Patrick Parker's Progress

by Mavis Cheek

  And then there was his mother to think of.

  There must be a way out.

  There was not.

  He walked all the way back again, and by the time he let himself back into the house it was another beautiful dawn in early summer. Birds singing, sky blue, air freshened by the night. He should have been stepping out in hope and promise. He had it all to play for. Instead he had this lot to deal with.

  He sat in his room with a bottle of Delmonico's roughest red wine. From Soho. Where the real cats hung out. On one level he quite liked the drama of it - drinking at five in the morning, the creator cast down by despair - but every time he thought of his mother he was Coventry all over again. He winced. Every time he thought of Audrey he winced, too. He tried not to think of Peggy at all - because if she floated into his mind he felt very close to tears. He was all buggered up. He ran his hands through his hair over and over again. All buggered up. Bloody well bugger it, as Audrey would say. For what? And for whom? And then - two glasses down - oh Miracle of Miracles - he had a thought...

  He wrote a letter of his own, in his finest hand, and he posted it that morning. The following day, he received a letter back. An appointment for an interview was given at the end of the week. It was successful. Which did not surprise him. The following morning, a Saturday, he took the train to Coventry. Nettles and Horns, he told himself as the nine-forty-two gathered speed. Nettles and Horns. He had grasped them both and come up smelling of roses. He was not surprised at that, either.

  Audrey was not surprised when Patrick's note arrived from Coventry. He had only just got back from Tokyo and he would want to see his mother. Besides, she was busy herself, preparing for Night School in September. Her mother and father were still lukewarm about the whole thing, but at least she had given up the vampire pallor and the black and they were grateful for that bit of good sense. If you were going to impress your employer, especially the Post Office, then being a little conventional was wise. She still kept an old black sweater at Patrick's and a pair of leggings - but that was more by mistake than anything else. Well, that was what she told Patrick - but it was not a mistake at all. She admitted, but only to herself, that she left them there because it made her feel part of the place, as if she had a role there, like leaving your toothbrush at a schoolfriend's house because it meant you were part of the family.

  Now she wore skirts with nipped-in waists, blouses or thin sweaters, and a little boxy suede jacket in brown. Dolly thought she looked a bit heavy in it all though her height just about saved her -and the milkman whistled when she passed his float in the mornings so she must be doing something right. If she could get her hair cut and then to stay in flick-ups it would be better but you couldn't tell Audrey anything - she wanted long hair and she was going to keep it. She did not tell her mother that it was for Patrick's sake. He thought all girls should have long hair. The longer the better. Even if you were up half the night washing and drying it.

  It was in just such a conventional outfit that Audrey arrived at Patrick's the following Friday night. She came straight from work, he straight from Coventry. And she was so happy to see him that she misread his mood. Which, when she looked back on it, was quite obviously pretty bloody bleak. But love is blind. Or hers was. Having learned not to remove her clothes until he said she should (which avoided any further misdemeanours), she sat on the bed and waited, twirling a lock of hair around her finger, sipping the red wine she had brought, and letting a little bit of stocking-top show. It worked. It always did.

  ‘I forgive you,' she said, falling back on the pillows and smiling up at him, 'for not bringing me anything back from Japan. But I don't see how you can love me if you can forget me so easily . . .' She did the Kitten Pout. And she waited. Above her, Patrick's facial expression was one of someone with very bad toothache. 'Are you all right?' she said, alarmed.

  They made love in silence.

  Afterwards, just as Audrey was drifting off to sleep, and bloody well bugger it yourself, her world turned upside-down. 'Audrey,' Patrick whispered in her happy, hopeful ear. 'Yes, Patrick?' 'Sit up. I want to talk.'

  She sat up. This was it. This was the big one. She could almost feel the ring on her finger.

  He said nothing for a while, just moved around a bit, plumped up his pillow, sipped from a glass of water. And then he asked her how the French was going. Which was odd.

  'Very well,' she said. ‘I shall be able to translate for you by this time next year.'

  He was right. She would eventually find something of her own to do, and it would take the place of - all this. "That's terrific,' he said. 'Really terrific'

  She was even more surprised. He had never shown much interest before. It did cross her mind that even though he went on and on about Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre being such an egalitarian (liberte, egalite, fraternity), when it came down to it he was rather weak in his active support on the subject.

  'You really think it's a good idea?' She hugged him. He did not hug her back. 'You're sure?' she said, faltering a little by now. Something was not quite right...

  You can say that again, was another thought she had later.

  'Absolutely sure’ he said. 'It'll take your mind off things.' "Things, Patrick? What sort of things?'

  When he ran his hands through his hair she began to feel really worried. 'Well’ she said nervously. 'What?'

  'Things like - the fact that - I'm getting married to Peggy Boxer next month.'

  He paused. Somehow that sentence, though true and complete in itself, did not seem quite enough. Something else was required. So he said, 'I'm afraid.'

  Neither did that.

  'Sorry’ he added.

  Outside the window the stars were winking at him. He was not sentimental about omens, not at all, but he felt he was now on his way up there to join them. Once this terrible night was over there would be a new and beautiful dawn. Sir Ronald was as good as his word. And even though it was only a very junior post, a very, very junior post, it was in one of the best practices in London. A wife and a baby on the way were compelling statements of settled, committed intent. As far as Patrick was concerned, Peggy Boxer would do as well as anybody else. Of course, he did not exactly put it like that, to himself or to anybody, and he did feel sad about Audrey, but he had his life, and she had hers, and he had never, ever told her it would be for ever. And he had too much to do, too much to think about, to hang around sorting out complications. He summed it up for himself in the useful phrase, For The Best.

  14

  Success and a Martyred Mother and a Wobbly Wife

  As soon as the Brooklyn Bridge opened in 1883, people began trying to hurl themselves from its steel cables and majestic limestone arches into the water below ... From the top of the tower to the water is about 270 feet... Any safety net extended becomes useless because a falling body will go through it like a sieve. The net will hold but the body won't. Gary Gorman, NYPD

  The exchanges between Mrs Florence Parker, mother of the groom, and Mrs Ruby Boxer, mother of the bride-to-be, were made in private. Just as well. Mrs Parker was of the opinion that Peggy Boxer was no better than she ought to be. Mrs Parker was also of the opinion that she had been let down and let down badly. Neither a baby nor a removal to London was on the cards when she took a back seat and let the pair of them get on with it, and now here she was having to deal with both. She also pointed out that she was no fool even if her Patrick was and that Peggy's little problem might have been caused by any one of half a dozen boys. Mrs Boxer pointed out that not only had Patrick agreed that he was responsible, but they had been seen by Archie Bowles's mother at least twice in the woods after George's funeral if you please, when she was walking her dog. This did not, apparently and according to Mrs Parker, clinch the argument. No. Not in any way whatsoever. Rita Bowles. Rita Bowles -hah! Dogs or not, she was hardly one to talk given the kind of war she'd had. Why, she'd say anything to anyone ... As for Peggy! She was a chip off the old block all right an
d Patrick was doing the right thing because he felt obliged. There was no love lost there, she said. How could there be with a silly chit of a girl like that? She would hold him back, she would, because she was brainless. And then wouldn't everyone be served?

  'Well, you thought it was a good idea at the time,' said Ruby. She didn't care and she spoke as she found. Her hat would be the star of the show in any case.

  Florence wrote to her son and told him, very firmly, that he did not have to marry the girl and that she would stand by him. 'You do not have to stay down in London. You can hold your head high up here.' She hoped that would clinch the argument. Patrick wrote back that he had found them a house on the Northern Line, that it was small, needed a bit of work, but it was a start. They would move in directly after the wedding. Argument not clinched. And with no more ado, Patrick, wedding suit and all, duly arrived. Just as well.

  Mr Brian Boxer, father of the enceinte Peggy, an aficionado of John Wayne and a follower of the Great American Western, arrived on the Parker doorstep and took a quite different view about the clinching of arguments. He arrived at the house to make sure of it. With the view that if Patrick wanted his face to remain in roughly the same place as it had always been, he had better get cracking and marry Mr Boxer's Peggy. Patrick, who was very calm, felt that Mr Boxer meant it. Peggy said that he had been acting very peculiar ever since "The Alamo' came to Coventry so he probably did. Over the huff and the puff of it all, Patrick made himself heard. He had every intention of doing his duty.

  Only in need of a gun to complete his Wayne-like stance - Mr Boxer's parting shot, fired at the quivering Florence - was guaranteed to seal parental antagonisms for life. 'At least her Patrick knew he was going to get a bit of what a marriage was all about now and then - unlike his dad ...' They knew where the bodies were buried in Coventry.

  Patrick could not wait for it to all be over and leave. Finally. Peggy, despite Florence's hopes and expectations, wholeheartedly agreed. There was, in her opinion, only one drawback to living in London. 'What about Audrey?' she asked.

  'She will get over it,' said Patrick. 'I'm still very fond of her.'

  Which did not, altogether, make Peggy Boxer feel secure.

  It would be chapel of course. When Florence went to see the minister she was deeply, deeply offended when, after her outpourings about the vicious brutality of the Boxer tribe, the minister smiled at her and patted her hand and said that he thought - and he thought that God thought - Patrick was doing the right thing. And that

  Peggy Boxer would make him a good and handsome wife. As if that were not humiliation enough he gave her a choice of several dates for the wedding which had already, he said, been given to the Boxer family first.

  Florence hit out at God. About the only one left she could blame. It was all right for Him - He'd got His boy up there sitting on His right hand. What would she do for the rest of her life now? She tottered out of the chapel and did not look back. When this was all over, she would never, ever, walk through its doors again.

  The wedding was more like a battleground. Florence stood to one side of Patrick, granite-jawed, wearing black and clutching a damp handkerchief. She cried for her son as she had not cried for her husband - an irony that was lost on her. Afterwards she glared at the lens of Cyril Horner's camera, photographer for the Weekly News, with a malevolence that would not have disgraced the Erinyes. Mr and Mrs Boxer standing on the other side, looked as if they were about to be transfigured on some wonderful white cloud, so much material was there billowing around their daughter's ankles. It was to be thanked that Empire-line dresses were all the go.

  Mrs Boxer wore a maroon and peach suit, with matching hat (which was, indeed, the star of the show as it kept blowing away) and her husband's tie co-ordinated. As, it might be said, did his face. Mr Boxer had begun a little earlier than the other toast-givers, a fact conjectured upon when, on being asked 'Who giveth this woman ...' in church, he replied, 'Me. Thank God.' Peggy went very pink but kept on smiling. The wedding, the frock, the husband and the forthcoming baby were quite enough pleasure for her. She could forgive her father such a slip when she had so much.

  Patrick did not smile. He was longing to get back to London and real life. His mother had not spoken a kind word to him since the whole thing began, her only comment on the wedding being that Dolly would not be attending obviously - and that she doubted very much whether Dolly would ever speak to her again. Privately, she thought he looked so young and beautiful in his grey suit and navy tie. Distinguished. She looked at the jacket label as she hung it up and she saw that it was made in Savile Row. Wasted, she thought, all wasted on this crowd of simpletons. And now they had taken him away from her.

  Patrick sent his new address to Audrey. He hoped she was getting on with her life and would she send on any things of his that she had. He added again that he was sorry and signed it with very best wishes. It was as much as he could do.

  For the honeymoon they spent four days in Disneyland, just coming up for its eighth birthday, courtesy of his new firm. While there he could check up on this phenomenon - a new way of building for the consumption of leisure. As he suspected, Peggy adored it. She loved the whole idea of a dimity, fantasy town in which your every dream could come true. Patrick studied it with interest. This was the ultimate madness of giving people what they wanted. Building for plebs. You had to dictate the higher possibility - not offer the lowest common one. He had in his wife the perfect example of what he was put on earth to enlighten. And he would. One day he would build bridges for heroes.

  'Wasn't that lovely?' said Peggy coming back on the plane.

  'Lovely,' he said. 'Why not?'

  He gave Sir Ronald a full report on the place as his first act as employee. Sir Ronald was impressed. He put in a tender for something similar that might or might not be built in Japan. They were a busy practice and they could afford to wait.

  Over the next few weeks Peggy was busy painting the rooms of their little house white. She had rather fancied some daring wallpaper -to jazz it all up a bit - but Patrick said that white was the only acceptable colour for walls, though she said she wanted lilac for the nursery. Lilac, she argued seriously, would go with either blue or pink when the time came. 'So would white,' said Patrick, but he let her have her way. A nursery, a home, was woman's domain. The world was his.

  Then Peggy fell all the way down their newly sanded staircase. Patrick had worked on them, pulling up the old carpet and throwing out the old stair rods with a savage joy. But he had not quite thought through the practicalities. Twelve uncarpeted steps, and the entire reason for the wedding was lost that night in the local hospital. Peggy Boxer's first thought on coming round was that Patrick would want to go back to Audrey now. When he arrived with a bunch of white lilies (an unfortunate choice in the matron's opinion) she said so. She turned her head away and stared at the window and said, 'I expect you'll want to go back to Audrey now.'

  To which Patrick looked amazed. Of all the things ...

  'Audrey?' he said. 'Why?'

  She only hoped he meant it.

  Of course he meant it. He was busy. He was focused. Just about the last thing he needed was to keep chopping and changing all the time. He had married her and that was that... Not the most ideally romantic way of putting it but better than nothing. She lay back and decided to live.

  Out of darkness came forth light... He designed some anti-slip studs for the edges of the stairs, neat little things that became all the rage with the emergent lifestyle stores. Terence Conran shook his hand.

  Florence was icily polite when he rang to tell her about the baby Her 'so sorry to hear it' would have broken several sets of crystal glasses. It wouldn't last, she told herself. She left him, meanwhile, to get on with it.

  But it did last. And Patrick had a little thing he liked to say about them. It was that he and Peggy constituted the three Ps - Patrick, Peggy, Perfection. Of course they would have children one day but it did not matter if they wait
ed. Patrick was quite happy to be alone with Peggy while his career blossomed. And Peggy made sure that he remained happy. She did not want him to ever, ever think she was inadequate - which is how she felt sometimes when she thought about the day she slipped down the stairs and what she had lost. So she put Patrick at the centre of her life - why not, he was the star -and she made sure he was well served in eveiything he required. It was a continuation of his mother's approach. He was used to it, barely remarked it as a matter of fact. It was - if he thought about it -exactly what he had once wished for. A Mother With Sex.