Patrick Parker's Progress Page 14

He was shocked into silence. Afraid to say.

  She laughed. She spoke just a touch too loudly. People were staring down the table. 'A very strange accent,' she repeated. 'You're not from where those Beatles come from, are you? Up North somewhere.'

  He lied, then. 'No,' he said. 'I'm from London.'

  Her smile hardened. 'London?' She laughed. 'Hardly London. No. You're a little Northern Johnny - Henry said so.'

  His face was on fire. He said quietly, 'But I live in London.'

  ‘I remember,' she shrieked. Even the aged aunt heard and turned to stare. 'I remember exactly. You're from Coventry. Henry calls it the place that woman got her tits out... Godiva, wasn't it?'

  Patrick laughed uncomfortably. 'Avery silly woman. Taking all her clothes off in public like that.'

  'Sounds heaven,' said Penelope. 'And you are a scholarship boy or something.'

  'No,' he said, ‘I am not.'

  He turned his attention back to the Old Aunt and spoke no more to the beautiful Penelope. The beautiful Penelope, he was aware, neither noticed nor cared.

  That night he sat on the edge of the damask-covered bed, sipped the whisky that had kindly been brought for him by the butler, and made some rough sketches. The humiliation of the encounter with the beautiful Penelope gave him an edge. My God he would show them. He would create something outrageous for the Galton pile. It would take them by surprise, it would be talked about, and the elegant, superior Penelope would know just whom she had snubbed. She would want him and it would be too late. Such were his twin dreams that night. He loosened his black tie, so perfectly learned, and lay back on the bed. The softness of the eighteenth-century facade with its dignified windows needed to be challenged. Oh yes. And by the time he had finished, those refined classical delicacies would have their eyes opened all right. And so they did.

  Within two months the entire structure was drawn up. And Patrick had learned, from his first private commission, the benefit of shock tactics. When it was finished the press had several field days and the Heritage lobby was up in arms. He had designed the new extension from raw, unrefined materials and harsh, direct detailing. The elegant classical eyeballs of the eighteenth-century facade were not just opened wide - they were out on stalks.

  'It's the new Brutalism,' he said to the assembled, when it was finished.

  'Well, yes - it certainly is that. . .' Penelope stared at him with a new light of interest. 'Very - brutal.'

  'One does not require good manners in design,' he said. He looked the beautiful Penelope straight in the eye. 'Where one needs good manners is at the dinner table and in bed.'

  Everyone, including the press, laughed.

  'Well you are a boy, aren't you?' she said.

  'I should hope so.'

  Then, with great dignity, and very deliberately, he turned his back and walked away.

  As one doyen of design put it in the conservative Design Review - it was Damn Well Plug Ugly. The radical New Design Monthly immediately rallied to Patrick's defence, and Henry Galton - who admitted to not really giving a stuff so long as he had somewhere out of the rain for the gin slings - was delighted at the way the publicity brought the visitors in. In building terms, even before his graduation, Patrick had arrived... At college his Course Tutor sighed and invited him into his study.

  'Patrick,' he said. 'It is considered quite unacceptable for a student, even a final-year student, to undertake commercial enterprises.'

  'Do you wish me to leave?'

  The Course Tutor shook his head and sighed again. He handed Patrick a whisky. 'If it was down to me,' he said, 'I'd have kicked you out in the first term. You'd have survived very well.'

  They both laughed.

  The other result from the dinner-table encounter with the dazzling Penelope was that he now knew the sort of wife he needed, and it was not the Penelope sort. He wanted no sparring partner, no game playing, no one who was higher in any way, shape or form that he was. He needed to be top. It was important for what he would become. Yes. What he wanted was quiet support. Audrey might well be the one. He was still not sure. You did not need, if you were to be a hero in your field, a woman who tried to match you. Already she was talking about improving herself. Dangerous talk for a woman. He took his line from Isambard and Isambard married carefully. He knew how important that was. Patrick must do the same.

  In this final year Patrick worked frenziedly to get his college work finished - to clean up with the Gold Medal and then to depart. He wrote an article, commissioned by New Design Monthly. The Course Tutor, on being shown the draft, suggested that he re-read Burckhardt on the subject of the Renaissance and its Humanity. Patrick sniffed. It was one of the little mannerisms he had learned at his mother's breast. When in doubt, sniff superciliously. 'Burckhardt is as Burckhardt does,' he said. 'Give me concrete and steel.' He did not add, 'and plastic', for the kiddies, in Corbusier colours. Let them, when he revealed it, see it and weep.

  George idled and daydreamed and began to dare to think that perhaps he and Lilly could make a go of it after all. He became so idle and so daydreamy that none of Florence's vitriol penetrated. He remembered his young days with Lilly, the Wednesday afternoons, the feel of her body pressed up against his and how empty he felt as he drove away from her.

  ‘I don't know what's come over you these last few weeks,' said Florence. She was beside herself with the unseasonal cold and wanted the range lit though it was the middle of May. "This country,' she said, 'always cold.'

  George went on sitting at the table, pretending to read the paper, thinking of Lilly. Somewhere in the background Florence was going on and on at him, saying he'd put her back in bed and this time in hospital and was that what he wanted . . .? George said that perhaps she'd got a chill. He nearly said he hoped she had, but managed to stop himself. Lilly would like that, he thought, Lilly would laugh at that. Wicked Lilly.

  'Chill be blowed. I'm going to bed. And I'm not getting out of it until the range is up and running again.' And off she went. 'But it's May’ he called up the stairs. 'Nearly flaming June.' 'Flaming June yourself.'

  He waited. When he heard the upstairs door slam and was sure that she was in bed, he tiptoed into the hall. The only room the telephone wire reached was the front parlour. Pushing the door as closed as he could, he dialled Lilly's number. It was a Sunday night. Always by Sunday ...

  She answered. He said, 'Lilly - dear Lilly - if you can't run away with me ... then you can hobble, can't you?' She laughed. 'Yes’ she said. 'I'll see you Wednesday. We'll make our plans.' 'Yes, yes, yes.'

  He was happier than he could ever remember. He whistled down the path to get the coal and the kindling. If it was what Florence wanted, then it was what Florence should have. He was in his shirtsleeves but what did that matter? He was warm from within. There was a nip in the air and it had come on to rain but it only served to make him feel alive again. At the end of the path George gave a little twirl of pleasure and slipped. He hit his head on the path and lay there, quite still, pushed up awkwardly at the side of the shed. Something was not right about the angle of his leg. Florence, warm in her bed, heard nothing, thought nothing. The neighbours, warm in their houses, the windows sealed against the wet, the curtains pulled against the unseasonal night, heard nothing. It was many hours before a passing policeman (who should have passed a lot earlier but who found the station and his cup of tea more to his liking) heard him - making weak little gurgling sounds. Cold and damp as death.

  In the hospital the pain in his leg was so bad he decided that it was the best time in the world to die. Quite suddenly and quite silently he stopped breathing. Florence, sitting at the back of the room while the doctors fussed about her husband, could not believe it. Just could not believe it. Her first thought was that she had not given him permission to die. She came over to the bed and looked down at her husband. It could not be anything but illusion, she knew, but he seemed to be smiling. And young again.

  Audrey and the Little Seed of Rebellion
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br />   Rodomont, the Saracen king of Algiers, loved the Christian Isabella. Rather than submit to him she tricked him into killing her. He built a great tomb for her that was approached by a narrow bridge across a river, and defended it against all comers.

  The Christian Orlando, furioso with grief, naked and unarmed, came and wrestled with Rodomont on the bridge. They both fell into the water, unluckily for Rodomont who was in full armour ...

  James A. Hall, Dictionary of Subjects and Symbols in Art

  Patrick received the phone call on his landlady's telephone first thing in the morning (no point in the boy losing a night's sleep, decided Florence). He went immediately, of course. Fortunately he had finished his article and the drawings could be done anywhere. He forgot to inform Audrey who stood for two hours in the rain the following evening outside the L'llluminata cinema in Soho (getting quite a few offers, which did not help the situation) before going round to his digs to find out what had happened.

  'He's gone, luv,' said the landlady. 'Got the train home first thing this morning for his poor old dad.'

  She was shivering when she reached home. There was something about being left uncared for on a cold pavement, being eyed up and down by dirty men in disgusting mackintoshes, that went deeper even than the freezing rain.

  'All right?' asked Dolly after telling her. 'Bit of a shock, I know.'

  'Just a bit on the cold side,' said Audrey.

  'Sit here then,' said her mother, 'and you can help me out. I'll be going up to stay with Florence tomorrow. See her through the next few days.'

  'I'll go up with you,' Audrey said. 'He'll want me there.'

  Dolly did her best to be tactful. 'It's a bit of a houseful’ she said. 'Why not wait and come up with your dad?'

  'He will want me there’ she said even more firmly though she was really shivering now. 'To ease his pain.'

  Dolly gave a little snort which she quickly turned into a cough. 'Well, well’ she said. 'You're dressed for the part at any rate.'

  She was wearing black jeans and a black sloppy joe. Patrick's favourite style for her.

  'If you want my opinion’ said Dolly. 'He's best off out of it. Poor George. She never gave him any credit. Well, neither of them did.'

  They considered this in silence.

  Her father came in and muttered something and then left them to it. Grieving being women's work.

  'You sure you want to come up with me? Your dad could do with looking after.'

  'I'll come’ said Audrey. 'Patrick will want me there.' She stared into the fire and her mother decided to leave it. Che sera sera .. .

  After a while Audrey said. 'I'm thinking of applying to the International Service. I want to make something of myself.'

  'You don't speak anything foreign’ said her mother, without looking up from the heel she was turning. 'So that's that.'

  'Nothing to say I can't learn’ said Audrey. 'There's evening classes. And the school said I was bright, remember.'

  If there was a hint of complaint in her voice, Dolly did not rise. Audrey had been just as keen as they were for her to get out in the world and start earning her own money. She put two pounds and a bunch of flowers on the table every Friday night and the rest was all hers. Now, having started all this carrying on with Patrick, Dolly wondered if he was turning her daughter's head ...

  'And who would be expected to keep you if you did that?' asked her mother in a voice that said the question was absolutely rhetorical.

  'Evening classes are better than college because you go on earning. Best of both worlds’ said Audrey. But already she was yawning in the heat and the comforting dullness of the scene.

  'And what does Patrick say about it?' Dolly asked, pursing her lips. She had a feeling that her daughter was being strung along.

  'Oh I haven't - really - mentioned it to him yet’ she said. 'But I think he'll be pleased. He's so clever himself. He needs clever people around him.'

  Her mother tutted once and the matter was dropped. Personally she thought that if there were any evening classes to be attended, they were better spent on pastry making and good plain cookery. Her daughter had not inherited Dolly's light hand either with sponges or with pie crust and if a man had to choose between having a wife who talked foreign at him, and one who put a decent steak and kidney on the table, Dolly knew which he'd prefer.

  Audrey decided, dreaming into the red hot caverns of the fire, that she would talk to Patrick about it and have a go if he thought it was a good idea. She fancied French. French was safest. Though Patrick would go on about how dynamic Berlin was nowadays, and Dresden and what a brilliant rebuilding programme they had despite being razed to the ground. He was also talking about his coming trip to Japan, which was also brilliant, apparently, despite its wartime sufferings. Anywhere where they had dropped a bomb appeared to be brilliant, she thought. Except, apparently, Patrick's poor old Coventry. She thought about trying to learn Japanese but one look at it convinced her she could be clever, but not that clever. Anyway, she was hardly likely to be able to go with him - not all the way to Tokyo - not on a telephonist's wages.

  As for German - her father would never countenance her learning that particular language. Not with his feet. He always said that if he'd had George's feet, he'd have stayed at home all comfy. As it was he went out to Tobruk with a perfect pair, lovely to behold, toes all straight and everything, and he came back with bunions, corns and missing a toe. Every time the damp weather came and his twinges began, he cursed the German nation. And that bugger Rommel. As for Japanese - apart from the certain knowledge she would find it impossible to learn - she would also be in danger of being thrown out on the street for that, too. Patrick was right - they should forget history and the war and get on with life. It had better be French, then, definitely.

  Audrey sighed and poked at the coals and took up one of the socks by her mother's chair. He went through his socks did her father. Dolly looked over her spectacles at her. Despite the pastry, she was a good girl when she wanted to be. Audrey shrugged and smiled back. Might as well get on with something. Later she would try to read the book Patrick had lent her but it looked very difficult. Jean Genet -Querelles of Brest. She couldn't even pronounce it properly, she was sure. All her father said when he saw the name of it was 'Trust the Frenchies to call a book something with them in the title.' So even French would be tricky. But she had to do something. Otherwise Patrick would outgrow her.

  The next morning, off the two women went. Audrey's face was pale with make-up and she wore the customary black. She was excited at the thought of Patrick needing her. This would be her moment. Dolly said not to get her hopes up, funerals took people in different ways. Not all of them good ones. And when they arrived at the house it was perfectly clear that Mother Knew Best. Florence, opening the front door and seeing Audrey on the doorstep with her mother, was firm. 'I'm very sorry,' she said, in a tone that implied she was actually highly delighted (by now Dolly had gone upstairs with her bag), 'but you can't stay here. We've no room. All the beds are taken as you well know.'

  ‘I could sleep on the settee in the parlour,' said Audrey, determinedly walking past Florence and into the kitchen, looking for Patrick who was nowhere in sight.

  Florence followed. 'Well, good luck to you if you want to do that -but the body's already in there.'

  ‘I told you,' said Dolly, while Florence put the kettle on. 'You have to make room for people's ways with a bereavement.'

  Eventually Patrick came down the stairs. He stood on the other side of the room and never even kissed her cheek. She felt humiliated.

  'It was kind of you to come,' he said. 'But I think you'd probably better do what Mum says. Unless you can stay in a b. & b.?'

  Dolly said it was a good idea but Florence shook her head. 'Too much distraction,' she said. 'We've got a lot to organise.'

  'But I can help,' said Audrey.

  'Too many cooks,' said Florence, which Dolly thought was highly inappropriate. All the same,
Audrey had been wilful in coming, she had been warned, and it was Florence and Patrick's wishes that counted.

  'Better go,' she said quietly.

  'Yes,' said Patrick, ‘I think so.'

  And since it was his father who had just died, Audrey did not think she could do what she wanted to do which was scream at him and hit him very hard right where - she had learned from sunnier days - it hurt.

  'All right’ she agreed, and she stared at him with such a look that he went back upstairs again. He did not care to be made to feel in the wrong. She still made him feel like that and it was one of the reasons he held back. Sometimes what he read in her face was disturbing. Love - if that's what it was - seemed a demanding commodity to him

  -what with mothers and lovers - and he was glad his affections were more realistic.

  'She'll have a cup of tea and a sandwich first’ said Dolly.

  'But of course’ said Florence, more warmly now she had won. 'Can't send you back on an empty tummy'