Patrick Parker's Progress Read online

  With miracles and blessings in mind, the baby was draped in white lace and fine, hand-knitted woollens (this latter a present from dexterous Dolly) and taken into town to the Methodist Church where he shrieked and yelled a blue fit at the coldness of the water. Indeed, he pummelled and cried and held his breath and made the Reverend Pincher so irritated and tight-lipped with all his kickings and wrigglings that Florence was convinced the Man of God had lived up to his name. She very nearly took her baby back off him, but the Reverend Pincher held on tight (thus increasing the outraged volume of those little lungs) saying that it was necessary in the sight of God that he hold on to the little perisher to complete the job. With Florence shadow-close and snorting and flapping like a mother seal the baptism took place. Plain Patrick became Patrick Nigel and was handed back as such. The Reverend Pincher mopped his brow and called him a determined little lad. George, shaking the man's damp hand, could not quite hide a little smirk, feeling that if the ruddy church didn't know how to deal with the boy, it was no wonder that he, George, his own father could not. Florence strode off calming the angry child and was overheard to murmur all the way down the chapel path, 'There, there - didn't you like the nasty man with the horrid water, then?' Which the Reverend Pincher thought was somewhat against the grain of the baptismal ritual.

  George's daft sister Ada stood godmother, upsetting his other sister Bertha - which pleased Florence who did not care for Bertha's outspoken ways. Although Ada lived in Coventry she was not one of those women who knew, to the nearest number, how many beans made five and she would leave well alone. The godfathers were distant relatives - one no more than a lad himself, the least godly and not at all likely to interfere. Florence was not having anyone come between her and her son.

  George's daft sister Ada soon found herself under a burnt-out bus, not much more than a pile of ashes herself. The war did terrible, terrible things to communities, it was true, thought Florence, as she sat holding baby Patrick at the funeral - but there was always a bright side to everything... For instance, she was able to nurse baby Patrick for the first two and a half years of his life without anyone taking exception. And that kept him close to her. You might almost say, tied. Before the war it was becoming fashionable to use bottles for babies but not now. A good mother was a production unit like everything else. The war was useful in respect of this. Nobody bothered to tell you what to do and what not to do when the sirens sounded. Florence could pretend to the world, perhaps to herself, that she was still nursing him beyond his second birthday because it was convenient and best for him and natural. Nobody remarked on it. Only Dolly Wapshott's visit changed things. Dolly, whose baby girl Little Audrey arrived nine months after Patrick (the juxtaposition of two bodies, one male, one female, sharing a small single bed for several nights while Florence and son reposed in their double one awoke a surprising urge in Dolly and her husband). Little Audrey had already been weaned by the time she was one year old.

  'And that,' Dolly told Florence firmly, 'was considered late... Who knows what's waiting for us at the end of this war?' she said firmly. 'It doesn't do to make a milksop. They need to be a bit independent in this day and age. My little Audrey can chew on anything nowadays.'

  Very reluctantly, Florence yielded up her last two pleasurable moments with him - first thing in the morning and last thing at night - and it should be said that Patrick did not object very strongly. On

  the first night of the withdrawal of the maternal tit, when Auntie Dolly put a sweetened dummy in his mouth at the moment the tears began to well, he sucked on it and became quite cheerful again. Mother or sugary rubber teat, it was all the same to him. It was, after all, something new and therefore interesting. Patrick might not know the word but he knew the sensation: the world was an interesting place and he was ready to enjoy each new experience.

  "There you are, you see -' said Dolly in triumph. 'He doesn't need it at all.'

  She playfully chucked her own chubby daughter beneath the chin and the child chomped on a bickey-peg and smiled through its fat red cheeks. 'Quite the independent Little Audrey, aren't you?' she proudly said. Florence sniffed, looking at her own little angel as he lay in his cot, eyes closed, dummy moving rhythmically. Despite his having arrived early he was a perfect shape - neither fat, nor thin - and he was elegant, cautious - not one to do anything unforeseen - a thinking child, and quick on the uptake. From his earliest days, when the merest movement in his cot, the lightest change in his breath, the slightest flicker of his eyes brought his mother to his side to see what was required, Patrick had a way of looking out at the world that said he knew he was very important. Florence stroked his long, artistically shaped fingers and then looked at her friend's daughter's plump digits. 'Little Audrey?' she said suddenly, and acidly. 'Nothing little about it'

  'Got George's fingers, I see,' said Dolly, by way of a counter. She knew where Flo's bodies were buried if she'd a mind to.

  Florence was not one to find anything appealing apart from her son, even baby girls. Girls had a way of looking at you that went straight through and out the other side. Patrick just looked up at her, and trusted. That was what counted. To her Patrick she was everything, or almost everything. Not quite, because for some irritating reason, when they visited London, Patrick seemed to find Little Audrey fascinating - he liked to push at her and see her topple and then watch, smiling, as she righted herself, laughing and scarlet from the exertion among the cushions. He liked to pull her bottle in and out of her mouth and hear the sucking sound of the air and bubbles rushing back into the teat. Throughout it all, Little Audrey was entirely good-humoured. Florence did not like these games at all. But if she ever tried to change the mood - with a clapping song or 'Come to Mother...' Patrick paid no attention. Until he was ready. And then he would say so, loudly. 'Patrick stop now,' he would say, nodding sagely. And that would brook no nonsense. Florence would reclaim her prize. She swung him up in the air telling him he should go higher than the highest he had ever been before. 'You'll be something, my boy,' she would mutter. 'Not like the likes of Little Audrey. You'll look down on them all -'

  Coventry remained a wasteland. On one of her visits Dolly said, 'You'd have thought they'd start rebuilding this place, Flo - it's no setting for bringing up a kiddie.'

  'Oh,' said Florence. "They keep talking about doing this and that but nothing ever happens. If anyone does produce an idea then the Council can't make up its mind.'

  'Your George should go along with some of his models.'

  Florence just sniffed.

  Dolly whispered the question. 'Still Lilly, then?' To which Florence just sniffed the louder.

  Little Audrey liked to watch as Florence bathed and caressed and spoke to her baby boy. She watched the games and the rituals as Patrick meticulously put brick upon brick without knocking them down. 'Mother's little builder,' Florence would say, or 'Who's Mummy's clever boy, then?' Little Audrey saw that George looked on but said nothing. And that he built the boy things that Florence brushed aside. The general view of Patrick's great talent with the bricks was that he would one day grow up to rebuild Coventry, probably single-handedly, and be the wonder of the world. Little Audrey smiled and clapped as the bricks went higher but she was never allowed to touch. Once, overcome at the great height of the tower of coloured wood Patrick had made, she tottered over and gave it a mighty, satisfying punch and the bricks went everywhere. Patrick looked at her coldly and rebuilt his tower. He ignored her for the rest of the afternoon. She did not do it again.

  But Little Audrey showed she had some tricks of her own. As soon as Patrick saw how she sat up at the table and made use of a spoon all on her own - with a few spillages which Florence made quite a bustling fuss about - Patrick followed suit. Perfectly. He also asked for another cushion. Little Audrey sat on one, he would sit on two. When his mother tried to help him guide his spoon, he pushed away her hand. His first act of extreme independence and Florence was saddened to the core.

  When Dolly came
to stay, or when Florence visited London, the children were given their baths together. Florence did not like it and objected. 'There's a war on,' said Dolly firmly. 'Economy is important.' So here it was, in that warm, soap-scented water, that Florence told Patrick - and Little Audrey - all over again about the night of his birth and how he had escaped, that he was a miracle baby, that out of destruction he had been born. 'How clever you are,' said his mother, over and over again, as she watched his dexterous play with sponge and nailbrush and flannel. 'Clever, clever, clever boy.' When he had done with the play he drew steeples and roofs and chimney stacks in the steam on the mirror. It was all she could do to persuade him that he could not take his beloved wooden bricks into the bath.

  Little Audrey watched. She was fascinated and repelled at this sweet talk. But she saw how it pleased Patrick. She also came to recognise the moment just before Patrick decided that he had had enough and required lifting out of the water - because before saying so he ran his little hands through his fluffy baby hair from forehead to back ... As soon as she saw it she pulled out the plug and the splendid rushing gurgle always coincided with Patrick holding up his arms and saying, 'Out, Mummy, out.' Both Florence and Patrick would look at Audrey in astonishment. How did she always know? Or did she? Or was it always a coincidence? It was never - quite -distinguished. Florence Parker refused to consider the possibility that Little Audrey was bright.

  On one occasion George suggested that he might bath baby Patrick for a change and Florence had looked so shocked - so defensive - it was as if he had suggested that he would quite like to brain his son with an axe. "That's for a mother to do,' said the mother in question. 'You'd probably drown him.' Audrey lifted her hands to George and offered herself, but of course there was no question of that.

  Fortunately it was not considered odd if a father had nothing to do with his children until they misbehaved and needed attention. But George felt it. He could very likely count on the fingers of one hand, as he told Lilly, the number of times he had held his child. One of those was in church during the baptism. Florence watched him so sharply that he felt sure he would drop the little body. He liked holding Patrick, he liked the way the baby looked up into his eyes and struggled to make sense of what he saw - he liked the way, now that he was older, the boy tottered towards him and held up his arms. But

  he let Florence have her way. 'Well’ said Lilly, 'that's the way of it. Mother knows best.' Lilly had made a vow that she would never say anything bad to George about his wife. Sometimes she felt she could choke on the undertaking.

  Lilly did not like to dwell on George's domestic arrangements because it always made him so mournful. And her. When he was mournful it reminded her that she had nothing much to look forward to, either. Neither of them spoke of the past. Too long ago and best forgotten were those days when they were both young and free and went for walks together by the canals because they had no money to do anything else. They held hands and spent their dreams instead. George would build himself a castle to live in and Lilly would make a garden. And then he married Florence and she married Alfred. Now he lived in three rooms and her bedroom looked out over a small back yard, a shed full of sweet boxes, and a patch of earth that never got the sun. All Lilly wanted, needed, now was a bit of fun and bugger the garden. 'I'm sure Flo knows what she's doing’ she said sourly. 'She's devoted.'

  He longed to talk to her, really talk to her, but if she said it was all just a bit of fun between them, then that is all it could be. He would rather have it than not. A little bit of Lilly at any price was worth it. 'She is’ he said positively in return. 'Devoted. As you say'

  When George suggested that he and Patrick pack up a picnic one day and go for a bit of a hike, something that George had once done with his own father and enjoyed, Florence said it was out of the question because of the biting cold. When George waited until the sun shone and suggested it again, Florence said that Patrick could not walk far in any case because he had weak ankles. It was the first anyone had heard of it but Patrick rather liked the idea. It meant that whenever he did not want to do anything, he had merely to flick his little foot over on its side and a big, purple bruise would arrive. 'I'll carry him on my shoulders’ said George, as defiantly as he dared.

  Patrick perked up at this but Florence said, 'You'll do no such thing. He might fall and crack his head open.'

  An image of Humpty-Dumpty came to mind, and Patrick wailed. George decided to bide his time and wait until the boy was a bit older and a bit stronger. Meanwhile he left his son's welfare entirely in the arms of his wife and went on making his models of great buildings of the world. The war was coming to an end, the capitals of Europe would be free again, but he would never get to them now. He pinned up photographs as compensation and went on clipping tickets instead.

  Bathtime continued as mother and son's special time. Even during the war years, when soap was hard to come by, and oils and lotions almost non-existent, most of the time Florence managed to get something to use on the fine, soft skin of her boy at bathtime. She even crushed rosemary leaves or lavender in season to make cod-liver oil smell agreeable, and she would rub it over her son's cheeks and lips, his legs and back and arms to keep him soft and protected. The chill winds of Midlands weather could blast his baby skin into flaky redness. When she took him out in the pram, or later toddling in the park, he was startlingly beautiful compared with the other children who had wet, sore, reddened noses and chilblained cheeks and hands. Towards the end of the war it had to be either the boilings from fish or Vaseline that Florence used. Something which the boy, even though he was under five, noticed and objected to. He was used to the best. He would have it. He ran his hands through his hair in a gesture that Florence now knew to prelude a tantrum. 'Don't want horrible smelly stuff -' he screamed. 'Want nice stuff.' Florence managed to find some glycerine on the black market. 'Better,' said Patrick, mollified. Later he marched up to his father and handed him the horrible fishy concoction that Florence had tried to use. 'For you, Father,' he said. And George, who knew nothing of the incident, was touched. At first. But from that moment Patrick developed a curious way of dealing with anything that he did not like, including spinach, which was to insist that his mother gave it to George, which she did. Florence said this was the boy's caring response to hard rations and not wanting to waste things, but George saw it as something quite different. More like contempt.

  In his shed at the bottom of the garden George indulged himself. He moved on from wood and glue to buying bits and pieces of old Meccano and - his first project in the new medium - he replicated the station signal box. Patrick sidled down there, though his mother forbade it - V2 raids, the cold, the dark, his health, the mess - as he liked to watch unseen through the little window while his father made structures that looked infinitely complex and beautiful. If ever Florence caught him lingering there she brought him straight back indoors. She was torn between forbidding George his shed activities and enjoying the house and Patrick without the nuisance of his father. The former won. Just. And Patrick went on looking. George, absorbed in his task, never saw how rapt his son was by the intricacies of his handiwork.

  2

  Patrick at School

  The first examples of masonry arch bridges date from as early as 1000 bc and were first built in Persia where mud-plastered, bent reeds produced small vaulted huts. The free profile of bent stems tied across the top approximates to the ideal parabolic profile for a free-standing arch... Matthew Wells, 30 Bridges

  A month or two after D-Day the Parker family was finally and permanently rehoused in a three-up two-down on the edge of the town where the air was said to be purer. This would eventually mean the end of Lilly and the Wednesday afternoons. Not only because the journey across town was long, but because Florence decided it was time for the liaison to cease. She made it clear - though not in so many words - that now George was a father and his son was so knowing, It (unspecified) was no longer seemly. 'Halfway across Coventry,' she wou
ld say to the boy - just as if he was an adult - 'And for what, I ask you? For what?' And she would cross her arms and appear to juggle her swelling bosom. Her chest was formidable and she used it to advantage. It was as if, on finding itself no longer required, Florence's embonpoint was determined to maintain a high profile and palpable dudgeon.

  Patrick was intrigued. Both by the juggled bosom and by the question. Neither was forthcoming. If he reached out to touch her bosom Florence always tapped his hand away calling him a naughty boy, but smiling all the same so that it was like a little game between them. If Patrick then asked, in his piping little voice, 'What does my father go halfway across Coventry for?' his mother's smile would fade. 'Never you mind.' And she would busy herself with something. 'It's not the sort of thing you'll want to know about. ..' And out would come a biscuit, or his drawing things, or a scarf to tuck around him before they set off for a walk. He always liked his drawing things best. His mother would smile a particular smile, pat his arm, prop him up at the table on a cushion and tiptoe out of the room leaving him alone with his ideas and his thoughts. He was special, what he drew and imagined was special, and his mother kept his drawings, every one. When Little Audrey came to stay she did almost nothing you could possibly recognise on her paper. Patrick was contemptuous. He was also the tiniest, weeniest bit envious of the way she held her pencil in her fist and just seemed to throw the colours at the page. When he pointed out it was a mess she merely beamed at him and made some more. At the end of the session there would be polite maternal praise for her work and then it would be screwed up and thrown away. Little Audrey did not seem to mind. Later, though, when she drew pictures of Queens and Princesses, she liked to keep them, even though Patrick always liked to explain how the arms were too long or she had only put three fingers on a hand.