Never Mind by Edward St. Aubyn

Author:Edward St. Aubyn [Aubyn, Edward St.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Picador
Published: 2018-04-27T00:00:00+00:00

8

DURING LUNCH DAVID FELT that he had perhaps pushed his disdain for middle-class prudery a little too far. Even at the bar of the Cavalry and Guards Club one couldn’t boast about homosexual, paedophiliac incest with any confidence of a favourable reception. Who could he tell that he had raped his five-year-old son? He could not think of a single person who would not prefer to change the subject – and some would behave far worse than that. The experience itself had been short and brutish, but not altogether nasty. He smiled at Yvette, said how ravenous he was, and helped himself to the brochette of lamb and flageolets.

‘Monsieur has been playing the piano all morning.’

‘And playing with Patrick,’ David added piously.

Yvette said they were so exhausting at that age.

‘Exhausting!’ David agreed.

Yvette left the room and David poured another glass of the Romanée-Conti that he had taken from the cellar for dinner, but had decided to drink on his own. There were always more bottles and it went so well with lamb. ‘Nothing but the best, or go without’: that was the code he lived by, as long as the ‘go without’ didn’t actually happen. There was no doubt about it, he was a sensualist, and as to this latest episode, he hadn’t done anything medically dangerous, just a little rubbing between the buttocks, nothing that would not happen to the boy at school in due course. If he had committed any crime, it was to set about his son’s education too assiduously. He was conscious of already being sixty, there was so much to teach him and so little time.

He rang the little bell beside his plate and Yvette came back into the dining room.

‘Excellent lamb,’ said David.

‘Would Monsieur like the tarte Tatin?’

He had no room left, alas, for tarte Tatin. Perhaps she could tempt Patrick to have some for tea. He just wanted coffee. Could she bring it to the drawing room? Of course she could.

David’s legs had stiffened and when he rose from his chair he staggered for a couple of steps, drawing in his breath sharply through his teeth. ‘God damn,’ he said out loud. He had suddenly lost all tolerance for his rheumatic pains and decided to go upstairs to Eleanor’s bathroom, a pharmaceutical paradise. He very seldom used painkillers, preferring a steady flow of alcohol and the consciousness of his own heroism.

Opening the cupboard under Eleanor’s basin he was struck by the splendour and variety of the tubes and bottles: clear ones and yellow ones and dark ones, orange ones with green caps, in plastic and glass, from half a dozen countries, all urging the consumer not to exceed the stated dose. There were even envelopes marked Seconal and Mandrax, stolen, he imagined, from other people’s bathroom cabinets. Rummaging about among the barbiturates and stimulants and anti-depressants and hypnotics, he found surprisingly few painkillers. He had turned up only a bottle of codeine, a few diconol and some distalgesics, when he discovered, at the

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.