Patrick Parker's Progress

by Mavis Cheek

  It was a 'Hmmm' that spoke volumes. Patrick felt offended by it. Peggy's role was maximum support - not 'Hmmm'.

  'Anything in the post yet?' Patrick asked stiffly.

  ‘I haven't looked,' said Peggy wearily.

  'I'm expecting a letter from the Millennium people.'

  'If it comes,' she said, 'I'll send it on.'

  "Thank you,' he said. And he put down the receiver. Without Peggy - and without his mother - he suddenly felt very alone. Orphaned. And grass-widowered. He went back into the gathering feeling very sorry for himself.

  The front room looked no different from the way it looked at his father's funeral. The settee was in the same place, the grate held faded paper fans, the curtains were half drawn to save the furniture from the invasive sun. The only real difference was that the catering was more sophisticated, there were proper flower arrangements and one end of the table held glasses and drinks. Nothing too fancy, of course, no champagne or cocktails - just wine, beer, sherry and whisky. He thought he might have one of those now, and remembered his very first taste of the stuff. He was used to the best of it now.

  Across the room Audrey was talking to his godfather and Father Bryan. Father Bryan was saying how wonderful the addresses were ... and how brave of the woman in the wheelchair - who had been so determined, so determined. He was, Patrick decided, either a consummate bloody actor - or insane. He made his way to the table and poured himself a tot of the malt. Of course, there was one big difference with this funeral - one very big difference: this time Audrey was there, and Peggy wasn't.

  THREE

  AUDREY ALONE

  1

  Be Strong, Audrey

  *In the year of the humuliating of Audrey Wapshott, when her world fell apart and Patrick announced that he had made Peggy Boxer pregnant and was going to marry her, in another part of London altogether, on the poor side of the river, in a seamier, undeveloped, ugly part of London, where houses were cheap and groups of immigrants hung around together, afraid to break away from their familiars, a girl was born. Inconsequential event. Many girls were born there - some survived - some died - some dreamed - few achieved. This one - named Apsu by her hopeful parents - will be a dreamer and an achiever. She will grow up surrounded by people, and she will take it as a matter of pride and conscience to observe their needs. As they will observe hers. It is a poor community that has seen much, been through much, and is tempered with compassion accordingly. As she grows and takes her place in the New Land of the West, Apsu will dream this knowledge into an achievement. One day she will become wedded to the two confusions of Architect and Engineer, Art and Science, but for the moment she sleeps in her parents' bed, and knows no more of the world and its designs than the happy arrangement of having a reachable thumb at the end of her hand to suck. Perfect design.*

  When Audrey awoke she was still naked, still lying in Patrick's bed, but the light was now crepuscular. He had a little etching by Hans Bellmer called Crepuscule. It was one of his favourite words. Audrey had looked it up - it meant twilight. It also meant 'dim, not quite enlightened'. She felt sick, now, when she thought of it. It was the perfect word for her. On the table at the side of the bed was a note, in Patrick's stylish hand. It refreshed her memory about why she lay there feeling ill.

  I am sorry. I thought it would be best if I let you sleep. I am not feeling very well either and will stay at college tonight. Be strong, Audrey. As I must. Patrick. PS. Would you leave your key?

  Had he said more? She vaguely remembered a long discourse -Patrick rambling on about something or other - it was hurting both of them - it was not what he wanted but what could he do? But perhaps she made that up? Over quickly for the best. She seemed to remember that, too. Best if I let you sleep ...

  Sleep? She could not believe it. She had been asleep following him having told her he was going marry Peggy Boxer? How could she have slept? How could she? And then she realised. She had not been asleep at all. She had been unconscious: knocked flat. Out cold. Down for the count. Sleep, indeed!

  She got up from the bed and staggered. And she was still punch drunk. She felt as if she had been kicked, drowned in too many gin and limes, and beaten all over again. She picked up the stylishly written note, screwed it into a ball and hurled it at Patrick's stylish three white tulips in a stylish pale blue Japanese bottle balanced on the window sill. Good girl. Bullseye. It toppled, nearly righted itself, and then fell. Breaking very satisfactorily. Mental note, thought Audrey -when the world throws stuff at you, you may topple, but you must not roll over. Or you will break.

  The water from the vase dripped down the poster of Brunel's bridge at Clifton. A present from her to him. His present to her was to explain how it was constructed. While she was romantically remembering their visit there, he was telling her how the bloody abutments worked. The water, she thought, looked like tears. She held on to the thought for a painful moment - and then let it go. It looked like water running down a poster, that was all. From now on she would keep both her feet on the ground. Roll over and you will break.

  She opened the window and breathed in the warm night air. A passer-by, masculine, giving his dog its evening walk on this fine night, nearly strangled the unfortunate animal. It was the stuff that dreams were made on - you looked up at the just occurring stars while your dog crouched and strained in the gutter having his walk, and you expected to see nothing more than faint pinpoints of light in the sky, the fading trees, colourless brickwork, the beginning of a moonsheen on a roof - and instead - staring quite mindlessly up at an extremely scruffy house, you see an angel leaning out of the upstairs right-hand window - stark naked - white-shouldered, with breasts quite open to the elements, arms straight beside her on the windowsill, dark hair tumbling around her neck - and no shame - absolutely no shame at all. When she saw that he was looking at her, she waved and threw white tulips down to him. He pulled hard on the leash and ran. With the astonished dog trailing its nightly turd all along the pavement.

  Patrick's landlady was pottering around downstairs preparatory to going to bed. Audrey, still naked, walked out of Patrick's room, across the landing and into the bathroom and slammed the door. She then bathed noisily, using the ancient, hissing geyser at full volume. When she had finished and came out of the bathroom the landlady, standing at the bottom of the stairs, just about managed the terse opening bars of her hymn to her tenant's selfishness when her jaw dropped. Naked Audrey stood at the top of the stairs and told her what she could do with her shitty old bathroom. If this surprised Audrey - and it certainly did - it was as nothing to the landlady's surprise. Her shocked old voice rose to a crescendo, addressing her husband: 'Henry - don't come out...' Which, of course, he did. 'Best moment of me life,' he said in The Lamb and Flag the next day.

  Then the bravado left her. She was a reject. That was what she was. And some old husband of some old landlady giving her the eye scarcely changed that. She dressed and went home to Mother. Dropping her key down the drain on the way. The little act of vengeance did nothing to make her feel better. Neither did her mother's first words to her, which were, 'You look a bit ragged round the edges, my girl.' Dolly was standing by the dying embers of the range in her dressing gown and plaiting her long greying hair. 'You shouldn't stay out all hours when you've got to get up for work.'

  Audrey slumped into the chair recently vacated by her father. He always went up early to warm the bed. She told her mother what had happened. 'Apparently she's pregnant,' said Audrey. 'So that's that.'

  And did Dolly the Mother throw her arms around her only daughter's misery-ridden shoulders? Did she stroke her still damp hair and coo tidings of great comfort? No she did not. 'Be glad it's not you,' she said. 'Never did like that Patrick. Spoiled he was. Ho.' She flung the finished plait over her shoulder. 'You want someone a bit more settled. You'll be wanting to settle down yourself soon enough.'

  And make sponge cakes, Audrey mouthed to the blank beige wall.

  'I'll ring that Florence an
d give her a piece of my mind in the morning,' said Dolly. 'In the meantime, I'll make you a nice, hot milky drink and you'd better get into bed.'

  Bed. Even the word hurt. Audrey thought of Peggy Boxer, pregnant, a baby growing inside her, married, Patrick's for ever. All the things she had dreamed of. She poked a bit at the dying embers and saw them spark up. 'Leave the fire,' said her mother exasperated, 'we're off to bed soon, aren't we?'

  Audrey nodded. 'You know,' she said, 'I think I will carry on with French. Then I'll see what happens at the Exchange.'

  In her first interview, with her immediate superior, the supervisor, whom she was certain wouldn't know French from double-dutch -she merely peppered her speeches with the titles of some of Patrick's books that had been translated, but kept their original titles. Books by avant garde writers like Jean Genet (never finished on account of its being unfathomable and, if the jacket was anything to go by, very probably disgusting), Jean-Paul Sartre (never finished - what was an existentialist?) and Honore de Balzac (finished but not with pleasure because the neglect of Balthazar for his loved ones in pursuit of the absolute stone made her feel frightened). 'So,' said Mrs Pugsley. 'French?'

  'Querelles of Brest,' said Audrey, with the kind of shrug Jean-Paul Belmondo gave in And God Created Woman.

  Mrs Pugsley looked uncomfortable. "The International Exchange demands a very high standard, you know.'

  'Les Chemins de la Liberte.' Audrey smiled. And added, with another, smaller and wholly convincing shrug, 'Le Sursis

  Mrs Pugsley made a few notes on the sheet of paper before her.

  'Well,' she said, now slightly pink. 'Of course, if you have a smattering already it might be easier to recommend you.'

  Audrey leaned back and looked Mrs Pugsley straight in the eye. 'La Recherche de I'absolu’ she said.

  'Yes, well, that's all, I think, for now.'

  'Balzac,' said Audrey, and left.

  2

  Balm for the Reject

  The child Apsu, daughter of immigrants, still living in impoverished circumstances, can walk now and express tactile and visual interest in the world about her. She likes the contrasts of hard and soft, scuffed and shiny, sharp and blunt, and she watches the way the people about her are with things - careful with knives, laughing with balloons, respectful of fire, pleasured by light. Her grandmother holds her and sings to her when she can, but little Apsu does not stay still for long. 'Ah, she is a bright one, that one,' says her grandmother, who knows about these things. 'Even if she is a girl.'

  Somewhere around the time that Patrick's career began to take off, when he started to show just how full of bright ideas and innovative he was, and the Practice put his salary up so that other practices would not steal him away, Audrey travelled to Brighton to take her French examination. She was, if not the star of the course, certainly among its most dedicated. It was, she knew, the value of an otherwise empty life. And an angry one. Her engine was driven by both. When her mother told her that Peggy Boxer had lost the baby, Audrey just said, 'Good.' And that was all. She returned to her books and her verbs, the only sign of any inner activity being the tapping of her foot as she wrote. The word reject would come into her mind, no matter what she was doing, and she was determined, determined to erase it. A shocked Dolly had learned to keep her mouth shut.

  Madame Minette, her evening class teacher, recognised the jilted woman in her pupil, and she felt, with a Frenchwoman's love of romance, that she should participate in the drama. She invited her pupil to her flat in Bayswater for extra lessons, free. Even the address made Audrey sigh. It was a far cry from the grubby bit of south London where she and her parents lived. Bayswater!

  'You be careful,' said her mother, as if she was venturing to a foreign land.

  At first they spoke only in French. Her teacher offered her a cup of coffee which she poured from a small metal jug into tiny white cups. No milk was offered, nor sugar. It was bitter as medicine but it smelled wonderful. Just for a moment, sitting there by the enormous floor-to-ceiling window, perched on a scuffed, gilded stool, Audrey felt she was taking part in a film, that this was a setting full of props, everything beautiful but somehow wrong. Later she was to learn that this was all that was left of Madame's family's chateau after it was looted and burnt in the war. She liked Madame more for it. She felt she had been consumed by fire, too.

  On that first visit she was very nervous. She who had thought she was so Modern and sophisticated realised that she was not sophisticated at all. She and Patrick drank frothy coffee that tasted of nothing. This was the real thing, so real it burnt the back of your throat.

  'Next time,' said Madame Minette, speaking in English again as her pupil was so jittery, 'next time we will have an Armagnac, too.' Audrey assumed she meant cake.

  On her next visit Madame Minette held up, as if for applause rather than inspection, her Chanel suit. Audrey did not know what to say. It looked quite dull on its hanger. Black and white and bobbly instead of her favoured prints or pastels. Her teacher also dangled before her its matching bag. Too small to bother with, Audrey thought, but she smiled agreeably enough. It was all a bit of a mystery to her. But as Continental women knew - and as Madame Minette instructed her -one good stylish purchase made up for fifteen inferior and transient fashion items. There was simply nothing better for one's confidence -under the sun - than knowing you looked elegant. Audrey wanted to say that her French lessons had given her confidence but she was too polite. She was perfectly prepared to concede that this was small beer compared with looking good. Audrey wriggled into the tight checked skirt and buttoned the big, shiny buttons on the waist-cinching jacket.

  Madame nodded and looked pleased. 'But, Audrey,' she said critically. 'You must lose no more weight. Or it will hang.'

  Audrey nodded. The entire French lesson was given over to the dressing of Audrey.

  'And you must have a hat. No chic woman can impress without a hat. It makes you hold your neck just so...'

  Audrey said that it would have to be the headscarf. Madame Minette went rigid. 'You wish to look like your Queen?'

  Personally Audrey could think of a lot worse and said so. The Queen, in her opinion, wore some lovely frocks. And be blowed to modernity.

  There was a fairly hot debate between the two women - certainly very hot on Minette's side. 'You cannot, I will not allow it, she dresses either like a cake or a horse ...'

  'Oh, now -' began Audrey.

  'And the only elegant members of your Royal Family you send to the devil. You throw away. The Windsors ...'

  Judging by the passion in the Frenchwoman's eyes, Audrey decided not to pursue it. So she shrugged. 'Well, I haven't got anything else and I can't go hatless.'

  Minette's own hat had gone to be refashioned in Paris but she would not be gainsayed. She eyed the standing Audrey up and down, touched her Ughtly here and there to make her more straight of shoulder, more serpentine at the hip, and then said, 'My God - I see it - you are like your namesake.'

  'Who?' said Audrey.

  'The Hepburn . . .' said Minette, in a voice of wonder. 'In which case - it is easy - you will wear a little black beret.'

  'A beret?' said Audrey horrified. 'But I'll look like a schoolgirl. Or a French onion seller.' She remembered something else, something painfully connected with Patrick. 'Or Picasso.'

  But the woman had already hurried away to the rear of her flat, returning with a black beret which she placed on Audrey's head.

  'It is a shame about the hair which is not elfine - but - oh, my dear -' Minette held her at arm's length and smiled at her - 'the only schoolgirl you could possibly resemble would be a sly one - and you certainly could never look like an onion seller in a million years. And as for Picasso?' She led her to the full-length mirror in the hall. The only connection with him - if he met you now - is that he would want to eat you ...'

  It was a very great shock to Audrey - weaned as she had been on sensible cardigans and pleated skirts and nice fresh shirtwaisters
for the summer, and then turned by Patrick into some kind of waking vampire - to behold herself transformed into a long, thin, elegant, dangerous-looking Frenchwoman. How had this happened? Where were the heavy thighs, the solid calves, the heavy, rounded shoulders that she used to press against Patrick to arouse him? Even her breasts had nearly disappeared. 'Oh blimey . . .' she said, in a that's-torn-it voice. For this was what the pain of lost love had produced. She had been whittled away by it and never noticed, whittled away to a gamine young woman with eyes too big for the smallness of her face and elbows sharp as gimlets as she rested her hands on her bony hips. She would never be Little Audrey with the statuesque curves ever again. So this is me, she thought. Let's see what this new me can do.

  She thanked Madame Minette for the loan of the clothes and promised to bring her back a stick of Brighton rock. Madame Minette pulled a face. 'Non,' she said, just like de Gaulle. 'Non, non, non ...' The English were really absurd if you thought about it. Seaside rock was, actually, quite horrible. Audrey laughed. Then, with Madame's 'Bonne chance' in her ears and butterflies in every other part of her, she left the apartment. On the way home she realised that they had not gone over any of the vocabulary she had prepared. And now she was just too elated, too tired.