Patrick Parker's Progress

by Mavis Cheek

  Breathlessly she ran out into the Bloomsbury streets, following him on to a bus, running up the stairs, racing to the seat at the front. The conductor disapproved and tutted as he clipped their tickets making her feel happy and young and alive. They held hands and looked about them. ‘I know what we'll do,' said Patrick. And they hopped off that bus and on to another so that they could ride over Westminster Bridge. Because, as Patrick said, it was one of the best bridges in London. 'And doesn't Mr Brunel's baby add to the view?' He pointed as the bus juddered over the river.

  'I'll say,' she said, nodding vigorously, and thinking that it looked rather ugly really and blocked her view of St Paul's. But of course she wouldn't say. She felt so happy that she could have died at that moment. To be entrusted with his hopes and aspirations, to share in everything, including his body and hers, was total fulfilment. She forgot about Lilly, she forgot about being rejected, and her heart soared, once again, with hope and happiness.

  Patrick extolled the virtues of being back in the Great City, saying how wonderful London was and denouncing Coventry. She asked him about the funeral. He had little to say. Neither had her parents her mother being unusually reticent about the experience. When asked how Patrick managed, Dolly just said, 'Well enough,' and clamped her mouth shut.

  Dolly was praying it would pass. All of it.

  'He's sensitive,' said Audrey.

  'My elbow,' said her mother. 'I don't think either of them shed a tear.' Then she turned to her daughter and asked her if she was truly serious about Patrick. 'More to the point,' she added, 'is he serious about you?'

  'Of course he is,' Audrey said. 'But we are not going to do anything Bourgeois.'

  'I'm very glad to hear it’ said her mother dubiously. 'All the same, I think you should hurry up and get that ring on your finger and marry him. Before someone else steps in.'

  "The funeral’ said Patrick, almost joyously, 'is over. And that is all you need to know. All right?'

  Of course it was. She was in love with Patrick, in love with London, in love with Westminster Bridge. And it seemed, for the first time ever, that Patrick might also be in love with her.

  With this in mind, and borne aloft on a cloud of feminine expectancy, Audrey started removing her clothes as soon as she walked into his room - a piece of boldness that she had never dared before. Patrick went ahead of her into his dear, beloved workplace that he had missed so much, and opened his portfolio. He spread out the copies of the Gold Medal drawings in order on the floor, kneeling above them, beckoning her, without looking up. 'See’ he said, pointing. 'It's fantastically revolutionary. Fantastically . . . And full of bloody humanity . . .' He touched the drawings lovingly, delicately, as if they might bruise. "Notice’ he said, 'that I have used the colours Corbusier used - red and blue and green - and this is a cross section of the rubber mat...'

  Now normally Audrey had a good instinct for what to do and what not to do and when. But on this particular occasion, buoyed up by their separation and with Patrick's enthusiasm and the idea of his glorying of her body - she misread the position. While he leaned admiringly over his work she removed the last of her clothing and knelt on the floor and leaned over him, actually putting her knee on one of the drawings. And then she said, rather seductively she thought, 'Can't we put those things aside for a little while?' She picked one up and tossed it gently away. 'Just for now? I've missed you so much.'

  He looked at her amazed. Then coldly. Then he looked back at his beautiful drawings. Then back at her again. She began to display goosebumps. "They are not - as you put it - those things. They are my future.'

  The silence was long and terrible. She broke it. 'Sorry’ she said. She willed herself not to look at the poster or she knew she would cry. ‘I suggest’ he said, 'that you put your clothes back on.'

  They did not meet for several weeks. Patrick remained silent, too busy to think or care beyond his work. The Galton Loggia - much photographed - was opened to the public. He did not take Florence to the ceremony - in his heart he knew she was not the kind of mother to impress - and the thought of her meeting Penelope in public was too awful to consider. But he did take her there afterwards. Already aware of the usefulness of publicity, he suggested to Henry (who was about to leave for his summer in Antibes) that he might -with his permission - invite the press along. The Daily Graphic and The Times were the only ones who showed up. But he was pleased. It was a start. And whatever else his mother could not do - she could certainly look quite smart. She brought a message of congratulations from Peggy, and he, feeling jubilant with everything, sent a friendly message back. His meticulous maquette of the children's playground was complete, all the drawings had already been submitted in sealed envelopes. All he had to do now was to sit back and wait.

  He put Florence on the train, kissed her cheek, and watched her smile and wave from the train all the way out of the station.

  'And hallo, Tokyo’ he said to himself as he ran down the steps and back into the street. 'Not long now.'

  Audrey, meanwhile, had two options - either to take to her bed or to do something positive; she chose the latter. Whatever had happened between her and Patrick could only be temporary - but while she had the time she would use it. She began looking at her French books in earnest. And she went back to the British Museum, and walked over Westminster Bridge - and past number eighteen Duke Street. Later she bought a postcard of Isambard Kingdom Brunel from the

  National Portrait Gallery. Looking at it, studying it each night, propping it on her dressing table, she grew to hate him - hate the cocky stance, the cigar, the place he held in her lover's heart.

  The press cuttings were sent on from Coventry and Audrey swallowed hard when she saw Florence standing there instead of her. But it was no more than she deserved. She had not been thoughtful enough. This was her period of self-awareness (a new concept) and she took it very seriously. She would put aside girlhood and become an adult, thinking woman. She ploughed on with the French.

  When Dolly was told by Florence (of course) that Patrick had won his medal (of course), she sent him the Brunel postcard. She wrote: ‘I congratulate you with all my heart. Please forgive me. Your loving Audrey.' And she waited. One thing she knew for certain. Patrick would never throw the postcard away. Not with bloody Brunel on the front of it.

  Patrick, meanwhile, was introduced to the Grandees of Design as the College's most promising undergraduate. He noted that they wore suits and ties and spoke the Queen's English. Yet he knew for a fact that one of them (bathetically named Ronald Wilkins), with a practice in London, Toronto and Sydney now, and the title 'Sir', had been born in Bradford. Another had been a Barnardo's Boy. They were international men now - no trace remained in either of them of their humble origins. His instinct to remove the stigma of Coventry was right.

  When the Gold Medal was announced and Patrick was presented with it, there was a dinner. And at the dinner Patrick sat next to the guest of honour, who happened to be the Great Man from Bradford. The Great Man from Bradford, who spoke so impeccably, congratulated Patrick on the Galton Loggia - he had seen it in the press. Clever stuff. Brave. Go far. Emboldened by a glass of wine and his own substantial achievement, Patrick asked the Great Man to tell him what else (after talent) was needed in the professional life he led that had enabled him to achieve and maintain his Greatness. The Great Man, having enjoyed his bumper, smiled broadly, picked up his glass and raised it to a straight-backed, sweet-faced women, with blue-grey hair in a tight perm (just the sort of neat little woman Patrick thought he despised) and said, 'Get yourself a good wife.'

  The Great Man appeared to be serious.

  'I only employ married men’ said the Great Man, still apparently serious. "The unmarried ones are bound to be wild and go off at a tangent.'

  Patrick studied the women sitting at the table. The staff and the Academic Hierarchs' wives were distinguishable by their short, grey hair and serviceable outfits and the way they got their heads down, saying Utile,
eating much. The wives of the Grand Outsiders were distinguishable by their air of relaxed ease, their blue rinses or coiffures unflecked by grey, and their discreet but sparkly frocks. Nothing cool about them. Just nice ordinary women with one thing in mind. The success of their husbands. It made perfect sense. He envied them all - the Great Men and The Great Men's Women. He thought of Audrey with irritation. If she were only more conventional - less restless. None of these wives would have dismissed his work as 'those things' and suggested putting them aside for sex (clearly!). Food for thought. Definitely. He thanked the Great Man for his advice. 'Get a wife’ he said, now very much further on with the port. 'And I might just employ you.'

  He telephoned Audrey quite soon after. Out of the blue.

  'OK?' he said.

  'OK’ she just about managed to reply. But it was not from anger, it was from relief. As she danced out of the house she called to her mother that she always knew it would be all right really . . . Dolly went on with her knitting. Maybe, was all she thought, maybe.

  Just as Audrey arrived back in his life - and to be fair he was very happy about it. .. yes - he could say it - he had missed her. Just as that happened Peggy Boxer began writing to him. He sent her one polite note back saying that he was very well and he hoped she was and thank you for the congratulations - and then - just as out-of-the-blue as his phone call to Audrey, Peggy Boxer appeared on the college steps one day. Off her own bat, and telling no one, she just appeared and waited for him. She had tightened her hair, pencilled in her eyebrows, which seemed to go on to infinity, and wore a very fetching little suede box jacket. She looked - as the other students (male) showed from their stares - pretty bloody sexy. The female students did not stare - not at all - which showed that they thought so too.

  'Hi’ she said, with a little wave.

  He was flattered, distinctly flattered. They spent the night in his room before he put her on the train, and he had forgotten how good it was to enjoy yourself without responsibilities. Audrey could be quite serious nowadays. Not one question but twenty. She knew all there was to know about beam bridges, arch bridges, suspension bridges - and when he tested her she really did know the difference. 'Talk to me about them, Patrick,' she would say. Tell me more.' Peggy required no such input. She wore amazing lace underwear, too. Amazing. Nevertheless - back on the train she must go. And that must be that...

  Peggy wrote again, this time with endearments. He did not reply. He was busy working on his Tokyo itinerary. Audrey was busy doing something or other about her French - and Peggy wrote again, with more endearments; he sent a card. Perhaps, he suggested, he would see her when he returned from Japan - if he came up to visit his mother. That should do it, he thought. But it didn't. One evening Peggy Boxer telephoned. Saying that she just had to hear his voice because he was going away for so long (two weeks!) and that Florence had given her the landlady's number - and how was he? He, as it happened, was having palpitations and difficulty with his bowels on account of Audrey being in his room at that very moment, with her kit off. He only managed to grunt. Peggy Boxer said that she was quite well thank you, in a funny sort of voice. And rang off.

  Back down to London Peggy came. 'I want to see some of the sights,' she said. But unless you called his room, its posters, the two Heal's mugs and the inside of some rumpled bed linen memorable scenes of interest, she did not achieve her ambition. Or - retrospectively - maybe she did? She certainly went away quite happy. She was - no doubt about it - very attractive and lively, and Patrick was always - after the initial shock - glad to see her. She glowed where Audrey was all vampire pallor (Max Factor panstick being the new thing), she laughed where Audrey questioned ... She was, he dared to think, something of a relief. The last thing Peggy said to him at the station, was, ‘I do understand. You are busy. That was fun. Have a wonderful time in Tokyo. Bye.'

  Audrey was not so considerate.

  If he stayed away for any length of time, or forgot to telephone or cancelled arrangements... it was oppressive compared with the way he could stand there on that platform and wave Peggy Boxer away. Comparisons are odious, as he knew, but he could not help making them.

  With profound relief, a week later he flew to Tokyo. Audrey cried, his mother cried and the note his mother brought him from Peggy Boxer was covered in tears, too (apparently). If he could shake the dust from his heels over that little lot, he would be happy. What he really wanted, what he dreamed might happen, what he thought was very possible, given his Gold Medal status, was that someone in Tokyo would offer him a job. Then he could stay for as long as he liked and all three women would be quite irrelevant. He'd get himself a geisha. He'd joked about it with Audrey often enough. Though she didn't seem to see the funny side.

  13

  Darkest Before the Dawn

  We're getting married under Brooklyn Bridge. Until you're a bride, you just don't understand. It transforms you, it makes you feel lovely. Mamie

  The first place the welcome party took Patrick to visit was old. The Imperial Palace. More than three hundred and fifty years old, they told him. There it stood, half-ruined, a traditional Japanese royal building, surrounded by a great moat and massive, sloping volcanic stone ramparts. Patrick was unimpressed. Such ancient monuments bored him. They laughed. 'Come closer,' they said. 'Look. See ...'

  The building was not traditional at all. It was not even half-ruined. It was being rebuilt and it was being rebuilt from non-flammable ferro-concrete. Clever, brilliant in fact.

  'Firebombs, nineteen-forty-five,' they said. And bowed.

  'And I am from Coventry,' he told them. 'Also firebombed.'

  They ah shook hands.

  Sometimes one's history could come in useful.

  Then they took him to the business area, west of the Shinjuku station. Behold, he thought amazed, Mammon. Here they were making buildings that reached for the clouds - his eyes ached trying to focus on their tops. 'Most expensive real estate in entire world,' said his guide. 'Per metre. Soon.' Patrick licked his lips.

  He asked to be taken to the site of the new Olympic Stadium, to pay homage to Kenzo Tange. 'Brunel is my hero,' he said. 'But Tange comes close.'

  They approved.

  The rudiments of the building were taking shape, the magical sleight of hand that would one day support - without appearing to the already famous sea-shell roof was beginning to happen. It would one day shelter thousands and make the architects of the world fall to their knees with envy. Patrick would have given his soul to have thought of that.

  'Can I have a job here?' he asked, only half playfully.

  The escort bowed before him one by one. They were smiling. 'You are not old enough,' he was told. 'Here we value experience.'

  A man approached and plucked a grey hair from his head. He placed it on his upturned palm. "When you can do the same,' he said, 'return to us.'

  Patrick bowed. 'One day I will. And I will build you such a bridge that Tokugawa himself would approve.' They all clapped.

  Personally, Patrick did not think they would need to wait for his hair to grow grey for that little prophecy to come true. But he also realised that now he was out in the big wide world it was better not to say such things. If it wasn't the dash of humility his Course Tutor had asked for, it was a good pretence at it.

  He also learned, as many busy high-flying men before him, the usefulness of airport shopping. He bought his mother a duty-free fan and he sent Audrey a postcard of a geisha - full costume, smiling and serpentine, painted as a piece of china. 'My new girlfriend,' he wrote. The card was three-dimensional, very clever, and if you moved it around the geisha would wink and take off her clothes.

  He returned to London and prepared to take up his rather inferior position (given that he had hoped to remain in Japan, sitting on the right hand of Tange, it was something of a comedown) with a City-based architect. Humble stuff, all bingo halls and Mecca ballrooms. And the most they allowed was some clever use of glass wall dividers and the occasional bit of drama
with an exterior finish. Rough plaster, smooth plaster, plaster to look like a hacienda. But at least it was an income, it was in London, and he could look around for something else. He had a week before he started there. Just enough time to find a proper flat - or at least somewhere with its own front door and no questions asked. Somewhere big for his work table. And somewhere near the river. Definitely near the river. London's artery. He wanted to feel the pulse of it. Audrey was delighted.

  'You should do the same, Aud,' he said, get a bit of independence. Which was not exactly what she had in mind. 'D'accord’ she said, but she didn't.

  Upon one thing he was resolved. He did not have time for two lovers. He asked his landlady to say he was out if Miss Boxer telephoned, and his landlady obliged. She fielded two calls before the letter arrived. He recognised the tiny handwriting and nearly didn't open it but something about the way she had written URGENT all over the envelope made him open it. It would be undying love, he knew, so he was doubly winded when he read it.

  He sat down. He got up. He read it again and then he went out into the night and he walked. He felt as if he was floating through a very bad dream - down Ladbroke Grove, along Holland Park, through the decay of Shepherd's Bush - right the way into Richmond. Dark and empty the water below him on Twickenham Bridge - which was how, approximately, he felt about his life at that moment. He had no doubt the baby was his. That, he told himself, nodding at the water, was what happened - a man and a woman made love - they made a baby. He was the fool for having let it happen. At least Audrey - dear Audrey (he winced at the thought of telling her) wore one of those rubber things. She wore it whenever they met, just in case, she had told him. It never occurred to him that Peggy Boxer wouldn't do the same ... Now what should he do?