Patrick Parker's Progress (6 page)

Audrey blinked. 'Economical,' she said, 'is what my mother calls Sunlight. She says she prefers it because it's very ec-on-o-mical.'

Patrick was not altogether sure he liked this. 'That's washing soap,' he said with assumed disgust. 'Stupid.'

'And my skirt. She said my school skirt was economical. It meant I couldn't have a frill. I like frills . . .' she added mournfully. Patrick drew some for her, like the ruff around Harlequin's neck.

She laughed. "That's lovely
’
she said. 'Oh, Patrick, you are clever.'

They both chewed a piece of grass and looked at the drawing. Audrey sighed. Then Patrick, who felt he was losing ground, tapped the bridge drawing again.

'Now you'll know how to do it for ever.'

'Do what?' asked Audrey.

'Climb the tree safely. Follow the lines. See?' he said. 'I've drawn the way up for you.' He laughed, excited by his success.

She did not say what she was about to say, which was - more or less - that she knew the way up, stupid yourself, and that anyway the whole point about the climbing of trees was that you didn't know everything. With knobs on, thank you . . . But she said none of this. Instead she turned to look at Patrick and opened and shut her large brown eyes and smiled him a sweet, sickly smile. Patrick liked this. She was aware of it. I'd never have thought of it without you,' she said. "Thanks ever so.'

'No,' he said. 'No -
I
don't believe you would.' Patrick felt a little glow of warmth towards her. She was all right. 'You looked very pretty up there,' he said.

She smiled that same sweet smile. 'Can I keep this, then?' The smile, which he liked, stayed put.

'Oh yes,' he said airily.
‘I
suppose so.'

'Oh
thank you,
Patrick.'

She put the piece of paper down carefully on the grass and kissed his cheek. Then she went back to the tree and tried to climb on a different set of branches (she knew, really, that they were not the right ones to risk) but one cracked and she only just saved herself from tumbling. Dusting herself off she took Patrick's piece of paper and climbed again, making it clear to him as he gazed up at her that she was following his every line. She went very swiftly, using only the branches he had drawn. Of course it worked. She looked back over her shoulder as she climbed and gave him another, even more dazzling smile. For a moment they were both caught in a pleasure of enchantment. Dangling above her head, caught in the sunlight, was another spider's web. She ignored it and followed the drawing to her sitting place. Then she turned and waved. Patrick waved back, carelessly, with a look on his face that almost said he was not, actually, waving at all.

Back down on the ground, she asked for a paper and pencil and she made her own drawing of the way up - including the spider's web - but she linked each branch she drew with a line. At each meeting of line and branch she drew a little bobble. When he asked her what the little bobbles were, she said, 'Knots. The steps are made from ropes. It's what they call a zigzag. It's what you have to do if a crocodile chases you because they can't. . . zigzag. And that -' she pointed - 'is the spider's own bridge between the branches.'

They both looked at each other with a newfound respect. Patrick, on being offered Audrey's drawing, pocketed it with a thoughtful face. 'I suppose,' he said, 'crocodiles can't zigzag because it's complicated.'

'Or because they're stupid,' she said. 'After all, it's not hard to do, now is it?'

And she was up and off, zigzagging her way towards the table and the jug of lemonade.

When it was time for Patrick and his mother to return home, he and Little Audrey solemnly shook hands at the station. And then, impulsively, she kissed his cheek again and he blushed. Florence's heart tightened to see it. Dolly noticed nothing except for two children being friendly, which was nice. 'Come again soon,' she said.

'No,' said Florence firmly. 'Next time you must come up to us.'

On the train back Florence sat staring out of the window. Every time she attempted conversation with her son, he asked her to be quiet because he was working on something. He drew nearly all the way to Coventry.

'What are those?' she asked, eventually.

'Bobbles,' he said under his breath, and smiled as he drew. 'Audrey's idea,' he said, obviously amused by it.

She tried to sound as casual as she could. 'And how do you like Audrey nowadays? Bit more grown up, isn't she?'

'She's OK,' he said, resuming his drawing. 'For a girl. But she has some daft ideas.'

'Yes,' said Florence, pleased. 'She does.' She touched his bent head gently. 'Nearly home. Better pack up now.'

They stared out of the train window. War damage was still shockingly evident all the way into the station. 'There'll still be plenty for you to do here when you're grown up,' said Florence happily. "That lot will take some shifting. You'll be the making of Coventry, Patrick. I really believe you will.'

Audrey and her mother returned home from the station on the bus. Audrey breathed on windows and in the breathy vapour she drew the climbing tree and its pared-down variations, then the sky, then the stars, and then a ladder made of rope leading from the topmost branches of the tree to the furthest star. 'Patrick is clever,' she said to her mother.

"They say
’
said Dolly.

'Am I?' she asked.

'Clever is, as clever does,' said Dolly, delivered in her Somebody's Being Silly Again voice. 'I like school,' said Audrey.

Dolly's voice softened a little. "That's because you are a good girl,' she said.

4

Sweets from a Stranger

London Bridge is falling down

Falling down

Falling down

London Bridge is falling down

My fair lady

Take a key and lock her
up

Lock her
up

Lock her
up

Take
a key and lock her
up

My fair lady

Patrick did not enjoy Senior School. It was Preparing You To Be A Man. No matter how much Florence argued with the authorities that her son needed to be warm and indoors, the answer was always that her son was a big boy now and the world was not made of cotton wool. The playground might be cold, but there he must stay. It was, apparently, a microcosm of life.

On hearing this Florence thought the Headmaster was referring to germs. She, who had spent her life protecting her son, was horrified. 'If you think,' she said, puffing out her chest which had grown even more redoubtable over the years, 'that any son of mine is going to be exposed to microcosms, you can think again. I keep a clean house, free of anything like that and I expect you to do the same.' She sailed away with her arm around her son's shoulders (though he was now as tall as she was) and took him straight home.

Patrick was torn between pleasure at being tucked up indoors before a roaring coal fire, and the humiliation of hearing his mother's ignorance. In the end he decided to keep quiet about the mistake, favouring the roaring coal fire and hot Horlicks over the filial triumph of sarcasm, attendant draughty classrooms and freezing asphalt.

That evening Florence told George what had taken place in the Headmaster's office. 'Microcosms
’
she said, shaking with indignation again. 'He admitted it. Freely. In the playground. Crawling with them, he said. Microcosms.'

George, taken completely by surprise at this shared, if erroneous, confidence, burst out laughing. 'It's not germs
’
he told her. 'It's little worlds.'

Florence had never let her ignorance disturb her. 'Little worlds doesn't sound much better to me
’
she said.
‘I
don't want him mixing in any of those things either.'

George contained his laughed. He winked at his son, and was surprised that he winked back. A moment of accord. There was a depth to that son of his that he had not - could not - plumb, but it was there. George was pleased and was quite perky about the house that night. Florence grumbled and told him to stop his humming. So he whistled very softly instead.

He went up to his son and awkwardly patting the top of his arm said, 'You know the easiest way is to do what you're told. The more you make a fuss, the more you'll make it difficult for yourself.'

'Like you, you mean?' said Patrick under his breath. 'Bugger that.'

School work was hard and he was not excused doing it. Indeed, he was made to stay in until it had been achieved. His class teacher, Mr Murdoch, who also taught maths, used the famous and chilling lines, 'I'm not going anywhere. I've got all night if necessary . . .' Which Patrick was inclined to believe. It wasn't that maths wasn't interesting, or that he couldn't do it - it was being told to do it that riled him. Then the teachers began disciplining him in earnest - even to slapping his head when he pinched a smaller boy - which he took very badly. It made him ill and he went home and he told his mother. Florence, this time with George in tow, since both parents had been requested, set off for the school and the Headmaster.

'Tell him, George
’
she said, as they stood facing Mr Henning across his desk. 'Tell him about hitting Patrick.'

But George was privately rather in favour of it.

'It seems to me
’
he said, 'that if it is true and Patrick has hurt someone, then he must learn how it feels by being hurt back.'

It was one of the longest sentences Florence had ever heard him utter. The Headmaster shook his hand, nodded sternly at Florence.

And they left.

Back at home she told Patrick, 'Your father said to Mr Henning that it was all right to hit you any time they like.'

Patrick glared at his father. George returned to his armchair on one side of the range like a dog sent back to its basket. He could never win. Well, not in this life anyway. And he hoped to God there was nothing of the same going when you passed over to the other side. He was counting on Heaven being a Florence-free zone. Perhaps even with Lilly in it. He had begun to think about her again, even to dream of her. He missed her very much. He had given her up for the sake of his fatherhood, and his fatherhood had not made it worth his while.

On Fireworks Night Jimmy knocked on the door (bold as brass, as
Florence
put it) and asked Patrick out. 'I knew you'd want to help with the guy,' said Jimmy, rubbing his hands and ignoring Florence's angry face.

'Oh no,' said Patrick, 'not that. It's because they're building a bonfire.'

Down in London, Little Audrey (who now requested, with dignity, that they should not call her Little any more) asked if she could help with the bonfire they were building on the bomb-site at the end of the street. Despite the Dawning of the New Elizabethan Age, as her mother and the neighbours were wont to remark sardonically, they still had a fair few such places round their way. Audrey rather liked these patches of wildness in among all the dull, new buildings. 'Bonfire?' said her father. 'Don't be daft.'

But she went up there anyway and stood at the edge of the space and watched the boys and the men throwing on old chairs and orange crates and rotten floorboards. It looked fun and dangerous but very haphazard. 'Keep back,' she and the Bamber girls were told. 'Right back, now.'

She watched as flaming objects, having been hurled on willy-nilly, tumbled off again. 'Wouldn't it be better if they made up the bonfire properly before they lit it?' she asked the night air, since no one else was listening.

In Coventry, with his mother wringing her hands and when she wasn't wringing them adjusting his scarf and cap and buttons,

Patrick Parker stood on the sidelines and told the teachers and the handyman where to put the planks and chairs and sticks just so. 'I'll give him where to put the sticks
...'
muttered Cherry, the school caretaker. But he was only half
-
hearted in his irritation since the boy's suggestions worked. Even Mr Murdoch smiled at him but Patrick only gave him a haughty look back and went on pointing an imperious, absolutely confident, finger at the growing structure. He wanted it to be the best, and it would be.

There was such an air of certainty about him that pretty and dapper Peggy Boxer, in her perfect little felt jacket (made by her mother) and her spot-on little pixie hood of fluffy angora (made by her mother) and her bunny-ears gloves with bobbles (bobbles made by Peggy, the rest by her mother) came and held his hand. Just slid up slyly beside him and wriggled her hand into his.