The Patrick Melrose Novels (62 page)

At his first birthday party last week, Thomas had been attacked for the first time, by a boy called Eliot. A commotion suddenly drew Patrick's attention to the other side of the drawing room. Thomas, who was walking along unsteadily with his wooden rabbit on a string, had just been pushed over by a bruiser from his playgroup, and had the string wrenched from his hand. He let out a cry of indignation and then burst into tears. The thug wandered off triumphantly with the undulating rabbit clattering behind him on uneven wheels.

Mary swooped down and lifted Thomas off the ground. Robert went over to check that he was all right, on the way to recapture the rabbit.

Thomas sat on Mary's lap and soon stopped crying. He looked thoughtful, as if he was trying to introduce the novelty of being attacked into his frame of reference. Then he wriggled off Mary's knee and back down to the ground.

‘Who was that dreadful child?' said Patrick. ‘I don't think I've ever seen such a sinister face. He looks like Chairman Mao on steroids.'

Before Mary could answer, the bruiser's mother came over.

‘I'm sorry about that,' she said. ‘Eliot is so competitive, just like his dad. I hate to repress all that drive and energy.'

‘You're relying on the penal system for that,' said Patrick.

‘He should try knocking me over,' said Robert, practising his martial arts moves.

‘Let's not go global with this rabbit thing,' said Patrick.

‘Eliot,' said the bruiser's mother, in a special false voice, ‘give Thomas his rabbit back.'

‘No,' growled Eliot.

‘Oh, dear,' said his mother, delighted by his tenacity.

Thomas had transferred his focus to the fire tongs which he was dragging noisily out of their bucket. Eliot, convinced that he must have stolen the wrong thing, abandoned the rabbit and headed for the tongs. Mary picked up the string of the rabbit and handed it to Thomas, leaving Eliot revolving next to the bucket, unable to decide what he should be fighting for. Thomas offered the rabbit string to Eliot who refused it and waddled over to his mother with a cry of pain.

‘Don't you want the tongs?' she asked coaxingly.

Patrick hoped he would handle things more wisely with Thomas than he had with Robert, not infuse him with his own anxieties and preoccupations. The hurdles were always raised at the last moment. He was so tired now. The hurdles always raised … of course … he would think that … he was chasing his tail now … the dog was barking on the other side of the valley … the inner and outer worlds ploughing into each other … he was almost falling asleep … perchance to dream … fuck that. He sat up and finished the thought. Yes, even the most enlightened care carried a shadow. Even Johnny (but then, he was a child psychologist) reproached himself for making his children feel that he really understood them, that he knew what they were feeling before they knew themselves, that he could read their unconscious impulses. They lived in the panoptic prison of his sympathy and expertise. He had stolen their inner lives. Perhaps the kindest thing Patrick could do was to break up his family, to offer his children a crude and solid catastrophe. All children had to break free in the end. Why not give them a hard wall to kick against, a high board to jump from. Christ, he really must get some rest.

After midnight, the wonderful Dr Zemblarov was never far from his thoughts. A Bulgarian who practised in the local village, he spoke in extremely rapid, heavily accented English. ‘In our culture, we have only this,' he would say, signing an elaborate prescription, ‘
la pharmacologie.
If we lived in the
Pacifique
, maybe we could dance, but for us there is only the chemical manipulation. When I go back to Bulgaria, for example, I take
de l'amphetamine.
I drive I drive I drive, I see my family, I drive I drive I drive, and I come back to Lacoste.' The last time Patrick had hesitantly asked for more Tamazepam, Dr Zemblarov reproached him for being so shy. ‘
Mais il faut toujours demander.
I take it myself when I travel.
L'administration
want to limit us to thirty days, so I will put “one in the evening and one at night”, which naturally is not true, but it will avoid you to come here so often. I will also give you Stilnox, which is from another family – the hypnotics! We also have the barbiturate family,' he added with an appreciative smile, his pen hovering over the page.

No wonder Patrick was always tired, and could only offer short bursts of child care. Today, Thomas had been in pain. Some more teeth were bullying their way through his sore gums, his cheeks were red and swollen and he was rushing about looking for distractions. In the evening, Patrick had finally contributed a quick tour of the house. Their first stop was the socket in the wall under the mirror. Thomas looked at it longingly and then anticipated his father by saying, ‘No, no, no, no, no.' He shook his head earnestly, piling up as many ‘no's as he could between him and the socket, but desire soon washed away the little dam of his conscience, and he lunged towards the socket, improvising a plug with his small wet fingers. Patrick swept him off his feet and hauled him further down the corridor. Thomas shouted in protest, planting a couple of sharp kicks in his father's testicles.

‘Let's go and see the ladder,' gasped Patrick, feeling it would be unfair to offer him anything much less dangerous than electrocution. Thomas recognized the word and calmed down, knowing that the frail, paint-spattered aluminium ladder in the boiler room had its own potential for injury and death. Patrick held him lightly by the waist while he monkeyed up the steps, almost pulling the ladder back on them. As he was lowered to the ground, Thomas burst into a drunken run, reeling his way towards the boiler. Patrick caught him and prevented him from crashing into the water tank. He was completely exhausted by now. He'd had enough. It wasn't as if he hadn't contributed to the baby care. Now he needed a holiday. He staggered back into the drawing room, carrying his wriggling son.

‘How are you?' asked Mary.

‘Done in,' said Patrick.

‘I'm not surprised, you've had him for a minute and a half.'

Thomas hurtled towards his mother, buckling at the last minute. Mary caught him before his head hit the floor and put him back on his feet.

‘I don't know how you cope without a nanny,' said Julia.

‘I don't know how I would cope with one. I've always wanted to look after the children myself.'

‘Motherhood takes some people that way,' said Julia. ‘I must say, it didn't in my case, but then I was so
young
when I had Lucy.'

To show that she too went mad in the sun-drenched south, Kettle had come down to dinner wearing a turquoise silk jacket and a pair of lemon-yellow linen trousers. The rest of the household, still wearing their sweat-stained shirts and khaki trousers, left her just where she wanted to be, the lonely martyr to her own high standards.

Thomas slapped his hands over his face as she came in.

‘Oh, it's too sweet,' said Kettle. ‘What's he doing?'

‘Hiding,' said Mary.

Thomas whipped his hands away and stared at the others with his mouth wide open. Patrick reeled back, thunderstruck by his reappearance. It was Thomas's new game. It seemed to Patrick the oldest game in the world.

‘It's so relaxing having him hide where we can all see him,' said Patrick. ‘I dread the moment when he feels he has to leave the room.'

‘He thinks we can't see him because he can't see us,' said Mary.

‘I must say, I do sympathize,' said Kettle. ‘I rather wish people saw things exactly as I do.'

‘But you know that they don't,' said Mary.

‘Not always, darling,' said Kettle.

‘I'm not sure that it's a story of the self-centred child and the well-adjusted adult,' Patrick had made the mistake of theorizing. ‘Thomas knows that we don't see things as he does, otherwise he wouldn't be laughing. The joke is the shift in perspective. He expects us to flow into his point of view when he covers his face, and back into our own when he whips his hands away. We're the ones who are stuck.'

‘Honestly, Patrick, you always make everything so intellectual,' Kettle complained. ‘He's just a little boy playing a game. Apropos of hiding,' she said, in the manner of someone taking the wheel from a drunken driver, ‘I remember going to Venice with Daddy before we were married. We were trying to be discreet because one was expected to make an effort in those days. Well, of course the first thing that happened was that we ran into Cynthia and Ludo at the airport. We decided to behave rather like Thomas and pretend that if we didn't look at them they couldn't see us.'

‘Was it a success?' asked Patrick.

‘Not at all. They shouted our names across the airport at the top of their voices. I would have thought it was perfectly obvious that we didn't want to be spotted, but tact was never Ludo's forte. Anyway, we made all the right noises.'

‘But Thomas does want to be spotted, that's his big moment,' said Mary.

‘I'm not saying it's exactly the same situation,' said Kettle, with a little splutter of irritation.

‘What are the “right noises”?' Robert had asked Patrick on the way into dinner.

‘Anything that comes out of Kettle,' he replied, half hoping she would hear.

It didn't help that Julia was so unfriendly to Mary, not that it would have helped if she had been friendly. His loyalty to Mary was not in question (or was it?); what was in question was whether he could last without sex for one more second. Unlike the riotous appetites of adolescence, his present cravings had a tragic tinge, they were cravings for the appetites, metacravings, wanting to want. The question now was whether he would be able to sustain an erection, rather than whether he could ever get rid of the damn thing. At the same time the cravings had to cultivate simplicity, they had to collapse into an object of desire, in order to hide their tragic nature. They were not cravings for things which he could get, but for capacities which he would never have back. What would he do if he did get Julia? Apologize for being exhausted, of course. Apologize for being tied up. He was having (get it off your chest, dear, it'll do you good) a midlife crisis, and yet he wasn't, because a midlife crisis was a cliché, a verbal Tamazepam made to put an experience to sleep, and the experience he was having was still wide awake – at three thirty in the fucking morning.

He didn't accept any of it: the reduced horizons, the fading faculties. He refused to buy the pebble spectacles his Magoo-standard eyesight pleaded for. He loathed the fungus which seemed to have invaded his bloodstream, blurring everything. The impression of sharpness which he still sometimes gave was a simulation. His speech was like a jigsaw puzzle he had done a hundred times, he was just remembering what he had done before. He didn't make fresh connections any more. All that was over.

From down the corridor, he heard Thomas starting to cry. The sound sandpapered his nerves. He wanted to console Thomas. He wanted to be consoled by Julia. He wanted Mary to be consoled by consoling Thomas. He wanted everyone to be all right. He couldn't bear it any longer. He threw the bedclothes aside and paced the room.

Thomas soon settled down, but his cries had set off a reaction which Patrick could no longer control. He was going to go to Julia's room. He was going to turn the narrow allotment of his life into a field of blazing poppies. He opened the door slowly, lifting it on its hinges so that it didn't whine. He pulled it closed again with the handle held down so that it didn't click. He released the tongue slowly into the groove. The corridor was glowing with child-friendly light. It was as bright as a prison yard. He walked down it, heel-to-toe, all the way to the end, to Lucy's partially open door. He wanted to check first that she was still in her room. Yes. Fine. He doubled back to Julia's door. His heart was thumping. He felt terrifyingly alive. He leant close to the door and listened.

What was he going to do next? What would Julia do if he went into her room? Call the police? Pull him into bed whispering, ‘What took you so long?' Perhaps it was a little tactless to wake her at four in the morning. Maybe he should make an appointment for the following evening. His feet were getting cold, standing on the hexagonal tiles.

‘Daddy.'

He turned around and saw Robert, pale and frowning in the doorway of his bedroom.

‘Hi,' whispered Patrick.

‘What are you doing?'

‘Good question,' said Patrick. ‘Well, I heard Thomas crying…' That much was true. ‘And I wondered if he was all right.'

‘But why are you standing outside Julia's room?'

‘I didn't want to disturb Thomas if he had gone back to sleep,' Patrick explained. Robert was too intelligent for this rubbish, but perhaps he was a shade too young to be told the truth. In a couple of years Patrick could offer him a cigar and say, ‘I'm having this rather awkward
mezzo del camin
thing, and I need a quick affair to buck me up.' Robert would slap him on the back and say, ‘I completely understand, old man. Good luck and happy hunting.' In the meantime, he was six years old and the truth had to be hidden from him.

As if to save Patrick from his predicament, Thomas let out another wail of pain.

‘I think I'd better go in,' said Patrick. ‘Poor Mummy has been up all night.'

He smiled stoically at Robert. ‘You'd better get some sleep,' he said, kissing him on the forehead.

Robert turned back into his room, unconvinced.

The safety plug in Thomas's cluttered room cast a faint orange glow across the floor. Patrick picked his way towards the bed into which Mary carried Thomas every night out of his hated cot, and lowered himself onto the mattress, pushing half a dozen soft toys onto the floor. Thomas writhed and twisted, trying to find a comfortable position. Patrick lay on his side, teetering on the edge of the bed. He certainly wasn't going to get any sleep in this precarious sardine tin, but if he could just let his mind glide along, he might get some rest; if he could go omnogogic, gaining the looseness of dreams without their tyranny, that would be something. He was just going to forget about the Julia incident. What Julia incident?