Patrick Parker's Progress (51 page)

Patrick was much disturbed after Paris, too. He did not know what to do. He tried to trace this Madame Koi - and indeed, for several weeks after his strange meeting with her he placed advertisements in the Parisian papers to see if they had any luck with finding her. But they did not.
Nexus Tokyo
denied all knowledge of her, so she was an impostor. But somehow that made it even more exotic. Wild. It was a long time since he had done anything even remotely unconventional. He was one of the world's leading designers, and, he
ought
to be a little on the dangerous side. Sir Ronald's advice was all very well and Peggy was a very good wife and organiser - but it never went near the soul with her, and Tokyo Cinders did. She stood up to him - and she would have lain down for him. What more, he asked himself as he looked at his poor, miserable Peggy, could a Man of Destiny want?

Fortunately no one ever corroborated the rumours about who it was they found with his trousers down, and Patrick, of course, denied them. Members of the Louvre's catering staff were interviewed and bribed but since they did not know which of the two British designers was which (they all look the same, English Suits) they were - thank God - not much use. He thought about employing a private detective but that seemed absurd. She was probably safely back in Japan by now - and tantalising someone else. In the end there was nothing more to be done. He argued to himself that if French journalists - desperate French journalists - could not find her, he was hardly likely to do any better. Anyway - he thought sadly - he didn't know much about women, but he knew this. If one of the breed wants something, and it involves a man, she'll get it. So she couldn't have wanted him. And that was that. He put the shoe away at the back of one of his plan chests. But he was never
quite
unaware of its presence.

Audrey was never
quite
the same with Edwin again, either. Or perhaps, she thought, she was not the same with her life. She, too, kept the other shoe. The Cinderella touch cost her an arm and a leg at the costumiers (one shoe, madam, would be understandable - but to lose
two
...)
And they were made by Verrier
...
She asked about the dexterous little fingertips and was told coldly that some of the best bead-work was done by Verrier's men workers. She paid the enormous bill with a smile, deciding it was worth it. Objects become symbols. She placed the shoe on the dressing table where she could see it every day because it made her smile.

Edwin Bonnard noticed it and asked about it she said it was a little nonsense that had taken her fancy in the Flea Market. He had the vaguest feeling he had seen something like it before. He picked it up and turning it around in his hands said, 'It's exquisite,' he said. 'I've an idea I've seen this before somewhere - can't think -'

'Really?' said Audrey in a not altogether gentle voice. She had not quite forgiv
en him for being potentially un
faithful to her with herself.

'Where did you say you found it?'

'Les Halles,' she said, and went on painting her toenails.

‘
I
like that dark red,' he said softly, coming towards her. It was one of the activities he liked to watch her perform, which she knew perfectly well.

'Careful,' she said, and tapped him away with her hand.
‘
I
don't want to smudge it.'

She was more like that with him nowadays. When he pointed out some of her brusquenesses she just laughed and said that she was behaving more like a proper, stricter mistress than she used to. That was all.

He ran his fingers over the beadwork. 'Pity you haven't got the pair to it,' he said. 'It's exquisite.'

She concentrated on painting her little toe, always awkward, and without looking up said, 'Oh I may be able to lay my hands on it. When I'm ready.'

'Really?' he said, and studied the dragon. 'You know - I'm sure I've seen this -'

'Perhaps,' said Audrey, keeping her hand steady, her eyes on her toes, 'you saw something similar on a little foot at the
Brunel
Opening?' She wiggled her toes.

He looked slightly ashamed. 'It really was the last time for Simone. It had to be done. If you are jealous - don't be.'

She considered Madame Bonnard,
Simone,
and the way she walked with her hand holding on to her husband's arm. Then she considered herself and Patrick nearly naked on that couch together. She waited to see what she felt. And then she looked up, brush poised, and said. 'No. I was once. But I am not any more. I don't want to marry you after all.'

'Good,' said Edwin. But he said it with a pleasing hint of disappointment.

In a royal palace, in a white and gold drawing room, with two corgis and a walnut desk between the regal occupant and the awkwardly besuited men with slightly too-long hair sitting opposite her, the Monarch holds meetings at which she has been apprised, over several months and well in advance, of various building schemes proposed to celebrate the coming of the New Millennium. Those that wish to use the name of the Royal Firm must first be approved by Her Majesty. Fair dos.

Today the Monarch is being advised not of the institutional schemes, nor of the purely governmental schemes, not the PPP schemes or those of local boroughs. She is being advised of the one scheme that will be perfectly co-ordinated, the one scheme of all of them that will be stage-managed by the Royal Firm - redoubtable men in perfect grey suits (with perfectly neat haircuts) - who can manage a State Funeral and a Coronation while balancing on their heads if they have to. This Millennium project will also bear the Queen's name, but the Grand Opening, when it happens, will be filmed and shown on worldwide television. Something of a coup by the BBC who intend to make a film of the entire process from paper drawing to final cutting of the
ribbon by the Queenly hand. The
Royal Academy,
collegium ars gravitas,
has already agreed to host an exhibition of the best proposals, from which the final choice will be announced. The people (for this is The People's Millennium and the project will be the Queen's Bridge and the Queen belongs to her people) will also have the opportunity to say which of the offerings they choose. They are - oh horrors - to be consulted.

The awkward men who are here today are experts and they have come to lay before their Monarch's feet, so to speak, the jewels of possibility. In theory her Majesty will make the final choice. In practice, think the experts, they will make it for her. As far as they are concerned it is a foregone conclusion. The Parker Partnership will surely be the selected. But still, the democratic process must be seen to be done. Royalty is above being lobbied. Advised, but never lobbied. Already the Monarch reminds herself to keep calm and count to ten as these grey little experts (anti-royalists to a man, thinks her Majesty, who can smell such things; anti-royalists to a man until they come into her girdle of awe) go about their tawdry business. She pats a corgi's head to soothe herself. 'Next,' she says disdainfully to a drawing that is held up for her inspection. It looks like the water slide the grandchildren begged to have installed at Sandringham.

For the men in grey suits the one comforting aspect of this nerve-racking meeting today is that that wisest of all Firms, the Royal One, has allotted plenty of time. If the Royal Choice is but putative and manipulable, the Millennium itself is not. There may no longer be an Empire but it will be good to show the world how well it could be organised if there were. Still smarting from the Isambard Kingdom
Brunel
show across the English Channel put on by those supercilious French, the British wish to show the world that they have truly great, purely home-grown geniuses of design - and that they know what to do with them. After all Patrick Parker has built so little in his homeland. They must redress this if they are not to look more foolish and reactionary than they do already. They can only entice Parker to the drawing table if they offer him something big. He has indicated that he wants this project badly now they must make it happen. He is also, and not a day too soon, to be properly honoured by Her Majesty. Though he does not yet know this. Neither does the Queen.

They will need all their powers of diplomacy. Her Majesty has the pragmatism of the good
hausfrau
in her blood, as well as a line of haughty kings. Like her great-great-grandmother before her, if she does not like a thing, in private at least, she will say so. It behoves those who serve her in private not to let her become displeased. One does not become God's Anointed by lying down and taking it.

Delicately they begin to talk in general terms, for Her Majesty is led to believe that she is a good conversationalist and likes to keep abreast. With a royal wrinkling of her nose and the ghost of a twinkle in her eyes, she says of the Parisian exhibition, "They've certainly put up a most futuristic connecting building over there, haven't they? The Louvre extension? That ziggurat thingie. Monstrous. But I expect it's the sort of thing Mr
Brunel
would like. The bridge he built at our Scottish Estate, Balmoral, is never, ever spoken about in the family and it is said that my great-great-grandmother always closed her eyes when she travelled across it. If I have to choose a bridge I think I would prefer not to have one which required me to keep my eyes closed. Not in my back yard.'

The twinkle increases. Since Her Majesty's particular backyard at this precise moment is the centre, the very heart, of London - the increased twinkle is not surprising.

'No, indeed, Ma'am,' says the older of the two men whom, she suddenly notices, does not wear any socks with his slip-on, tassel-laced, shoes. How very beatnik, she thinks. Out loud she says, 'If Our name is on it then We've got to
like
the thing - haven't We?'

'Yes indeed, Ma'am.'

Both men pray that Her Majesty is not quite so on the ball as it is said, otherwise she will remember that the design she has just decried was created by the winner (not that the competition has actually been launched yet) of this Millennium Project. The Project, of course, is a
bridge.
Therefore no better designer could be chosen than Patrick Parker. Neither of them, either, feels it would be sensible to point out to their Monarch that the ziggurat bridge connection is considered one of the finest pieces of new architecture to be erected in Paris or anywhere. Once Patrick Parker is honoured it will help. Such awards give the Royals, everybody, confidence - it gives their man a pedigree.

Meanwhile form must be adhered to. They put before Her Majesty a host of bridges - some that look like cascades of water, some that look as if they are fish picked clean to their bones, bridges that (in her opinion) look as if they have undergone a military attack, bridges that seem to defy gravity and are coloured in shocking colours green, orange, mauve. Many look awkward, wayward, unsafe. She sees submissions for some of the world's individual leading designers of bridges, British by birth or British by adoption, and she sees submissions from conglomerates. Towards the end of the range of submissions, she sees a drawing and schedule entitled - but only in brackets: (Working Title:
Grandmother's solution for getting to the other side: build a bridge).
She likes this. It makes her smile. 'This is very straightforward,' she says. 'And it has buildings. Shops. It seems to me very sensible when space in My Capital is at such a premium.'

'Mmm,' say the men in grey suits. They put it to one side and cover it quickly with a drawing of something with shining metal cable stays that looks like a large, unruly violin. They bring out The Parker Design. Her Majesty inspects it as it is laid before her on her desk.

'It is based, Ma'am,' says the Beatnik type, 'on your Coronation arches from nineteen-fifty-three.'

‘I
know when my own Coronation was,' the Monarch snaps. Immediately she tacks on a gracious smile. But patience is wearing thin. She puts on her spectacles and peers at the drawing. Had she ridden under arches of these dimensions, she would have been entirely dwarfed. She pushes it to one side and gimlet sharp, pushes aside the violin and returns to 'Grandmother's Solution'. It must be put in the exhibition. By Royal Command. The men in suits bow in acknowledgement. The Queen, like her corgis, is growing restless. She must find a suitably dismissive statement. So she says, 'One does not get out to the shops
enough
...'
And with that she gives the slightest droop of her head. The meeting is over.

The job is done, she has had her say, and she makes a note on her pad for her Private Secretary to check the final list of exhibitors at the Royal Academy. 'If "Grandmother's Solution" is not included,' she writes playfully, perhaps even wistfully thinking about those bare, white ankles, 'then Chop Off Their Heads.'

And that is it as far as the Monarch is concerned. It is just another bit of the jigsaw of duty for her. The selection of an historic, new bridge. Another stone in the fabric of the nation's existence. In a few year's time she will choose an outfit to wear which, in its own way will have been just as carefully constructed and chosen (she will therefore not arrive crumpled, the wind will not show her knickers, buttons will remain firmly done up over her broad bosom), and the fabric will be warm or light depending upon the season. She will be collected in a big, black, shiny car, and driven to a place where one of these drawings she has in front of her now will be made fact. Concrete and steel, wood and brick, glass and high-grade plastic. The Bridge. Her Bridge. May it please Her Majesty.