Patrick Parker's Progress Page 4

  'Your Audrey,' said Florence, choosing her words carefully, but they both knew what she meant, 'is - well - very - accepting.'

  'Nothing wrong with that,' said Dolly. 'Being accepting. Getting on with it. You can go a long way before you find something better than being ordinary. Think of Hitler.'

  Florence was silent for a moment. Normally when she was discussing her son there was no room to think about anyone else - but Hitler? 'And just what do you mean by that?'

  'Well,' said Dolly, 'we'd have all been a great deal better off if he'd stayed ordinary, now wouldn't we?' The logic was faultless. Florence ignored it.

  'My Patrick is different’ she said. 'He's got a Destiny'

  'Destiny is as Destiny does,' said Dolly good-naturedly (she was now thinking of Gone With the Wind and Forever Amber).

  Both mothers stole a quick glance down the garden at their respective offspring. Patrick was lying on his stomach drawing something meticulous, a frown of concentration on his tender brow. Little Audrey was lying on her back, staring at the sky humming something in a low voice and playing cat's cradle with confident, unseen fingers. Both mothers wore an expression of profound certainty.

  'Ah,' said Dolly. 'But will it bring him happiness?'

  'What?'

  'Destiny?'

  Florence sipped from her cup of tea and said no more.

  Florence kept Patrick at home as much as she could but what the Attendance Officer found difficult to implement, Little Audrey did all on her own just by corning to visit and describing the jolly things she was going to do at school. Patrick suddenly wanted to go, and very much. Despite Florence's reminding him over and over again about the big hard playground and the rough, dirty boys, and how ill it would make him, Little Audrey's picture of it painted every day as a little adventure. Florence might baulk at the distance that Patrick would travel, but Little Audrey had to go to a school ever so far from where she lived, on account of the local one being bombed. Now the war was over and it was no longer in danger from air raids, Dolly sent her off on the bus with some of her friends, all holding hands so as not to lose anybody, and she managed very well. Patrick was enraptured at the idea of doing something entirely alone - free of parental restraint. He stamped his foot, he would go, he would, he would. And on a bus, too. Florence was horrified. That woman, she said to George, whose face did not flicker, that woman will be sorry one day ...

  'He's a very delicate little boy,' she told the Headmaster.

  The Headmaster smiled. "Then he will have to toughen up,' he said. "They always do.'

  'But my son is different.'

  The Headmaster, who had heard it all before, said he knew that. But the boy must attend every day because it was the law.

  'You'll never be able to cope’ said his mother, clucking over him and tucking in his scarf and his shirt and his pull over. He was both thrilled and frightened to be going. Florence wrapped him up so closely that, despite the mildness of the September day, he began sweating. 'Oh my goodness look at that,' said his mother before they were halfway across the first field. 'You're starting a fever.' And she brought him straight back again. Patrick howled which made him all the hotter. "There you are,' said Florence with much satisfaction. 'I knew it, I knew it.'

  But the Attendance officer called again. And that was that.

  Patrick was excited when Jimmy two doors down told him that they gave you a gold star if you were good - and he wanted one. He was special and he would tell them so, which he did. The teacher, a round, grey-haired woman who was far too firm for Florence's liking, told him that he would have one when he had done something worthwhile. He immediately went away and drew from memory the most elegant picture he could of his father's model signal box. The gold star was his. And it was a great disappointment. He held his breath, he stamped his feet, he kicked the desk and said it was rotten. The gold star was made out of gummed paper and the size of a sixpence and went into your writing book. The teacher said that if he ever behaved like that again she would send him to the Headmaster. 'See if I care,' he said. So the teacher said that if he ever behaved like that again she would make him do sums instead of painting and drawing. Out came his lower lip, but he stayed silent.

  When Audrey told him how difficult she found school now that she had to do real lessons, and rolled her eyes and said that she just could not do sums, Patrick said that he found everything easy.

  'Lumme,' said Audrey. It was less in admiration than in pity. Why go to school then? she wondered. Was life supposed to be easy? She didn't think so. Whenever her father or mother said phrases concerning Easy, they were said with contempt:

  'Oh they've got it easy'

  Or 'Easy come, easy go.'

  Or (of the Duchess of Windsor, a continuing thorn in her mother's side living it up in Paris) 'She's just an easy woman.'

  So it couldn't be right. Much as Audrey liked the sound of it. An easy woman, after all, sounded much nicer than a hard one.

  'Go on with you’ she said to Patrick, 'you can't only do everything you like.'

  'Yes I can,' he said. 'And what I don't like doing,' he added, 'I don't.'

  Patrick, she decided, obviously had no idea. Something stirred in her Little Girl's heart. If you only did the things you wanted to do, and left undone the things you ought to do, the things they told you, repeatedly, you ought to do, you wouldn't get very far in this life. She was sure of that. She had been told it often enough. She said 'Lumme' again, a little more softly, and then, 'You be careful, Patrick,' and gave him a gentle push. He pushed her back, and she fell over. Easily.

  3

  A Lesson in Bridge Building

  Several types of bridge structure have come down to us from ancient civilisations, including timber-corbelled bridges formed from inverted stacks of logs, which still exist in China and eastern Asia and have no modern counterpart... These types are unequivocally similar to Roman examples providing evidence of communication and trade, or perhaps correspondences, between opposite ends of the ancient world. Matthew Wells, 30 Bridges

  We crossed (to Rome) on the Ponte Molle, formerly called the Ponte Milvius ... This bridge was built by Aemelious Censor ... it was the road by which so many heroes returned with conquest to their country; by which so many kings were led captive to Rome; and by which so many ambassadors of so many kingdoms approached the seat of empire ... to sue for the protection of Rome ... Nothing of the ancient bridge remains but the piles; nor is there anything in the structure of this, or of the other five bridges over the Tyber, that deserves attention. Tobias Smollett, Letter XXIX, Travels through France and Italy, 1766

  At Dolly's insistence, Florence took Patrick to London to visit Audrey for her eighth birthday. Audrey was the same height as Patrick now, and nothing chubby about her. She was a romping, cheery little girl, whose baby brother was in awe of her. 'She's an independent little miss,' said her mother very proudly, as she scooped up her baby son and held him close. "This one's much whinier.' The baby boy in question might, thought Florence, half with envy and half with contempt, be a bit less whiny if his mother wasn't always picking him up and carrying him. Just as well she did not say so, for Dolly would have applied her favourite cutting retort: Pot calling the Kettle, I think...

  Florence was not altogether pleased with the way the friendship between little girl and little boy was developing. Already Dolly had suggested that Patrick might come down to London to stay on his own with them. Florence watched Little Audrey's vest and knickers flicker quick and sure in amongst the branches of the apple tree while Patrick stood below looking up. The rain, or perhaps the dew, had left droplets on the spiders' webs that hung and trembled beneath Little Audrey's surefooted climb. Patrick stared, apparently entranced. Little Audrey thought his rapture was for her and showed off even more. 'Come on up, Patrick,' she called to the boy. 'It's very easy' She dabbled her fingers in one of the spiders' webs that hung there sparkling with watery brilliants. 'See how strong it is,' she said, almost to hersel
f with the wonder of the sudden discovery. 'And beautiful.' She touched it again, more roughly. 'It looks like lace but it is so strong. My dad says that if you put it on a sore place it stops bleeding.'

  'Don't be daft,' he said, but he moved forward. For a moment it looked as if he might begin to climb. Audrey dabbled her fingers more provocatively and the spider's web shed its drops but held its anchorage. 'See,' she said, 'it looks really delicate. I can't break it, though. Or not easily anyway' She pulled it around some more. 'What's interesting about this,' she said, in a voice very similar to her class teacher's and peering at it even more closely, 'is that it does a good job and it looks nice. Like a bridge of lace.'

  Below her Patrick exploded with laughter. 'Bridges are made of wood and iron and brick and steel, silly,' he said. 'They are big and strong and last for ever. Not like that stuff.' And he reached up for one of the branches to shake it. 'Come down,' he said. 'Show me how you come down.'

  Audrey wiggled her fingers in her ears and stuck out her tongue and pretended to wobble about. 'Help,' she said, but she was laughing. 'Come and get me,' she said. 'Come on ...'

  He laughed, too, reaching upwards.

  She held out her hand, stretching so that with just a little effort he could clasp it and be helped to climb. The spider's web dangled from her fingers, still catching the light with its beads of water. He moved further towards the tree and raised his hand as far as he could to reach Audrey's - she stretched further - their fingers nearly touched. She smiled encouragingly. 'Come on,' she said. 'You can see the whole world up here. Hold my hand.' Patrick, staring up at her, seeing the sunlit halo around her head, the bright smile, the laughing eyes, thought she looked pretty and would have said so but just at that moment, just at the very moment when Audrey could almost feel the heat from his fingertips, his mother called a warning. 'Don't you go up there, Patrick,' she said. 'You'll fall.'

  Patrick immediately stepped back. He made no further move. Slowly Audrey pulled her hand away and looked down at him sadly. He remained firmly on the grass below, staring up at her. He was no longer interested in climbing; looking was sufficient. He could see all he wanted to see from the ground. He was not interested in the spider's web or its sparkling beauty, or Audrey's sunny prettiness any more.

  'Climb down for me,' he called. What interested him as he screwed up his eyes against the glare was watching Audrey as she stepped about the branches. 'Cowardy-custard,' called Audrey but he did not care. She wiped the broken spider's web off her fingers. Below her Patrick picked up his paper and pencil and sat cross-legged on the grass and made a picture of the tree above him, with the pattern of the branches crudely simplified. What he had drawn were the relevant branches to Little Audrey's climb. The ones she used. The others he had discarded.

  Later, when Audrey sat on the grass beside him, and showed him the bits of spider's web on her hands - 'It took some breaking ... I think it's stronger than all those other things . . . wood and iron and stuff'- he looked up. 'Don't be daft,' he said.

  She held the broken web close to her face and studied it. 'It had millions of dead insects in it. You just think,' she said. 'It held them all up, as well as the spider. Think of a piece of lace holding you and your mum and dad, even just me - it couldn't do it.'

  'Don't be daft,' he repeated, but a little less certainly.

  She picked up his drawing and stared at it for a moment before asking why he had only put in a few branches and he told her.

  "That is very clever,' she said.

  'It's the economics of structure,' he said.

  Audrey blinked. 'Economical,' she said, 'is what my mother calls Sunlight. She says she prefers it because it's very ec-on-o-mical.'

  Patrick was not altogether sure he liked this. 'That's washing soap,' he said with assumed disgust. 'Stupid.'

  'And my skirt. She said my school skirt was economical. It meant I couldn't have a frill. I like frills . . .' she added mournfully. Patrick drew some for her, like the ruff around Harlequin's neck.

  She laughed. "That's lovely’ she said. 'Oh, Patrick, you are clever.'

  They both chewed a piece of grass and looked at the drawing. Audrey sighed. Then Patrick, who felt he was losing ground, tapped the bridge drawing again.

  'Now you'll know how to do it for ever.'

  'Do what?' asked Audrey.

  'Climb the tree safely. Follow the lines. See?' he said. 'I've drawn the way up for you.' He laughed, excited by his success.

  She did not say what she was about to say, which was - more or less - that she knew the way up, stupid yourself, and that anyway the whole point about the climbing of trees was that you didn't know everything. With knobs on, thank you . . . But she said none of this. Instead she turned to look at Patrick and opened and shut her large brown eyes and smiled him a sweet, sickly smile. Patrick liked this. She was aware of it. I'd never have thought of it without you,' she said. "Thanks ever so.'

  'No,' he said. 'No -I don't believe you would.' Patrick felt a little glow of warmth towards her. She was all right. 'You looked very pretty up there,' he said.

  She smiled that same sweet smile. 'Can I keep this, then?' The smile, which he liked, stayed put.

  'Oh yes,' he said airily. ‘I suppose so.'

  'Oh thank you, Patrick.'

  She put the piece of paper down carefully on the grass and kissed his cheek. Then she went back to the tree and tried to climb on a different set of branches (she knew, really, that they were not the right ones to risk) but one cracked and she only just saved herself from tumbling. Dusting herself off she took Patrick's piece of paper and climbed again, making it clear to him as he gazed up at her that she was following his every line. She went very swiftly, using only the branches he had drawn. Of course it worked. She looked back over her shoulder as she climbed and gave him another, even more dazzling smile. For a moment they were both caught in a pleasure of enchantment. Dangling above her head, caught in the sunlight, was another spider's web. She ignored it and followed the drawing to her sitting place. Then she turned and waved. Patrick waved back, carelessly, with a look on his face that almost said he was not, actually, waving at all.

  Back down on the ground, she asked for a paper and pencil and she made her own drawing of the way up - including the spider's web - but she linked each branch she drew with a line. At each meeting of line and branch she drew a little bobble. When he asked her what the little bobbles were, she said, 'Knots. The steps are made from ropes. It's what they call a zigzag. It's what you have to do if a crocodile chases you because they can't. . . zigzag. And that -' she pointed - 'is the spider's own bridge between the branches.'

  They both looked at each other with a newfound respect. Patrick, on being offered Audrey's drawing, pocketed it with a thoughtful face. 'I suppose,' he said, 'crocodiles can't zigzag because it's complicated.'

  'Or because they're stupid,' she said. 'After all, it's not hard to do, now is it?'

  And she was up and off, zigzagging her way towards the table and the jug of lemonade.

  When it was time for Patrick and his mother to return home, he and Little Audrey solemnly shook hands at the station. And then, impulsively, she kissed his cheek again and he blushed. Florence's heart tightened to see it. Dolly noticed nothing except for two children being friendly, which was nice. 'Come again soon,' she said.

  'No,' said Florence firmly. 'Next time you must come up to us.'

  On the train back Florence sat staring out of the window. Every time she attempted conversation with her son, he asked her to be quiet because he was working on something. He drew nearly all the way to Coventry.

  'What are those?' she asked, eventually.

  'Bobbles,' he said under his breath, and smiled as he drew. 'Audrey's idea,' he said, obviously amused by it.

  She tried to sound as casual as she could. 'And how do you like Audrey nowadays? Bit more grown up, isn't she?'

  'She's OK,' he said, resuming his drawing. 'For a girl. But she has some daft ideas.'
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  'Yes,' said Florence, pleased. 'She does.' She touched his bent head gently. 'Nearly home. Better pack up now.'

  They stared out of the train window. War damage was still shockingly evident all the way into the station. 'There'll still be plenty for you to do here when you're grown up,' said Florence happily. "That lot will take some shifting. You'll be the making of Coventry, Patrick. I really believe you will.'

  Audrey and her mother returned home from the station on the bus. Audrey breathed on windows and in the breathy vapour she drew the climbing tree and its pared-down variations, then the sky, then the stars, and then a ladder made of rope leading from the topmost branches of the tree to the furthest star. 'Patrick is clever,' she said to her mother.

  "They say’ said Dolly.

  'Am I?' she asked.

  'Clever is, as clever does,' said Dolly, delivered in her Somebody's Being Silly Again voice. 'I like school,' said Audrey.

  Dolly's voice softened a little. "That's because you are a good girl,' she said.

  4

  Sweets from a Stranger