The Patrick Melrose Novels: Never Mind, Bad News, Some Hope, and Mother's Milk (26 page)

Honest John: ‘Speak for yourself.’

The Vicar: ‘And in very much the same spirit, when we make judgements about other people (and which one of us doesn’t?) we have to make sure that we have the “whole story” spread out before us.’

Attila the Hun (basso profundo): ‘Die, Christian dog!’ (Decapitates the Vicar.)

Vicar’s Severed Head (pausing thoughtfully): ‘You know, the other day, my young granddaughter came to me and said, “Grandfather, I
like
Christianity.” And I said to her (thoroughly puzzled), “Why?” And do you know what she said?’

Honest John: ‘Of course we don’t, you prannit.’

Vicar’s Severed Head: ‘She said, “Because it’s such a comfort.”’ (Pauses, and then more slowly and emphatically): ‘“Because it’s such a comfort.”’

Patrick opened his eyes and uncurled slowly on the floor. The television stared at him accusingly. Perhaps it could save him or distract him from his own involuntary performance.

Television (snivelling and shivering): ‘Turn me on, man. Gimme a turn-on.’

Mr President: ‘Ask not what your television can do for you, but what you can do for your television.’

Ecstatic Populace: ‘Hooray! Hooray!’

Mr President: ‘We shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship…’

Von Trapp Family Singers (ecstatically): ‘Climb every mountain!’

Mr President: ‘… support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and success of television.’

Ecstatic Populace: ‘Hooray! Hooray!’

Mr President: ‘Let the word go forth from this time and place, that the torch has passed to a new generation of Americans – born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage and unwilling to do anything except watch television.’

‘Yes, yes, yes,’ thought Patrick, crawling across the floor, ‘television.’

Television (shifting restlessly from wheel to wheel): ‘Gimme a turn-on, man, I gotta have it.’

Viewer (coolly): ‘What you got for me?’

Television (ingratiatingly): ‘I got
The Million-Dollar Movie. The Billion-Dollar Man. The Trillion-Dollar Quiz Show.
’

Viewer: ‘Yeahyeahyeah, but wot you got
now
?’

Television (guiltily): ‘A still of the American flag, and some weirdo in a pale blue nylon suit talkin’ about the end of the world.
The Farming Report
should be comin’ up real soon.’

Viewer: ‘OK, I guess I’ll take the flag. But don’t push me’ (getting out a revolver) ‘or I’ll blow your fuckin’ screen out.’

Television: ‘OK, man, just keep cool, OK? The reception isn’t too great, but it’s a
real
good shot of the flag. I personally guarantee that.’

Patrick switched off the television. When would this dreadful night come to an end? Clambering onto the bed, he collapsed, closed his eyes, and listened intently to the silence.

Ron Zak (his eyes closed, smiling benignly): ‘I want you to listen to that silence. Can you hear it?’ (Pause.) ‘Become part of that silence. That silence is your inner voice.’

Honest John: ‘Oh, dear, it’s not over yet, eh? Who’s this Ron Zak, then? Sounds like a bit of a prannit, to be honest.’

Ron Zak: ‘Are you all one with that silence?’

Students: ‘We are one with the silence, Ron.’

Ron Zak: ‘Good.’ (Long pause.) ‘Now I want you to use the visualization technique you learned last week to picture a pagoda – that’s kind of a Chinese beach house, only in the hills.’ (Pause.) ‘Good. It’s very beautiful, isn’t it?’

Students: ‘Gee, Ron, it’s so neat.’

Ron Zak: ‘It’s got a beautiful golden roof, and a network of bubbling round pools in the garden. Climb into one of those pools – mm, it feels good – and allow the gatekeepers to wash your body and bring you fresh new robes made of silk and other prestigious fabrics. They feel good, don’t they?’

Students: ‘Oh, yes, they feel great.’

Ron Zak: ‘Good. Now I want you to go into the pagoda.’ (Pause.) ‘There’s somebody in there, isn’t there?’

Students: ‘Yes, it is the Guide we learned about the week before last.’

Ron Zak (a little irritably): ‘No, the Guide is in another room.’ (Pause.) ‘It’s your mum and dad.’

Students (in startled recognition): ‘Mum? Dad?’

Ron Zak: ‘Now I want you to go over to your mum and say, “Mum, I really love you.”’

Students: ‘Mum, I really love you.’

Ron Zak: ‘Now I want you to embrace her.’ (Pause.) ‘It feels good, doesn’t it?’

Students (they scream, faint, write cheques, embrace each other, burst into tears, and punch pillows): ‘It feels so good!’

Ron Zak: ‘Now I want you to go over to Dad and say, “You, on the other hand, I cannot forgive.”’

Students: ‘You, on the other hand, I cannot forgive.’

Ron Zak: ‘Take out a revolver and shoot his fuckin’ brains out. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang.’

Students: ‘Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang.’

Koenig Spook (terrible creaking of armour): ‘Omlet! Ich bin thine Popospook!’

‘Oh, for fuck’s sake,’ shouted Patrick, sitting up and slapping himself across the face, ‘stop thinking about it.’

Mocking Echo: ‘Stop thinking about it.’

Patrick sat down at the table and picked up the packet of coke. He tapped the packet and an unusually large rock fell into the spoon. Bringing a jet of water down on the cocaine, he heard a silvery ringing where it struck the side of the spoon. The powder flooded and dissolved.

His veins were beginning to shrink from the savage onslaught of the evening but one vein, lower down the forearm, still showed without encouragement. Thick and blue, it snaked its way towards his wrist. The skin was tougher there, and it hurt to break beneath it.

Nanny (singing dreamily to her veins): ‘Come out, come out, wherever you are!’

A thread of blood appeared in the barrel.

Cleopatra (gasping): ‘Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.’

Attila the Hun (viciously, through clenched teeth): ‘No prisoners!’

Patrick fainted and sank back onto the floor, feeling as if his body had suddenly been filled with wet cement. There was silence as he looked down on his body from the ceiling.

Pierre: ‘Look at your body, man, it’s fucking rubbish.
Tu as une conscience totale.
No
limites.
’ (Patrick’s body accelerates very rapidly. Space turns from blue to dark blue, and from dark blue to black. The clouds are like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. Patrick looks down and sees, far below him, the window of his hotel room. Inside the room is a thin white beach surrounded by an intensely blue sea. On the beach children are burying Patrick’s body in the sand. Only the head is showing. He thinks he can break the case of sand with a simple movement, but he realizes his mistake when one of the children empties a bucket of wet concrete in his face. He tries to wipe the concrete from his mouth and eyes, but his arms are trapped in a concrete tomb.)

‘Jennifer’s Diary’: ‘Patrick Melrose’s graveside appeared to be unattended as the coffin was lowered, somewhat roughly, into the ground. However, all was not lost, and in the nick of time, that ever popular, gracious, enchanting, indefatigable couple, Mr and Mrs Chilly Willy, the Alphabet City junkies, on a rare visit uptown, shuffled attractively onto the scene. “Don’t sink him, don’t sink him, he’s my man,” cried the inconsolable Chilly Willy. “Where I gonna git a dime bag now?” he wailed. “Did he leave me anything in his will?” asked his grief-stricken wife, who wore a cleverly designed, affordable dress in a superbly colourful floral fabric. Among those who did not attend, claiming that they had never heard of the deceased, were Sir Veridian Gravalaux-Gravalax, Marshal of the Island Kennels, and his cousin the very attractive Miss Rowena Keats-Shelley.’

Honest John: ‘I don’t think he’s going to survive this one, to be honest.’

Indignant Eric (shaking his head incredulously): ‘What amazes me is that people think they can come along and, eh, casually, eh, bury people alive.’

Mrs Chronos (carrying a huge hourglass, and wearing a tattered old ball gown): ‘Well, I must say, it’s nice to be wanted! Not a single part since the fourth act of
The Winter’s Tale
’ (warmly). ‘A play by Bill Shakespeare, of course – a lovely man, by the way, and a close personal friend. As the centuries slipped past I thought, “That’s right, just ignore me, I know when I’m not wanted.”’ (Folds her arms and nods.) ‘People think of me as a character actor, but if there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s being typecast. Anyway,’ (little sigh) ‘I suppose it’s time to say my lines.’ (Pulling a face.) ‘Frankly, I find them a little bit old fashioned. People don’t seem to appreciate that I’m a modern girl.’ (Coy laugh.) ‘I just want to say one more thing,’ (serious now) ‘and that’s a big “thank you” to all my fans. You kept me going during the lonely years. Thank you for the sonnets, and the letters and the conversations, they mean a lot, they really do. Think of me sometimes, darlings, when your gums go black, and you can’t remember someone’s name.’ (Blows kisses to the audience. Then composes herself, smoothes the folds of her dress, and walks front stage.)

‘Since his death cannot be mended,

All our revels now are ended.

Think not harshly of our play

But come again another day.’

Attila the Hun (punches the lid off his coffin, making a sound of growling, snarling, hissing fury, like a leopard being baited through the bars of a cage): ‘Raaaarrrrrghh!’

Patrick shot bolt upright and banged his head on the leg of the chair. ‘Shit, wank, fuck, blast,’ he said in his own voice at last.

8

PATRICK LAY ON THE
bed like a dead thing. He had parted the curtains for a moment and seen the sun rising over the East River, and it had filled him with loathing and self-reproach.

The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new. That was another first sentence.

Other people’s words drifted through his mind. Tumble-weed riding through a desert. Had he already thought that? Had he already said it? He felt bloated and empty at the same time.

Traces of the night’s possession surfaced now and again in the slowly simmering scum of his thoughts, and the experience of being so thoroughly and often displaced left him bruised and lonely. Besides, he had almost killed himself.

‘Let’s not go over that again,’ he murmured, like a beleaguered lover who is never allowed to forget an indiscretion.

He winced as he stretched out his aching and sticky arm to check the time on the bedside clock. Five forty-five. He could order a selection of cold meats or a plate of smoked salmon straight away, but it would be another three-quarters of an hour before he could organize that brief moment of affirmation when a trolley rattling with wholesome breakfast food was wheeled into the room.

Then the fruit juice would sweat and separate under its cardboard cap; the bacon and egg, too intimidatingly carnal after all, would grow cold and begin to smell, and the single rose, in its narrow glass vase, would drop a petal on the white tablecloth, while he gulped down some sugary tea and continued to ingest the ethereal food of his syringe.

After a sleepless night, he always spent the hours from five thirty to eight cowering from the gathering roar of life. In London, when the pasty light of dawn had stained the ceiling above the curtain pole, he would listen with vampirish panic to the squealing and rumbling of distant juggernauts, and then to the nearby whining of a milkcart, and eventually to the slamming doors of cars bearing children to school, or real men to work in factories and banks.

It was nearly eleven o’clock in England. He could kill the time until breakfast with a few telephone calls. He would ring Johnny Hall, who was bound to sympathize with his state of mind.

But first he had to have a little fix to keep him going. Just as he could only contemplate giving up heroin when he had already taken some, so he could only recover from the ravages of cocaine by taking more.

After a fix of a moderation that impressed him almost as much as it bored him, Patrick propped up some pillows and installed himself comfortably beside the phone.

‘Johnny?’

‘Yup.’ There was a strained whisper at the other end of the line.

‘It’s Patrick.’

‘What time is it?’

‘Eleven.’

‘I’ve only had three hours’ sleep in that case.’

‘Do you want me to ring back?’

‘No, the damage is already done. How are you?’

‘Oh, fine. I’ve had a rather heavy night.’

‘Nearly dying, et cetera?’ gasped Johnny.

‘Yup.’

‘Me too. I’ve been shooting some really disreputable speed, made by a failed chemistry graduate with a shaking hand and a bottle of hydrochloric acid. It’s the kind that smells of burnt test tubes when you push the plunger down, and then makes you sneeze compulsively, sending your heart into wild arrhythmic flurries reminiscent of the worst passages of Pound’s
Cantos.
’

‘As long as your Chinese is good you should be all right.’

‘I haven’t got any.’

‘I have. It’s medicine, man, medicine.’

‘I’m coming over.’

‘To New York?’

‘New York! I thought the hesitating, whispering quality of your speech was a combination of my auditory hallucinations and your notorious indolence. It’s very disappointing to learn that it has a
real
cause. Why are you there?’

‘My father died over here, so I’ve come to collect his remains.’

‘Congratulations. You’ve achieved half-orphan status. Are they refusing to part with his body? Are they making you put an equal weight of gold in the opposite scales to secure the precious cargo?’

‘They haven’t billed me for it yet, but if there’s even a hint of exaggeration, I’ll just leave the rotten thing behind.’

‘Good thinking. Are you at all upset?’

‘I feel rather haunted.’

‘Yes. I remember finding that the ground beneath my feet seemed, if possible, more unreliable than usual, and that my desire to die was, if possible, even greater than before.’

‘Yes, there’s a lot of that. Plus quite a bad pain in my liver, as if a gravedigger had pushed a shovel under my ribs and stepped on it rather hard.’