And then the Amitriptyline woman appeared wearing the same green sweater and tweedy skirt that he had first seen her in. He remembered thinking that she must have come with a small suitcase.
‘But the bastards won’t give me any…’ she was saying to Jill, a tearful member of Patrick’s Depression Group.
Jill had run sobbing out of that morning’s session, after her suggestion that the group treat the word God as an acronym for Gift of Desperation had been greeted by the bitter and abrasive Terry with the words, ‘Excuse me while I vomit.’
Anxious to avoid conversation with the two women, Patrick bolted behind the dark lateral branches of a cedar tree.
‘You lucky thing…’ The Amitriptyline speech continued on its inevitable course.
‘But I haven’t been given any,’ Jill protested, clearly feeling the presence of God, as tears welled up in her eyes again.
‘The last time I saw her, I got stuck behind a cedar tree for twenty minutes,’ Patrick explained to Johnny, as they walked into a pale blue room with high French windows overlooking a placid communal garden. ‘When I saw her coming, I dashed behind a tree while they took over the bench I’d been sitting on.’
‘Serves you right for abandoning your depression buddy,’ said Johnny.
‘I was having an epiphany.’
‘Oh, well…’
‘It all seems so far away.’
‘The epiphany or the Priory?’
‘Both,’ said Patrick, ‘or at least they did until that woman turned up.’
‘Maybe insight comes when you need to get out of the madhouse. The loony downstairs might be a catalyst.’
‘Anything might be a catalyst,’ said Patrick. ‘Anything might be evidence, anything might be a clue. We can never afford to relax our vigilance.’
‘Fortunately we can help with that,’ Johnny slipped again into his American doctor’s voice, ‘thanks to Vigilante. Fought over by fighter pilots, presiding over presidents, terrifying terrorists, the busy-ness behind the business of America. Vigilante: “Keeping Our Leaders on the Job Around the Clock.”’ Johnny’s voice switched to a rapid murmur. ‘Do not take Vigilante if you are suffering from high blood pressure, low blood pressure, or normal blood pressure. Consult your physician if you experience chest pains, swollen eyelids, elongated ears…’
Patrick tuned out of the disclaimer and looked around at the almost empty room. Nancy was already deep in a plate of sandwiches at the far end of a long table loaded with too much food for the small party of mourners. Henry was standing next to her, talking to Robert. Behind the table was an exceptionally pretty waitress, with a long neck and high cheekbones and short black hair. She gave Patrick a friendly open smile. She must be an aspiring actress between auditions. She was absurdly attractive. He wanted to leave with her straight away. Why did she seem so irresistible? Did the table of almost untouched food make her seem generous as well as lovely? What was the proper approach on such an occasion? My mother just died and I need cheering up? My mother never gave me enough to eat but you look as if you could do much better? Patrick let out a short bark of private laughter at the absurdity of these tyrannical impulses, the depth of his dependency, the fantasy of being saved, the fantasy of being nourished. There was just too much past weighing down on his attention, taking it below the waterline, flooding him with primitive, pre-verbal urges. He imagined himself shaking off his unconscious, like a dog just out of the sea. He walked over to the table, asked for a glass of sparkling water and gave the waitress a simple smile with no future. He thanked her and turned away crisply. There was something hollow about the performance; he still found her utterly adorable, but he saw the attraction for what it was: his own hunger, with no interpersonal implications whatsoever.
He was reminded of Jill from his Depression Group, who had complained one day that she had ‘a relationship problem — well, the problem is that the person I have a relationship with doesn’t know that we have a relationship’. This confession had elicited peals of derisive laughter from Terry.
‘No wonder you’re in treatment for the ninth time,’ said Terry.
Jill hurried from the room, sobbing.
‘You’re going to have to apologize for that,’ said Gordon.
‘But I meant it.’
‘That’s why you have to apologize.’
‘But I wouldn’t mean it if I apologized,’ Terry argued.
‘Fake it to make it, man,’ said Gary, the American whose opportunistic tourist of a mother had created such a flurry during Patrick’s first Group session.
Patrick wondered if he was faking it to make it — a phrase that had always filled him with disgust — by turning away so resolutely from a woman he would rather have seduced? No, it was the seduction that would have been faking it, the Casanova complex that would have forced him to disguise his infantile yearnings with the appearance of adult behaviour: courtesy, conversation, copulation, commentary; elaborate devices for distancing him from the impotent baby whose screams he could not bear to hear. The glory of his mother’s death was that she could no longer get in the way of his own maternal instincts with her presumptive maternal presence and stop him from embracing the inconsolable wreck that she had given birth to.
12
As the room began to fill, Patrick was drawn out of his private thoughts and back into his role as host. Nicholas walked past him with haughty indifference to join Nancy at the far end of the room. Mary came over with the Amitriptyline woman in tow, followed closely by Thomas and Erasmus.
‘Patrick,’ said Mary, ‘you should meet Fleur, she’s an old friend of your mother’s.’
Patrick shook hands with her politely, marvelling at her whimsical French name. Now that she had taken off her overcoat he could see the green sweater and tweed skirt he recognized from the Priory. Bright red lipstick in the shape of a mouth shadowed Fleur’s own mouth, about half an inch to the right, giving the impression of a circus clown caught in the middle of removing her make-up.
‘How did you know…’ Patrick began.
‘Dada!’ said Thomas, too excited not to interrupt. ‘Erasmus is a real philosopher!’
‘Or at any rate a realist philosopher,’ said Erasmus.
‘I know, darling,’ said Patrick, ruffling his son’s hair. Thomas hadn’t seen Erasmus for a year and a half, and clearly the category of philosopher had come into focus during that time.
‘I mean,’ said Thomas, looking very philosophical, ‘I always think the trouble with God is: who created God? And,’ he added, getting into the swing of it, ‘who created whoever created God?’
‘Ah, an infinite regress,’ said Erasmus sadly.
‘Okay, then,’ said Thomas, ‘who created infinite regress?’ He looked up at his father to check that he was arguing philosophically.
Patrick gave him an encouraging smile.
‘He’s frightfully clever, isn’t he?’ said Fleur. ‘Unlike my lot: they could hardly string a sentence together until they were well into their teens, and then it was only to insult me — and their father, who deserved it of course. Absolute monsters.’
Mary slipped away with Thomas and Erasmus, leaving Patrick stranded with Fleur.
‘That’s teenagers for you,’ said Patrick, with resolute blandness. ‘So, how did you know Eleanor?’
‘I adored your mother. I think she was one of the very few good people I ever met. She saved my life really — I suppose it must have been thirty years ago — by giving me a job in one of the charity shops she used to run for the Save the Children Fund.’