Patrick Parker's Progress

by Mavis Cheek

  Madame Helene was at least as old as Edwin, tall and stick-thin, a bit like the Duchess of Windsor. 'She would be flattered,' said an amused Edwin. She arrived the following morning and said that they had a bargain - if Audrey would speak English with her - she would help Audrey become French. She seemed to know her way around the apartment very well and, after her inspection, suggested that if Audrey found anything inconvenient she should let the concierge know and the concierge would pass it on to the correct individual. Everything was quite calm until Madame Helene opened the doors of Audrey's wardrobe. Whereupon she shrieked. She clawed at all the clothes, including the wonderful cocktail dress, and threw them in a heap on the floor. 'You are from London?' she said, frowning.

  Audrey wondered what on earth she had done. 'Yes,' she said, cautiously.

  Madame Helene's English was extremely good. "They are saying that London is the epicentre of style - it is reported so in Paris Match - yet I look at this and I am astonished, amazed - Mademoiselle Audrey I am -’I am -'

  Audrey looked down at the crumpled clothing. Some of her favourite items - her black toreador pants, her big, comforting, floppy jumpers, her chiffon-sleeved dress for special occasions. All lying there, defeated somehow. Ashamed of themselves. She was near to tears suddenly. It was as if she was seeing her very self discarded. But she swallowed hard. And she straightened her back. She had made this bed for herself and she must lie in it.

  'Madame,' she said. 'Edwin has left me some money. He said I should trust you. I do trust you. And I am in your hands.'

  Madame Helene beamed at her and nodded. As much as a stick insect can beam. It seemed that with Madame Helene it was money that talked.

  4

  Odalisque

  While Audrey pirouetted in front of her mirror or sat out on her balcony reading her books on etiquette and learning to live the life of a jolie mademoiselle, the child Apsu began attending her first school. She showed an extraordinary gift for drawing. At five years old she could copy a picture from a story book and had an understanding of perspective that was quite beyond her years. Her parents nodded when they were told. Of course their little Apsu was a good girl. And clever. She had gifts, of course. And their son, they knew, would be just the same. But they were liberal in their outlook. Apsu would be educated just as her brother would be educated. She could- go to the good state school nearby and receive a good education there. This could be done because the school was only for girls. The teacher emphasised that Apsu was special, gifted. The parents nodded again. Of course, of course, and beautiful too ..

  Audrey was quite used to her duties. Learning what the man in her life wanted her to learn. Same ethos, different man. Not hard to adapt if you were prepared to be amenable. And bright. She had her appearance organised again - but this time by Helene. She had her cultural interests and her views on the world sorted out again - by Edwin. She went to the right art exhibitions, shopped in the right shops, heard the right music and read the right books so that she could converse quite satisfactorily at dinner when required. Of course she was very good at it, very quick, for she had done it once already. Only this time, luckily, her mentor was kinder.

  Sometimes at night Paris seemed a disturbed city. She would hear police cars, shouting, screams and if she looked down from her balcony she would see - usually - young men, dark, being beaten or kicked or bundled into police vans. No one seemed to do anything except the odd passer-by who shook their fist or shouted. Once or twice when they were driving through the city she saw similar ugly scenes during the daytime.

  'Why are they hitting those people?' she asked. 'Who are they?'

  'Probably the rump of the Front de Liberation Nationale -Algerians.'

  "What have they done?'

  'We have just given them their independence. Now they want revenge...' 'Why?'

  'Because we were not - very - kind.' She shivered. 'In what way -'

  'Enough’ he said. 'Politics is a dirty trying business. Best left.' 'My mother always said it was best left to my father.' 'Well’ said Edwin, 'there you are then.'

  He gave her a little squeeze, as if to reassure her, and no more was said. Within a few months the incidents died away and her sleep was no longer disturbed.

  The standard joke among Edwin and his friends (most of whom had mistresses or - shockingly - beautiful young men) was that whereas the Englishman required of his mistress all the subtlety of Barbara Windsor and Diana Dors, the Frenchman wanted something between de Beauvoir and Jeanne Moreau - with a sprinkling of Lesley Caron. Someone you could read Proust to afterwards, went the joke. There was a flaw in this argument, though Audrey did not yet see it. At least half of the mistresses she met were English - and not given to reading anything much. They were good at cards, and some enjoyed needlework and knitting (which they hid when their Masters were in town) and doing beauty things. If they thought about Proust at all, they tended to call him Prowst. Audrey only knew that was wrong because she listened carefully to Edwin and his friends. At least, thanks to Patrick, she knew that Genet was not pronounced Jeannette. But who cared? 'We give them cachet’ said one giggling girl from Broadstairs. 'And they give us cadeaux. Fair enough.' Nobody spoke of love and marriage and Audrey kept quiet.

  A few years later, and a little less naive, when she and Edwin went to a Delacroix exhibition, there they were, The Women of Algiers, Odalisques, lying around looking beautiful, luscious and bored out of their skulls. It had the ring of authenticity. She kept that thought to herself, too. Edwin gazed at it for a full five minutes before moving on to Liberty Leading the People. 'Ah,' he said enraptured. 'One of my favourites - the greatest propaganda painting of all time.' Liberty, she was interested to see, was shown as a woman.

  On one of her morning visits Madame Helene brought with her a doctor, Dr Claude, who examined her and pronounced that she was healthy.

  'Well I knew that!' said Audrey, feeling a little cross at not being consulted. 'Of course I'm healthy.'

  Madame Helene laughed. 'You really are quite, quite innocent, are you not?'

  At the very beginning of their understanding, Edwin told her that there were to be no children. Since she had grown up with the knowledge that children, if you were not married, were a bad thing, the undertaking was not at all difficult.

  Thus, along with the vitamin supplements and the light-dose sleeping pills that Doctor Claude gave her (at night she was sometimes restless - especially if she had seen no one all day), there were six small foil packets containing little pink pills in individual slots. She asked Madame what they were for.

  Madame winked. 'You must take one of these every day at the same time,' she said, 'and you will not become enceinte.'

  'Good,' said Audrey. 'What's in them?'

  'Magic,' laughed Madame.

  'No I mean how do you stop a baby with a pill?'

  Again she gave that French shrug. 'How should I know? Just be grateful that Monsieur Edwin is a Protestant.'

  Dolly buried the hatchet enough to go up and stay with Florence where they both sat on opposite sides of Florence's fire and talked about the great achievements of their respective children. Neither listened to the other very much. Afterwards Dolly passed on snippets of news to Audrey - Patrick now drove a Jaguar car, was tipped for a partnership and was the youngest architect to run a full team, Peggy still hadn't fallen again, Florence never seemed to see them nowadays . . . Audrey showed little enthusiasm for these nuggets. Florence passed on almost nothing at all to Patrick, largely because she had no opportunity. She was still waiting for a reply to her letter of two months ago and though the telephone was there she did not see why she should be the first to use it. It was all Peggy Boxer As Was's fault, of course. Her who couldn't even hold a baby.

  Part of the reason that Audrey did not return to London for several years was fear of discovery - and guilt. As time went on and she was less and less sure of being made an honest woman of, she was more and more aware that it was one thing to live in the m
idst of semi-respectability in Paris - and quite another to go home and tell lies. Occasionally she looked in the mirror and willed herself to ring her mother and tell her everything and hope it would all blow over - but she always baulked. No. She had made a silken web for herself and she was all tangled up in it and though it was quite a nice life really, she began to see that she was trapped by the very fact that it was.

  'Everything all right your end, Aud?' Dolly often asked on one of her - slightly nervous because it was such a long way - telephone calls. Audrey said that it was. All perfectly fine. And invented a whole string of things that had happened to her. Then she rang off. Shed a tear or two. Wandered around the apartment a bit, thought about telephoning Edwin but he was with his wife and children that evening - and eventually rang Madame Helene instead, saying that a little game of bezique was just what she fancied - and Madame Helene obliged.

  'How do you avoid boredom?' she asked her guest.

  'So soon?' Madame Helene replied.

  'A little,' said Audrey.

  Madame shrugged that familiar French shrug. 'You have many years ahead of you. You could always get yourself a little dog.'

  Instead she put aside the sleeping pills and began to read. She was right. Jean Genet was absolutely disgusting.

  Long after Madame Helene declared there was nothing more to teach her, and when she had learned to sit down and dine without gagging on beef that ran blood (Mrs Wapshott liked to give her joint a damn good roasting before she released it on the world. At the slightest hint of pinkness it went straight back in the oven which she then guarded, arms crossed against all offenders, until she was sure all signs of life had ceased), it was decided that Audrey should learn to ski. Edwin was very good at knowing when the moment came to find her a diversion and each time - about once a year - she reached a point of rebellion because of boredom, he provided a new interest. She had already learned to ride, for there was a stables in the middle of Paris, and she could now drive tolerably well though it was a skill only there for emergencies. (Edwin said that if he bought her a car she might run away in it. She was not entirely sure he was joking.) She now had an account at the best bookshop in Paris, opened for her by Edwin, and a monthly luncheon club (ladies only) at which she and the other jolie mademoiselles wore their latest finery. But skiing was much more exciting than all these - because for skiing they must travel. When Edwin told her they were going to Gstaad and she wrinkled her nose and said couldn't they go somewhere that sounded nicer, he laughed delightedly. Gstaad, it seemed, was about the best you could get, even if its name wasn't very promising. They would go in the middle of February. In previous years he went away with the family for most of that month - a bad time for Audrey who became more restless than ever - but Madame Bonnard was now a little stiff in the joints (good, thought Audrey) - and the children went away with friends of their own. If she felt a little frisson of anger at being second on the queue, she kept it to herself. Slowly, slowly catchee monkee, she thought - or was it softlee?

  Edwin was pleased with how she looked in her ski outfit and he was even kind about her goggles (a mortifying moment when she put them on), which helped her through the more trying bits of learning to stay upright and eventually to move about on her skis. Part of the Parisian training was to look elegant and unruffled at all times, which was quite hard when your bum was covered in snow. Repeatedly. In the end she began to enjoy the exercise and the experience and to look about her at the beauties of the place. It was all like a fairy tale in its icing-powder sparkle. The whiteness and the silence were beautiful, and Edwin made her feel beautiful, and that was about as much as she could dream of asking. She forgot the occasional dullness of city life, the restraints, the two diaries, the sense of being second-class, and instead she became his fairy princess again. He liked to watch her and she liked to be watched. Once she could stay upright, of course.

  Edwin scarcely skied. His excuse for not joining her on piste very often was that he preferred to watch. She knew that really it was that his joints were suffering, too. Whereas she - she - had so much energy and vitality fizzing out of her that she decided, very probably, she would live for ever. It was happiness - confidence - to be good at things was good. Edwin, on the other hand, was apparently saving himself for the nights. And for the first time she found the lessons of being a mistress tough going. One thing to be out on the slopes all day and exhilarated. Quite another to feel every ache in her bones and to just want to fall into a hot bath and bed - to find Edwin in her bed each night. She longed for him to remain in his own room next door, even for one night, but no - still she must smile him into her bed. For a moment the telephone exchange looked the better bargain.

  The exercise became her, the boredom of the city had lifted and the air pinkened her cheeks. The young skiing instructor whispered things and held her arm or touched her leg a little too lingeringly. Nobody seemed to mind, so why should she? It was enjoyable being with someone of her own age. Edwin looked on. He might smile, but at night he warned her: 'Remember "My Last Duchess",' he said. And now she understood. It made her flesh creep - like something out of a Hitchcock movie. 'You mean he murdered her? Just for some imagined dishonour?'

  'Oh no,' said Edwin, laughing. 'The Duke of Ferrara didn't murder her...'

  'Well, that's a relief,' said Audrey.

  'He had someone else do the deed. It is the lot of a mistress to be at the master's mercy, you surely see that?'

  Audrey had no idea if Edwin was joking or not. But it reminded her where the power lay. Youth might be hers but the power and the pleasure lay with him.

  On one or two of the days, instead of skiing, they walked, shopped a little, dined at the Eagle Club, drove into Rougemont, took a hot-air balloon over the snowy range and tobogganed near the Schonreid. She pinched herself. Impossible to imagine the Audrey from London doing any of this. The dream was continuing and it was lovely, lovely, lovely. From a distance she saw Princess Margaret and her group, and she saw Jackie Kennedy and her party. 'Ah, the merry widow,' said Edwin, and bowed low. Audrey sent her mother a card the very next day, underlining the names of both Princess Margaret and Jackie Kennedy. It was fairyland all right.

  One lazy morning, when she could scarcely stop yawning and he called her his dormouse, which was just about right, they were due to take a sleigh ride and stay overnight at a little inn above Zweisimmen.

  He woke her. She rolled over and went back to sleep. In the end they left in a rush and she was still half awake as she snuggled up to Edwin during the ride. Through sleepy eyes she watched the beauties of the journey and felt very loved and very cherished, even if she was only a mistress. The next morning she discovered that she had not brought her little foil packet of pills and she also remembered that she had not taken one the day before either. Well. What was the harm? She decided to say nothing and take three the next day when they returned to the Palace Hotel. Such, she thought in later years, was the extent of her naivety, and the last of it.

  Six weeks later she realised that something was not quite right and she called the doctor, who came and examined her. She had been very sick for a couple of days - what could it possibly be? The doctor telephoned Edwin and they both came to her apartment. She was pregnant. A wonderful warmth ran through her. With child. I am so happy, she thought. She waited for Edwin's rapture. For the first time she saw that he could be as ugly as a thwarted child himself. ‘I said no children and I meant no children,' he said, stony-faced. 'Dr Claude will see to it.'

  Then she wept. First real tears since Patrick. She was aware of that amid all the bucketings. It could not be happening. To be told to grow up? She had never felt smaller. The days before the appointment at the clinic were spent weeping. Surely, surely he could not mean it? She tried asking him again.

  'If you have a child’ he said, 'you will not have me. I have a wife and I have a son and I have a daughter; that is as it should be. I want no more. I never said we would have children. I have been honest with
you. You must be honest with me, now. Does our bargain stand?'

  Impossible to say that she had never believed in it because she certainly did now.

  He softened a little, almost became Edwin again. ‘I should be more sorry to lose you than you might believe at this moment. You must decide.' He hesitated - then picked up his hat and left the apartment. Audrey continued to cry.

  Afterwards, in the little private room, at the small discreet clinic by the Forest of Fontainebleau (Napoleon's favourite retreat, so she was told), she received a small bouquet of spring flowers and a note which said that Edwin would be away for a while, that he hoped she would soon be restored. It was sent with his love, he said. Audrey continued to cry. She cried in the clinic and she cried in the taxi, she cried in the apartment and she cried in the street, and when Edwin arrived back, three weeks later, she was still crying. 'Either the crying stops, or I go,' he said. 'Which?'

  Audrey stopped crying. The prospect of being sent home at such a time was completely beyond her.