Patrick Parker's Progress

by Mavis Cheek

  But while she was relieved, Patrick felt a curious mixture of humiliation, sadness, and loss. Of course, the Koi woman was quite wrong about Isambard - but at least she had something to say for herself. He looked at Peggy as she knelt at his feet. She had never learned anything about bridges.

  'Peggy?' he said.

  She looked up.

  'What was Isambard Kingdom Brunel's gauge size?'

  She shook her head and went back to tending him.

  Throughout the press conference as he tried to keep his mind focused, his ankle throbbed and the shoe in his pocket dug uncomfortably, erotically, into his ribs.

  Audrey moved swiftly, shuffling barefoot, through the crowd. Two bare feet and a shoe in her hand. The assembled guests were more relaxed now, loosened up by the champagne, more inclined to stare. All eyes seemed to be upon her as she made her way towards the entrance. Unsurprising, really, since apart from a somewhat wonky, and very odd, appearance, to be barefooted was wild. She looked neither to the right nor the left but made directly for the grand doors, holding out a beaded shoe as if it were an offering. Probably, decided the throng, she was one of the mime artists from the square below -or a more distinguished performance artist. Difficult to tell. Watching her also, and with a little amused regret, was Edwin Bonnard - a bit tipsy, he assumed - if only he were a few years younger ... Madame Bonnard clung to the crook of his arm. The outing had tired her very much. It was unlikely she would attend such a party again. But she had rallied sufficiently to put one in the eye of that accursed Englishwoman - and the revenge was sweet.

  As Audrey reached the grand doors, two attendants pulled them wide for her and she exited, laughing now, out into the night, the dusk departed into bright, bright stars. The doors swung to behind her, their shiny modern handles reflecting her gaudy dress. The grand staircase, bathed in blue moonlight, was empty and she descended - light-footedly running towards the street and hailing a taxi. As it pulled up in front of her she dropped her notebook down the grating of a drain. And that was that.

  The taxi driver wanted to know if she had enjoyed herself. She said that she had. The taxi driver wanted to know if she had seen anyone famous? Gerard Depardieu, perhaps? No, she had not, she said, but there were certainly other actors about and she had seen one or two of those.

  In the sky shimmered a huge, sinister hologram of Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Audrey, looking up at it from the cab window, thought that he looked down on her with a distinctly sour expression. 'Feeling's mutual,' she said. Before telling the driver to step on it. She shivered, that feeling again, as if someone had walked over her grave. If only, she thought, sitting back and relaxing at last, if only the caterers had come along even a quarter of an hour later. After all, Patrick had never taken very long in the past.

  When Audrey reached home she bathed, hid everything away just in case Edwin changed his mind and came to call, put on her nightdress and robe and went and sat out on her balcony. In the distance, high in the sky, the Brunel hologram wavered and wobbled. Below her in the streets the town went rushing on, going about its late-hour business, ordinary, unremarkable, as she had seen it most nights for nearly thirty years. But now it had changed. Along with the mythology of Brunel, she had removed the mythology of Patrick Parker. And she didn't know if it was better or worse. Would it have been better to continue believing that he was special, a genius, a star in the firmament that she was privileged to have pleasured? Or was it better to know the truth as she now knew it, to see through the myth to the mortal? A talent, a huge talent, but as much a weak and flawed man as she was a weak and flawed woman. Florence was not the only one to blame for Patrick's unloving spirit, Little Audrey Wapshott was, too.

  It made the last thirty years a waste of bloody time. She need never have broken her heart for Patrick at all. She need never have mourned him. And she need never have thought that to be rejected by one so wonderful meant that her life was over. That she was unworthy. You only get one hero in a lifetime, she remembered thinking all those years ago, and when you have known such a one ... If I had been wiser then, she told herself, I would have rejected Edwin at the station, or at the first sign of My Last Duchess - gone home to England, taken my French examination, passed it probably, got a good job, settled down, married a respectable man, had two children and lived quite contentedly. Never thinking of Patrick again. Just as, come to think of it, she never thought about William the train steward. She had turned Patrick into an immortal, and she had therefore paid the price. But tonight, at least, she felt she had earned some of it back.

  In London Apsu sat in her large, draughty, skeletal loft in the soon-to-be-thriving industrial area of the easterly Thames, and played around on her computer. Her dexterous little feminine fingertips found it easy to negotiate the keyboard and she seldom had to go back over her virtual drawing of a bridge to rectify a mistake. I must, she thought, have faith. She had written the word spectacular up on one wall, in large red-lipsticked letters. It was her goad.

  Hanging above it, the only framed pictures in the room, were two reproductions of details of paintings - the first Michelangelo's Sistine God and Adam - the fingers about to touch - the moment before man - and it would seem to be only man - connects with the world, and claims it as his own. The other, much enlarged, is a detail from a Rembrandt drawing of a mother encouraging her child in its first steps. The Rembrandt detail is of the two sets of hands holding on to each other as if there is nothing else in the world that matters beyond this first moment of daring, the step alone, the act of faith. The artist has used red chalk and the enlargement shows that his emphasis, his pressure point, was that linking of the pairs of hands. That was the connection upon which Rembrandt placed the whole dynamic of the drawing.

  The girl who sits experimenting with her virtual drawing holds on to the simple, small idea, which intellect, pride, greed, hubris and desire for grandeur and glory make repeated attempts to pull from her. The simple, small idea comes from this: her grandmother lives on one side of the water, and there are places her grandmother wants to visit on the other side. At the moment her grandmother either has to walk a considerable distance (not too good for my old feet, my dear), or she must catch a bus to get to the other side (if there ever are any).

  'It would', she says frequently to her granddaughter, "be very useful if I could just walk over to the other side on a nice bridge.

  FOUR

  AFTERMATH

  1

  Some Years Later - At Home and Abroad

  Game: Spot the Missing Person

  Erasmus Bridge: Rotterdam, the Netherlands

  [Designed by] Ben van Berkel Dept. of Public Works of the City of

  Rotterdam

  Heading in Matthew Wells book illustrating 30 Bridges

  Erasmus Bridge: Rotterdam, the Netherlands

  Since its completion in 1996 the bridge has rarely escaped headlines. Its designers, Ben van Berkel and Caroline Bos, referring to their creation as 'the baby blue monster'...

  From text describing the same bridge in Lucy Blakstad's book Bridge:

  The Architecture of Connection

  'Why do you never ask me anything?' said Patrick. 'About what?' said Peggy. 'About anything,' said Patrick. 'I just did,' she said. 'About what?' he asked. 'Exactly,' she replied.

  Since Paris Peggy was not so compliant. Paris shook her to the core. Not only did Patrick leave her alone with the Van Crees - but the Van Crees immediately tried to engage her in conversation concerning his designs, about which she knew absolutely nothing beyond the fact that he had done them, they were big, he was famous for them, and they stayed up.

  To make matters worse the Van Crees then drifted away to be replaced by a couple, who spoke no English, only French, of which she knew but two words, those being Yes and No - and certainly not the polite word for Toilet. She had never learned what the Van Crees knew how to do, which was drift off at parties when they were bored, and she felt that Patrick had let her down badly by leaving her
alone for so long. Usually, if she was invited to functions at all, she sat at the side of him while he did his interviews or whatever it was, and he would occasionally take her hand, or look at her fondly, or even let them ask her what she thought of the latest project to which she, naturally enough, would only reply - could only reply - that it was another very Big and very Wonderful thing. That stayed up.

  Patrick's lost hour had never been fully explained. And there were rumours . . . The only reason she knew there were rumours was because - when they arrived back in London - Isambard and Polly were full of sly nudges and irritating whispers. Apparently it had been over all the papers - their sort of papers - well, her sort of papers too but she kept it to herself - that the design team of this Parisian project was British (hurray), co-ordinated by Lord Buckland (hurray, hurray - a British aristocrat - the Brits knowing how to keep their aristos and not chop off their heads) and flanked by Giles Rennie and Patrick Parker (hurray, hurray), that the exhibition was about a very British man (Isambard Kingdom Brunel - hurray), despite the French trying to say he wasn't (boo), who should have been honoured by the British rather than the French (shame, shame) - and it was rumoured that a mysterious Japanese woman (ooh, exotique) had been disturbed, semi-clad, with one of the naked (shock, horror) British designers.

  No one was quite sure which of the two men it was, but it was rumoured very strongly - because, it was hinted, the other might not like undressed women - that it was Patrick Parker. This was just as tasty in a way because Patrick Parker was always going off somewhere and building a bridge that wasn't English. And getting medals. Foreign Medals. And he was always complaining that he never got asked to build bridges in his own native land (paid for by the British Taxpayer, no doubt) - just who does he think he is? - and now he was behaving like Johnny Foreigner as well.

  Patrick laughed it off. Peggy knew that laugh - Isambard Junior laughed like that when he was caught playing hooky and Polly laughed like that when she was caught pinching lipstick from Woolworth's. So Peggy was not convinced. And Peggy brooded. And when Peggy brooded she ended up distraught. Peggy felt sure that Audrey Wapshott - as she still was apparently - was somewhere at the bottom of all this. No man could have been with someone for so long and then just forgotten all about them. Patrick had not married her because he loved her better than Audrey, but because she was pregnant. He probably still had feelings for his old love and he was very well aware - as Peggy was well aware - that Audrey was At Large in Paris. Of course he would say it never occurred to him until Peggy mentioned it but she didn't believe him for one minute. They might even have had a secret rendezvous. Florence rang up (fortunately Patrick was away at the time) and told her that Audrey looked wonderful at Dolly Wapshott's funeral and that she had been asking after him. Who knows if it didn't begin then? Florence hinted as much. Said she thought Patrick would be very interested to see how well Audrey had turned out. And should she pass on the address? Or just the telephone number? Peggy said both, but they never arrived. It was quite likely she sent them straight to Patrick. Florence had never taken to her and goodness knew Peggy had tried. Oh yes, Oh dear, yes, if she ever sat down and thought about it all, Peggy was convinced that Audrey Wapshott was somewhere at the heart of the matter.

  Patrick was much disturbed after Paris, too. He did not know what to do. He tried to trace this Madame Koi - and indeed, for several weeks after his strange meeting with her he placed advertisements in the Parisian papers to see if they had any luck with finding her. But they did not. Nexus Tokyo denied all knowledge of her, so she was an impostor. But somehow that made it even more exotic. Wild. It was a long time since he had done anything even remotely unconventional. He was one of the world's leading designers, and, he ought to be a little on the dangerous side. Sir Ronald's advice was all very well and Peggy was a very good wife and organiser - but it never went near the soul with her, and Tokyo Cinders did. She stood up to him - and she would have lain down for him. What more, he asked himself as he looked at his poor, miserable Peggy, could a Man of Destiny want?

  Fortunately no one ever corroborated the rumours about who it was they found with his trousers down, and Patrick, of course, denied them. Members of the Louvre's catering staff were interviewed and bribed but since they did not know which of the two British designers was which (they all look the same, English Suits) they were - thank God - not much use. He thought about employing a private detective but that seemed absurd. She was probably safely back in Japan by now - and tantalising someone else. In the end there was nothing more to be done. He argued to himself that if French journalists - desperate French journalists - could not find her, he was hardly likely to do any better. Anyway - he thought sadly - he didn't know much about women, but he knew this. If one of the breed wants something, and it involves a man, she'll get it. So she couldn't have wanted him. And that was that. He put the shoe away at the back of one of his plan chests. But he was never quite unaware of its presence.

  Audrey was never quite the same with Edwin again, either. Or perhaps, she thought, she was not the same with her life. She, too, kept the other shoe. The Cinderella touch cost her an arm and a leg at the costumiers (one shoe, madam, would be understandable - but to lose two...) And they were made by Verrier... She asked about the dexterous little fingertips and was told coldly that some of the best bead-work was done by Verrier's men workers. She paid the enormous bill with a smile, deciding it was worth it. Objects become symbols. She placed the shoe on the dressing table where she could see it every day because it made her smile.

  Edwin Bonnard noticed it and asked about it she said it was a little nonsense that had taken her fancy in the Flea Market. He had the vaguest feeling he had seen something like it before. He picked it up and turning it around in his hands said, 'It's exquisite,' he said. 'I've an idea I've seen this before somewhere - can't think -'

  'Really?' said Audrey in a not altogether gentle voice. She had not quite forgiven him for being potentially unfaithful to her with herself.

  'Where did you say you found it?'

  'Les Halles,' she said, and went on painting her toenails.

  ‘I like that dark red,' he said softly, coming towards her. It was one of the activities he liked to watch her perform, which she knew perfectly well.

  'Careful,' she said, and tapped him away with her hand. ‘I don't want to smudge it.'

  She was more like that with him nowadays. When he pointed out some of her brusquenesses she just laughed and said that she was behaving more like a proper, stricter mistress than she used to. That was all.

  He ran his fingers over the beadwork. 'Pity you haven't got the pair to it,' he said. 'It's exquisite.'

  She concentrated on painting her little toe, always awkward, and without looking up said, 'Oh I may be able to lay my hands on it. When I'm ready.'

  'Really?' he said, and studied the dragon. 'You know - I'm sure I've seen this -'

  'Perhaps,' said Audrey, keeping her hand steady, her eyes on her toes, 'you saw something similar on a little foot at the Brunel Opening?' She wiggled her toes.

  He looked slightly ashamed. 'It really was the last time for Simone. It had to be done. If you are jealous - don't be.'

  She considered Madame Bonnard, Simone, and the way she walked with her hand holding on to her husband's arm. Then she considered herself and Patrick nearly naked on that couch together. She waited to see what she felt. And then she looked up, brush poised, and said. 'No. I was once. But I am not any more. I don't want to marry you after all.'

  'Good,' said Edwin. But he said it with a pleasing hint of disappointment.

  In a royal palace, in a white and gold drawing room, with two corgis and a walnut desk between the regal occupant and the awkwardly besuited men with slightly too-long hair sitting opposite her, the Monarch holds meetings at which she has been apprised, over several months and well in advance, of various building schemes proposed to celebrate the coming of the New Millennium. Those that wish to use the name of the Royal
Firm must first be approved by Her Majesty. Fair dos.

  Today the Monarch is being advised not of the institutional schemes, nor of the purely governmental schemes, not the PPP schemes or those of local boroughs. She is being advised of the one scheme that will be perfectly co-ordinated, the one scheme of all of them that will be stage-managed by the Royal Firm - redoubtable men in perfect grey suits (with perfectly neat haircuts) - who can manage a State Funeral and a Coronation while balancing on their heads if they have to. This Millennium project will also bear the Queen's name, but the Grand Opening, when it happens, will be filmed and shown on worldwide television. Something of a coup by the BBC who intend to make a film of the entire process from paper drawing to final cutting of the ribbon by the Queenly hand. The Royal Academy, collegium ars gravitas, has already agreed to host an exhibition of the best proposals, from which the final choice will be announced. The people (for this is The People's Millennium and the project will be the Queen's Bridge and the Queen belongs to her people) will also have the opportunity to say which of the offerings they choose. They are - oh horrors - to be consulted.

  The awkward men who are here today are experts and they have come to lay before their Monarch's feet, so to speak, the jewels of possibility. In theory her Majesty will make the final choice. In practice, think the experts, they will make it for her. As far as they are concerned it is a foregone conclusion. The Parker Partnership will surely be the selected. But still, the democratic process must be seen to be done. Royalty is above being lobbied. Advised, but never lobbied. Already the Monarch reminds herself to keep calm and count to ten as these grey little experts (anti-royalists to a man, thinks her Majesty, who can smell such things; anti-royalists to a man until they come into her girdle of awe) go about their tawdry business. She pats a corgi's head to soothe herself. 'Next,' she says disdainfully to a drawing that is held up for her inspection. It looks like the water slide the grandchildren begged to have installed at Sandringham.