Patrick Parker's Progress Read online

  'So I've got to concentrate. Exams.'

  'Yes’ she said, disappointed. 'Got a place in college.' 'Lovely.'

  'Well, I might see you around.'

  He nodded. Stood there awkwardly for a moment more and then said, 'Oh well - bye.'

  'Bye’ she said, giving him a beautiful, lipsticky smile.

  He moved away and then returned. She felt triumphant. But it was only to say, 'Don't tell anyone about the college thing yet, will you? ‘I haven't told my mother.'

  He set off, wheeling his bike, turned back once and waved, and she waved back. She looked a picture sitting there on the bench with her ankles crossed and the bows of her shoes dangling. The workmen whistled her again. He wasn't surprised. Damn, he said to himself as he pushed his bicycle across the road and headed home. Damn, Damn, Damn. She had a lovely pair of tits from what he could see.

  As he pedalled the dull streets homewards he felt dull himself. Why was it all so difficult? Why was he so afraid to give in to what his Headmaster called urges? Everything about his ambition felt so vulnerable. Like his hero, he had what he secretly called his sacred, creative flame and he must protect it. Isambard once wrote to some woman or other, and how Patrick understood it now, 'I want you to know that if I appear to be taking things coolly it is because I feel them so acutely that I am obliged to harden myself a little in order to bear them ...'

  One day, he promised himself, pedalling like fury, one day he would be free of all these little-town constraints. One day he would take his place at the helm of the new world and be sure enough of himself not to worry about dilution, urges, or anything else. He could concentrate on designing great works, take his place in the Pantheon. And then he could kiss the girls. Once he was out of Coventry with its piddling canals, and its municipal geraniums, away from these flat Midland sounds and their flat Midland ideas, and off to London, he would become reborn. Blessed as Dick Whittington. To London, to London. But minus the cat. Which was all to the good. For as anyone who knows their pantomimes will tell you, The Cat is not only a companion to Dick, but His Conscience. His Heart.

  6

  In the Temple

  I do not know much about gods; but I think that the river

  Is a strong brown god - sullen, untamed, intractable,

  Patient to some degree, at first recognised as a frontier;

  Useful, untrustworthy, as a conveyor of commerce;

  Then only a problem confronting the builder of bridges.

  The problem once solved, the brown god is almost forgotten

  By the dwellers in cities - ever, however, implacable,

  Keeping his seasons and rages, destroyer, reminder

  Of what men choose to forge ...

  ‘T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets: "The Dry Salvages'

  Patrick was one of the youngest students ever to be accepted for the London Academy's design course. He began remarkably well, something which did not surprise him and something which he was irritated to find surprised his tutors, by producing a critical essay in praise of Wren, Vanbrugh and Adam and damning what he called That Dreadful Reactionary Stuff which followed them and ended in the horror of Barry and Pugin's Westminster. He wrote it, as he proudly announced in the opening paragraph, for blind men who clung to the past instead of honouring it and moving on. He declared himself a champion of the future. Both as architect, as engineer, and as artist. It was a gauntlet that many had flung down before, as his course tutor remarked to his colleagues, but there was definitely something about the boy ...

  'Concrete and steel perhaps?' said the Head of the Department somewhat acidly. 'Concrete and steel...'

  The Course Tutor smiled. 'He thinks he's the natural successor to Brunel,' he said.

  "They often do,' said the Head of Department, wearily.

  'Oh but this one, sir - this one -I think this one may be different...'

  The Head of Department settled back in his chair. ‘I do not know much about gods’ he quoted. 'We'll see’ he said.' We'll see ...'

  At the end of his first year's assessment the Course Tutor called Patrick into his study and told him that, given his age, they had taken a chance on him and - they were delighted to affirm - he had not let them down.

  'Of course I haven't,' he said waspishly. 'Age has nothing to do with genius.'

  That had the Course Tutor reeling. He's the son of Brunel, all right, he thought. Now what do we do with him ...?

  Patrick turned to leave. He cared little for authority and intended to show it. At this stage he believed that a Grand Talent would be enough to conquer the world - and if it wasn't - then Grand Ambition would complete the climb. If Faraday once stood on Giants' Shoulders -Patrick Parker must do the same. Newton to Science - Brunel to Engineering Design. If you showed that you knew you were superior the rest of the world, then the world would believe that you were. Therefore, with his head held high and leaving the reeling Course Tutor with his head drooped low, Patrick marched out of the room. The Course Tutor (otherwise affectionately known as Old Socrates) was a wise old man and he knew that a touch of humility never went amiss.

  'Reality and Humility’ he called after Patrick's retreating back. 'Are good watchwords - in the world of design as in everything else ...'

  Patrick did not look back, just called out, 'Tell that to Brunel!' And went on walking.

  'But he's dead’ said the Course Tutor to himself, and he sighed.

  How many young men had said those words? How many young men thought they could recapture that peculiar age, the time of the Great Victorians? And failed? How many did not understand that the particular ingredients of any age produced the designs for it? Empire, heroism, arrogance, the satisfying pinkness of the map and the comparative cheapness of life helped form the great structures. As Patrick Parker told him - as if he were the first to do so instead of the umpteenth - he abhorred the way Samuel Smiles had left the Brunels, father and son, out of his Lives of the Great Engineers.

  When the Course Tutor asked, mildly, if Patrick knew why, Patrick said that there could be no 'why' therefore the question could not exist. 'Very philosophical’ said the Course Tutor.

  Patrick saw no irony.

  'Perhaps I should set you an essay?'

  Out came Patrick's lower lip.

  'Perhaps I should set you an essay entitled "Although Samuel Smiles was very complimentary towards Brunel as an engineer, he regarded him as devoted to a suspect form of gargantuanism. Smiles suggests that his ruling idea was magnitude; he had an ambition to make everything bigger than he had found it . . . Being the very Napoleon of Engineers and thinking more of glory than of profit was good neither for investors nor for the public who would come to use his designs. What is needed now, as power and honour ebb away and money begins to be the only god, is a change of scale. Discuss.'"

  'Smiles was a damn fool,' said Patrick. 'It would be a waste of my time.'

  'No, Patrick,' said the sighing Tutor softly. 'It would be a waste of mine.'

  Most of the students were throwing off the old and embracing the new, but Patrick did it with more contempt than anyone else - just threw the balance of old wisdoms away as one might throw out a rotting vegetable. Appropriate, then, that he came from Coventry. So said the Course Tutor. But when it was put to Patrick that he might one day wish to transform his home town into a new age of design, he was scornful. 'Shopping malls, Walkways, Municipal Offices for Petty Bureaucrats, little houses for little people -'

  "Then what would you build, Patrick? Another Reichstag?'

  'If I had to choose between provincial design and that - then yes. But I won't. Because I am not interested in building anything domestic - anything that needs plumbing, electricity, waterpipes, doors, windows - all the stuff that has to be housed in a skin and dictates, no matter how hard you try to avoid it - the form. Oh no. I shall build bridges, which are the purest structures of all. And if there is one thing they have absolutely no use for in Coventry - it's a bridge. Little-town minds.'

&n
bsp; 'It's the people who pay,' said the Course Tutor. 'It's the people who use whatever you make.'

  'Maybe -' said Patrick, 'but they must not dictate the form. Most people are idiots ... I do not bow to making what people love. They must learn to love what I do.'

  Ah yes - Mies van der Rohe. It often was. Usually - though not in

  this case - without the skills to carry it off. Patrick could - and he probably would. The Course Tutor had heard it all before, seen it all before. The trading of one lot of traditions and mores for a new lot that were simply the old lot's antithesis. New Wave - every few years. This season's young bucks were sharpening their teeth on Pinter, Barstow, Storey - rages against the banal, or paeans for it, depending on your point of view. Interpreting it - as every age does with every new thing under the sun - to suit themselves. They usually forgot real people. Too difficult to deal with, Sweep it away - like Rembrandt hiding those difficult-to-paint hands. There was something touching about that.

  He looked at Patrick Parker. He was not touched by what he saw: a tall, graceful - beautiful even - young man, with fire in his voice and contempt in his eyes. Those who forge ahead have no time for mortals and must forget that great building - truly Great building -even the biggest Palladian masterpiece in Christendom - has a humble heart. It is, in the end, about people. Nothing the human hand and mind created was about anything else. How could it be? Men were not gods, but men .. . Mies creating a house that burned you in summer and froze you in winter was not Great Design. It was arrogance. And he thought he could see already that this young man...

  The trouble with the lad from Coventry being so good was that nobody wanted to touch him. Nobody wanted to be responsible for reshaping such talent, or influencing it to the point of change. Even a little. They were all scared of it. This was the time of youth. His tutors were fazed by his ability, and, as he accused them quite rightly from time to time, they did not really understand Where He Was Coming From. And so they left him alone. Or guided him with a very loose rein and hoped for the best. One tutor, a religious sort who specialised in community housing, said that at seminars Patrick sometimes reminded him of twelve-year-old Jesus teaching in the Temple. Another thought he had about him the air of the young Giotto, as described by Vasari. A third cited Wren and John Evelyn's description: 'that miracle of a youth'. Patrick had a freshness of mind, a bounding invention and adventurous empiricism that matched Wren in his vigorous heyday. Whatever they thought of him as a man, as a builder of Great Bridges (bloody great bridges, said the Tutor into his whisky glass), they were sure he would go far. Which concurred, naturally enough, with the object of their estimation's view of things ... Patrick Parker was already preparing himself for dining with the gods - he had evened out his vowel sounds and bought a suit from Savile Row (four-button cuff), and his aim was to walk away at the end of the course with the coveted gold medal and a public or private commission. Or two.

  'He seems to take for granted that he will win the thing,' said another tutor. 'As if he expects his brilliance to be treated accordingly ...'

  The Head of Department agreed. But there was nothing to be done. If he continued with such startling originality and high technical standards in everything, his the gold medal would be. His transportable green Perspex-cladded hunting lodge was still the talk of The Academy and it was rumoured that he had already received a private commission out of it. Patrick's shrug of the shoulders and his public statement that 'You had to start somewhere' when the end-of-year commendations were given out was nowhere near humility and somewhere near the truth. It really was only a beginning. Somehow the Head of Department and the Course Tutor and the rest of them did not find this cheering.

  'He will be our star pupil,' said one sadly.

  ‘I know,' said the other mournfully. ‘I know.'

  The Course Tutor, wincing as he remembered this, reached for another very stiff whisky, a very stiff whisky indeed. The trouble with Patrick was that - if he was absolutely brilliant - he was also -somehow lacking in - he searched for the word - compassion. He was heartless, cold to anything that might threaten his ambition. That was it - not threaten his designs, but his ambition. So then - Patrick had chosen wisely for his hero. Brunel was a horse-whipper, too. And if the horse fell down, there was always another one waiting behind. Patrick Parker wanted to be like him, did he? Well, thought the Course Tutor as he sipped his drink and slowly closed his door on Patrick's retreating, hubris-ridden back, it would end in tears. One day. If not Patrick's - then everybody else's . . .

  7

  Embracing the Modern, In Every Sense

  A clapper bridge is a simple dry stone construction dating from the Middle Ages and is thought to be the oldest form of human made bridge. The name 'clapper' is believed to come from the Saxon world cleaca, an ancient word for stepping stones, and the clapper bridge was perhaps the most natural progression from fallen trees or stepping stones.

  Lucy Blakstad, Bridge: The Architecture of Connection

  Patrick wrote regularly to his mother, letters full of what he had done, what had been said, and urged her to keep the correspondence for posterity. Florence was delighted. She wrote that she was very proud, though she missed him badly and the house was empty without him. She had forgiven him for going. She believed he would be back. She spared nothing in the telling about his father's many irritations. He was getting worse, driving her mad - sitting with him and the clock and nothing else for the evening was giving her palpitations. Patrick wrote back that he was sorry she felt like that and that she should encourage his father to get out of the house, give him a job to do, stir him up. It was easy to dictate from afar and have it translate as being caring.

  'Patrick says you should get going on something,' Florence said, looking up from her letter. 'Let not slip the hour -' she paused to check the writing - 'is what he says.' She put the letter down and stared at him over her spectacles. ‘I suggest you let not slip the hour and clear the shed out.'

  It was the one place George dreaded visiting. 'Maybe,' he said. 'Better ask him about that bike before I start.' He added, pleased to have some respite. 'Can't move stuff past it, now can I?'

  Florence wrote. What did Patrick think? Should they get rid of his old bicycle? She was mortified by his reply.

  'No’ he wrote, 'keep it. I have met up with Little Audrey again and she might come up for a day or two in the Christmas vac. If the weather is any good we could go for a cycle ride.'

  It is a wise parent who can keep his or her mouth shut. George did it of necessity. Florence had never learned. 'Be careful’ she wrote back. 'You need all your energy for your studies. Leave Audrey well alone for the time being, I would.'

  Patrick laughed as he read it. More about dilution. Well - dilution be damned. He was a year and a half down the line, he was doing brilliantly, it was time for a little dilution in that department. Which is why, of course, he had sent that postcard to Audrey in the first place.

  If he had hoped to meet a girl on the Design Course, he was disappointed. Of the twenty-seven students in his year, two were girls, and one of those was only approximate. She wore brogues, fisherman's sweaters, cropped hair and smoked small cigars. The most intimate moments spent with her were when she punched him in the chest by way of greeting. The other girl, called Sylvia, was very pretty, very clever, and engaged, by the end of the first term, to Lord Galton's son, also on the course (though he did not turn up very often). And that was that. He was disappointed but not surprised. A career designing buildings and bridges and railways and roads was not woman's work. Besides, mixed classes could do exactly what Florence warned and lay waste to young men's brains. Patrick had found his concentration wandering towards Sylvia's blouse once or twice during lectures and he was very aware of the Pitfall that was Girl.

  What he was not aware of was the effect he had on the few girls he did make contact with, from other parts of the college - the fabric designers, the garden and interior designers - girls who hung around t
he entrance to the main building and eyed him as he strode past. If he desired a love life he had no way of communicating it - and no instinct for discovering who might reciprocate. So unversed was Patrick in the methods of the screen romance and its like, that when Millicent Carter - driven to distraction - plucked up courage and virtually fell at his feet in a welter of petticoats and laddered stockings, he stepped over her - apologising as he went on his way. Not quite daring to look. And when, in his second term, he received two Valentine's cards at his digs, he thought they must have been sent as a joke. So for Patrick there was no easy way to meet girls, which became - in the moments when his head was free of his college work, when he had set aside the lines and planes and conurbations and cantilevers - quite an urgent desire. He wanted a diversion. He was ready for a diversion. And he would have one.

  His field trip that term was to Balmoral. He was amazed at the audacity of it when he saw Brunel's design for the young Queen Victoria. 'It's a splendid little bridge,' he wrote to his mother. 'Very modern. Genius in embryo. But it is only a very little one. No wonder Brunel thought he had better design something revolutionary to compensate for the scale of the thing. Otherwise, why bother? As for Queen Vic saying she hated the thing - well - what do you expect from someone who chose Landseer?’