Inner Circle (18 page)

Patrick shook his head violently. He didn’t want that, he wanted to be with Dolly-mum as in the good old days.

2

He didn’t kill her with the potato knife. He only peeled off a bit of her skin. A year later he tried to strangle her with a leather leash he had pinched from Nicky the poodle, but leather wasn’t much good for that kind of thing: it resisted the pull.

Patrick felt very sorry about the attempt and the failure, kissed Dolly’s hands and the place on her throat where the leash had left a slight bruise. They both wept and said nice sweet things to each other. She was his only mum, much nicer really than Vera with her blue hair and her blue-eyed cat; nothing, nothing in the whole world would ever part them, because he was Dolly’s boy, Patrick. Oh, how warm her shaking hand felt on his cheek; how beautifully she sobbed over the tea-pot and one solitary cup with a lipstick smudge as crooked as her lips.

The Indian lady-doctor was changed for a nasty yes-doctor who insisted on clear answers, no-sir, yes-doctor, this no, that yes. Patrick ran away from him, not far, only to Sindra’s place. And Sindra gave his dad a tinkle, and they talked for at least half an hour, while Patrick fiddled with the plastic telephone cord and thought of Dolly-mum.

Every morning Dolly wept at breakfast. She couldn’t swallow a thing, she said, and Patrick like a good boy soaked brown bread for her in tea and in milk. Some she ate, some she threw up straight onto the white tablecloth which Patrick didn’t think polite. He forgave her that as she had forgiven other things.

One day, Dolly-mum had a most unpleasant attack of weeping. She vomited all over the carpet and broke her blue tea-pot which she loved because it had been in the family for so long. This brought more weeping, louder and uglier. She seemed to be making faces at Patrick, now from the top of her nose down, now from her chin upwards.

He became very nervous himself, and thought quickly of two solutions: either something suppler than the leash, one of her stockings for instance, or the risk of ringing up his father, though it was only a quarter to eleven.

He chose the telephone, because it was there, glaring at him with its white dial, and Dolly was wearing both her stockings. Patrick would have disliked pulling them off her legs.

Dolly-mum had a nervous breakdown and was taken to a quiet house in the country. After a few months she returned and there was much talk between his dad and the nasty yes-doctor about Patrick, whether he should see his second mummy or stay away from her. Only a week elapsed, and Dolly herself wanted to be with her sweet boy, she even promised to be very good and not to weep. She didn’t, good old Dolly, and the idyllic reunion lasted three long eventful days.

On the second day Patrick took Dolly-mum to the Zoo by bus. It was his own idea. Augustus the father approved of it and gave him a couple of quid extra for entertainment.

‘Treat the old girl to a lunch somewhere off Baker Street, not too near the Zoo, though; the neighbourhood stinks of monkeys.’ Augustus patted him absentmindedly. ‘A boy of fifteen, you know, should occasionally entertain his lady chums, but don’t go to a pub called “Ye Olde Irelande”—’ he pronounced final e’s, ‘the place stinks of monkeys, too.’

Alas, they couldn’t have lunch because of the parrots, yellow, green, violet, with hooked beaks and screeching hello-voices.

They were perched on twigs and swings, they flapped their wings and stared at you sideways. Dolly-mum stood amidst the cages, getting redder and redder despite the powder she had on her face and the powder she tried to put on. Finally, she gasped, looked sideways at Patrick just like one of the parrots and after another gasp shrieked so loud that an attendant in uniform rushed in and gave her something to smell. Dolly-mum fainted, came to, fainted again at the sight of the parrots, and the whole treat ended for her in a taxi. The fare to South Kensington cost Patrick less than the lunch he was going to give her.

At home he behaved like a real son, rang everybody he could think of to tell them what had happened, then he boiled some milk which she drank gratefully. His dad arrived, made a mess of things by trying to cook a meal; then it was the doctor’s turn to arrive and fuss about the house. Augustus said he would stay the night. He did and fell asleep as soon as he had drunk the last few drops of Dolly’s white port. Patrick took over: he wound the clock, shut the front door, went to the loo, washed and in the end entered Dolly-mum’s bedroom to kiss her good night.

She was asleep, poor dear, and very pretty she looked in her pink nightie with a loose silk scarf round her neck. All day long she wore it, and in bed too, because she felt cold there, Dolly said, ever since they had taken her in the dark car to that dark house in the country. She couldn’t remember where the house was, in Dorset maybe, or in Cornwall.

Patrick untied the scarf to find that place he had once bruised, and to prove that he meant no harm whatsoever, he lay a long, loving kiss there. Dolly-mum opened her eyes, shrieked horribly, jumped out of bed and then through the window, straight onto a small bit of lawn in her back garden. Even if she had wanted to break her neck, she couldn’t possibly have succeeded from that ground-floor window and on that bouncy lawn.

And the poodle barked, and woke Augustus who said brightly: ‘Ah—where am I?

Must have snoozed off in your lap, naughty girl.’ A dark car arrived in the morning, and two strong men carried Dolly-mum in a chair with straps. They took her to another home in the country.

‘Don’t imagine things, Patrick, my boy, she’s living in a lovely cottage with a thatched roof and a cock crowing from the top.’ His father said this a month later, when Patrick had already heard from the rheumatic lady about Dolly-mum’s funeral. She had attended it herself, and the poodle Nicky was with her. ‘I looked for you there, Patrick, but you know how poor my eyes are.’

It was Sindra the beautiful who found out about the cemetery and drove Patrick there in her American car. She wanted him to see for himself that it was all over, the attachment, the compulsion and the guilt. No, he hadn’t caused Dolly’s death, how could he, since she was staying in a home at the time. As for nervous breakdowns, they were nowadays no more unusual than ‘flu, and Sindra sealed her pronouncement with an exotic Indian smile. ‘Oh, what a wonderful shade of green,’ she said to a man who was placing new turf on Dolly-mum’s grave. The old square, moulting at the edges, lay rolled up next to a marble slab which reminded Patrick of one of the chimneys in Queen’s Gate Terrace. No, he wouldn’t have a nervous breakdown, ever.

And during the following six years he had none. He strolled gaily along the Fulham Road, the King’s Road, Queen’s Gate, through parks and squares, his debonair self on top of the world, and only sometimes a tiny-weeny bit below. Patrick was riding towards his twenty-first birthday on the crest of euphoria, and whenever he sank a little, for a day or an hour, it felt like dropping into a pit of depression. So euphoric he stayed on the sea of other people’s troubles. He could be most sympathetic though, when he heard of someone’s breakdown.

‘I’m so sorry, my dear John,’ he said to an elderly acquaintance who had an antique shop in Chelsea, a mistress at the cash-box, a tom-cat upstairs and a wife in a mental home. ‘I didn’t know she’d fallen ill again. Last time I saw you both, she looked so beautifully sunburnt and relaxed.’

‘That must have been Liz.’ He meant his mistress in charge of the cash-box. His wife was no beauty.

‘No, no! it was your charming wife, I am positive, John.’ And Patrick patted him on the back. John knew how useless it would be to tell Patrick that his wife hadn’t been out for seven years.

‘Well, what can one do? Life is hard, Boris, that’s all.’ He tried to get away from Patrick but Patrick wouldn’t let him. No chum of his, however pressed for time, should go uncomforted. Besides, they had cats in common.

‘Are you hard up by any chance? Would you like a quid or two? Please take three.’ And immediately Patrick began rummaging in his pockets.

‘No, thank you very much. Really, I have no financial worries, I assure you, Boris.’

‘Glad to hear it, John. But any time you. . . .’

‘I know, thank you again. Most kind of you.’

‘Look, John.’ Patrick put his arm round the man’s stiff neck and let Miss Siam drop on to the pavement, which the cat did with her usual grace. ‘Listen to me, John, you mustn’t think your beautiful wife is a mental case. Everybody one meets has had a nervous breakdown. It’s quite natural these days like—oh, I don’t know—like having a religious background. You must look at it that way, John. And how’s your cat?’

‘Very well, good-bye Boris.’ The man was off. ‘Give me a tinkle!’ he shouted after John, ‘whenever you feel a bit depressed.’ The next chum Patrick bumped into was euphoric like himself and smelt of beer and whisky.

‘How’s life, Patrick?’

‘Fine, splendid. Just fine.’

‘Your new job all right?’ This puzzled Patrick, for he had no job. But he was always ready to oblige a friend as interested in him as this nice tippler whose name he couldn’t remember. And Patrick mounted the crest of an optimistic wave which would make the conversation flow.

‘Ah—the job! I’ve been asked to take up a post in Coimbra. Teaching English, you know.’

‘Splendid, Patrick—marvellous!’ The drunk chum sounded enthusiastic. Patrick loved it when people were enthusiastic while talking to him. Then he heard: ‘How’s your Portuguese? Excellent, no doubt.’

‘Oh—’ Patrick was taken by surprise but wouldn’t stoop to covering up. ‘Thought they spoke Spanish. Funny that. Well, I’ll know both Spanish and Portuguese in a couple of months, ho-ho-ho!’ His dad’s laugh came in useful on such ambiguous occasions. ‘As a matter of fact—’ he loved supplying facts—’I am taking my G.C.E. exams this June.

Seven subjects at the Ordinary Level, three at the Advanced. Do you think’—he wished he knew the chap’s name—’do you think I should take English at the Advanced Level because of this job in Coimbra?’

Patrick never sat for any examination and had nothing on paper to prove that he could read or write; his education had been entirely private and consisted of hours and hours spent in the consulting rooms of psycho-analysts. Yet he still had his two mummies rocking a little cradle of guilt, and he still startled people by saying he was backward.

‘It’s quite normal these days: Patrick explained. ‘You see both my mothers had a nervous breakdown. It’s natural too. What? Oh, yes, they’re all right now, thank you.’

His first mummy, as a matter of fact, had hers in New York, while she was singing on the stage. Vera’s voice simply caved in, and the opera selected by fate for her breakdown happened to be
Boris Godunov.
When he heard of this, Boris Patrick bought himself a Siamese cat on a silk leash.

3

‘You shouldn’t have told me about them drowning in the Tube. I shall have a nasty dream, as horrid as that about the turf being peeled off a grave. Have you ever smelt powder in your dreams? I have.’

Patrick was talking to John who had an antique shop full of ricketty junk, with one live mistress at the cash-box. John, like Patrick’s father, had some reminiscences from his remote war days, but preferred to repeat the more horrific ones. This time he described at length how one underground shelter was flooded during the blitz, drowning several children.

‘You’re keen on knowing things about the Tube, Boris. I thought it might interest you as part of history.’

‘Well—you shouldn’t have told me about them drowning, John. It worries me enough to imagine all those tree roots trying to push into the Underground. And the people inside the bottle on that picture about the rush-hour, remember John, it turns my stomach. Now you’ve told me. . . .’

‘It’s from the past, Boris. History is like that, always nasty.’

‘You want me to look after your tom, is that it?’ Patrick spoke hurriedly to obliterate that watery picture of horror. John goggled and sat on a plushy piece of his junk.

‘How did you guess, Boris?’

‘You mentioned your holiday before you started going on and on about the shelter in the Tube.’

‘So I did. Would you be so very kind once more, and Boris. . . .’

Patrick didn’t listen. He would oblige his friend, though there were two things against the tom. He was a rather common and lecherous tom, sure to bother the aristocratic Miss Siam with his sexual attentions; and moreover he wore a collar of twisted leather, more suitable for a poodle on a leash and the sight of such leather upset Patrick’s euphoria.

He had to take Miss Siam to a vet for a monthly check-up, the appointment was fixed for Wednesday. On Monday he went to the Classic cinema and saw a film called
Hamlet
with Laurence Olivier whom he adored on account of his flaxen hair. He also adored Hamlet, because he was rude to his mother and very sad afterwards. Patrick had a chum at the cinema, most polite and a manager as well; the courteous chum said it was English Lit. as it used to be writ, so Patrick told him that he would most certainly take English Lit. and
Hamlet
at his next G.C.E. exam. The manager was delighted.

On Tuesday Patrick dyed his hair Scandinavian blond. It took some time because of the blue which the homopatho hairdresser had to paint out for ages. The result seemed to have pleased everybody he passed in the streets; people turned round, a builder from a scaffolding cried ‘Hi, Larry!’, a policeman at the traffic lights dropped his whistle. To show how English Lit. looked on his head, Patrick went to the cinema, impressed the manager and got a free ticket to see those angry scenes again. ‘Lovely,’ said a man next to him in the row and touched his knee. A minute later the hand moved higher, but not as high as his flaxen hair, so disappointed Patrick left the gloomy homopatho and the mother scene. At home he slept with his hair in a net.

The vet passed Miss Siam as fit for any misadventure and this called for a celebration. She would always snooze on public transport, now she needed a good rest after the vet’s prodding, so Patrick decided to give her the treat he once loved as a boy: a double ride on the Inner Circle.