The Patrick Melrose Novels

by Edward St. Aubyn

  Bridget had been such a nice little girl. It was that horrible Nicholas Pratt who had changed her. It was hard to describe, but she had started to criticize everything at home, and look down her nose at people she’d known all her life. Virginia had only met Nicholas once, thank goodness, when he had taken her and Roddy to the opera. She had said to Roddy afterwards that Nicholas wasn’t her cup of tea at all, but Roddy had said that Bridget was a sensible girl and she was old enough now to make her own decisions.

  * * *

  ‘Oh, do come on,’ said Caroline Porlock. ‘We promised to arrive early and lend moral support.’

  Moral support, thought Peter Porlock, still dazed from his conversation with Sonny that morning, was certainly what Cheatley needed.

  They headed down the drive past placid deer and old oaks. Peter reflected that he was one of those Englishmen who could truly claim that his home was his castle, and wondered whether that was the sort of thing to say during one’s famous television appearances. On balance, he decided, as Caroline whizzed the Subaru through the honey-coloured gateposts, probably not.

  * * *

  Nicholas Pratt lounged in the back of the Alantours’ car. This is how the world should be seen, he thought: through the glass partition of a limousine.

  The rack of lamb had been excellent, the cheeses flown in from France that morning, delicious, and the 1970 Haut Brion, ‘très buvable’, as the ambassador had modestly remarked.

  ‘Et la comtesse, est-elle bien née?’ asked Jacqueline, returning to the subject of Bridget, so that her husband could savour the details of her background.

  ‘Pas du tout,’ answered Nicholas in a strong English accent.

  ‘Not quite from the top basket!’ exclaimed Jacques d’Alantour, who prided himself on his command of colloquial English.

  Jacqueline was not quite from the top basket herself, reflected Nicholas, which was what gave that rather hungry quality to her fascination with social standing. Her mother had been the daughter of a Lebanese arms dealer, and had married Phillipe du Tant, a penniless and obscure baron who had neither been able to spoil her like her father, nor to save her from being spoilt. Jacqueline had not been born so much as numbered, somewhere in the Union des Banques Suisses. With the slightly sallow complexion and downturned mouth she had inherited from her mother, she could have done without the frighteningly prominent nose that her father had settled on her; but already famous as an heiress from an early age, she appeared to most people as a photograph come to life, a name made flesh, a bank account personified.

  ‘Is that why you didn’t marry her?’ teased Jacqueline.

  ‘I’m quite bien né enough for two,’ replied Nicholas grandly. ‘But, you know, I’m not the snob I used to be.’

  The ambassador raised his finger in judgement. ‘You are a better snob!’ he declared, with a witty expression on his face.

  ‘There are so many varieties of snobbism,’ said Jacqueline, ‘one cannot admire all of them.’

  ‘Snobbery is one of the things one should be most discriminating about,’ said Nicholas.

  ‘Some things, like not tolerating stupid people, or not having pigs at one’s table, are not snobbish at all, they are simply common sense,’ said Jacqueline.

  ‘And yet,’ said the wily ambassador, ‘sometimes it is necessary to have pigs at one’s table.’

  Diplomats, thought Nicholas, long made redundant by telephones, still preserved the mannerisms of men who were dealing with great matters of state. He had once seen Jacques d’Alantour fold his overcoat on a banister and declare with all the emphasis of a man refusing to compromise over the Spanish Succession, ‘I shall put my coat here.’ He had then placed his hat on a nearby chair and added with an air of infinite subtlety, ‘But my hat I shall put here. Otherwise it may fall!’ as if he were hinting that on the other hand some arrangement could be reached over the exact terms of the marriage.

  ‘If they are at one’s table,’ concluded Jacqueline tolerantly, ‘they are no longer pigs.’

  * * *

  Obeying the law that people always loathe those they have wronged, Sonny found himself especially allergic to Bridget after his conversation with Peter Porlock, and went as far as the nursery to avoid her.

  ‘Dada! What are you doing here?’ asked Belinda.

  ‘I’ve come to see my favourite girl,’ boomed Sonny.

  ‘What a lucky girl you are,’ cooed Nanny, ‘a busy man like your father coming to see you on a day like this!’

  ‘That’s all right, Nanny,’ said Sonny. ‘I’ll take over.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Nanny unctuously.

  ‘Well,’ said Sonny, rubbing his hands together, ‘what have you been up to?’

  ‘We were reading a book!’

  ‘What’s the story about?’ asked Sonny.

  ‘It’s a school trip,’ said Belinda rather shyly.

  ‘And where do they go?’

  ‘To the wax museum.’

  ‘Madame Tussaud’s?’

  ‘Yes, and Tim and Jane are very naughty and they stay behind and hide, and when it’s night-time all the wax people come to life, and then they start to dance with each other like real people, and they make friends with the children. Will you read it to me, Dada, please?’

  ‘But you’ve just read it,’ said Sonny, puzzled.

  ‘It’s my favourite story, and it’s better if you read it. Please,’ pleaded Belinda.

  ‘Of course I will. I’d be delighted,’ said Sonny with a little bow, as if he’d been asked to address an agricultural fair. Since he was in the nursery he might as well create a good impression. Besides, he was jolly fond of Belinda and there was no harm in underlining the fact. It was awful to think this way, but one had to be practical and plan ahead and think of Cheatley. Nanny would be a useful character witness if there was a fuss about custody. One could be sure that this unexpected swoop into the nursery would be branded on her memory. Sonny installed himself in an old battered armchair and Belinda, hardly believing her luck, sat in his lap and rested her head against the soft cashmere of his bright red sweater.

  ‘All the children in Tim and Jane’s class were very excited,’ boomed Sonny. ‘They were going on a trip to London…’

  * * *

  ‘It’s too bad your not being able to come,’ said David Windfall to his wife, slipping a couple of condoms into the inside pocket of his dinner jacket, just in case.

  ‘Have fun, darling,’ gasped Jane, longing for him to leave.

  ‘It won’t be fun without you,’ said David, wondering whether two condoms were enough.

  ‘Don’t be silly, darling, you’ll forget about me on the motorway.’

  David couldn’t be bothered to contradict the truth of this assertion.

  ‘I hope you feel better tomorrow,’ he said instead. ‘I’ll call you first thing.’

  ‘You’re an angel,’ said his wife. ‘Drive carefully.’

  * * *

  Johnny had called to say that he would take his own car after all, and so Patrick left London alone, relieved to get away before it was dark. He marvelled at the feverish excitement he had once been able to put into partygoing. It had been based on the hope, never yet fulfilled, that he would stop worrying and stop feeling pointless once the movie of his life took on the appearance of flawless glamour. For this to work, though, he would have had to allow the perspective of a stranger leafing through the filled pages of his diary to eclipse his own point of view, and he would have had to believe, which was far from being the case, that if he got enough reflected glory he could be spared the trouble of seeking out any of his own. Without this snobbish fever he was stranded under the revolving ceiling fan of his own consciousness, taking shallow breaths to get as little oxygen as possible into a brain apparently unable to manufacture anything but dread and regret.

  Patrick rewound Iggy Pop’s ‘The Passenger’ for the third time. His car shot down the hill towards the viaduct suspended between the factories and houses of
High Wycombe. Released from the trance of the music, a fragment of the dream he’d forgotten that morning came back to him. He could picture an obese Alsatian flinging itself against a padlocked gate, the rattling of the gate. He’d been walking along the path next to a garden, and the dog had been barking at him through the green chicken wire that so often marks the boundary of a French suburban garden.

  His car swept up the hill on the other side of the viaduct while the introductory notes of the song strummed through the speakers. Patrick contorted his face, preparing to sing along with Iggy, starting to shout out the familiar words half a beat too early. The smoke-filled car sped tunelessly on into the gathering darkness.

  * * *

  One of the reservations Laura had about her personality was that she sometimes got this thing about leaving her flat. She couldn’t get through the door, or if she did she had to double back, she just had to. Lost and forgotten objects surfaced in her bag the moment she stepped back inside. It had grown worse since her cat died. Making sure the cat had water and food before she went out, and making sure it didn’t follow her into the corridor, had helped a lot.

  She had just sent China off to fetch the car with the excuse that the bags were too bulky to carry far, but really so that China didn’t witness the propitiatory ritual that enabled Laura to get out of the flat. She had to walk out backwards – it was ridiculous, she knew it was ridiculous – and touch the top of the door frame as she went through. There was always the danger of one of her neighbours finding her reversing out of her flat on tiptoe with her arms outstretched, and so she glanced down the corridor first to check that it was clear.

  ‘We could play a game in the car,’ China had said. ‘The person you’d least like to sit next to at dinner.’

  ‘We’ve played that before,’ Laura had complained.

  ‘But we could play it from other people’s point of view.’

  ‘Oh, I hadn’t thought of that,’ Laura had said.

  Anyhow, thought Laura as she locked her front door, Johnny was China’s ex-boyfriend and so at least she could have some fun on the drive down, asking about his habits and about how much China missed him.

  * * *

  Alexander Politsky, whose extreme Englishness derived from his being Russian, was perhaps the last man in England to use the term ‘old bean’ sincerely. He was also widely acknowledged to have the best collection of shoes in the country. A pair of pre-First World War Lobb riding boots given to him by ‘a marvellous old boulevardier and screaming queen who was rather a friend of my father’s’ were only brought out on special occasions when the subject of boots or shoes arose spontaneously in the conversation.

  He was driving Ali Montague down to the Bossington-Lanes’, where they were both staying. Ali, who had known Bill Bossington-Lane for forty years, had described him and his wife as ‘the sort of people one never sees in London. They just don’t travel well.’

  Someone once asked Bill if he still had his beautiful manor house. ‘Beautiful manor house?’ he said. ‘We’ve still got the old dump, if that’s what you mean.’ ‘By the way,’ Ali continued, ‘did you see that thing in Dempster about tonight? After all the usual rubbish about the best shoot in England, and ten thousand acres and Princess Margaret, there was Bridget saying, “I’m just having a few people round to celebrate my husband’s birthday.” She just can’t get it right, can she?’

  ‘Ugh,’ groaned Alexander, ‘I can’t stand that woman. I mean, I almost don’t mind being patronized by Princess Margaret, and no doubt will be tonight—’

  ‘You should be so lucky,’ interjected Ali. ‘Do you know, I think I prefer parties given by people I don’t like.’

  ‘But,’ Alexander continued, unperturbed, ‘I won’t be patronized by Bridget Gravesend, née Watson-Spot or whatever it was.’

  ‘Watson-Spot,’ laughed Ali. ‘Oddly enough I knew the father slightly in another lifetime. He was called Roddy Watson-Scott, frightfully stupid and jolly and rather used-car salesman, but nice. As you know I’m not a snob, but you didn’t have to be a snob to drop that man.’

  ‘Well, there you are,’ said Politsky. ‘I don’t want to be patronized by the daughter of a used-car salesman. After all, my family used to be able to walk from Moscow to Kiev on their own land.’

  ‘It’s no use telling me about these foreign places,’ said Ali. ‘I’m afraid I just don’t know where Kiev is.’

  ‘All you need to know is that it’s a very long way from Moscow,’ said Alexander curtly. ‘Anyway, it sounds as if Bridget’ll get her comeuppance with this Cindy Smith affair.’

  ‘What I can’t understand is why Cindy’s gone for Sonny,’ said Ali.

  ‘He’s the key to the world she wants to penetrate.’

  ‘Or be penetrated by,’ said Ali.

  Both men smiled.

  ‘By the way, are you wearing pumps this evening?’ asked Alexander casually.

  * * *

  With her fist, Anne Eisen rubbed the Jaguar’s back window and got nowhere; the dirty fog on the other side stood its ground.

  The driver glanced in the rear-view mirror disapprovingly.

  ‘Do you know where we are?’ asked Tom.

  ‘Sure,’ said Anne. ‘We’re out of our minds.’ She spaced the words slowly and evenly. ‘That’s where we are. We’re on our way to see a lot of museum pieces, arrogant snobs, airheads, and feudal boondockers…’

  ‘Harold tells me that Princess Margaret is coming.’

  ‘And thick Krauts.’ Anne added this last item to her list with satisfaction.

  The Jaguar turned left and crept down to the end of a long drive where the lights of an Elizabethan manor glowed through the fog. They had arrived at Harold Greene’s, their host for the weekend.

  ‘Wow!’ said Anne. ‘Get a load of this: fifty rooms, and I’ll bet all of them are haunted.’

  Tom, picking up a battered leather case from the floor, was not impressed. ‘It’s a Harold-type house,’ he said, ‘I’ll give you that. He had one just like it years ago in Arlington, when we were young and saving the world.’

  6

  BRIDGET HAD TOLD HER mother to get a taxi at the station and not to worry because she would pay, but when Virginia Watson-Scott arrived at Cheatley she was too embarrassed to ask and so she paid herself, although seventeen pounds plus a pound for the driver was no small sum.

  ‘If orchids could write novels,’ Tony Fowles was saying when Virginia was shown into Bridget’s little sitting room, ‘they would write novels like Isabel’s.’

  ‘Oh, hello, Mummy,’ sighed Bridget, getting up from the sofa where she’d been drinking in Tony’s words. The Valium had helped to muffle the impact of overhearing Sonny’s telephone call, and Bridget was slightly shocked but pleased by her ability to enter into the trance of habit and to be distracted by Tony’s witty conversation. Nevertheless the presence of her mother struck her as an additional and unfair burden.

  ‘I thought I was so well organized,’ she explained to her mother, ‘but I’ve still got a million and one things to do. Do you know Tony Fowles?’

  Tony got up and shook hands. ‘Pleased to meet you,’ he said.

  ‘It’s nice to be in proper countryside,’ said Virginia, nervous of silence. ‘It’s become so built-up around me.’

  ‘I know,’ said Tony. ‘I love seeing cows, don’t you? They’re so natural.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Virginia, ‘cows are nice.’

  ‘My trouble,’ Tony confessed, ‘is that I’m so aesthetic. I want to rush into the field and arrange them. Then I’d have them glued to the spot so they looked perfect from the house.’

  ‘Poor cows,’ said Virginia, ‘I don’t think they’d like that. Where’s Belinda?’ she asked Bridget.

  ‘In the nursery, I imagine,’ said Bridget. ‘It’s a bit early, but would you like some tea?’

  ‘I’d rather see Belinda first,’ Virginia replied, remembering that Bridget had asked her to come at teatime.

  ‘A
ll right, we’ll go and have tea in the nursery,’ said Bridget. ‘I’m afraid your room is on the nursery floor anyhow – we’re so crowded with Princess Margaret and everything – so I can show you your room at the same time.’

  ‘Righty-ho,’ said Virginia. It was a phrase Roddy had always used, and it drove Bridget mad.

  ‘Oh,’ she couldn’t help groaning, ‘please don’t use that expression.’

  ‘I must have caught it from Roddy!’

  ‘I know,’ said Bridget. She could picture her father in his blazer and his cavalry twills saying ‘righty-ho’ as he put on his driving gloves. He had always been kind to her, but once she had learned to be embarrassed by him she had never stopped, even after he died.

  ‘Let’s go up, then,’ sighed Bridget. ‘You’ll come with us, won’t you?’ she pleaded with Tony.

  ‘Aye-aye,’ said Tony, saluting, ‘or aren’t I allowed to say that?’

  Bridget led the way to the nursery. Nanny, who had been in the middle of scolding Belinda for being ‘overexcited’, set off to make tea in the nursery kitchen, muttering, ‘Both parents in one day,’ with a mixture of awe and resentment.

  ‘Granny!’ said Belinda, who liked her grandmother. ‘I didn’t know you were coming!’

  ‘Didn’t anyone tell you?’ asked Virginia, too pleased with Belinda to dwell on this oversight.

  Tony and Bridget moved over to the tattered old sofa at the far end of the room.

  ‘Roses,’ said Tony reproachfully, sitting down.

  ‘Aren’t they sweet together?’ asked Bridget, watching Belinda on Virginia’s knee, peering into her grandmother’s bag to see if there were sweets in it. For a moment Bridget could remember being in the same position and feeling happy.

  ‘Sweet,’ confirmed Tony, ‘or sweets anyway.’

  ‘You old cynic,’ said Bridget.

  Tony put on an expression of wounded innocence. ‘I’m not a cynic,’ he moaned. ‘Is it my fault that most people are motivated by greed and envy?’