Patrick Parker's Progress (40 page)

'Don't be so silly
’
she told the
m all. And resumed her studies.

Audrey rarely went back to London but always, when she did, her mother had kept some new cuttings about Patrick for her. It was as if Dolly could not stop rubbing in the salt and Audrey could not help holding open the wound to oblige, though she always affected indifference. At these times she rediscovered a painful hollow inside herself. And if she thought about it at all, the word fulfilment came to mind. But she tried not to think. There was one press cutting that cut more sharply than most. The photograph of Patrick, proud father, with his newborn son.

'At last
’
said Dolly. 'And now
we
won't hear the last of it.'

Not a sign of Peggy Boxer As Wa
s any
where. If Audrey did not exist in her world in Paris, Peggy Boxer scarcely seemed to exist in hers. Faceless and voiceless seemed to be the way of things when you served Genius. Faceless and voiceless for both of them then. Which seemed fair.

The years moved on, slipped by, rolled away - quite easily. In Paris there was a good rhythm to life. Sometimes she would try out the words to her mirror 'kept woman' but it caused her more surprise than shame. At least Edwin
had
kept her. Patrick just threw her away. How had she gone from being Little Audrey Wapshott, climbing trees and marvelling at spiders' webs, to this wicked sophisticate? She could hardly remember. But she knew she had done it quite easily. Very easily. Too easily, was the next stage in the consideration, but she never went there.

'We are not kept,' said Pauline, fourteen years with the head of Parisian Police (now retired). 'It is us who keeps
them.'

Gradually on her visits to London her mother ceased to say the word 'grandchildren' and look at her meaningfully, and instead concentrated on her son Sandy's offspring - overpraising the poor little dribbling, snotty things in Audrey's opinion, though she smiled and nodded and looked interested at every informative morsel. It was highly unlikely that they could talk, write, draw, play any musical instrument, do sums, have several sets of the finest teeth and make you laugh till your eyes dropped out at the tender ages of two and four - but Audrey accepted it. She also accepted that Jeannie, Sandy's wife, was probably the best mother in the world (barring the Queen Mother) and that Dolly could not wish for a better daughter-in-law. If the implication was that she
could
wish for a better daughter, Audrey did not rise. Her mother made the best of it and referred to her daughter as 'a successful businesswoman'. Audrey hoped that fate would not intervene and inform Mrs Wapshott just what business it was at which her daughter was so successful.

She went on keeping the cuttings her mother saved her about Patrick. Couldn't help it. She tucked them into her suitcase to take back to France to read. And in France she hid them away at the back of a cupboard under piles of yellowing linen.

'Interested are you?' said Dolly, watching her fold them into her packing so carefully

'I'm always interested in old friends,' she replied sweetly.

Audrey knew all about discretion. It did not do to tell anyone that she thought of Patrick every time she crossed a bridge - that she thought of him when she looked at a painting in the Louvre or at the Prado - that when she heard a certain kind of jazz or saw the title of a familiar book - she still thought of Patrick. As to what she felt when she thought about Patrick, she could not say. It was not love, that was certain. It was just a something. Like her mother saying she could fancy a little bit of a something but she didn't know what.

And her life in general? Was she happy or not? Happiness, it seemed to her, was what other people required it to be on your behalf. 'Are you happy?' Edwin said occasionally. What he meant was,

'Reassure me things will continue as they are . . .' And her mother -not that she ever actually came out with the word, happiness being an extravagant concept - sometimes asked, 'So - everything all right, then?' which came to the same thing, and as with Edwin, required a reply to reassure. She gave it. It was a nice life, easy. Edwin spent more time with her as the years went on. He talked to her about European Union Cultural Matters. She listened, politely, but she was never engaged by any of it. Art, music, poetry, buildings - they were painful things. Items upon which a door had been closed. When she looked at that smug little Maya with her neat naked body and her dainty, silly feet, she merely wanted to smack her. She didn't know the half of it, locked into paint like that. And neither, actually, did Goya.

In Paris she had an elderly maid, Evie, who commented if she hummed to herself, or did anything of a foolish, spontaneous nature, saying, 'You seem happy today, Madame
...'
in that doubtful way of the true Roman Catholic. All in all it seemed that the world was made anxious by happiness and its existence or not was best not speculated upon. Pragma, she reminded herself, I am Pragma.

When her father died she was relieved to go home and take with her real, deep feelings. In the chapel she put her hands together and bowed her head and thanked her father for being real. For being someone about whom she did not have to pretend. She was so used to impersonating the woman that everyone in Paris thought she should be that she was unsure where she ended and the real Audrey Wapshott began. At least these tears were her own. At least when she put her arms around her mother she meant it. Even Sandy touched her heart with his painful face. Well - those were her bridges, she supposed. Small compared to Patrick's, of course. Hardly worth considering.

'How's Florence?' she asked, to take her mother's mind off the day for a while.

'Flo is a very bitter woman,' said Dolly, nodding into her teacup with deep satisfaction. 'Too upset to come,' she said.

‘I
never thought she cared for Dad that much.'

'Nor does she. No - she's upset about Patrick and that wife of his and the children. Never go up. Never see her. If they remember her birthday it's a miracle, she says. And after all she's done, she says.'

‘I
know how she feels,' said Audrey wryly.

'Oh she's bitter,' said Dolly. 'Just sits up there in Coventry and gets bitter.
Very
bitter.'

All Audrey could think was, Good.

Perhaps it was something about funerals. Or mention of that town, but Audrey decided to take the train up to Coventry. Dolly was busy enough with Sandy and Jeannie and the children (all those grandchildren - and thank God for it, thought Audrey) and she could be spared for a day. She went to see Lilly. It was a cold, grey day and the journey depressed her. Not so much for the lowering clouds and the dull light over the fields, but because she remembered the way she used to feel when she travelled up to Coventry. No matter how bad the weather, how low the light, she was always excited, expectant, alive with possibilities. Even when she travelled up that last time to see Patrick, to be by his side at his father's funeral, even then -guiltily - she had felt excited at the thought of being with him. All that innocence. Hardly bore thinking about.

Ghosts were there to meet her as she left the train - she saw Florence and Patrick on the station - she saw George sucking on his pipe - Poor George - and she heard herself, suddenly, saying 'My arse' to Patrick when he launched into yet another lecture on the virtues of bloody old
Brunel
. Bloody Old
Brunel
. She wished she had said it to him more often. Just once, she thought, as she skittered down the station stairs and hailed a taxi, just once, she would like the chance to meet with Patrick again and tell him what she really thought about his bloody old bugger-it Monumental Odyssey. My arse just about summed it up.

As the cab pulled away she looked about her. She had not been back since George's death and it was strange to find that - despite Patrick's scathing dismissals - she still liked the town. The Cathedral had mellowed, the surrounding buildings did not look quite so stark and there was a sense of community in the streets as busy people hurried about. Such boring little lives, Patrick used to say. How arrogant he was. How arrogant she let him be. Looking at them now, they seemed nice, ordinary, kind. She could well imagine them turning their faces to the wall to preserve a lady's dignity. She had a warm regard for Godiva, despite the way Patrick used to dismiss her as That Silly Woman. Now she could think beyond the drama of her naked ride and wonder how she ever managed to return to her husband after he had humiliated her so. Probably like the rest of Womankind, Audrey decided, she kept her head down, said nothing, and just got on with it. Pragma, Godiva. We are all at it, she thought. And smiled.
'That Silly Woman', indeed. To
Audrey she seemed remarkably wise. After all - she got what she wanted - it was her husband who ended up with egg on his face. And then, just as the taxi turned into Chapel Street, she had a little thought
...
Just a very tiny one - a little daydream
...
Which made her smile. Just a little thought about egg on a face
...

Lilly was pleased to see her. The shop was to close. You could not compete with the clever, industrious work-all-hours Asians. Nor did she want to. Lilly's husband was dead now so she had time to spare. She often thought about George and cursed Florence. 'One day,' she said, smiling a wicked smile,
‘I
will dance on that woman's grave. I told her that. And I will.'

‘I
know how you feel,' said Audrey. 'She's a bitter woman.'

'It's no way to be,' said Lilly. 'Don't ask for wages in this life. You have to look forwards, not back. It's what might be - not what was, that counts.'

Audrey nodded.

'How's that son of hers?' said Lilly. She said it with such fierce contempt that Audrey was shocked. 'He's doing very nicely'

'Nicely is as nicely does,' said Lilly contemptuously. 'Unfeeling little bugger. Needs taking down a peg or two.' Audrey nodded again. Wise old bird, Lilly.

She kissed her on the cheek as she left and waved until the taxi turned the corner of Chapel Street. Lilly looked sad, orphaned almost, as she stood at the kerb, waving back. 'Keep in touch,' she said and Audrey thought that she would. Then, on a whim, she asked the driver to go slowly past Patrick's old house. A low light was on in the hallway, otherwise it was in darkness. Inside lives a bitter woman, thought Audrey. And I must not let that happen to me.

It was harder to leave London this time. Not so much in the leaving her mother because Sandy and his family were there - but because one of her roots had died and it made her remember, even to cherish, the rest. In her heart she was no different from Little Audrey Wapshott who would one day want to come home. And be forgiven? Only one person could do that, and that was herself.

In the meantime she and Edwin moved into a life of comfortable affection. Edwin was satisfied that her love for him was love and she did not say any different. Frankly, she thought, his own view of love was wonky enough; quite as strange as the Duke of Ferrara's, if less fatal. He had kept his bargain and she would keep hers. To him she was now - if not youth - and if not Simone de Beauvoir mixed with Lesley Caron - then at least an attractive, sometimes beautiful, woman. Audrey liked to call herself, with irony, a very
well-kept
woman. She had adapted over the years as a companion (less bed, more read nowadays) too, and could converse in an informed and amusing way. Edwin had a good bargain. She was something between a female Faustus and (Edwin loved her to read Oscar Wilde to him) a Dorian - Dora? - Gray
...
Except that if she were the heroine of that novel she would be found at the end with a dagger through her heart, her face unlined, and the painting crumbled to dust. The wages of sin, it appeared, were smooth features.

Well - she deserved something for being a Duchess in a Cage and in a land dedicated to such pursuits she put it down, publicly, to the excellent face products she used. To herself she put it down to her ability, hard won, to detach herself from too much reality. And to remain untouched. True, if she stood on a bridge with Edwin, it was Patrick she always remembered; and a litany of phrases - 'tensioned cables and struts', 'open lattice work without masonry skin', 'multiple span', 'heavy catenaries and slender timbers' - all sounding more poetic than they looked. And then maybe, while she stood there, the little flame would leap up again, fear or anger, sadness or regret, something intangible was ignited - but on the whole she kept the damper down. Lilly was right. Look to the future.

As part of the less bed and more read rhythm of life, she began, on a whim, subscribing to the English-language
Architecture Today -
which certainly surprised Edwin when he found her curled up with it. She lied to him. She said that she was losing her grip on the more difficult aspects of English and this was good exercise. It saved his questioning her. Whatever her motives, they were private.