The Patrick Melrose Novels Read online

  ‘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.’

  ‘That’s what your liver’s for, didn’t you know?’

  ‘How can you ask that?’

  ‘It’s true. Forgive me. So when are we two Olympians going to meet?’

  ‘Well, I should be back tomorrow evening. Could you get some gear, and then I’ll come straight round to you from the airport, without having to see the appalling Brian.’

  ‘Of course. Talking of appalling people, I wound up in the flat of some truly idiotic Italians the other night, but they did have some pink crystal coke which made a sound like a glockenspiel when it dropped into the spoon. Anyhow, I stole the whole lot and locked myself in the bathroom. As you know it takes a lot to ruffle the moronic tranquillity of those doe-eyed Italian dope fiends, but they seemed really pissed off, banging on the door and shouting, “Come out of there, you fucking man, or I kill you. Alessandro, make him come out!”’

  ‘God, how hilarious.’

  ‘Sadly, I think we’ve said “Ciao” for the last time, or I’d get you some. It was really the stuff to take before pushing the flaming longship into the grey waters for the last time.’

  ‘You’re making me envious.’

  ‘Well, maybe we’ll finally kill ourselves tomorrow night.’

  ‘Definitely. Make sure you get a lot.’

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘OK, I’ll see you tomorrow evening.’

  ‘Goodbye.’

  ‘Bye now.’

  Patrick hung up the phone with a faint smile on his lips. It always cheered one up talking to Johnny. He immediately dialled a new set of numbers and settled back on the pillows.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Kay?’

  ‘Baby! How are you? Hang on, I’ll just turn down the music.’

  The sound of an exasperated solitary cello grew suddenly muted, and Kay returned to the phone. ‘So how are you?’ she asked again.

  ‘I haven’t managed to get very much sleep.’

  ‘I’m not surprised.’

  ‘Neither am I, I’ve had about four grams of coke.’

  ‘Oh, God, that’s awful. You haven’t been taking heroin as well, have you?’

  ‘No, no, no. I’ve given that up. Just a few tranquillizers.’

  ‘Well, that’s something, but why the coke? Think of your poor nose. You can’t let it just drop off.’

  ‘My nose is going to be fine. I just felt so depressed.’

  ‘Poor baby, I’m sure you did. Your father dying is the worst thing that could have happened to you. You never got a chance to work things out.’

  ‘We never would have.’

  ‘That’s what all sons feel.’

  ‘Mmm…’

  ‘I don’t like to think of you there alone. Are you seeing anybody nice today, or just morticians?’

  ‘Are you implying that morticians can’t be nice?’ asked Patrick lugubriously.

  ‘Lord, no, I think they do a wonderful job.’

  ‘I don’t really know. I have to collect the ashes, otherwise I’m as free as the wind. I wish you were here.’

  ‘So do I, but I’ll, see you tomorrow, won’t I?’

  ‘Absolutely. I’ll come round straight from the airport.’ Patrick lit a cigarette. ‘I’ve been thinking all night,’ he continued rapidly, ‘– if you can call that thinking – about whether ideas come from the continual need to talk, relieved occasionally by the paralysing presence of other people, or if we simply realize in speech what we’ve already thought.’ He hoped this was the kind of question that would distract Kay from the exact details of his return.

  ‘That shouldn’t have kept you up,’ she laughed. ‘I’ll tell you the answer tomorrow night. What time do you get in?’

  ‘Around ten,’ said Patrick, adding a few hours to the arrival time.

  ‘So I’ll see you about eleven?’

  ‘Perfect.’

  ‘Bye, baby. Lots of love.’

  ‘You too. Bye now.’

  Patrick put down the phone and made himself another little fix of coke to keep him going. The last fix was still too recent and he had to lie on the bed for a while, sweating, before he could make the next call.

  ‘Hello? Debbie?’

  ‘Darling. I didn’t dare call you in case you were asleep.’

  ‘That hasn’t been my problem.’

  ‘Well, I’m sorry, I didn’t know that.’

  ‘I’m not accusing you of anything. There’s no need to be so defensive.’

  ‘I’m not being defensive,’ laughed Debbie. ‘I was just worried about you. This is ridiculous. I only meant that I’ve been worried all night about how you were.’

  ‘Ridiculous, I suppose.’

  ‘Oh, please don’t let’s argue. I wasn’t saying you were ridiculous. I meant that arguing is ridiculous.’

  ‘Well, I was arguing, and if arguing is ridiculous then I was being ridiculous. My case rests.’

  ‘What case? You always think I’m attacking you. We’re not in a courtroom. I’m not your opponent or your enemy.’

  Silence. Patrick’s head pounded from the effort of not contradicting her. ‘So what did you do last night?’ he asked at last.

  ‘Well, I was trying to get hold of you for a long time, and then I went to Gregory and Rebecca’s dinner thing.’

  ‘Suffering takes place while somebody else is eating. Who said that?’

  ‘It could have been almost anyone,’ laughed Debbie.

  ‘It just popped into my mind.’

  ‘Mm. You should try editing some of the things that just pop into your mind.’

  ‘Well, never mind last night, what are you doing tomorrow night?’

  ‘We’ve been asked to China’s thing, but I don’t suppose you want to eat and suffer at the same time.’ Debbie laughed at her own joke, as was her habit, while Patrick pursued his ruthless policy of never laughing at anything she said, without feeling on this occasion the least trace of meanness.

  ‘What a brilliant remark,’ he said drily. ‘I won’t come along, but nothing could persuade me to stop you from going.’

  ‘Don’t be rid
iculous, I’ll cancel.’

  ‘It sounds as if I had better not stop being ridiculous, or you won’t recognize me. I was going to come and see you straight from the airport, but I’ll come when you get back from China’s. At twelve or one.’

  ‘Well, OK, but I’ll cancel if you like.’

  ‘No, no, I wouldn’t dream of it.’

  ‘I’d better not go or you’ll just use it against me later.’

  ‘We’re not in a courtroom. I’m not your opponent or your enemy,’ Patrick echoed mockingly.

  Silence. Debbie waited until she could make a fresh start, trying to ignore Patrick’s impossibly contradictory demands.

  ‘Are you in the Pierre?’ she asked brightly.

  ‘If you don’t know what hotel I’m in, how could you have rung me?’

  ‘I guessed you were in the Pierre, but I couldn’t be sure since you didn’t see fit to tell me,’ sighed Debbie. ‘Is the room lovely?’

  ‘I think you would like it. There are lots of sachets in the bathroom and a phone next to the loo, so you needn’t miss any important calls – an invitation to dinner at China’s, for instance.’

  ‘Why are you being so horrid?’

  ‘Am I?’

  ‘I’m going to cancel tomorrow.’

  ‘No, no, please don’t. It was only a joke. I feel rather mad at the moment.’

  ‘You always feel rather mad,’ laughed Debbie.

  ‘Well, my father happens to have died, which makes me feel especially mad.’

  ‘I know, darling, I’m sorry.’

  ‘Plus, I’ve taken a huge quantity of coke.’

  ‘Was that a good idea?’

  ‘Of course it wasn’t a good idea,’ yelped Patrick indignantly.

  ‘Do you think your father’s death will make you less like him?’ Debbie sighed again.

  ‘I’ll have the work of two to do now.’

  ‘God, are you sure you wouldn’t rather forget the whole thing?’

  ‘Of course I’d rather forget the whole thing,’ snapped Patrick, ‘but that’s not an option.’

  ‘Well, everyone has their cross to bear.’

  ‘Really? What’s yours?’

  ‘You,’ laughed Debbie.

  ‘Well, be careful or somebody might steal it from you.’

  ‘They’ll have to fight for it,’ said Debbie affectionately.

  ‘Sweet,’ cooed Patrick, wedging the phone between his shoulder and his ear and sitting on the edge of the bed.

  ‘Oh, darling, why do we always argue?’ asked Debbie.

  ‘Because we’re so in love,’ said Patrick haphazardly, as he opened the packet of heroin over the bedside table. He dipped his little finger in the powder, put it to one of his nostrils and inhaled quietly.

  ‘That would seem a strange explanation from anybody else.’

  ‘Well, I hope you’re not getting it from anybody else,’ said Patrick babyishly, dipping and sniffing several more times.

  ‘Nobody else would dare give it, if they behaved like you,’ laughed Debbie.

  ‘It’s just that I need you so much,’ whispered Patrick, reclining again on the pillows. ‘It’s frightening if you’re addicted to independence like I am.’

  ‘Oh, that’s what you’re addicted to, is it?’

  ‘Yes. All the other things are illusions.’

  ‘Am I an illusion?’

  ‘No! That’s why we argue so much. Do you see?’ It sounded good to him.

  ‘Because I’m a real obstacle to your independence?’

  ‘To my foolish and misguided desire for independence,’ Patrick corrected her gallantly.

  ‘Well, you certainly know how to pay a girl a compliment,’ laughed Debbie.

  ‘I wish you were here,’ croaked Patrick, dabbing his finger in the white powder again.

  ‘So do I, you must be having a horrible time. Why don’t you go and see Marianne? She’ll look after you.’

  ‘What a good idea. I’ll give her a ring later on.’

  ‘I’d better go now,’ sighed Debbie. ‘I’ve got to be interviewed by some silly magazine.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Oh, about people who go to lots of parties. I don’t know why I agreed to it.’

  ‘Because you’re so kind and helpful,’ said Patrick.

  ‘Mm … I’ll call you later. I think you’re being very brave and I love you.’

  ‘I love you too.’

  ‘Bye, darling.’

  ‘Bye now.’

  Patrick hung up the phone and glanced at the clock. Six thirty-five. He ordered Canadian bacon, fried eggs, toast, porridge, stewed fruit, orange juice, coffee, and tea.

  ‘Is that breakfast for two?’ asked the cheerful sounding woman taking the order.

  ‘No, just for one.’

  ‘Wooh, you’re sure having a hearty breakfast, honey,’ she giggled.

  ‘It’s the best way to start the day, don’t you find?’

  ‘Sure is!’ she agreed.

  9

  THE SMELL OF DECAYING food had filled the room surprisingly quickly. Patrick’s breakfast was devastated without being eaten. A dent in the grey paste of the porridge contained a half-eaten stewed pear; rashers of bacon hung on the edge of a plate smeared with egg yolk, and in the flooded saucer two cigarette butts lay sodden with coffee. A triangle of abandoned toast bore the semicircular imprint of his teeth, and spilled sugar glistened everywhere on the tablecloth. Only the orange juice and the tea were completely finished.

  On the television, the Wile E. Coyote, astride an accelerating rocket, crashed explosively into the side of a mountain, while the Road Runner disappeared into a tunnel, emerged at the other side, and receded in a cloud of dust. Watching the Road Runner and the stylized rotundity of the dust in his wake, Patrick was reminded of the early, innocent days of his drug taking, when he had thought that LSD would reveal to him something other than the tyranny of its own effects on his consciousness.

  Thanks to his loathing of air conditioning the room was becoming increasingly muggy. Patrick longed to wheel the trolley outside, but the danger of meeting someone in the corridor made him resigned to the growing stench. He had already overheard a conversation about himself between two maids, and although he accepted, theoretically, that it was a hallucination, his strength of mind would not allow him to test this vein of detachment to the extent of opening the door. After all, had one maid not said to the other, ‘I told him, “You gonna die, boy, if you go on takin’ that shit.”’ And hadn’t the other one replied, “You gotta call the police for your own protection, can’t go on livin’ like that.”’

  Wandering into the bathroom, he rolled his right shoulder to ease the pain that was lodged under the shoulder blade. Sceptically but irresistibly, he approached the mirror and noticed that one of his eyelids was drooping much lower than the other, drooping over an inflamed and watering eye. Pulling the skin down he saw the familiar dark yellow of his eyeballs. His tongue was also yellow and thickly coated. Only the purple trenches under his eyes relieved the deadly whiteness of his complexion.

  Thank God his father had died. Without a dead parent there was really no excuse for looking so awful. He thought of one of the guiding mottoes of his father’s life: ‘Never apologize, never explain.’

  ‘What the fuck else is there to do?’ muttered Patrick, turning on the taps of his bath and tearing open one of the sachets with his teeth. As he poured the glutinous green liquid into the swirling water he heard, or thought he heard, the ringing of the telephone. Was it the management warning him that the police were on their way up? Whoever it was, the outside world was crashing into his atmosphere, and it filled him with dread. He turned off the taps and listened to the naked ringing of the phone. Why answer? And yet he couldn’t bear not to; maybe he was going to be saved.

  Sitting on the loo seat, not trusting his own voice, Patrick picked up the phone and said, ‘Hello?’

  ‘Patrick, my dear,’ drawled a voice from the other end.
<
br />   ‘George!’

  ‘Is this a bad time to call?’

  ‘Not at all.’

  ‘I was wondering if you’d like to have lunch with me. It may be the last thing you want to do, of course. You must be feeling perfectly ghastly. It’s a terrible shock, you know, Patrick, we all feel that.’

  ‘I do feel a bit wonky, but I’d love to have lunch.’

  ‘I must warn you, I’ve asked some other people. Charming people, naturally, the nicest sort of Americans. One or two of them have met your father and liked him very much.’

  ‘It sounds perfect,’ said Patrick, raising his eyes to the ceiling and grimacing.

  ‘I’m meeting them at the Key Club. Do you know it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I think you’ll find it amusing in its way. One comes in from the noise and the pollution of New York, and it’s quite suddenly like an English country house of a certain sort. God knows whose family they are – I suppose some of the members must have lent them – but the walls are covered in portraits, and the effect is really quite charming. There are all the usual things one would expect to find, like Gentleman’s Relish for instance, and strangely enough some things that are nowadays very hard to find in England, like a good Bullshot. Your father and I agreed that we hadn’t had such a good Bullshot in years.’

  ‘It sounds heaven.’

  ‘I’ve asked Ballantine Morgan. I don’t know if you’ve met him. I’m afraid I’m not sure he isn’t the most frightful bore, but Sarah has taken to him in a big way and one gets so used to his popping up everywhere that I’ve asked him to lunch. Oddly enough, I knew someone called Morgan Ballantine once, perfectly charming man; they must be related in some way, but I’ve never really got to the bottom of it,’ said George wistfully.

  ‘Perhaps we’ll find out today,’ said Patrick.

  ‘Well, I’m not sure I can ask Ballantine again. I have a feeling I must have asked him before, but it’s very hard to be sure because one has such trouble listening to his answers.’

  ‘What time shall we meet?’

  ‘About quarter to one in the bar.’

  ‘Perfect.’

  ‘Well, goodbye, my dear.’

  ‘Bye now. See you at quarter to one.’ Patrick’s voice trailed off.

  He turned his bath back on and wandered into the bedroom to pour himself a glass of bourbon. A bath without a drink was like – was like a bath without a drink. Was there any need to elaborate or compare?