The Patrick Melrose Novels (47 page)

Next to her the ambassador appeared to be in a kind of trance, but under his dumb surface he was composing, with the fluency of an habitual dispatch writer, his report for the Quai d'Orsay. The glory of France had not been diminished by his little gaffe. Indeed, he had turned what might have been an awkward incident into a triumphant display of gallantry and wit. It was here that the ambassador paused for a while to think of something clever he might have said at the time.

While Alantour pondered, the door of the dining room opened slowly, and Belinda, barefooted, in a white nightdress, peered around the edge of the door.

‘Oh, look, it's a little person who can't sleep,' boomed Nicholas.

Bridget swivelled around and saw her daughter looking pleadingly into the room.

‘Who is it?' the Princess asked Sonny.

‘I'm afraid it's my daughter, ma'am,' replied Sonny, glaring at Bridget.

‘Still up? She should be in bed. Go on, tuck her up immediately!' she snapped.

Something about the way she had said ‘tuck her up' made Sonny momentarily forget his courtly graces and feel protective towards his daughter. He tried again to catch Bridget's eye, but Belinda had already come into the room and approached her mother.

‘Why are you still up, darling?' asked Bridget.

‘I couldn't sleep,' said Belinda. ‘I was lonely because everyone else is down here.'

‘But this is a dinner for grown-ups.'

‘Which one's Princess Margaret?' asked Belinda, ignoring her mother's explanation.

‘Why don't you get your mother to present you to her?' suggested Nicholas suavely. ‘And then you can go to bed like a good little girl.'

‘OK,' said Belinda. ‘Can someone read me a story?'

‘Not tonight, darling,' said her mother. ‘But I'll introduce you to Princess Margaret.' She got up and walked the length of the table to Princess Margaret's side. Leaning over a little, she asked if she could present her daughter.

‘No, not now, I don't think it's right,' said the Princess. ‘She ought to be in bed, and she'll just get overexcited.'

‘You're quite right, of course,' said Sonny. ‘Honestly, darling, you must scold Nanny for letting her escape.'

‘I'll take her upstairs myself,' said Bridget coldly.

‘Good girl,' said Sonny, extremely angry that Nanny, who after all cost one an absolute bomb, should have shown him up in front of the Princess.

‘I'm very pleased to hear that you've got the Bishop of Cheltenham for us tomorrow,' said the Princess, grinning at her host, once the door was firmly closed on his wife and daughter.

‘Yes,' said Sonny. ‘He seemed very nice on the phone.'

‘Do you mean you don't know him?' asked the Princess.

‘Not as well as I'd like to,' said Sonny, reeling from the prospect of more royal disapproval.

‘He's a saint,' said the Princess warmly. ‘I really think he's a saint. And a wonderful scholar: I'm told he's happier speaking in Greek than in English. Isn't it marvellous?'

‘I'm afraid my Greek's a bit rusty for that sort of thing,' said Sonny.

‘Don't worry,' said the Princess, ‘he's the most modest man in the world, he wouldn't dream of showing you up; he just gets into these Greek trances. In his mind, you see, he's still chatting away to the apostles, and it takes him a while to notice his surroundings. Isn't it fascinating?'

‘Extraordinary,' murmured Sonny.

‘There won't be any hymns, of course,' said the Princess.

‘But we can have some if you like,' protested Sonny.

‘It's Holy Communion, silly. Otherwise I'd have you all singing hymns to see which ones I liked best. People always seem to enjoy it, it gives one something to do after dinner on Saturday.'

‘We couldn't have managed that tonight in any case,' said Sonny.

‘Oh, I don't know,' said the Princess, ‘we might have gone off to the library in a small group.' She beamed at Sonny, conscious of the honour she was bestowing on him by this suggestion of deeper intimacy. There was no doubt about it: when she put her mind to it she could be the most charming woman in the world.

‘One had such fun practising hymns with Noël,' she went on. ‘He would make up new words and one would die laughing. Yes, it might have been rather cosy in the library. I do so
hate
big parties.'

 

9

PATRICK SLAMMED THE CAR
door and glanced up at the stars, gleaming through a break in the clouds like fresh track marks in the dark blue limbs of the night. It was a humbling experience, he thought, making one's own medical problems seem so insignificant.

An avenue of candles, planted on either side of the drive, marked the way from the car park to the wide circle of gravel in front of the house. Its grey porticoed facade was theatrically flattened by floodlights, and looked like wet cardboard, stained by the sleet that had fallen earlier in the afternoon.

In the denuded drawing room, the fireplace was loaded with crackling wood. The champagne being poured by a flushed barman surged over the sides of glasses and subsided again to a drop. As Patrick headed down the hooped canvas tunnel that led to the tent, he heard the swell of voices rising, and sometimes laughter, like the top of a wave caught by the wind, splashing over the whole room. A room, he decided, full of uncertain fools, waiting for an amorous complication or a practical joke to release them from their awkward wanderings. Walking into the tent, he saw George Watford sitting on a chair immediately to the right of the entrance.

‘George!'

‘My dear, what a nice surprise,' said George, wincing as he clambered to his feet. ‘I'm sitting here because I can't hear anything these days when there's a lot of noise about.'

‘I thought people were supposed to lead lives of
quiet
desperation,' Patrick shouted.

‘Not quiet enough,' George shouted back with a wan smile.

‘Oh, look there's Nicholas Pratt,' said Patrick, sitting down next to George.

‘So it is,' said George. ‘With him one has to take the smooth with the smooth. I must say I never really shared your father's enthusiasm for him. I miss your father, you know, Patrick. He was a very brilliant man, but never happy, I think.'

‘I hardly ever think of him these days,' said Patrick.

‘Have you found something you enjoy doing?' asked George.

‘Yes, but nothing one could make a career out of,' said Patrick.

‘One really has to try to make a contribution,' said George. ‘I can look back with reasonable satisfaction on one or two pieces of legislation that I helped steer through the House of Lords. I've also helped to keep Richfield going for the next generation. Those are the sorts of things one is left hanging on to when all the fun and games have slipped away. No man is an island – although one's known a surprising number who own one. Really a surprising number, and not just in Scotland. But one really must try to make a contribution.'

‘Of course you're right,' sighed Patrick. He was rather intimidated by George's sincerity. It reminded him of the disconcerting occasion when his father had clasped his arm, and said to him, apparently without any hostile intention, ‘If you have a talent, use it. Or you'll be miserable all your life.'

‘Oh, look, it's Tom Charles, over there taking a drink from the waiter. He has a jolly nice island in Maine. Tom!' George called out. ‘I wonder if he's spotted us. He was head of the IMF at one time, made the best of a frightfully hard job.'

‘I met him in New York,' said Patrick. ‘You introduced us at that club we went to after my father died.'

‘Oh, yes. We all rather wondered what had happened to you,' said George. ‘You left us in the lurch with that frightful bore Ballantine Morgan.'

‘I was overwhelmed with emotion,' said Patrick.

‘I should think it was dread at having to listen to another of Ballantine's stories. His son is here tonight. I'm afraid he's a chip off the old block, as they say. Tom!' George called out again.

Tom Charles looked around, uncertain whether he'd heard his name being called. George waved at him again. Tom spotted them, and the three men greeted each other. Patrick recognized Tom's bloodhound features. He had one of those faces that ages prematurely but then goes on looking the same forever. He might even look young in another twenty years.

‘I heard about your dinner,' said Tom. ‘It sounds like quite something.'

‘Yes,' said George. ‘I think it demonstrates again that the junior members of the royal family should pull their socks up and we should all be praying for the Queen during these difficult times.'

Patrick realized he was not joking.

‘How was your dinner at Harold's?' asked George. ‘Harold Greene was born in Germany,' he went on to explain to Patrick. ‘As a boy he wanted to join the Hitler Youth – smashing windows and wearing all those thrilling uniforms: it's any boy's dream – but his father told him he couldn't because he was Jewish. Harold never got over the disappointment, and he's really an anti-Semite with a veneer of Zionism.'

‘Oh, I don't think that's fair,' said Tom.

‘Well, I don't suppose it is,' said George, ‘but what is the point of reaching this idiotically advanced age if one can't be unfair?'

‘There was a lot of talk at dinner about Chancellor Kohl's claim that he was “very shocked” when war broke out in the Gulf.'

‘I suppose it was shocking for the poor Germans not to have started the war themselves,' George interjected.

‘Harold was saying over dinner,' continued Tom, ‘that he's surprised there isn't a United Nations Organisation called UNUC because “when it comes down to it they're no bloody use at all”.'

‘What I want to know,' said George, thrusting out his chin, ‘is what chance we have against the Japanese when we live in a country where “industrial action” means going on strike. I'm afraid I've lived for too long. I can still remember when this country counted for something. I was just saying to Patrick,' he added, politely drawing him back into the conversation, ‘that one has to make a contribution in life. There are too many people in this room who are just hanging around waiting for their relations to die so that they can go on more expensive holidays. Sadly, I count my daughter-in-law among them.'

‘Bunch of vultures,' growled Tom. ‘They'd better take those holidays soon. I don't see the banking system holding up, except on some kind of religious basis.'

‘Currency always rested on blind faith,' said George.

‘But it's never been like this before,' said Tom. ‘Never has so much been owed by so many to so few.'

‘I'm too old to care anymore,' said George. ‘Do you know, I was thinking that if I go to heaven, and I don't see why I shouldn't, I hope that King, my old butler, will be there.'

‘To do your unpacking?' suggested Patrick.

‘Oh, no,' said George. ‘I think he's done quite enough of that sort of thing down here. In any case, I don't think one takes any luggage to heaven, do you? It must be like a perfect weekend, with no luggage.'

*   *   *

Like a rock in the middle of a harbour, Sonny stood stoutly near the entrance of the tent putting his guests under an obligation to greet him as they came in.

‘But this is something absolutely marvellous,' said Jacques d'Alantour in a confidential tone, spreading his hands to encompass the whole tent. As if responding to this gesture the big jazz band at the far end of the room struck up simultaneously.

‘Well, we try our best,' said Sonny smugly.

‘I think it was Henry James,' said the ambassador, who knew perfectly well that it was and had rehearsed the quotation, unearthed for him by his secretary, many times before leaving Paris, ‘who said: “this richly complex English world, where the present is always seen, as it were in profile, and the past presents a full face.”'

‘It's no use quoting these French authors to me,' said Sonny. ‘All goes over my head. But, yes, English life is rich and complex – although not as rich as it used to be with all these taxes gnawing away at the very fabric of one's house.'

‘Ah,' sighed Monsieur d'Alantour sympathetically. ‘But you are putting on a “brave face” tonight.'

‘We've had our tricky moments,' Sonny confessed. ‘Bridget went through a mad phase of thinking we knew nobody, and invited all sorts of odds and sods. Take that little Indian chap over there, for instance. He's writing a biography of Jonathan Croyden. I'd never set eyes on him before he came down to look at some letters Croyden wrote to my father, and blow me down, Bridget asked him to the party over lunch. I'm afraid I lost my temper with her afterwards, but it really was a bit much.'

*   *   *

‘Hello, my dear,' said Nicholas to Ali Montague. ‘How was your dinner?'

‘Very
county
,' said Ali.

‘Oh, dear. Well, ours was really
tous ce qu'il y a de plus chic
, except that Princess Margaret rapped me over the knuckles for expressing “atheistic views”.'

‘Even I might have a religious conversion under those circumstances,' said Ali, ‘but it would be so hypocritical I'd be sent straight to hell.'

‘One thing I am sure of is that if God didn't exist, nobody would notice the difference,' said Nicholas suavely.

‘Oh, I thought of you a moment ago,' said Ali. ‘I overheard a couple of old men who both looked as if they'd had several riding accidents. One of them said, “I'm thinking of writing a book,” and the other one replied, “Jolly good idea.” “They say everyone has a book in them,” said the would-be author. “Hmm, perhaps I'll write one as well,” his friend replied. “Now you're stealing my idea,” said the first one, really quite angrily. So naturally I wondered how your book was getting along. I suppose it must be almost finished by now.'