Patrick Parker's Progress (17 page)

If Audrey had not been wedged between a large man with several carrier bags and a lolling child, she would have danced down the length of the bus home. Instead she sat there and had a think. How to get on? How to be somebody? She would find a way. It seemed to her that if you loved, you could do anything - just like the best songs and films always said. If Patrick was going to build his bridges, what were her bridges going to be?

Patrick sent his father a copy of Dylan Thomas's
Adventures in the Skin Trade
together with a copy of the tape of
Under Milk Wood.
Florence eyed both these items beadily. 'And just where does he think you're going to find a machine to listen to
that
muck again?' she asked the kitchen sink, rattling the dishes until she broke one. George said nothing. But he read the book and wrote back that he found it a bit strange but enjoyable. For the first time in his life George received a full letter from his son, addressed to him only, and in his own right. It had news of theatre trips, foreign films, a design prize for the college Gold Medal, part of which was a visit to Tokyo. It gave Florence breathing difficulties while George, delighted, wrote back and suggested that he might consider making a ticket collector's booth for the prize. In his opinion the signalmen were always looked after, it was the poor ticket collector who got stuck in a matchbox and took cold
...
Patrick wrote back and said he had his eye on something a bit more startling than that. George sighed. The letter ended with 'Love to Mum' - and that was all.

Florence waited for her own letter. Waited, and waited. No letter came and Florence became ill.

George nursed her. She became iller when, having written to Patrick that his father made a terrible presence in the sickroom, Patrick wrote back and said that he was in the middle of exams, as well as working on his competition entry, and couldn't return. He sent her a flowery card in pastels and wrote under the sentimental verse 'All My Love Your Loving Son'. Florence put it on her bedside table, continued to grow pale and not to eat and to have what she decided were fits. She wrote to Patrick that she was afraid she might die. Patrick wrote back - hurriedly - and said it was nonsense. That she would be fine. What she needed was a bit of a holiday. Why didn't she and Dad spend a little of their savings and go away somewhere warm? He suggested Morocco and Florence nearly had another fit. 'I'll come up when I can,' he said.

Florence, beside herself, turned on George. 'And you can get out there to that shed now, George Parker, cold or not. For you're no use to me in here.'

But since she was
lying
down, George dared to stand up for himself. 'I'll go out when the weather warms up a bit,' he said. He waited for the heavens to open or the earth to swallow him up. But already Florence's mind had wandered off the subject. Tokyo. The very word on her son's lips made her shiver. It was Audrey who had done this. London was bad enough but it was a means to an end. But Tokyo? She lay in bed and fumed. All she got was another postcard. In the end, since she could not die and see the results in the pain her loss would cause Patrick, she got up again, but her recovery was slow. She was, if she thought about it, grieving for what might have been. She began knitting for him - like a Fury. This time in even finer wool, the thin, beautiful wool she used for him when he was a baby. Maroon. He suited maroon.

Patrick gave it to the first beggar he found. Audrey was shocked. 'What she doesn't know can't hurt her,' he said, triumphant to be so right. He was right about everything at the moment. His idea for the Gold Medal was brilliant - while everyone else strove to climb Olympus, he would design a children's playground. With the ghost of his father's idea about the ticket collector's booth - he would include a shelter for the mothers - he knew it would win. It would be plastic, and indestructible and cheap. He'd got the idea wandering around Coventry, watching children kicking tin cans along gutters, turning somersaults around bicycle parking bays, hanging upside-down from trees
...
Quick, easy, temporary - there were still so many bomb sites unused. If they wanted humanity - they could have it. He was no fool. He knew that designing something for children would touch the hearts of the judges. You had to build up to the heroic slowly. Take them by surprise. If he used Corbusier's primary colours for the structures it would give the project just the right touch.

He told no one. Not his mother, not Audrey, not his father. Audrey had no idea that on the rare occasions they met (apart from when he sneaked her into his room for a couple of hours) and they went and sat looking at groups of children playing, he was less thinking about starting a family with her, than the basic requirements of the mini-human being in design terms. She sat looking fondly, imagining having his baby - he sat looking fondly imagining how his acceptance speech would go down
...

'I'm on my way,' he said to her, patting her cold knee. 'What was the worst thing you ever remember about playing?'

'You wouldn't climb the tree with me.'

He laughed. 'No - seriously - what?'

She was being serious actually. 'Falling down,' she said.

He nodded and thought for a while. Then - 'That's
it
’
he said ecstatically, 'the final touch. If they like to go head-first then what a playground needs is some form of mock grass, rubber based
...'

Audrey agreed.

In Coventry, his moment of rebellion over and feeling quite glad to escape Florence's returned good health and accompanying misery, George set about doing his duty by the shed. He began with Patrick's old bicycle. The surprise he found in the old saddlebag once he had excavated it down to the Roman level (not a spanner or an oil dropper in sight - just old maps, used train tickets, sweet wrappers and assorted rubbish) had him sitting on one of the sacking-covered boxes for a whole evening, wondering what to do, how it had come to be in there, whether his son knew all about everything, what to make of it. It also had him rediscovering that distant land called Hope. After all, he had nothing to lose now -nothing.

He smoked several pipes, turned the note over in his hands, as if by doing so it would reveal more of itself, and wondered how long it had been in there. Indelible pencil. Smudged but still quite readable. Even on the envelope. He knew the writing and he wondered, his heart making little flipping motions, whether to take up what Lilly said in the note: 'If you are ever passing the door on a Wednesday afternoon you'd be welcome to drop in. We close at one and Alf gets picked up to go to his physio. It would be very nice to see you again.' And then, underlined, she had added, 'I have missed you. Lilly' He had no idea when the note was written but it had been over fifteen years since he had seen her. Perhaps it was best left. On the other hand, Patrick only got the bicycle six or seven years ago. So the note might not have been written that long ago at all.

'Cleaned out the bike,' he wrote to Patrick. 'Found a few surprises. Your mother still isn't eating properly. Couldn't you come up?' He waited for Patrick's response but there wasn't one.

In London Audrey decided that a good project to start off with was to get on the right side of her potential mother-in-law. She knew that if she was going to succeed with Patrick she needed Florence. Dolly said she was wasting her time. That no one who came between mother and son would be tolerated. But Audrey thought a little bit of bridge-building of her own might do the trick.

'You must go to her,' she said to Patrick. 'It will make all the difference and one day away won't kill you.' Truth was she was shocked at his selfishness but she managed to put the thought out of her head. Patrick was a genius and geniuses were different. She preferred to think of it like that.
‘I
really think you should.'

Patrick ran his hands through his hair and sulked and frowned and said 'Would bloody Michelangelo have left the Sistine to visit his mum? Would Pericles have allowed Mnesicles to leave the sodding Parthenon?'

Audrey said they very probably would.

'Aud, I'm in the middle of the Gold Medal. It's impossible. I damn well won't.'

Then she cajoled, enjoying the role which she more or less copied from a Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy film. She liked watching those busy, bossy American women in frilly pinnies telling their husbands how to behave, despite being only housewives. She would be like that. In the end Patrick nodded. 'Oh well,' he said, 'If you think I should.'

Well obviously I do, she thought. But she just smiled. 'Tell her about your private commission. That'll perk her up.' Patrick nodded enthusiastically. 'That'll please her.'
‘I
should think it will,' she said. 'A commission from royalty' 'Not quite,' he said. "The Galtons are only aristocratic'

And up he went. Just For Twenty-Four Hours, as he told himself over and over again on the train.

It annoyed him to see how pale and thin Florence looked but after half an hour or so she perked up. 'Audrey was right,' he said, tucking the shawl more neatly around his mother's shoulders. 'She said it would do you good if I came.' 'Audrey did?'

He nodded. 'She can be quite firm with me sometimes.'

He said this with a smile. But his mother was not smiling. How dare the girl dictate to her son what he should do about his own mother? Indeed, she grew quite pink at the very thought, and Patrick misreading the signs, patted her arm and added several bushels of salt to the wound by saying. 'Audrey's pretty well always right about little things like that.' He laughed. 'Leaves me time to get on with the important things.'

'Where's your new maroon jumper? And the blue one?' asked Florence quickly.

'In the wash,' he said.

‘I
hope she hasn't shrunk them,' was all she could think of to say.

Patrick told her about the loggia he had been asked to design by Henry Galton. I'll take you to see it when it's done,' he said. 'We can have a day out at Coulter Hall. They're opening the place up to the public a couple of days a week. Death duties or something
...'

Florence forgot all about umbrage. She saw herself in a nice navy two-piece with her arm linked through her son's and - though she knew it could not be - everyone was bowing as they passed.

'Mixing with the great and the good,' said Florence. For once she , was satisfied.

Leaning back, she closed her eyes and smiled.
‘I
knew you'd have time for your old mother.'

'Not so much of the old,' he said.

But as she lay back he saw for the first time that she was. Old. And a shiver went up his spine. A shiver that said Responsibility. His father wasn't getting any younger either. One day he might have to do more than make fleeting visits like this. It was then, and almost idly, that possible salvation occurred to him. He needed a wife.

He rang Audrey that night.
‘I
wish you were here,' he said. And he meant it. She could tell. 'Good old Audrey
’
said Patrick.

When Florence, feeling much better, was rucked up in bed, father and son sat at the kitchen table and sipped tea and talked. Jazz Club was on the radio, turned down low, and they were set for an easy, harmonious evening of it. Or rather, Patrick observed, they might have been, if his father would just stop clearing his throat. Obviously in preparation for saying something.

"This is Charlie Parker,' Patrick said pointedly, hoping it would stop the intermittent rasping.

George nodded but he looked wound up, as if he had something pressing on his mind. 'I was just wondering if you really meant us to get rid of that bike?'

'Oh yes,' said Patrick. 'Don't keep asking - just do it.'

"There's nothing in it that you want to keep?' His father looked at him sharply, almost angrily. 'Nothing?'

'Oh no,' said Patrick airily. 'I'll be getting a car soon. The Gold Medal's worth a couple of hundred, and when I get the loggia money I can more than afford it
...'

His father remained stern. 'You can think of no reason why that bicycle can't be thrown away?'

He shook his head as if in puzzled good humour. 'Dad - in a while I'll be travelling in style. Get rid of the bike
...'

George relaxed. 'Fine,' he said, and poured more beer. He fingered the note in his pocket. Safe. 'You're on your way then? Big time?'

Patrick nodded. 'Once you get taken up by people of influence like the Gallons it's word of mouth. Not that I intend to spend my life doing domestic stuff but a bit of money and a few connections will be good. Then I'll go into partnership with someone and after a few years I'll specialise in big stuff. And then - bridges. Only bridges. No doors and windows and fancy frills. Just amazing, astonishing bridges. The world needs more of them.'

'No ticket collector's booths then?'