Patrick Parker's Progress Read online

  'Would you like to ...?' he began, but his voice trailed off.

  Audrey gave him a dazzling smile. 'I thought you'd never ask,' she said.

  He downed his pint in one. Now or never, he thought. The point of no return. She had acquitted herself fairly well that day, apart from the Godiva business. For most of the time she listened to him attentively and made sensible comments and she was, he could not deny it, enjoyable company. And attractive.

  'Let's go then,' he said, standing up. Audrey tucked her hand under his arm and they walked out of the pub into the late November darkness. The stars shone in the heavens (which Audrey found very appropriate) and the air was cold and fresh. This was it. This was the future. They would be a couple at last. And she could almost, almost smell the bridal bouquet.

  On the bus Patrick talked and she listened. They were taking their place in the modern world. They were Moderns. They must honour the past but build in the future. Modernity was everything. And Modernity did not - er - go with - er - virginity. She blushed at the word. Well, not for her either. 'You bet,' she said again, surprising them both, and she began to sing. 'Che sera sera ...', not caring that the people on the bus turned to stare. We are Moderns, thought Patrick, trying desperately not to feel embarrassed.

  'What does it mean?' he asked.

  And she sang again, 'Che sera sera - whatever will be will be - the future's not ours to see, che sera sera ...'

  Exactly the opposite of the way he felt, which was that he knew every step he must take, and he would take it, he was the future.

  And this would be an important step into it. With Audrey. Known and trusted. She was still singing, smiling away at him, eyes bright, shoulders swaying slightly in the seat. Uninhibited. It must have been the gin and lime, he thought, which was a very good sign.

  Tiptoeing up the stairs, past his landlady's door, she got a fit of silent giggles. Then he did too. Clinging to each other, shaking and almost bursting with it, they fell into his room. It felt as if neither of them would ever be able to stop laughing ever again... But when he closed the door behind them and they faced each other they were instantly silent and serious once more. The hour was nigh. No going back.

  In preparation, with hope in his heart, Patrick had pinned up a new poster at the end of his bed. She could hardly look at it for blushing, yet she could hardly not. The name above the poster's black and white photograph was Eikoh Hosoe. The picture was of a male (very) torso and a female (obviously) torso, standing pressed frontally into each other - so close no leaf could pass between them - and photographed from the side. It was like a landscape of skin, joined at every place that - well - they should - or should not be ... It was a confusing image to Audrey because there was nothing very rude in it - you could not see a nipple or any of their private parts or the - er -other bits - yet it was the most naked and exciting picture of two bodies she had ever seen.

  When she did manage to look at it properly she sighed and said, 'It's beautiful. You can feel what they can feel of each other physically, and what they are feeling emotionally. It's a picture of feeling.'

  Patrick was somewhat taken aback. 'Really?' he said. He thought it was a good, sexy picture. He peered again. 'Well,' he said, nodding with sudden gravitas, ‘I see it as plastic forms taking on a sexual overtone. But at the same time appearing as detached as sculpture.'

  'Oh no,' she said. 'Well, yes,' she said, going up to it as if she would drink it in. 'But it is also not like sculpture at all. It's living. Human.'

  'I mean sculptural in its form. Not marble or bloody bronzes,' he said irritably.

  She was still staring at the poster. He hadn't mean it to stir her brain up, only her body. Just when you want them to see the erotic, he thought peevishly, they go and find the artistic.

  'Is it a new exhibition?' she asked.

  'Yes,' he said impatiently, moving closer. 'But it's in Tokyo. He's Japanese.'

  She read the words beneath the image. "The full potential power of every medium is dependent upon the purity of its use.'

  'Modernism,' he said, 'is purity. No taint, no homage, no leaning for support on the past. The New.'

  'Why,' she said, still staring hard. 'It is not rude at all - it's pure. It's the heart speaking.' She read the quotation underneath the photograph. 'Quotation by the photographer: "I would like to express Love in my nude photography. This Love must flow like a stream beneath all photographs of the nude.'"

  "The Japanese,' said Patrick, 'are streets ahead of us culturally. Well - in everything really.'

  . 'Even love?' she asked with daring. One of them had to get down to it.

  'Particularly in building design,' he said. 'Way out front.'

  They stood staring at each other. Love? he thought. She moved closer. Words came to him smooth on the tongue, and he heard himself saying, 'Well then - let's see if we can get ahead of them for once -'

  They smiled into each other's eyes. It was going to be all right. They moved as close together as the picture above their heads.

  Poor Audrey, yielding herself up to the romance of it, did not know what had hit her. In a moment of supreme clumsiness Patrick stepped towards her, overbalanced as she stepped back with a little squeak, and, with her beneath him, they both fell backwards onto the bed. Which might, thought Audrey, have been filmstar romantic if she hadn't caught her chin a right crack on the headboard. She saw stars and had tears in her eyes. Which was approximately how she knew it was supposed to be, even if it was for the wrong reason. They lay there, hearts beating, waiting for the landlady's step on the stair. It did not come.

  More to the point, thought Patrick, neither did his mother.

  Beneath him everything seemed to be taking place exactly as it should. Including Audrey's responses.

  'Oh Patrick,' she said, very, very happily. 'You are wonderful.'

  Perfect.

  Afterwards she felt, as she looked up at the poster, that she was Modern at last. Although part of her, the secret part, was not Modern at all because that part of her was imagining walking down the aisle, holding white carnations and freesias, or perhaps little pink roses - or maybe something else - and finally changing her name from Wapshott to the infinitely more desirable name of Parker.

  Patrick, on the other hand, enjoyed the entire experience intensely, until it was over, and then he was unsure what to do. He put his arm around Audrey's shoulders and lay looking up at the ceiling and wished that he smoked. They fell asleep and the Eikoh Hosoe poster was the last thing they saw until morning.

  Audrey went about with a spring in her step that did not go unnoticed among the girls at the Exchange. Where it was still considered not quite the thing to do and where the claim 'I am a Modernist' fell on largely unimpressed ears. 'Just watch you don't get caught’ was the favourite phrase, muttered darkly. Audrey said that was not likely to happen because they only ever went to his digs together when the landlady was out. The speaker raised her eyebrows in mocking merriment. That was the trouble with the girls of today. Modern meant Half-baked.

  Patrick waited for his brain to atrophy, his pencil-holding hand to become palsied, his eyes to cease to have their visionary clarity - and none of it happened. Instead, he felt miles better. Energised. As part of the course curriculum he was required to design a small factory and he had been fiddling around with various possibilities for ages. Now, for the sheer, shocking pleasure of it he threw out the more conventional ideas and created a series of very simple squinch arches, applying them to the roof of the building where they looked - well -astonishing. Good, but astonishing. A cathedral to industry. Brick, wood and glass was not what was expected. Steel and asbestos and plastic were more usual for factories now. But brick, wood and glass it was. 'Just To Prove I Can,' he wrote underneath the finished elevation. The tutors saw this audacious use of materials and form and found it hard not to praise him - rather incautiously - to his face. The Course Tutor, eyeing the drawing, sighed. It was, without doubt, brilliant. More whisky was
required. He gave his star pupil a large one, too. Patrick asked the Course Tutor, the only one to keep silent, what he thought. The Course Tutor deliberated for a moment and then he looked up, smiled, patted Patrick on the shoulder and said, ‘I think you should take more water with it...'

  So what? Patrick already knew his worth. He walked out of the college with his hands in his pockets, his head up, whistling.

  'You seem to be seeing quite a lot of Audrey Wapshott’ wrote Florence to her son. (The use of her surname indicating strong disapproval.) ‘I hope you are not letting her divert you from what you went down there to do . . .' Patrick wrote back that he was not, that they were just friends. Audrey, when she sneaked a look at Florence's letter, pursed her lips and said nothing. After all, there were some things a boy wanted that a boy couldn't get from his mother, and Audrey wasn't talking oat and honey biscuits.

  Dolly and her father asked her flat-out if Patrick was behaving himself. She said that he was and that he was a perfect gentleman. He was teaching her things.

  'Like what?' asked her dad.

  'A Design for Living’ she said, off the top of her head. It was currently Patrick's favoured phrase.

  'Well, if he's got designs on you’ said her mother, 'he can forget them unless he puts a ring on your finger.'

  'He's changing the world,' said Audrey. Dolly's expression made her rather wish she hadn't.

  'All I ask is that he changes your surname’ said Dolly. 'The world will do its own changing when it wants to.'

  Dolly asked Florence what she thought. Florence said that Patrick was following his destiny and didn't have time for all that malarkey. Florence asked Dolly a week or two later what she thought. Dolly said that Audrey was a sensible girl and they were just friends. Both mothers didn't believe a word of it. Dolly was worried that Audrey would miss out on marriage if she hung around with Patrick, and Florence, who felt the miles between mother and son, worried that Audrey might take her place.

  Let battle commence, she found herself saying, as the days drew nearer for Patrick to come home for the holidays. She baked and sewed and knitted and even bought a copy of Architecture Monthly for his room. 'Let battle commence if that little madam thinks she can come up here and take him away from me.' He was, and always would be, her little builder boy.

  8

  Between Juno and Venus sits Apollo

  To 'Make a bridge of gold for him' is to enable a man to retreat from a false position without loss of dignity. Old Proverb

  Patrick arrived home. He did his bit by the turkey and plum pudding, he did his bit by the mince pies, and he ate a gratifyingly large chunk of Christmas cake. But Florence was not happy. 'Built anything yet?' asked George.

  "They hold you back,' said Patrick. But he got out his drawing pens and soon sketched the rough plan of the factory - and the hunting lodge. For the latter, George suggested he might have added a roll-up walkway - in case the land was waterlogged. Patrick thought it an interesting idea and the two bent their heads over the breakfast room table, pens and pencils in hand.

  Florence picked up the book Patrick had given her. 'Time to chuck out the cobwebs, Mum,' was what he said as he gave it to her. A particular insult for a woman who was known for her shining home. She had pursed her lips, couldn't help it. But then he put his arm round her. 'Take a look at it,' he said. 'It's about the art of food.' He emphasised the words art of food as if she was the village idiot. If she hadn't been so anxious to make this visit a happy time for him, she would have told him so. And queried why, apart from speaking down his nose to her, he was speaking down his nose in general. She was still coming to terms with his new accent - last Christmas he spoke his native Coventry - this Christmas he spoke like the Queen. Where would it all end? Patrick and George still had their heads bent over the table and the drawings and she thought that once there was a time when he would have only wanted her. She said nothing and turned the pages of his gift. A cookery book, by a woman called Elizabeth David. The wound went deep. She got up immediately and went to make turkey sandwiches. Patrick noticed the way she tossed the book down on the chair behind her.

  ‘I thought you'd like it’ said Patrick stiffly. 'After all, it's hardly avant garde any more.' He said avant garde as if she was a dimwit. We'll see about that, she thought, and got on with the turkey sandwiches. He tucked into those all right. No Art about it.

  Neither parent actually remarked on the change in their son's accent, nor did they appear to notice that he was wearing an orange silk handkerchief loosely knotted around his neck. It made a change from black roll-necks anyway.

  'So how are you finding the capital city?' asked George.

  Through a turkey sandwich Patrick said that London was amazing - inspirational. 'There's something in the air down there that feeds the mind ... It's different. Exciting.'

  We'll see about that too, thought Florence.

  For his father Patrick bought a record. Jazz. While it played Florence looked at the wall with an expression of blank incomprehension. Not helped by George jouncing around in his chair and apparently liking it. It sounded like bellyache music to her. Where was the boy who liked John McCormack and Kathleen Ferrier?

  'Who's it by?' asked George enthusiastically.

  'Miles Davis’ said Patrick.

  'Put the other side on’ his father said, sucking on his empty pipe.

  Florence looked down at her horrible book. Even the illustrations were an insult. Pictures that were all black lines and harsh - no shading, no details - nothing like the pictures she admired of Constable and Gainsborough.

  'He's good’ said Patrick, coming up behind her and making her jump. 'Johnnie Minton. Superseded now but at least he was trying to do something different.'

  'Yes’ said Florence. 'He certainly was.'

  When the Miles Davis ended Patrick produced a large, grey lumpy machine. It was a tape recorder. 'Borrowed this from college’ he said. It was called a Grundig. German, thought Florence sourly, but she said nothing.

  'And this was Audrey's present.' Patrick put on a reel of tape. 'Under Milk Wood,' announced the rolling Welsh tones of Richard Burton.

  'By Dylan Thomas.'

  They listened and when the grimly spotless Mrs Ogmore-Pritchard suggested that 'the sun could only come in if it wiped its feet' and Patrick slapped his knee and said, 'Isn't that just the way it is for the bourgeoisie?' Florence felt that she was being got at. She wondered, but again she kept it to herself - just what Patrick would do if she didn't clean his room, wash his clothes, iron his shirts and send him back to college with everything clean as a pin. He never complained of it at any rate. He might wear his navvy's trousers of corduroy and his black jumpers - but he liked them to be washed and pressed all the same. She sat there and she listened without a word of complaint, because this was her son, her only son.

  When it came to the courting couple, or lovers as they so brazenly chose to call them - and how Burton's voice rolled over the words -it was as if he was actually there in the room with them. Florence had had quite enough. Silly names and dirty people. Mog Edwards and Myfanwy Price were just plain rude.

  'Well -' she said, beyond speech.

  'Oh Mum,' said Patrick, enjoying himself (for he could take his place among them, the non-virginal, now). 'It's just the way of it today.' And he winked at his dad.

  It was then that Florence knew her son and Audrey were more than just friends. She felt sick. It did not help that George took the pipe out of his mouth and laughed a little laugh - like he knew too. Well, he would, she thought, with Lilly-Her-That-One.

  We'll also see about that, she thought, and tears came into her eyes as she looked upon her handsome, happy son. Peggy Boxer may have failed once, but she would make another plan. She took some comfort from hatching it.

  When Patrick said that Dylan Thomas had died at the age of thirty-nine, from drink, Florence could not stop herself. 'I'm not surprised,' she said.

  'Tragic,' said George.

  '
Oh I don't know,' said Patrick. 'Those whom the gods love die young...'

  'Don't tempt Fate,' said Florence.

  Patrick said airily, 'Oh - I'm not sure it isn't best for the creative spirit to die early. After all - what is there left once you get old? Nothing. All dried up.'

  George put his pipe back in his mouth. 'You'll move the goal posts soon as you get there’ he said.

  "The new cathedral opens next year’ said Florence. 'At last. I expect the Germans have been laughing at us.'

  'Too busy rebuilding Dresden I should think’ said Patrick. 'What they've done there is amazing. We, on the other hand . . .'he sniffed his Florence sniff - 'Well, I took a look on the way in. What a dog's breakfast.'

  'They've kept the old cathedral walls I'm pleased to say’ said his father.

  Patrick curled his lip. 'Basil Spence the architect? More like A Right Basil I'd say.'

  'Oh?' said George.

  'It's all whimsy’ said Patrick. 'Like the Festival of Britain.' 'Oh I thought that a grand show.' 'Your generation would