered vindictively. The sleeve of his shirt rolled forward and absorbed the trickle of blood on his arm.
* * *
‘You know, Paddy,’ said Earl, regardless of the fact that nobody called Patrick ‘Paddy’, ‘I’ve made a hell of a lot of money, and I figured it was time to enjoy some of the good things in life.’
It was half an hour into the flight and Paddy was already Earl’s good buddy.
‘How sensible of you,’ gasped Patrick.
‘I’ve rented an apartment by the beach in Monte Carlo, and a house in the hills behind Monaco. Just a beautiful house,’ said Earl, shaking his head incredulously. ‘I’ve got an English butler: he tells me what sports jacket to wear – can you believe that? And I’ve got the leisure time to read the Wall Street Journal from cover to cover.’
‘A heady freedom,’ said Patrick.
‘It’s great. And I’m also reading a real interesting book at the moment, called Megatrends. And a Chinese classic on the art of war. Are you interested in war at all?’
‘Not madly,’ said Patrick.
‘I guess I’m biased: I was in Vietnam,’ said Earl, staring at the horizon through the tiny window of the plane.
‘You liked it?’
‘Sure did,’ Earl smiled.
‘Didn’t you
have any reservations?’
‘I’ll tell you, Paddy, the only reservations I had about Vietnam were the target restrictions. Flying over some of those ports and seeing tankers deliver oil you knew was for the Viet Cong, and not being able to strike them – that was one of the most frustrating experiences of my life.’ Earl, who seemed to be in an almost perpetual state of amazement at the things he said, shook his head again.
Patrick turned towards the aisle, suddenly assailed by the sound of his father’s music, as clear and loud as breaking glass, but this aural hallucination was soon swamped by the vitality of his neighbour.
‘Have you ever been to the Tahiti Club in St Tropez, Paddy? That’s a hell of a place! I met a couple of dancers there.’ His voice dropped half an octave to match the new tone of male camaraderie. ‘I got to tell you,’ he said confidentially, ‘I love to screw. God, I love it,’ he shouted. ‘But a great body is not enough, you know what I mean? You gotta have that mental thing. I was screwing these two dancers: they were fantastic women, great bodies, just beautiful, but I couldn’t come. You know why?’
‘You didn’t have that mental thing,’ suggested Patrick.
‘That’s right! I didn’t have that mental thing,’ said Earl.
* * *
Perhaps it was that mental thing that was missing with Debbie. He had called her last night to tell her about his father’s death.
‘Oh, God, that’s appalling,’ she stammered, ‘I’ll come over straight away.’
Patrick could hear the nervous tension in Debbie’s voice, the inherited anxiety about the correct thing to say. With parents like hers, it was not surprising that embarrassment had become the strongest emotion in her life. Debbie’s father, an Australian painter called Peter Hickmann, was a notorious bore. Patrick once heard him introduce an anecdote with the words, ‘That reminds me of my best bouillabaisse story.’ Half an hour later, Patrick could only count himself lucky that he was not listening to Peter’s second-best bouillabaisse story.
Debbie’s mother, whose neurotic resources made her resemble a battery-operated stick insect, had social ambitions which were not in her power to fulfill while Peter stood at her side telling his bouillabaisse stories. A well-known professional party planner, she was foolish enough to take her own advice. The brittle perfection of her entertainments turned to dust when human beings were introduced into the airless arena of her drawing room. Like a mountaineer expiring at base camp, she passed on her boots to Debbie, and with them the awesome responsibility: to climb. Mrs Hickmann was inclined to forgive Patrick the apparent purposelessness of his life and the sinister pallor of his complexion, when she considered that he had an income of one hundred thousand pounds a year, and came from a family which, although it had done nothing since, had seen the Norman invasion from the winning side. It was not perfect, but it would do. After all, Patrick was only twenty-two.
Meanwhile, Peter continued to weave life into anecdote and to describe grand incidents in his daughter’s life to the fast-emptying bar of the Travellers Club where, after forty years of stiff opposition, he had been elected in a moment of weakness which all the members who had since been irradiated by his conversation bitterly regretted.
After Patrick had discouraged Debbie from coming round to see him, he set out for a walk through Hyde Park, tears stinging his eyes. It was a hot dry evening, full of pollen and dust. Sweat trickled down his ribs and broke out on his forehead. Over the Serpentine, a wisp of cloud dissolved in front of the sun, which sank, swollen and red, through a bruise of pollution. On the scintillating water yellow and blue boats bobbed up and down. Patrick stood still and watched a police car drive very fast along the path behind the boathouses. He vowed he would take no more heroin. This was the most important moment in his life and he must get it right. He had to get it right.
* * *
Patrick lit a Turkish cigarette and asked the stewardess for another glass of brandy. He was beginning to feel a little jumpy without any smack. The four Valiums he had stolen from Kay had helped him face breakfast, but now he could feel the onset of withdrawal, like a litter of drowning kittens in the sack of his stomach.
Kay was the American girl he had been having an affair with. Last night when he had wanted to bury himself in a woman’s body, to affirm that, unlike his father, he was alive, he had chosen to see Kay. Debbie was beautiful (everybody said so), and she was clever (she said so herself), but he could imagine her clicking anxiously across the room, like a pair of chopsticks, and just then he needed a softer embrace.
Kay lived in a rented flat on the outskirts of Oxford, where she played the violin, kept cats, and worked on her Kafka thesis. She took a less complacent attitude towards Patrick’s idleness than anyone else he knew. ‘You have to sell yourself,’ she used to say, ‘just to get rid of the damned thing.’
Patrick disliked everything about Kay’s flat. He knew she had not put the gold cherubs against the William Morris-styled wallpaper; on the other hand, she had not taken them down. In the dark corridor, Kay had come up to him, her thick brown hair falling on one shoulder, and her body draped in heavy grey silk. She had kissed him slowly, while her jealous cats scratched at the kitchen door.
Patrick had drunk the whisky and taken the Valium she had given him. Kay told him about her own dying parents. ‘You have to start looking after them badly before you’ve got over the shock of how badly they looked after you,’ she said. ‘I had to drive my parents across the States last summer. My dad was dying of emphysema and my mother, who used to be a ferocious woman, was like a child after her stroke. I was barrelling along at eighty through Utah, looking for a bottle of oxygen, while my mother kept saying with her impoverished vocabulary, “Oh dear, oh my, Papa’s not well. Oh my.”’
Patrick imagined Kay’s father sunk in the back of the car, his eyes glazed over with exhaustion and his lungs, like torn fishing nets, trawling vainly for air. How had his own father died? He had forgotten to ask.
* * *
Since his luminous remarks about ‘that mental thing’, Earl had been speaking about his ‘whole variety of holdings’ and his love for his family. His divorce had been ‘hard on the kids’, but he concluded with a chuckle, ‘I’ve been diversifying, and I don’t just mean in the business field.’
Patrick was grateful to be flying on Concorde. Not only would he be fresh for the ordeal of seeing his father’s corpse, before it was cremated the next day, but he was also halving his conversation time with Earl. They ought to advertise. A simpering voiceover popped into his mind: ‘It’s because we care, not just for your physical comfort, but for your mental health, that we shorten your conversation with people like Earl Hammer.’
‘You see, Paddy,’ said Earl, ‘I’ve made very considerable – I mean big – contributions to the Republican Party, and I could get just about any embassy I want. But I’m not interested in London or Paris: that’s just social shit.’
Patrick drank his brandy in one gulp.
‘What I want is a small Latin American or Central American country where the ambassador has control of the CIA on the ground.’
‘On the ground,’ echoed Patrick.
‘That’s right,’ said Earl. ‘But I have a dilemma at this point; a real hard one.’ He was solemn again. ‘My daughter is trying to make the national volleyball team and she has a series of real important games over the next year. Hell, I don’t know whether to go for the embassy or root for my daughter.’
‘Earl,’ said Patrick earnestly, ‘I don’t think there’s anything more important than being a good dad.’
Earl was visibly moved. ‘I appreciate that advice, Paddy, I really do.’
The flight was coming to an end. Earl made some remarks about how you always met ‘high-quality’ people on Concorde. At the airport terminal Earl took the US citizens’ channel, and Patrick headed for the Aliens’.
‘Goodbye, friend,’ shouted Earl with a big wave, ‘see you around!’
‘Every parting,’ snar
led Patrick under his breath, ‘is a little death.’
2
‘WHAT IS THE PURPOSE of your visit, sir? Business or pleasure?’
‘Neither.’
‘I’m sorry?’ She was a pear-shaped, slug-coloured, shorthaired woman wearing big glasses and a dark blue uniform.
‘I’m here to collect my father’s corpse,’ mumbled Patrick.
‘I’m sorry, sir, I didn’t catch that,’ she said with official exasperation.
‘I’m here to collect my father’s corpse,’ Patrick shouted slowly.
She handed back his passport. ‘Have a nice day.’
The rage that Patrick had felt after passing through passport control eclipsed his usual terror of Customs (What if they stripped him? What if they saw his arms?).
And so here he was again, slumped in the back of a cab, in a seat often repaired with black masking tape, but still opening occasionally onto small craters of yellow foam, back in a nation that was dieting its way to immortality, while he still dieted his way in the opposite direction.
As his taxi bounced and squeaked along the freeway, Patrick started to register reluctantly the sensations of reentry into New York. There was of course a driver who spoke no English, and whose lugubrious photograph confirmed the suicidal gloom which the back of his neck could only hint at. The neighbouring lanes bore witness to the usual combination of excess and decay. Enormous battered cars with sloppy engines, and black-windowed limos, swarmed into the city, like flies on their favourite food. Patrick stared at the dented hubcap of an old white station wagon. It had seen so much, he reflected, and remembered nothing, like a slick amnesiac reeling in thousands of images and rejecting them instantly, spinning out its empty life under a paler wider sky.
The Patrick Melrose Novels Page 13
