‘We’re not discussing the trouble I’ve had with my mother’s wishes, but the trouble you’re having with them. Let’s not stray from the subject.’
‘They’re inseparable.’
‘Everything looks inseparable to a moron.’
‘There’s no need to get personal. They’re inseparable because they both depend on knowing what Eleanor wanted.’
‘It’s obvious what she wanted. What isn’t clear is whether you can accept the part that doesn’t suit you.’
‘Well, I have a more global vision than that, Patrick. I see the problem in holistic terms. I think we all need to find a solution together, you and your family, and Kevin and Anette, and me. Perhaps we could do a ritual expressing what we bring to this community and what we expect to take from it.’
‘Oh, no, not another ritual. What is it with you people and rituals? What’s wrong with having a conversation? When I spent my teenage years in what has become your cottage, there were two bedrooms. Why don’t you put your friends up in your own spare room?’
‘That’s now my study and office space.’
‘God forbid they should invade your private space.’
Thomas wriggled down from Mary’s arms and started to explore. His desire to move made her even more aware of how paralysed the rest of them had become. She took no pleasure in seeing Patrick frozen in a kind of autumnal adolescence: dogmatic and sarcastic, resentful of his mother’s actions, still secretly thinking of Seamus’s cottage as the teenage den in which he spent half a dozen summers of semi-independence. Only Thomas, because he hadn’t been given any coordinates on this particular grid, could slip to the floor and let his mind flow wherever it wanted. Seeing him get away gave Mary a certain remoteness from the scene being played out by Patrick and Seamus, even though she could feel a sullen violence taking over from Seamus’s usual inane affability.
‘Did you know,’ said Patrick, addressing Seamus again, ‘that among the caribou herdsmen of Lapland, the top shaman gets to drink the urine of the reindeer that has eaten the magic mushrooms, and his assistant drinks the urine of the top shaman, and so on, all the way down to the lowest of the low who scramble in the snow, pleading for a splash of twelfth-generation caribou piss?’
‘I didn’t know that,’ said Seamus flatly.
‘I thought it was your special field,’ said Patrick, surprised. ‘Anyhow, the irony is that the premier cru, the first hit, is much the most toxic. Poor old top shaman is reeling and sweating, trying to get all the poison out, whereas a few damaged livers later, the urine is harmless without having lost its hallucinogenic power. Such is the human attachment to status that people will sacrifice their peace of mind and their precious time in order to pickaxe their way towards what turns out to be a thoroughly poisonous experience.’
‘That’s all very interesting,’ said Seamus, ‘but I don’t see what it has to do with our immediate problem.’
‘Only this: that out of what I admit is pride, I am not prepared to be at the bottom of the pissing hierarchy in this “community”.’
‘If you don’t want to be part of this community, you don’t have to stay,’ said Seamus quietly.
There was a pause.
‘Good,’ said Patrick. ‘Now at least we know what you really want.’
‘Why don’t you go away,’ shouted Robert. ‘Just leave us alone. This is my grandmother’s house, and we have more right to be here than you do.’
‘Let’s calm down,’ said Mary, resting a hand on Robert’s shoulder. ‘We aren’t going to leave in the middle of the children’s holidays, whether we come here next year or not. We could compromise over your friends, perhaps. If you sacrifice your office for a week, we could put them up for the last week of our stay. That seems fair enough.’
Seamus faltered between the momentum of his anger and his desire to look reasonable.
‘I’ll have to get back to you on that,’ he said. ‘To be honest with you, I’m going to have to process some of the negative feelings I’m having at the moment, before I can come to a decision.’
‘You process away,’ said Patrick, getting up to bring the conversation to an end. ‘Be my guest. Do a ritual.’
He moved round the table, and spread his arms as if to herd Seamus out of the house, but then he came to a halt.
‘By the way,’ he said, leaning close, ‘Mary tells me that you’ve dropped Eleanor now that she’s given you the house. Is that true? After all she’s done for you, you might pop in on her.’
‘I don’t need any lectures from you on the importance of my friendship with Eleanor,’ said Seamus.
‘Listen, I know she’s not great company,’ said Patrick, ‘but that’s just part of the treasure trove of things you have in common.’
‘I’ve had just about enough of your hostile attitude,’ said Seamus, his face flushing crimson. ‘I’ve tried to be patient—’
‘Patient?’ Patrick interrupted. ‘You’ve tried to billet your sidekicks on us and you’ve tossed Eleanor on the scrap heap because there’s nothing more you can screw out of her. Anyone who thinks that “patient” is the word to describe that sort of thing should be doing English as a foreign language rather than signing a book contract.’
‘I don’t have to stand for these insults,’ said Seamus. ‘Eleanor and I created this Foundation, and I know that she wouldn’t want anything to undermine its success. What’s so tragic, in my opinion, is that you don’t see how central the Foundation is to your mother’s life’s purpose, and you don’t realize what an extraordinary woman she is.’
‘You’re so wrong,’ said Patrick. ‘I couldn’t wish for a more extraordinary mother.’
‘It’s fairly obvious where all this is heading,’ said Mary. ‘Let’s take some time to cool off. I don’t see any point in more acrimony.’
‘But, darling,’ said Patrick, ‘acrimony is all we’ve got left.’
It was certainly all he had left. She knew that it would fall on her to rescue a holiday from the wreckage left by Patrick’s disdain. The expectation that she would be tirelessly resourceful and at the same time completely sympathetic to Patrick was not one she could either put up with or disappoint.
As she hoisted Thomas into her arms, she felt again the extent to which motherhood had destroyed her solitude. Mary had lived alone through most of her twenties and stubbornly kept her own flat until she was pregnant with Robert. She had such a strong need to distance herself from the flood of others. Now she was very rarely alone, and if she was, her thoughts were commandeered by her family obligations. Neglected meanings piled up like unopened letters. She knew they contained ever more threatening reminders that her life was unexamined.
Solitude was something she had to share with Thomas for the moment. She remembered a phrase Johnny once quoted about the infant being ‘alone in the presence of its mother’. That had stayed with her, and sitting with Thomas after the row between Patrick and Seamus, while he played with his favourite hose, holding it sideways and watching the silvery arc of water splash to the ground, Mary could feel the pressure to encourage him to be useful, to water the plants and to keep the mud from splattering his trousers, but she didn’t give in to it, seeing a kind of freedom in the uselessness of his play. He had no outcome in mind, no project or profit, he just liked watching the water flow.
It would have made perfect sense for her to make room for nostalgia now that the departure she had longed for seemed inevitable, but she found herself looking at the garden and the view and the cloudless sky with a cold eye. It was time to go.
Back in the house, she went to her own room for a moment’s rest, and found Patrick already sprawled on the bed with a glass of red wine beside him.
‘You weren’t very friendly this morning,’ he said.
‘What do you mean?’ said Mary. ‘I wasn’t unfriendly. You were wrapped up in arguing with Seamus.’
‘Well, the Thermopylae buzz is wearing off,’ said Patrick.
She sat down on t
he edge of the bed and stroked his hand absently.
‘Do you remember, back in the Olden Days, when we used to go to bed together in the afternoon?’ asked Patrick.
‘Thomas has only just gone to sleep.’
‘You know that’s not the real reason. We’re not grinding our teeth with frustration, promising we’ll jump into bed the moment we get the chance: it isn’t even a possibility.’ Patrick closed his eyes. ‘I feel as if we’re shooting down a gleaming white tunnel…’ he said.
‘That was yesterday, on the way from the airport,’ said Mary.
‘A bone with the marrow sucked out,’ Patrick persevered. ‘Nothing is ever the same again, however often you repeat that magical phrase to the waitress in the cocktail bar.’
‘Never, in my case,’ said Mary.
‘Congratulations,’ said Patrick, falling abruptly silent, his eyes still closed.
Was she being unsympathetic? Should she be giving him a charity blow job? She felt that these pleas for attention were timed to be impossible, so as to keep him self-righteously unfaithful. Patrick would have been horrified if she had started to make love to him. Or would he? How could she find out while she was incapable of taking any sexual initiative? The whole thing had died for her, and she couldn’t blame his affair for the collapse. It had happened the moment Thomas was born. She couldn’t help marvelling at the strength of the severance. It had the authority of an instinct, redirecting her resources from the spent, enfeebled, damaged Patrick to the thrilling potential of her new child. The same thing had happened with Robert, but only for a few months. This time her erotic life was subsumed in intimacy with Thomas. Her relationship with Patrick was dead, not without guilt and duty turning up at the funeral. She sank down on the bed next to him, stared at the ceiling for a few seconds of empty intensity and then closed her eyes as well. They lay on the bed together, floating in shallow sleep.
‘Oh, God,’ said Mary to Robert, getting up from the floor where she had been kneeling next to the open suitcase, ‘I still haven’t cancelled Granny and Sally.’
‘I must say it’s frightfully disappointing,’ said Robert in his Kettle voice.
‘Let’s see if you’re right,’ said Mary, sitting down next to him to dial her mother’s number.
‘Well, I must say it is disappointing,’ said Kettle, making Mary cover the mouthpiece while she tried to suppress her laughter. ‘Perfect,’ she whispered to Robert. He raised his arms in triumph.
‘Why don’t you come anyway?’ said Mary to her mother. ‘Seamus seems to enjoy your company even more than we do. Which is saying a lot,’ she added after too long a pause.
Sally said she would come to see them all in London instead, and then took the view that it was ‘great news’.
‘To an outsider that place looks like a beautiful bell jar with the air being sucked out. You have to get out before you blow up.’
‘She’s happy for us,’ said Mary.
‘Well, gee,’ said Robert, ‘I hope she loses her house so we can be happy for her.’
When Patrick returned, he put a piece of paper on top of the suitcase Mary was struggling to close and sank down onto the chair by the door. She picked the paper up and saw that it was one of Eleanor’s faint pencil-written notes.
My work here is over. I want to come home. Please find a nursing home in Kensingston?
She gave the note to Robert.
‘It’s difficult to know which sentence gave me most pleasure,’ said Patrick. ‘Eleanor’s tiny store of unshamanic capital will be dismembered in rather less than a year if she moves to Kensington. After that, if she has the bad taste to stay alive, guess who will be expected to keep her vegetating in the Royal Borough?’
‘I like the question mark,’ said Mary.
‘Eleanor’s real genius is for putting our emotional and moral impulses into total conflict. Again and again she makes me hate myself for doing the right thing, she makes virtue into its own punishment.’
‘I suppose we have to protect her from the horror of knowing that Seamus was really only interested in her money.’
‘Why?’ said Robert. ‘It serves her right.’
‘Listen,’ said Patrick, ‘what I saw today was someone who is terrified. Terrified of dying alone. Terrified that her family will abandon her, as Seamus has done. Terrified that she’s fucked up, that she’s been sleepwalking through a replica of her mother’s behaviour. Terrified by the impotence of her convictions in the face of real suffering, terrified of everything. If we agree to her request, she can switch from philanthropy to family. Essentially, neither of them works any more, but the switch might give her a little relief before she settles back into hell.’
Nobody spoke.
‘Let’s hope that it’s purgatory rather than hell,’ said Mary.
‘I’m not very up on these things,’ said Patrick, ‘but if purgatory is a place where suffering refines you rather than degrades you, I see no sign of it.’
‘Well, maybe it can be purgatory for us at least.’
‘I don’t understand,’ said Robert. ‘Is Granny going to come and live with us?’
‘Not in the flat,’ said Mary. ‘In a nursing home.’
‘And we’re going to have to pay?’
‘Not yet,’ she replied.
‘But that way Seamus wins completely,’ said Robert. ‘He gets the house and we get the cripple.’
‘She’s not a cripple,’ said Mary, ‘she’s an invalid.’
‘Oh, sorry,’ said Robert, ‘that makes all the difference. Lucky us.’ He put on his compère voice. ‘Today’s lucky winners, the Melrose family from London, will be taking home our fabulous first prize. This amazing invalid can’t speak, can’t walk and she can’t control her bowels.’ Robert made the sound of delirious applause, and then changed to a solemn but consoling tone. ‘Bad luck, Seamus,’ he said, putting his arm around an imaginary contestant, ‘you played well, but in the end, they beat you in the Slow Death round. You won’t be going home empty-handed, though, because we’re giving you this private hamlet in the South of France, with thirty acres of gorgeous woodland, a giant swimming pool and several garden areas for the kiddies to play in…’
‘That was amazing,’ said Mary. ‘Where did that pop up from?’
‘I don’t think Seamus knows yet,’ said Patrick. ‘She made me read a postcard saying that he was going to come and see her after the family had left. So he still hasn’t seen her yet.’
‘And did she look as if that might change her mind?’
‘No,’ said Patrick. ‘She smiled when she gave me the note.’
‘The mechanical smile, or the radiant one?’
‘Radiant,’ said Patrick.
‘It’s worse than we thought,’ said Mary. ‘She’s not just running away from the truth about Seamus’s motives, she’s making another sacrifice. The only thing she had left to give him was her absence. It’s unconditional love, the thing people usually keep for their children, if they can do it at all. In this case the children are the sacrifice.’
‘There’s an awful Christian stench to it as well,’ said Patrick. ‘Being useful and affirming her worthlessness at the same time – all in the service of wounded pride. If she stays here she has to pay attention to Seamus’s betrayal, but this way we’re the ones who are betrayed. I can’t get over her stubbornness. There’s nothing like doing God’s will to make people pig-headed.’
‘She can’t speak or move,’ said Mary, ‘but look at the power she has.’
‘Yeah,’ said Patrick. ‘All this chattering that takes place in between is nothing compared to the crying and groaning that takes place at either end of life. It drives me crazy: we’re controlled by one wordless tyrant after another.’
‘But where are we going for our holidays next year?’ asked Robert.
‘We can go anywhere,’ said Patrick. ‘We’re no longer prisoners of this Provençal perfection. We’re jumping out of the postcard, we’re hitting the road.’ He sat do
wn next to Robert on the bed. ‘Bogotá! Blackpool! Rwanda! Let your imagination roam. Picture the fugitive Alaskan summer breaking out among the potholes of the tundra. Tierra del Fuego is nice at this time of year. No competition for the beaches there, except from those hilarious, blubbery sea lions. We’ve had enough of the predictable pleasures of the Mediterranean, with its pedalos and its pizzas au feu de bois. The world is our oyster.’
‘I hate oysters,’ said Robert.
‘Yeah, I slipped up there,’ said Patrick.
‘Well, where do you want to go?’ asked Mary. ‘You can choose anywhere you like.’
‘America,’ said Robert. ‘I want to go to America.’
‘Why not?’ said Patrick. ‘That’s where Europeans traditionally go when they’ve been evicted.’
‘We’re not being evicted,’ said Mary, ‘we’re finally getting free.’
AUGUST 2003
13
WOULD AMERICA BE JUST like he’d imagined it? Along with the rest of the world, Robert had lived under a rain of American images most of his life. Perhaps the place had already been imagined for him and he wouldn’t be able to see anything at all.
The first impression that came his way, while the plane was still on the ground at Heathrow, was a sense of hysterical softness. The flow of passengers up the aisle was blocked by a red-haired woman sagging at the knees under her own weight.
‘I cannot go there. I cannot get in there,’ she panted. ‘Linda wants me to sit by the window, but I cannot fit in there.’
‘Get in there, Linda,’ said the enormous father of the family.
‘Dad!’ said Linda, whose size spoke for itself.
That certainly seemed typical of something he had seen before in London’s tourist spots: a special kind of tender American obesity; not the hard-won fat of a gourmet, or the juggernaut body of a truck driver, but the apprehensive fat of people who had decided to become their own airbag systems in a dangerous world. What if their bus was hijacked by a psychopath who hadn’t brought any peanuts? Better have some now. If there was going to be a terrorist incident, why go hungry on top of everything else?
The Patrick Melrose Novels Page 55