by Mavis Cheek
Poor Peggy. Despite being the three Ps, she did not feel absolutely secure. Audrey maintained quite a strong presence in their lives for the first year or two. Patrick might make the odd remark about 'Remember when you first saw the Elgin Marbles?' or he might read from the paper that they were going to attempt to make a film of 'that Genet book I lent you' and each time it happened Peggy felt, in the words of a centuries-old superstition, as if someone had just walked over her grave...
Once she dared to enquire about Audrey's whereabouts. 'I think she's working in Paris now,' he said. And then with an affectionate little shake of his head. 'Who'd have thought it? Little Audrey.'
Patrick enjoyed an excellent sixties. London was the place to be, and he was very much a part of the scene. He was beautiful and witty enough to be part of the beautiful set and he even had the opportunity of dancing at a nightclub with the Galtons' Penelope - which he was very happy to decline. She, it must be said, rather regretted her earlier behaviour as she watched him walk away. Times were more democratic and he was both attractive and something of a star. And he had been photographed for Vogue by Snowdon.
These few years were a great time to be young, successful and creative. There was big money around for building projects, and youth was premium. At the age of twenty-eight he became the youngest partner in Sir Ronald's practice - and he was given his first serious project: to design an entire housing complex. It would be smaller than Leslie Martin's Roehampton Estate, about a third of the size (only a dozen point blocks, several high slabs, twenty blocks of flats of seven storeys and around fifty clutches of small two- and three-bedroom houses) and far less important in its siting - which is why Sir Ronald risked giving it to Patrick Parker. But it was a time for youth and if you wanted to compete in both the home and international markets, you must use dashing, dramatic young designers. Patrick took the opportunity and he laid out his own particular, peculiar, prodigious (another three Ps) design stall. If the children's playground was never produced except in prototype (too advanced for mortal eyes still used to detail and definition) the housing estate was.
He interlinked (bridged, he insisted) all the community buildings and shops - and the places for people to wait for buses, the places where they might sit in the sun, shelter from the rain - with a series of elegant walkways - plain, undecorated and efficient. He threw out the idea of geometric patterning and staggered balconies and followed a ruthlessly, simple path, letting the lines and planes and layout of the buildings themselves dictate the cohesion - not invented patterning on facades. The whole was laid out by referring back to the eighteenth century's love of the picturesque. But not with parks and gardens and the building's relation to them - Patrick threw that aside and applied the principles of irregularity, intricacy, surprise, informality to the relationship of the buildings to each other. It was a huge success for the practice, and an even greater success - triumph - for Patrick personally. He went on to design an office building for Beggar Records, a pavilion for the Venice Biennale (a shadow of Tange about it) which won him a medal, another small housing complex but this time in the north of Sweden. Each major design by Patrick Parker carried his hallmark trait - somewhere, somehow, he would include some kind of bridge. Not too difficult for the annexe pavilion in Venice, ingenious staircasing for Beggar Records. Photographers loved him. The golden age of the colour supplement loved him. Anything creative was worshipped in those late-sixties days, and anyone young and creative was swallowed whole.
Patrick Parker, aware of the game, played the part. He was the 007 of the design world. The Hockney of architecture. The Ginsberg of design. He dressed in style, drove an E-type and appeared in all the right places. Peggy, if she accompanied him, smiled and looked just like a pop star's bird. Sir Ronald was quite right. He would never starve - not with caviar and champagne and Langan and photographs at the Bunny Club endorsing the way the Bunnies were dressed. 'As a piece of engineering,' Patrick said, for the benefit of The Times, 'their costume is without doubt perfectly designed to maximise their strengths and rrunimise their weaknesses.' The reporter blinked. 'It is all a matter,' he said kindly, 'of stresses and strains ...'
He became one of the five or six most used architects, working less and less in England, more and more in Europe. But London was still the only place to be, the centre of excellence. Coventry tried to claim him but he ignored it. Small-town ways. He could never go back. Money began to roll. Their small house south of the river was replaced by a larger one on the fringes of Chelsea. After a few more years, with the commissions beginning to form a queue, an even larger house was bought, just off the King's Road and very much in the heart of Chelsea - while across the water Patrick bought the lease of a building and set up his own partnership, which he called a workshop because it meant that the egalitarian principle was not supreme. He was in charge and he was playing the long game. His eyes were set on glory, not trendiness, on heroism not style. He had displayed his capacity to be fashionable and quirky - now was the time - just on his thirtieth birthday - when he must eschew a bridge as a trademark and make it the centre of his design universe. When the Norwegians - who had already grown excited at the prospect of North Sea oil, decided to prepare for the transport revolution and bridge some of their fjords and mountains - Patrick took the commission. His very first major bridge. The footbridge in Italy, which had won him his first prize and about which he was once so excited, became no more than a footnote - the medal gathering dust in one of his desk drawers. Now he was getting somewhere. Now his real designer's profile began. Brunel. He would stand on his shoulders.
A classic suspension bridge - simple - with direct, unselfconscious detail. It was as if Patrick was saying to himself and the world that the flowers were over - that the power now lay in going back to basks, to beautiful structure again, the bones of design. It had barely a span of 420 metres (not much more than a thousand feet) but it was greeted with wonder and delight, and all antagonism that he was English forgotten in the pride of it. He was on his personal Brunel trail in earnest. He declared to the Ustening world that the foolishness of Romance and eccentricity were in the past. A good plain, wholesome diet, was his message - kept the body healthy, and the soul. Years on from this first Big Baby, there was another Norwegian bridge, at Ollsten, even more beautiful and sublime - a real bridge builder's bridge - with a wonderfully structurally unnecessary arch of steel, abutment to abutment, that he had painted blue to match the sky. When the rays of the sun hit it, it looked like a rainbow. It was entirely romantic.
Not long after the Ollsten bridge was opened, Peggy obliged him with a son. "The New Brunel', said the headlines in the Daily Mail as Patrick was photographed crouched over the wrinkled, sleepy newborn thing. Little Isambard had arrived. You could barely see the baby for Patrick's teeth.
The following year their second child, a girl, was born. Eventually they named her Polly. It took Patrick four weeks to register the birth because he was so busy working ...
Success after success followed. Money flowed. Grand schemes sprouted and soared throughout a buoyant Europe - and London was at the heart of the boom. Patrick was commissioned to work with a Japanese architect to design a series of high-rise buildings for discerning workers and residents in docklands. He gambled and nearly won. He said he would work on the project for a smaller fee if they would also raise half the finance for a bridge across the Thames - his grand ambition - a Parker bridge for his Nation's capital. If they put up one half of the money he was sure he could raise the rest from the government. They agreed. Foolish not to. What a wonderful addition to the Thames. But somewhere in the deserts of the Middle East a decision was made that changed everything that year. Patrick's bridge was shelved. Almost everything was shelved. People got up in darkness and went to bed in darkness. Everything and everyone was a victim of the oil crisis. It was the first real disappointment of his creative life and he never forgot it. How many opportunities does a man get in one lifetime to build a bridge over the Capital's River, to pla
ce his monument within the very heart of the Nation?
Peggy could only rock her baby and tell Patrick that it would all be all right one day. Florence, who grudgingly arrived in London to see the baby, pronounced her quite unlike her side of things again (a statement which privately made Peggy feel very relieved) and departed again. Florence felt ousted, cheated, humiliated - and though she dutifully, even proudly (for of course inside she was still proud) sent all press cuttings to Dolly and occasionally rang her to point out her son's success - she had taken such a large of dose of umbrage that she was in danger of choking on it. In all their years of marriage, Patrick and Peggy had only visited Coventry twice. It wasn't her fault that there wasn't a double bed for them and that they had to sleep in separate rooms. Did they think that Florence should give up her own comfort just to recognise theirs? Once Patrick had called in on his way to Edinburgh - but he had only stayed for a bite to eat and a cup of tea. It was on the tip of her tongue to say that in half a jiff she could have a bag packed and go with him, but those days of ease were gone. The proud joy of being escorted around Coulter Hall, on her son's arm, with the press in attendance, was gone for ever - Peggy Boxer had seen to that. If Florence could not forgive her, she also found it hard to forgive her son. All in all, Florence Parker had lived for her son, and now it looked as if he was slowly killing her.
Gradually Europe licked its economic wounds and wealth began to mount again. The London river project was shelved largely because the days of big investment and city money had gone for good - quiet, long-term planning were the watchwords and in Asia, Japan was having a crisis of its own. Boom and Bust. Patrick had returned to Tokyo only once - and in triumph - bringing his few grey hairs as testimony - to accept their commission for the longest-spanning bridge in the world. Now he must turn his face to Europe again and Europe was very pleased to have him. He was invited by the wise French to submit designs for creating the link between the old building and the new building of one of the proudest and most sensitive architectural sites in France - the Louvre. The original grandeur of the east front must connect with its brand-new modern extension. A BridgeMan was needed, and Patrick Parker was to be the BridgeMan. It was an honour and it mended his heavy heart; the international accolades that followed even swelled it again. He was awarded the Prix des Arts et des Lettres (French letters as he liked to joke in his speeches) after his name. "They brought Bernini from Rome,' he said to his wife, who wondered if it was some kind of pasta but who had wisely learned over the years to wait for the clue - it came - 'And now they are bringing Parker from London. Not bad, eh?'
Clever, wonderful, brilliant, top of the tree - these and other words and phrases came from her lips. And she meant them. But she also dreaded the whole thing. Audrey Wapshott is in Paris, Audrey Wapshott is in Paris. It echoed and echoed around her brain even after all those years.
'Your mother said she'd heard that Audrey was still living in Paris,' pursued Peggy miserably. (Florence liked to turn the screw on her daughter-in-law whenever she had the chance.)
Patrick sighed. 'She also heard that she had been skiing with Princess Margaret,' he said scathingly. 'And Jackie Kennedy. Now I ask you. Is that likely?'
Frankly Peggy thought anything was possible.
'Do you want Isambard and Polly to come?' she asked, hoping they would so that she had some moral support.
Patrick actually winced. 'Why? he asked. "Will his probation officer let him leave the country?'
'Oh now, Patrick,' said Peggy. 'You know he's not as bad as all that.'
'Yet,' said Patrick.
Polly was not even part of the equation.
The Grand Opening was to be Grand in that peculiarly overstated way that the French do so well. Not so overstated to be vulgar like the Italians, not so understated to be taken for a British diplomatic funeral. Opulence was its hallmark, and being the best and being seen to be the best. On the chosen night anyone seeking to hire a car of any quality to take them there in style would be disappointed. The guests knew they would find cameras awaiting them - and an April night is not always the most balmy of occasions. Coiffures can be damaged, chill air can hide the cut of a decolletage. Those men who chose to wear a little enhancement in the matter of mascara or foundation or a touch of black about the hair line, would not wish it to streak in a sudden squall. The French, in advance of everyone else on the Continent (though not, it must be said, America), had got Celebrity about ten years before anyone else. Celebrity was dressing itself up like a starlet going on camera for the very first time. And Celebrity had hired all the cars. Including the car designated for Patrick. A wadge of francs - and pouf! It was gone! Peggy, nervous enough at the vague possibility of Audrey turning up with Jackie Kennedy and Princess Margaret, was also put to another, more physical disadvantage - she and Patrick had to walk from their hotel.
Now - Patrick did not mind because the exercise helped his nerves. And like Brunel, whom the evening would honour along with the New Extension's architects, he liked to walk to places. Peggy - aware that she had to pull out all the stops in her toilette - and not aware that they would, once pulled out, be subjected to some very severe meteorological conditions - wore very high heels (one needed height at such gatherings she had learned), very big hair (precariously perched), and flounced shoulders padded to a degree not unlike her father's beloved John Wayne (it being the time for it).
Thus it was that Peggy arrived, having hit the unpredictable squall that was quite predictable following the argument of Sod's Law and she arrived looking and feeling less than radiant; in fact - not to put too fine a point on it - she was wet through, flattened, and with two odd-looking growths, one on each of her shoulders, that gave her a look of the Munsters. Not an auspicious start. A little madness followed. Had Patrick done this deliberately? she wondered. So that if Audrey was there - she, Peggy, would look sad and disadvantaged by comparison? It played on her mind as the rain dripped on to her neck. Unusually, she snapped at Patrick. 'Do I have to check everything myself?' she said.
'Couldn't you have just for once pulled your finger out?'
And Patrick - less unusual - took umbrage. 'If my wife can't support me tonight of all nights’ he said through gritted teeth, 'then what hope is there?' The mess she looked did not lean him towards sympathy. She was usually so radiant and stylish and able to talk so much small talk that you'd swear she had a mincer in her throat. But tonight, of all nights ...
Madness was in the air about her, too. A hunted air, a searching look instead of her usual quiet, dignified aplomb. As soon as they entered the place Peggy began seeking out the crowds for that familiar face, the haunting one from her dreams. Audrey
But Audrey never appeared. Patrick disappeared at the opening party - disappeared for quite a long time - and that made her jumpy. But he turned up again. Of Audrey there was no sign. No sudden, shocking, reappearance.
'Why on earth should she?' Patrick had asked her, irritably, on the way back to London.
After their return he remained irritable. At first Peggy thought it was like post-Birthday Party Syndrome. But it was much more as if he was out of love with her... The Three Ps were never talked of now and the photographs of the event were not placed in an album and shown to visitors - they were kept in Patrick's study. And he seemed to study them, for some odd reason. The few that were taken of Peggy had been burnt by her. Ten minutes in the Little Dames Room that evening had not improved her much and it was best forgotten. Could it, she worried, be as simple as that? Her looks had gone? She always kept herself so trim and attractive. Suddenly, and for the first time, she found herself looking at her life. Without Patrick it was - well, despite her two children - empty. Emptied out. She had given everything to her husband. What could she do if he no longer wanted her? She stayed quiet, kept her head down, waited for the ill-feeling to pass. It would all be made better, she was sure, if the commission for a new bridge, a bridge for The Millennium, in London, came to him.
Peggy ha
d not lived and worked for Patrick for all those years without knowing him. She was right. They were preparing to commission a bridge for the Millennium and Patrick knew that he - and the world -would expect it to be his. Yet as they moved towards the nineties there was a sense of egalitarianism abroad - the word 'caring' had crept into the social vocabulary. An architect, even world-class, could not be certain of anything. Even one who had designed and built a bridge with the longest span in the world. After that, how the Japanese would look askance - would laugh - if he were passed over by his own people.
She came into Patrick's workroom one evening and found him rerunning the video of his interview with French television made during the Grand Opening of the Louvre. The last time, she thought, that they were ever happy. She sat down with him and watched too. 'Just look at how your tie is all skew-whiff,' she said. 'And your jacket collar. And whatever had you been doing to get your hair in a state like that?' It brought it all back to her. The long absence. When he did reappear he looked as if he had been in a fight. There was very definitely something of the little-boy-caught-out about him.
Patrick immediately switched off the video and stood up. Interview over, was the message. 'I'm going to bed,' he said. And left the room. Peggy got up too. Perhaps, she decided, it was because he was getting older. Perhaps Paris really was his last great moment? She puffed up the cushions, tweaked the drawn curtains tidy and switched out the light To be truthful, she'd be rather glad if it was. It would be nice to have a holiday.
