Patrick Parker's Progress (54 page)

‘
I
don't have to go yet
’
she said, when he asked. 'I'll stay'

'Good
’
he said, meaning it. 'Now for a serious drink and a chance to talk . . . I'm not going anywhere either.' He opened the kitchen door, she followed him. 'And if I have to accept one more person's condolences
...'
He ran his hands through his hair (thinner now, she noticed, but still a good colour) and picked up a bottle. 'A drink and a chance to be alone
...'

And then the telephone rang.

Which obviously amused Audrey highly. 'Oh Sir Patrick! Saved by the bell
’
she crowed, and laughed and laughed. 'Or you never know what we might have got up to after all these years.'

He did not feel saved at all. He felt interrupted. Audrey was a completely different person from the one he'd known all those years ago. Sophisticated. Alluring even, despite her years (and he could talk). He liked her. He liked being with her. They went back a long way and he was looking forward to spending some time with her - perhaps closely with her. And having a decent glass of something. And now the bloody telephone.

It was his wife.

'Ah
’
he said. 'Peggy.'

Behind him the laughter ceased.

'Who was that?'

'What?'

'Laughing.'

'Well - the funniest thing. Guess who came to the funeral?' 'I'm not much in the mood for guessing games.' As if she did not know. 'Who?' 'Little Audrey' There was a silence.

'Audrey. Audrey Wapshott. Remember her?'
‘I
certainly do. What's she doing still there?'

'Oh - we were talking about old times.' 'What about them?'

We used to be quite good friends. From childhood. Our mothers
...'

‘I
know, I know
’
said Peggy sharply.
‘I
remember.'

'Do you?' he said, surprised. Anything that took place more than a few years ago and that did not directly include his world of design he found hard to retain. Not enough room in the head for small stuff like that. Even Paris, which he would have liked to remember in every detail, and occasionally tried to, had faded.

Peggy said, 'I'm coming up.'

'No need
’
he said quickly.

'I thought you wanted me there. I thought you wanted me to bring you your post . . .' This last, she realised, sounded very lame.
‘
I
thought you didn't know how you were going to cope on your own.'

He was about to say, 'But I'm not on my own
’
but even he realised that this would not be sensible.

'Let me speak to Polly
’
he said.

"There's no need -'

'Now
’
he added, commandingly.

Polly was summoned.

'Your mother does not need to come up here
’
he said, very firmly
‘I
am coping very well, everyone is helping and being very kind, and I do not need her.'

'Just as well
’
said Polly laconically. 'Because she's in no shape.'

'Good
’
said her father. 'You keep her that way'

Polly felt this was not quite the right way to put it but the end result was the same. She was sorry to hear that her father was coping but - well - she had done her best
...

Patrick put down the receiver.

Polly put down the receiver.

Polly turned to her mother, who was last seen reclining, still pink and feverish, in her bed. Polly was surprised, therefore, to see her upright, pulling out drawers and slapping a holdall onto the tumbled bedclothes.

"You are to stay put, Mother
’
said Polly. 'Dad's asked me to make sure of it.'

'You and whose army?' said Peggy As if she didn't know exactly, bell, book and candle, the kind of relationship Patrick and Audrey used to have - and not just in childhood either. 'Get the office on the line, please. I want a car. Now.'

'I think you might be delirious,' said her daughter.

With a strength that no member of the family had ever seen, let alone experienced, Peggy pushed her daughter out of the way and picked up the telephone herself.

'Car,' she said. 'To Sir Patrick Parker's place. Now. Going to Coventry. Yup. Co-ven-try
...
I know the time. But I want it here now - or sooner.'

The receiver was replaced. Into the holdall went an odd assortment of garments, in Polly's opinion - a disgusting, black see-through nightie, a suspender belt, and an assortment of frilly horrors among them. And when her mother, staggering a little from the exertion, emerged from the en-suite ten minutes later she wore, below her ghastly face - that looked, so thought her daughter, like a rouged phantom - a leather mini-skirt and crocheted top that left very little to the imagination.

‘I
really don't think -' said Polly.

But the doorbell rang.

'Best you don't, then,' said her mother, staggering off on the spindliest of high heels, and down the stairs, with the bag bumping along behind her. The door closed. And frail Peggy Boxer As Was was gone.

'Who was that?' Audrey asked disingenuously.

He had better come clean. After all, they were adults. He sat himself down a little gingerly on the front-room sofa. He was half expecting his mother to pop her head around the door. He handed Audrey a whisky. Quite a large one. 'Did you know,' he said firmly, 'that I married Peggy Boxer?'

'As Was?' she said, and she nodded.

It was all she could do not to chuck her whisky at him. How could he possibly think that she would not know? How could he possibly have forgotten lying in bed beside her as he explained?
Did she know?
Indeed. She smiled at him sweetly. The smile of a serpent. He looked relieved.
‘I
wasn't sure if you knew or not,' he said, with some relief.

'Yes,' she said, 'I did know that.'

'She doesn't - really - understand me,' he said.

Audrey burst out laughing again.

He looked hurt and retreated back along the leatherette. 'No
’
he said, hurt, 'she doesn't.'

She pulled herself together. 'Sorry
’
she said, 'it's the emotion of seeing you. And you have two fine children. A boy and a girl.'

Patrick was touched. He felt emotional - if that was the right word - seeing her, too. 'Oh yes. Two children. And they
certainly
don't understand me.'

She put out her hand to reassure him.

'You always understood me
’
he said, a slight peevishness creeping into his voice. 'You were always interested in what I did. I liked that
...'
he added, wistfully.

Not only brilliant in the forgetful department, she thought, smiling away at him, but bloody brilliant in the area of creative hypocrisy, too.

'Oh, Audrey
’
he said (it was partly the emotions of the day, partly the whisky - and partly . .
.)
'You knew me so well. . . There is - I think - perhaps - unfinished business between us?'

She closed her eyes and gritted her teeth. In the deepening dusk it was hard to see her expression but it was clearly one of strong emotion. Little shoe, she thought softly, soon, but not yet. She kept her handbag right by her and a tiny piece of pale blue tissue paper peeked out.

After a moment she opened her eyes again and said quite firmly, 'It's only now that I realise how well I
did
know you.' He slid back towards her again.

She smiled encouragingly. 'And you are right. We do have unfinished business.' She ran her fingertips over his cheek and gave him an encouraging smile. How much she had loved him.

He was encouraged.
‘
I
want -' he said.

Outside in the street a couple stomped by, laughing. It was a raw, alien sound in that room.

'All I want
’
he murmured, 'is to relax with you. Go to bed with you. Like we used to
...'

And she was tempted, very tempted. There was absolutely nothing in the world to stop them now.

'Actually
’
she said, standing up, 'what I want at the moment is a bit of a walk.'

Delayed gratification. She knew about that, too. She'd delayed hers by over thirty years.

It is the same for a jewel thief who can only wear the stolen ruby at night when there is no one to see, or for the purloiner of a Great Painting who can only hang it in their cellar and enjoy it alone . . . Peggy Boxer As Was had never, really, felt Patrick was hers. She had stolen him. He was her ruby, her Great Painting - what her mother called the Feather in Her Cap. But always, somewhere in the back of her mind, she was aware of Audrey Wapshott. And she always feared that one day she would come back and claim what she considered still to be hers. Florence had told her often enough. Audrey would never forgive her. Audrey would have her revenge.

And now it was true. She had heard that laugh, and she had heard the faintest hint of guilt in her husband's voice. He who could do no wrong was about to. The laugh was Audrey's all right, but it was not the laugh of one who is polite, cold, distant, separated by the past - it was reckless, amused
...

She had never felt more ill, nor more determined. In the car she goaded the driver to go faster as if she were travelling in some eighteenth-century coach with four greys and a snapping, jingling harness. She always had a penchant for romantic novels (not that she told Patrick) and had been quite relieved after Barbara Cartland died to see a very pink portrait of the novelist, called post-modern, in the Royal College's Graduate show. So she couldn't be all bad. Not that any of that mattered now. All that mattered now was to get to Coventry and save her marriage. 'Drive faster,' she shouted again. If it wasn't a harness jingling it must be her teeth. 'Go on - faster,' she yelled to the driver. 'Faster, faster, faster
..'

The driver immediately braked and slowed and pulled into a layby. He turned. He smiled. He said, 'Lady Parker, your husband would not welcome it if both of us were to be found at dawn tomorrow spread all over the A40
...'

'He might,' said Peggy miserably.

He started up the car again and they drove the next fifty miles or so in silence. Silence, all save for the chewing of Peggy Boxer As Was's once impeccable nails. As were.

During their walk, as Audrey reacquainted herself with familiar places, she asked Patrick if he did not feel nostalgic. Perhaps a little sad. Patrick said that the whole of Coventry made him sad and that he never wanted to come here again. They had even asked him, he told her, to redesign the Town Hall. And had offered him the keys of the city for it. As if he would.

'You wouldn't even come to visit Florence's last resting place?' she asked.

‘I
don't feel anything for her,' he said helplessly.

'Do you feel anything for me?'

He stared at her. 'I don't know,' he said.

She was thinking of some of her favourite bridges. The Pont Neuf in Paris, the Rialto, the Ponte Vecchio, the tragic bridge of Mostar, Brooklyn, Ironbridge, the perfection of the Punt da Suransuns at Viamala, the broken twelfth-century bridge of St Benezet in Avignon, the Campo Volantin in Bilbao - she had not realised that she knew of so many - or that she cared about them. Sh
e fell in love with Patrick at I
ronbridge, and Edwin, in his last months of life, proposed marriage to her on the Pont Neuf. Bridges were powerful things.
‘I
saw a poster once,' she said, 'about an exhibition of town planning.'

'Oh really?' he said, politely.

"The poster,' she said, 'was from some design exhibition somewhere - and it said, "Ask not what kind of a bridge to build, but whether you need one.'"

Patrick stared at her. 'Are you mad?' he said. 'If there is a void to be crossed, there is a bridge to be built.'