Patrick Parker's Progress (16 page)

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 Superseded now but at least he was trying to do something different.'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

'You forget that I've got an eye for that sort of thing
’
said George firmly.

'Oh?' said Florence.

'I used to build structures in Meccano, if you remember.' She burst out laughing, ridding herself of some of her hidden spleen. 'Meccano!' she said, 'Pie in the sky more like.' That shut him up.

Patrick remembered, fleetingly, taking one apart and putting it back together again in the shed. He might have mentioned it but the memory was not a happy one. He smiled to himself - Something Nasty In The Woodshed.

George saw the smile and misread it. It didn't do to venture anything in this house.

Florence said coaxingly, 'Well then - there'll still be plenty for you to do in Coventry when you've finished at college. You could start by building something that doesn't look like an army barracks and I'm sure we'd all be obliged.'

Patrick went and sat at the table. 'Any piccalilli, Mum?' he asked, picking up another sandwich.

'In the cupboard,' she said. 'I'm just popping out.'

They looked at her in astonishment. Four o'clock on Christmas Day?

'For a breath of fresh air.'

If George was amazed, it was as nothing to the amazement that the Boxer family felt when they received a personal invitation to the Parkers' for Boxing Day tea. It was the busiest time of the holiday for the pub and Mr Boxer declined. But Ruby and Peggy were delighted to accept. They decked themselves out in their very best attire and walked up. Florence, discreetly placed behind the front-room curtains, saw them coining and put a match to the parlour fire. She switched on the standard lamp, pulled the curtains tight shut, and went out to open the front door.

Ruby Boxer handed her a Christmas-wrapped gift - 'No prizes for guessing,' she said cheerfully. It was sherry. If George's amazement was high already, the sight of his pledge-signing wife dusting off the little glasses and putting them on a tray on the kitchen table with the bottle winking beside them, took it to new dimensions.

'We won't,' said Florence, smiling what she thought was a friendly smile and which, in actual fact, had Peggy and George's blood running cold. 'We're teetotal.' The smile, more horrible, widened. Ruby was smiling too. She said that she
would,
if it was all the same, as she'd been run off her feet. Florence nodded. 'And I'm sure Patrick will join you.'

Patrick was called down from the bottom of the stairs. And George, taking the opportunity while his wife was out of the room, poured sherry into each of the glasses. And took one. Florence returned. 'He'll be down in a minute,' she said confidingly, looking straight at Peggy. 'He's been drawing. He could do with a bit of livening up.'

George, top li
p poised over glass, nearly choked himself.

It says a great deal for the agitation taking place in Florence's breast that she ignored George's throwing-off of teetotalism, if she even noticed. 'And you two young things can take your drinks and go into the parlour. I've lit the fire.'

Ruby smiled at her daughter encouragingly. Florence smiled at her son encouragingly. George smiled into the fire and sipped and said nothing. The two young things picked up their glasses and carried them, very gingerly, along the hall and into the shadowy room where the fire was just taking hold.

Peggy placed herself just-so on the rug by the fire and sipped her sherry and smiled at Patrick and waited for him to speak. He sat on the unyielding edge of the squeaky couch and drank half the glass straight off.

'Well
’
he said. 'We don't usually have visitors at Christmas. You are honoured.' 'Am I?' she said.

He drained his glass. And got up. 'Would you like another?'

She shook her head. Sipping was the ladylike way and she wasn't going to let herself down. Patrick got as far as the door before Florence gave a little rattle of the handle and popped her head round. Her smile, if anything, was even more hideous.

‘I
brought you the bottle
’
she said, handing it to him. 'Your father's got no control.'

And she was gone.

'My dad's just the same,' said Peggy. 'I'd like to get out - leave the pub and go to London too. What's it like?' 'Busy
’
said Patrick.

The firelight was playing a halo around her hair and her skirt revealed a pair of very dainty knees. She sipped her drink again and looked at him over the rim. It was an inviting look. But Patrick, in the first full flush of new-discovered manhood, disdained it.
‘I
see a lot of Audrey
’
he said.

Somehow Peggy Boxer managed to get the sip of sherry down her windpipe.

'Really?' she said. 'What's she doing nowadays?' The voice was even and Patrick was lulled.

'Telephones
’
he said. 'Bit dead-end. But she's very bright actually. When she isn't being daft.' He said this last so affectionately that he surprised himself.

'Are you engaged?' Peggy also surprised herself. The daring of it came from disappointment. She had been led to believe
...

'Oh no
’
said Patrick. 'Just lovers. You know.'

There - he had told someone. Straight out. Lovers. It was a great word.

Peggy got up. 'I'm getting scorched,' she said. 'Where's the -?' Patrick waited. Peggy pulled a face. 'Where - er -?' Patrick picked up the bottle.

'Not that
’
said Peggy, so upset she nearly hit him over the head with it. 'Where's the bloody toilet?'

When Audrey came up to visit, just for a night, which was as much as Florence would allow, and almost more than Audrey could stand, given the way she paced the floor of her bedroom, went up and down the stairs countless times throughout the night, and generally made it clear that there would be no hanky-panky in her house. The weather was so bad that they never set foot out of doors and the general frustration level on everyone's part (except George's) was electric. All notions of taking a cycle ride were abandoned, and the bike and the contents of the shed mouldered on.

It was the second time that the serpent placed before Audrey Wapshott's nose the irrefutable fact that, if you withdraw the pleasures of the bedchamber from your man, he will undoubtedly be all the keener for them - and - even if only incidentally - you. Love clouded Audrey Wapshott's vision. Or was it love? Might it not be something far more dangerous? Blind adulation?

9

A Consideration of Duty versus Genius

Steg uber der Mur
:
This combined footbridge and cycle way plays an important role at Graz, as indicated by a local commentator, who describes it as a 'place for humanity, a symbol and a cultural axis for the city, where a tension field between tradition and receptiveness to the new has been set up'. Matthew Wells,
30
Bridges

The foodstuffs Patrick took back to London with him doubled in volume, and Florence had made him a pullover of the softest, finest wool which would have taken an ordinary mortal months to knit. It was in the colour she thought favoured him best: royal blue. He looked at it for a moment, then at her, and she was worried he might hand it back. But he did not. He bent to kiss her, thanked her, and boarded. There, she thought, as she waved him away on the train,
there
- his father - old misery he was - couldn't do anything like that for him, now could he? As soon as the train was out of sight of the waving hands, Patrick pulled down the window of his carriage and threw the jumper to the winds.

'Begone, Dull Bourgeois,' he cried. Then he leaned back in his seat, letting the icy breeze sting his face until a red-faced man in a scarf and hat leaned forward and asked him, very nervously, to close it.

Audrey met him at the station. They tiptoed past his landlady's door and spent the rest of the day in bed. In the evening, sitting either side of the popping gas fire, sipping beer, Patrick told her about Peggy Boxer's visit. He laughed and laughed about the mix-up over the bathroom (as he had learned to call it) - but Audrey did not laugh. She looked at him. If she was not careful she would lose him -not just because he was handsome - but because he really
was
somebody. You could feel it when you were with him. Of course Peggy Boxer wouldn't manage it - she was just a silly thing from what

Audrey remembered - but someone would someday . . . unless Audrey developed into somebody too. 'Teach me everything you know
’
she said, leaning forward. He took her straight back to bed. After which he made her tiptoe out into the night. He returned to college in the morning and needed - as he said to her playfully - to rest.