The Patrick Melrose Novels (55 page)

He had seen Thomas's eyes expressing states of mind which he couldn't have invented for himself. They reared up from the scrawny desert of his experience like brief pyramids. Where did they come from? Sometimes he was a snuffling little animal and then, seconds later, he was radiating an ancient calm, at ease with everything. Robert felt that he was definitely not making up these complex states of mind, and neither was Thomas. It was just that Thomas wouldn't know what he knew until he started to tell himself a story about what was happening to him. The trouble was that he was a baby, and he didn't have the attention span to tell himself a story yet. Robert was just going to have to do it for him. What was an older brother for? Robert was already caught in a narrative loop, so he might as well take his little brother along with him. After all, in his way, Thomas was helping Robert to piece his own story together.

Outside, he could hear Margaret again, taking on the cicadas and getting the upper hand.

‘With the breast-feeding you've got to build yourself up,' she started out reasonably enough. ‘Have you not got any Digestive biscuits? Or Rich Tea? We could have a few of those right away, actually. And then you want to have a nice big lunch, with lots of carbohydrates. Not too many vegetables, they'll give him wind. Nice bit of roast beef and Yorkshire pudding is good, with some roast potatoes, and then a slice or two of sponge cake at tea time.'

‘Good God, I don't think I can manage all that. In my book it says grilled fish and grilled vegetables,' said his tired, thin, elegant mother.

‘
Some
vegetables are all right,' grumbled Margaret. ‘Not onions or garlic, though, or anything too spicy. I had one mother had a curry on my day off! The baby was howling its head off when I got back. “Save me, Margaret! Mummy's set my little digestive system on fire!” Personally, I always say, “I'll have the meat and two veg, but don't worry too much about the veg.”'

Robert had stuffed a cushion under his T-shirt and was tottering around the room pretending to be Margaret. Once his head was jammed full of someone's words he had to get them out. He was so involved in his performance that he didn't notice his father coming into the room.

‘What are you doing?' asked his father, half knowing already.

‘I was just being Margaret.'

‘That's all we need – another Margaret. Come down and have some tea.'

‘I'm that stuffed already,' said Robert, patting his cushion. ‘Daddy, when Margaret leaves, I'll still be here to give Mummy bad advice about how to look after babies. And I won't charge you anything.'

‘Things are looking up,' said his father, holding out his hand to pull Robert up. Robert groaned and staggered across the floor and the two of them headed downstairs, sharing their secret joke.

After tea Robert refused to join the others outside. All they did was talk about his brother and speculate about his state of mind. Walking up the stairs, his decision grew heavier with each step, and by the time he reached the landing he was in two minds. Eventually, he sank to the floor and looked down through the banisters, wondering if his parents would notice his sad and wounded departure.

In the hall, angular blocks of evening light slanted across the floor and stretched up the walls. One piece of light, reflected in the mirror, had broken away and trembled on the ceiling. Thomas was trying to comment. His mother, who understood his thoughts, took him over to the mirror and showed him where the light bounced off the glass.

His father came into the hall and handed a bright red drink to Margaret.

‘Ooh, thank you very much,' said Margaret. ‘I shouldn't really get tipsy on top of my sunstroke. Frankly, this is more of a holiday for me than a job, with you being so involved and that. Oh, look, Baby's admiring himself in the mirror.' She leant the pink shine of her face towards Thomas.

‘You can't tell whether you're over here or over there, can you?'

‘I think he knows that he's in his body rather than stuck to a piece of glass,' said Robert's father. ‘He hasn't read Lacan's essay on the mirror stage yet, that's when the real confusion sets in.'

‘Ooh, well, you'd better stick to Peter Rabbit, then,' chuckled Margaret, taking a gulp of the red liquid.

‘Much as I'd love to join you outside,' said his father, ‘I have a million important letters to answer.'

‘Ooh, Daddy's going to be answering his important letters,' said Margaret, breathing the red smell into Thomas's face. ‘You'll just have to content yourself with Margaret and Mummy.'

She swung her way towards the front door. The lozenge of light disappeared from the ceiling and then flickered back. Robert's parents stared at each other silently.

As they stepped outside, he imagined his brother feeling the vast space around him.

He stole halfway down the stairs and looked through the doorway. A golden light was claiming the tops of the pines and the bone-white stones of the olive grove. His mother, still barefoot, walked over the grass and sat under their favourite pepper tree. Crossing her legs and raising her knees slightly, she placed his brother in the hammock formed by her skirt, still holding him with one hand and stroking his side with the other. Her face was dappled by the shadow of the small bright leaves that dangled around them.

Robert wandered hesitantly outside, not sure where he belonged. Nobody called him and so he turned round the corner of the house as if he had always meant to go down to the second pond and look at the goldfish. Glancing back, he saw the stick with sparkly wheels that Margaret had bought his brother at the little carousel in Lacoste. The stub of the stick had been planted in the ground near the pepper tree. The wheels spun in the wind, gold and pink and blue and green. ‘It's the colour and the movement,' said Margaret when she bought it, ‘they love that.' He had snatched it from the corner of his brother's pram and run around the carousel, making the wheels turn. When he was swishing it through the air he somehow broke the stick and everyone got upset on his brother's behalf because he never really got the chance to enjoy his sparkly windmill before it was broken. Robert's father had asked him a lot of questions, or rather the same question in a lot of different ways, as if it would do him good to admit that he had broken it on purpose. Do you think you're jealous? Do you think you're angry that he's getting all the attention and the new toys? Do you? Do you? Do you? Well, he had just said it was an accident and wouldn't budge. And it really was an accident, but it so happened that he did hate his brother, and he wished that he didn't. Couldn't his parents remember what it was like when it was just the three of them? They loved each other so much that it hurt when one of them left the room. What had been wrong with having just him on his own? Wasn't he enough? Wasn't he good enough? They used to sit on the lawn, where his brother was now, and throw each other the red ball (he had hidden it; Thomas wasn't going to get that as well) and whether he caught it or dropped it, they had all laughed and everything was perfect. How could they want to spoil that?

Maybe he was too old. Maybe babies were better. Babies were impressed by pretty well anything. Take the fish pond he was throwing pebbles into. He had seen his mother carrying Thomas to the edge of the pond and pointing to the fish, saying, ‘Fish.' It was no use trying that sort of thing with Robert. What he couldn't help wondering was how his brother was supposed to know whether she meant the pond, the water, the weeds, the clouds reflected on the water, or the fish, if he could see them. How did he even know that ‘Fish' was a thing rather than a colour or something that you do? Sometimes, come to think of it, it was something to do.

Once you got words you thought the world was everything that could be described, but it was also what couldn't be described. In a way things were more perfect when you couldn't describe anything. Having a brother made Robert wonder what it had been like when he only had his own thoughts to guide him. Once you locked into language, all you could do was shuffle the greasy pack of a few thousand words that millions of people had used before. There might be little moments of freshness, not because the life of the world has been successfully translated but because a new life has been made out of this thought stuff. But before the thoughts got mixed up with words, it wasn't as if the dazzle of the world hadn't been exploding in the sky of his attention.

Suddenly, he heard his mother scream.

‘What have you done to him?' she shouted.

He sprinted round the corner of the terrace and met his father running out of the front door. Margaret was lying on the lawn, holding Thomas sprawled on her bosom.

‘It's all right, dear, it's all right,' said Margaret. ‘Look, he's even stopped crying. I took the fall, you see, on my bottom. It's my training. I think I may have broken my finger, but there's no need to worry about silly old Margaret as long as no harm has come to the baby.'

‘That's the first sensible thing I've ever heard you say,' said his mother, who never said anything unkind. She lifted Thomas out of Margaret's arms and kissed his head again and again. She was taut with anger, but as she kissed him tenderness started to drown it out.

‘Is he all right?' asked Robert.

‘I think so,' said his mother.

‘I don't want him to be hurt,' Robert said, and they walked back into the house together, leaving Margaret talking on the ground.

*   *   *

The next morning, they were all hiding from Margaret in his parents' bedroom. Robert's father had to drive Margaret to the airport that afternoon.

‘I suppose we ought to go down,' said his mother, closing the poppers of Thomas's jumpsuit, and lifting him into her arms.

‘No,' howled his father, throwing himself onto the bed.

‘Don't be such a baby.'

‘Having a baby makes you more childish, haven't you noticed?'

‘I haven't got time to be more childish, that's a privilege reserved for fathers.'

‘You would have time if you were getting any competent help.'

‘Come on,' said Robert's mother, reaching out to his father with her spare hand.

He clasped it lightly but didn't move.

‘I can't decide which is worse,' he said, ‘talking to Margaret, or listening to her.'

‘Listening to her,' Robert voted. ‘That's why I'm going to do my Margaret imitation all the time after she's gone.'

‘Thanks a lot,' said his mother. ‘Look, even Thomas is smiling at such a mad idea.'

‘That's not smiling, dear,' grumbled Robert, ‘that's wind tormenting his little insides.'

They all started laughing and then his mother said, ‘Shhh, she might hear us,' but it was too late, Robert was determined to entertain them. Swinging his body sideways to lubricate the forward motion, he rocked over to his mother's side.

‘It's no use trying to blind me with science, dear,' he said, ‘I can tell he doesn't like that formula you're giving him, even if it is made by organic goats. When I was in Saudi Arabia – she was a princess, actually – I said to them, “I can't work with this formula, I have to have the Cow and Gate Gold Standard,” and they said to me, “With all your experience, Margaret, we trust you completely,” and they had some flown out from England in their private jet.'

‘How do you remember all this?' asked his mother. ‘It's terrifying. I told her that we didn't have a private jet.'

‘Oh, money was no object to them,' Robert went on, with a proud little toss of his head. ‘One day I remarked, you know, quite
casually
, on how nice the Princess's slippers were, and the next thing I knew there was a pair waiting for me in my bedroom. The same thing happened with the Prince's camera. It was quite embarrassing, actually. Every time I did it, I'd say to myself, “Margaret, you must learn to keep your mouth shut.'”

Robert wagged his finger in the air, and then sat down on the bed next to his father and carried on with a sad sigh.

‘But then it would just pop out, you know: “Ooh, that's a lovely shawl, dear; lovely soft fabric,” and sure enough I'd find one spread out on my bed that evening. I had to get a new suitcase in the end.'

His parents were trying not to make too much noise but they had hopeless giggles. As long as he was performing they hardly paid any attention to Thomas at all.

‘Now it's even harder for us to go down,' said his mother, joining them on the bed.

‘It's impossible,' said his father, ‘there's a force field around the door.'

Robert ran up to the door and pretended to bounce back. ‘Ah,' he shouted, ‘it's the Margaret field. There's no way through, Captain.'

He rolled around on the floor for a while and then climbed back onto the bed with his parents.

‘We're like the dinner guests in
The Exterminating Angel
,' said his father. ‘We might be here for days. We might have to be rescued by the army.'

‘We've got to pull ourselves together,' said his mother. ‘We must try to end her visit on a kind note.'

None of them moved.

‘Why do you think it's so hard for us to leave?' asked his father. ‘Do you think we're using Margaret as a scapegoat? We feel guilty that we can't protect Thomas from the basic suffering of life, so we pretend that Margaret is the cause – something like that.'

‘Let's not complicate it, darling,' said his mother. ‘She's the most boring person we've ever met and she's no good at looking after Thomas. That's why we don't want to see her.'

Silence. Thomas had fallen asleep, and so there was a general agreement to keep quiet. They all settled comfortably on the bed. Robert stretched out and rested his head on his folded hands, scanning the beams of the ceiling. Familiar patterns of stains and knots emerged from the woodwork. At first he could take or leave the profile of the man with the pointed nose and the helmet, but soon the figure refused to be dissolved back into the grain, acquiring wild eyes and hollow cheeks. He knew the ceiling well, because he used to lie underneath it when it was his grandmother's bedroom. His parents had moved in after his grandmother was taken to the nursing home. He still remembered the old silver-framed photograph that used to be on her desk. He had been curious about it because it was taken when his grandmother had been only a few days old. The baby in the picture was smothered in pelts and satin and lace, her head bound in a beaded turban. Her eyes had a fanatical intensity that looked to him like panic at being buried in the immensity of her mother's shopping.