Patrick Parker's Progress

by Mavis Cheek

  '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?'

  Patrick laughed and shook his head. 'Grand and monumental for me.'

  'Good for you,' said George. He smiled wryly. 'Got it all mapped out. I envy you that.'

  'You have to look ahead. Right now a man called Othmar Ammann has designed the longest spanning bridge in the world, over the Verrazano Narrows in New York. It'll be finished in a couple of years. One day I'll match it. That's the focus. And that is what I'll do. You make your mind up - you do it. Simple. Don't envy me, Dad. Do it.'

  His father leaned forward. 'That - saddlebag. You're sure you don't want it?'

  Patrick shook his head in disbelief. Little minds.

  Florence, happy to dream about accompanying her son among the aristocracy, let him go easily. She did not accompany them to the station, which was a relief. Patrick kissed her goodbye and watched her pale figure waving from the front room window as the car rattled its way down the street. Freedom, he was thinking at each bump and squeak. Freedom. Even the car, a Ford Popular, was a lesson in what the terrible deathly hand of uninspired living could do to you. His father. His mother. This town. Grey to his Gold. It all needed blowing up.

  'I'm reading some stuff by a French writer at the moment. Jean Genet. I'll send you a copy' 'Good?' asked George.

  'Shocking,' said Patrick, with great satisfaction. 'It's about repression and hypocrisy. The illusory nature of reality. The ambiguous definitions of good and evil. He's a bit - well - lurid at times.' He laughed. ‘I don't think you'd get it.'

  George said nothing.

  After seeing Patrick onto the train George drove across to the other side of town, running the car slowly down Chapel Street. Like a kerb crawler, he thought, avoiding the eyes of the girls who were already out. He had never been tempted. If it was bad enough leaving Lilly after those Wednesday afternoons, how much worse to pay and leave a stranger.

  He drove slowly past the shop. It was in darkness, naturally, but the light from the little sitting room at the back glowed dimly through the big window. It looked inviting. In all his years of living with Florence nothing had seemed so inviting. He wondered what was going on in there at that very moment. Was Alf there still? Maybe he was dead. Maybe Lilly was dead. These were the years for it. But above the outside window it still said, 'Willis's Stores' in the same faded red paint. He could only hope.

  He stopped the car and peered at the doorway. The list of opening and closing times was the same, Wednesday was still half-day. It was now Sunday. He had a sudden moment of deja-vu. Around this part of the week, in the past, he always began to hanker for Lilly. He turned the car back and headed for home. Nothing changed.

  As usual, Audrey met Patrick at the station. This is what couples did. They had absences, they met, they held hands on the tube.

  ‘I could never go back to Coventry,' he said.

  'Then don't,' she whispered, and snuggled nearer. 'Except for visits. You can stay here and I'll look after you and it will be just the two of us.'

  Later, in his bed, whispering in case the landlady heard, he said, 'I've been asked down to Coulter Hall next Saturday. For the weekend. Dinner suit, the lot. I'd better buy one. I'll need one for the future anyway.'

  'That's wonderful. I wonder what I should wear?' 'Oh no,' he said. 'I'm going on my own.' 'But -' she said.

  ‘I could hardly ask someone I don't know if I could bring my girlfriend.'

  Audrey lay next to him, staring at the poster of Eikoh Hosoe's nudes, the dream of which seemed as far away as ever. She wasn't good enough for him. That was what it was. And she reminded herself to do something about it.

  'Patrick,' she said to the darkness. ‘I really am going to improve myself.'

  But he said nothing and seemed to be asleep.

  Wednesday morning. George awoke and said, under his breath, 'D-Day, George, D-Day' It was a strange and wonderful thing to wake up wanting the day to begin. In the morning he went to the chemist to get Florence's prescription. When he brought it back Florence was curt with him. 'You'll need to take the washing to the launderette,' she said. The doctor had forbidden her to do the heavy laundering.

  'I'll go this afternoon,' he said, with irritating cheerfulness. He would leave it with the woman who ran the place and have a service wash. Wednesday afternoon - and he was free.

  Of course the shop was closed when he tried the door, it being half past one. He stood there wondering what to do and then knocked on the glass. It rattled. Too much knocking and it would fall out. Needed puttying, he noticed. He stood back. There was no sign that anyone was in. He knocked again. Though which was the door and which was his heart at this stage he could hardly tell. And then, miracle of miracle, the door at the back of the shop opened, and out came - well - someone who looked familiar yet not at all. Wearing an old raincoat, a washed-out green headscarf, and carrying a brown, plastic shopping bag over her arm. The hair that puffed from the front of
the scarf was grey with streaks of fairness in it, the face was pale, flat somehow, old and weary.

  He backed away. But too late. The person, Lilly it was, looked across the shop to the door and saw someone standing there.

  'Who is it?' she called. Her voice was nearly the same. She sounded nervous.

  'George,' he called back. No help for it now.

  As if she had been waiting for his arrival she walked quickly around the counter, reached the door, shot the bolt, and let him in.

  Lilly never was one to be fazed by anything, he remembered, as she stood to one side and let him pass. Not so much as a sound escaped her lips as she closed the door, which clicked very softly, behind him.

  'Well, Lilly?' he said eventually.

  'Well, George?'

  They stood in that dingy shop light, facing each other. He twirling his cap in his hand, she slowly pulling off her headscarf and pushing at her streaked grey curls in a gesture he remembered. No nail varnish now. He took her note from his pocket and pushed it into her hand. She peered down at it and shook her head.

  'Bit late,' he said, attempting a laugh. 'Only just found it. In the boy's saddlebag. We're throwing out the bike now. Well - he doesn't want it and he's more or less grown up and -' he stopped. There was a lump in his throat about the size of Iceland.

  And she was looking at him. Washed out, but still with a bit of fire about her eyes. Smiling slightly. Familiar.

  'My God, George,' she said. 'If I look half as bad as you do ...'

  He felt like crying. She was crying, or almost. He put his cap under one arm and putting a hand around her elbow, he steered her into the small back room and pulled the door to behind them. With the ease of sudden memory, he reached up and turned out the shop light. They stood staring at each other in the warm gloom. A low fire burned behind the fireguard, a Chianti bottle lamp, its shade at an angle, gave a dim light. The chairs were the same, one either side of the fire, same covers only more worn, on the table was a newspaper, a pair of reading glasses, a pot plant. Exactly as it used to be. Except for themselves.

  Lilly moved away from him. She put her bag down on the floor, straightened up and looked at him with cold eyes.

  'And is your Florence well?' she asked, indicating a chair at the table.

  'She's been a bit poorly' He sat down. 'But she's getting better slowly'

  'Pity’ she said.

  She sat opposite him. The damped-down fire echoed his feelings. One good rake around in the embers and he could flare up. ‘I am so sorry’ he said. A universal apology for his and her suffering.

  'For what?'

  'For staying away. For marrying the wrong woman.'

  She reached for his hand. They gripped each other's fingers tightly. It was more than enough. Overwhelming. George wondered when it had last happened, that he had held somebody's hand.

  'And Alf?' He raised his eyes to the ceiling.

  She shook her head. 'Out’ she said shortly.

  They went on holding hands. Neither of them spoke and both of them knew that they were not going to do anything else.

  'At least you've got a fine son’ Lilly said eventually.

  'Fine son?' he said. 'I haven't got a son. Haven't been allowed. I'll tell you what it's been like, Lilly, all these years. With her. And him. Shall I?'

  She nodded.

  And he did. The unburdening of it was joyful.

  Later they walked along by the canal which had been cleaned and spruced up and now bore the occasional painted barge looking like a Disney Dream, unreal to the two of them who remembered the place when it worked for the town. She asked him if he still built his models of places. Dream places. But he told her that he had to stop all that nonsense. Nonsense be blowed, was what she said to that. She called Florence a tyrant, said that Hitler and Uncle Joe weren't in it. George said not to do so, nevertheless his heart sang with the justice of it. 'It was my fault’ he said. 'I've been weak.'

  'You're kind,' she said.

  They walked and they talked and had tea in a workmen's cafe well out of the way. Lilly would not let him buy her an ice-cream. She pleaded the coldness of the air but the real reason was that if he bought her one it would make her cry and they were both being strong. There was no other way to be. Florence was at home, Alf would soon be brought back. Time to go back to their dull old lives.

  'We should have gone to Paris, Lilly,' he said. Safe to say it now.

  'We should have done a lot of things.'

  'It's hell on earth, Lilly.'

  She stopped him. 'You have to live with it. You make the wrong choice and you have to live with it. You have to live with the mistakes you make.'

  Simple the way she said it. Nothing else in life was simple, but that was.

  'Patrick won't do that,' said George. 'Clever lad. A planner. Got his future all mapped out.'

  'Clever is as clever does,' said Lilly. ‘I didn't take to him.' 'No,' said George.

  On the little bridge over the canal, now painted white and looking bright and jaunty in the cold sunlight, they stopped. ‘I wonder,' he said, looking down at the water.

  'No,' she sighed. "That was then.'

  'We could run away together,' he said, laughing at the absurdity of the thought.

  'Not with my legs,' she said.

  They walked on, a dejected-looking couple, people might think, if they spared the time to consider it. At the shop, quite suddenly, they kissed like lovers and pressed their bodies into each other against the cold. Perhaps, he thought, that was their first real kiss. They spent a long time standing there, still as a statues, before the sound of the ambulance at the top of the street sent George scurrying back to the car and Lilly fumbling at the lock. Driving back, George thought that the only Dream Place he wished he could build now was a time machine.

  Spring was late. By now they should have moved into the gentle rain of April, but over the next few weeks the frost set in and the ground was hard with it. Florence was mad with everything which meant she was more or less better. In London Patrick was working hard - or according to his postcards he was. Never a mention of anything, including Audrey. Dolly was cagey. She was not going to give Florence the satisfaction of knowing that her daughter did not seem to be seeing quite so much of her precious son. It's his final year,' said Audrey defensively, when her mother asked. But Audrey was scared. Nothing had been the same between them since he came back from that posh weekend. He scarcely spoke about it, except to say that the place was fantastic, that the setting was perfect for him to create something spectacular and that he Bloody Well Would. He said this last so aggressively that Audrey was quite sure something had happened down there. Bad or good? She needed to know but he ignored her when she asked.

  Something did occur at Coulter Hall. Something Patrick would never tell anyone but which had shaken him badly. At dinner he was seated between an elderly woman, the aged aunt of the family, who was quite deaf and hard going, but sweetly condescending to him, and Henry's elegant younger sister, Penelope, who was not. She looked him up and down challengingly. 'Henry said you were attractive,' she said. 'And you are.'

  Immediately he imagined himself married to someone as elegant and beautiful as her. He did not pursue the idea of Penelope in later years and in his mother's house, looking after her in her dotage.

  'And . ..?' he asked, pleased.

  'And I get very bored at these dos.'

  'Let me entertain you, then,' he said, charmingly 'You are too beautiful to be bored.' He was pleased with that. It was gallant.

  And he, apparently, was attractive. This was living all right. She wore a black dress with no shoulders or sleeves and the top bit (of which there was not much) seemed to stay in place while the rest of her moved around in it. She wore a huge diamond at the centre of her throat that almost hurt his eyes with its fire, and she had long, tapering white hands scattered with rings. He imagined her on his arm as they attended the various important functions that would accompany his creative progre
ss through the world. From now on this was the kind of woman he would meet and mix with - this was the kind of woman a man of substance needed. Very definitely this was the kind of woman he would one day marry. It was exactly what he had shed Coventry for.

  'You?' she said. 'Entertain me?' She raised an eyebrow. 'You can try' She gave him a smile that made him feel completely inadequate. He took up the challenge. He began to talk to her about college and what he was doing for the Gold Medal and what he intended to build for her brother - for posterity - here at Coulter Hall. Eventually she said, 'Posterity, hmm?' and added, 'You have a very strange accent. I forget where you are from?'