by Mavis Cheek
For the men in grey suits the one comforting aspect of this nerve-racking meeting today is that that wisest of all Firms, the Royal One, has allotted plenty of time. If the Royal Choice is but putative and manipulable, the Millennium itself is not. There may no longer be an Empire but it will be good to show the world how well it could be organised if there were. Still smarting from the Isambard Kingdom Brunel show across the English Channel put on by those supercilious French, the British wish to show the world that they have truly great, purely home-grown geniuses of design - and that they know what to do with them. After all Patrick Parker has built so little in his homeland. They must redress this if they are not to look more foolish and reactionary than they do already. They can only entice Parker to the drawing table if they offer him something big. He has indicated that he wants this project badly now they must make it happen. He is also, and not a day too soon, to be properly honoured by Her Majesty. Though he does not yet know this. Neither does the Queen.
They will need all their powers of diplomacy. Her Majesty has the pragmatism of the good hausfrau in her blood, as well as a line of haughty kings. Like her great-great-grandmother before her, if she does not like a thing, in private at least, she will say so. It behoves those who serve her in private not to let her become displeased. One does not become God's Anointed by lying down and taking it.
Delicately they begin to talk in general terms, for Her Majesty is led to believe that she is a good conversationalist and likes to keep abreast. With a royal wrinkling of her nose and the ghost of a twinkle in her eyes, she says of the Parisian exhibition, "They've certainly put up a most futuristic connecting building over there, haven't they? The Louvre extension? That ziggurat thingie. Monstrous. But I expect it's the sort of thing Mr Brunel would like. The bridge he built at our Scottish Estate, Balmoral, is never, ever spoken about in the family and it is said that my great-great-grandmother always closed her eyes when she travelled across it. If I have to choose a bridge I think I would prefer not to have one which required me to keep my eyes closed. Not in my back yard.'
The twinkle increases. Since Her Majesty's particular backyard at this precise moment is the centre, the very heart, of London - the increased twinkle is not surprising.
'No, indeed, Ma'am,' says the older of the two men whom, she suddenly notices, does not wear any socks with his slip-on, tassel-laced, shoes. How very beatnik, she thinks. Out loud she says, 'If Our name is on it then We've got to like the thing - haven't We?'
'Yes indeed, Ma'am.'
Both men pray that Her Majesty is not quite so on the ball as it is said, otherwise she will remember that the design she has just decried was created by the winner (not that the competition has actually been launched yet) of this Millennium Project. The Project, of course, is a bridge. Therefore no better designer could be chosen than Patrick Parker. Neither of them, either, feels it would be sensible to point out to their Monarch that the ziggurat bridge connection is considered one of the finest pieces of new architecture to be erected in Paris or anywhere. Once Patrick Parker is honoured it will help. Such awards give the Royals, everybody, confidence - it gives their man a pedigree.
Meanwhile form must be adhered to. They put before Her Majesty a host of bridges - some that look like cascades of water, some that look as if they are fish picked clean to their bones, bridges that (in her opinion) look as if they have undergone a military attack, bridges that seem to defy gravity and are coloured in shocking colours green, orange, mauve. Many look awkward, wayward, unsafe. She sees submissions for some of the world's individual leading designers of bridges, British by birth or British by adoption, and she sees submissions from conglomerates. Towards the end of the range of submissions, she sees a drawing and schedule entitled - but only in brackets: (Working Title: Grandmother's solution for getting to the other side: build a bridge). She likes this. It makes her smile. 'This is very straightforward,' she says. 'And it has buildings. Shops. It seems to me very sensible when space in My Capital is at such a premium.'
'Mmm,' say the men in grey suits. They put it to one side and cover it quickly with a drawing of something with shining metal cable stays that looks like a large, unruly violin. They bring out The Parker Design. Her Majesty inspects it as it is laid before her on her desk.
'It is based, Ma'am,' says the Beatnik type, 'on your Coronation arches from nineteen-fifty-three.'
‘I know when my own Coronation was,' the Monarch snaps. Immediately she tacks on a gracious smile. But patience is wearing thin. She puts on her spectacles and peers at the drawing. Had she ridden under arches of these dimensions, she would have been entirely dwarfed. She pushes it to one side and gimlet sharp, pushes aside the violin and returns to 'Grandmother's Solution'. It must be put in the exhibition. By Royal Command. The men in suits bow in acknowledgement. The Queen, like her corgis, is growing restless. She must find a suitably dismissive statement. So she says, 'One does not get out to the shops enough ...' And with that she gives the slightest droop of her head. The meeting is over.
The job is done, she has had her say, and she makes a note on her pad for her Private Secretary to check the final list of exhibitors at the Royal Academy. 'If "Grandmother's Solution" is not included,' she writes playfully, perhaps even wistfully thinking about those bare, white ankles, 'then Chop Off Their Heads.'
And that is it as far as the Monarch is concerned. It is just another bit of the jigsaw of duty for her. The selection of an historic, new bridge. Another stone in the fabric of the nation's existence. In a few year's time she will choose an outfit to wear which, in its own way will have been just as carefully constructed and chosen (she will therefore not arrive crumpled, the wind will not show her knickers, buttons will remain firmly done up over her broad bosom), and the fabric will be warm or light depending upon the season. She will be collected in a big, black, shiny car, and driven to a place where one of these drawings she has in front of her now will be made fact. Concrete and steel, wood and brick, glass and high-grade plastic. The Bridge. Her Bridge. May it please Her Majesty.
To the young woman with the fiercely concentrating look, who does not feel the cold in that loft of hers because she is burning with the future and its possibilities, it is the structure, not the name of its creator, that counts. And what it is there for, and for whom. The daughter of immigrants dreams ... As the applause begins and the Queen starts her speech and the gulls wheel above her, and the boats sound their horns on the crowded water, she thinks of her grandmother. That is all.
Gradually Patrick's memory of Madame Koi fades. He is far too busy with his new project and as he forms the Meccano he suddenly remembers his father's dexterous hands. He says something of this when he telephones his mother. She is, he can tell, very offended. Women, he thinks, are a very peculiar breed. Which makes him think fleetingly of that Japanese woman again. But only fleetingly. He still keeps the shoe. Somewhere.
Audrey has received a letter from Lilly, or rather a letter written by Lilly's new carer. Lilly has had a little stroke and she is now in a Residential Home. Which she likes. The carer writes, at Lilly's instruction, that Florence Parker, coming along the street when Lilly was being wheeled to the shops one day, said that it was no more than she deserved for her sinful ways. Lilly says that she tried to spit in the woman's eye, but she could only dribble. Which made her laugh.
Audrey, who has not forgotten Madame Koi, not at all, picks up the shoe and sits thinking, turning the beaded dragon over and over again in her hands. There is no need for her to keep its secret any more. Edwin has gone to where he cannot be hurt. He was hoping to make it to the Millennium. But he was a few years too early. Madame Bonnard still lives. Just.
2
Time to Go Home
I think there is a question of whether this [Millennium] bridge is actually bridging the two communities, the poor south to the rich north. I think the rich north will benefit more from the poor south.
Zedi (civil engineer, trained in Zambia, moved to L
ondon in 1979)
After a suitable period of mourning the desire to move on became strong and Audrey returned to England. She was, like any sensible Pompadour, well set up: the owner of her Parisian apartment which she immediately instructed an agent to let; the owner of a handsome seafront property in Brighton which she immediately put on the market; the beneficiary of a series of offshore investments which - true to his word - were placed by Edwin to maximum effect and made over to her in his will; a few good pieces of jewellery including a delightful diamond crocodile brooch that had once belonged to Mrs Simpson (Audrey's mother and father now being dead she freely owns something connected to That Dreadful Woman); and the crowning pleasure, the small pastel by Pierre Bonnard which she takes with her wherever she goes, tucked into the bottom of her travelling case, wrapped in silk. In the same case, wrapped in pale blue tissue paper, she keeps the dragon shoe. Both seemed to symbolise something. The bourgeois and the exotic. The best and the worst of her, perhaps.
Her accountant, once Edwin's, suggested that now was a good time for Audrey to put the painting into a New York auction - but she said, looking directly into his eyes so that he blushed, which was very satisfying, that she would keep the painting. She thought that over the years she had sold enough of herself, one way or another. Yes?
On arrival in England she booked herself two rooms in their favourite Bloomsbury hotel. It was a good place to stay for a while to acclimatise herself. Underlying the grief for Edwin and the sadness for losing Paris, was relief. She no longer lived in that world. That world, she knew, no longer existed. She was Audrey Wapshott of England and about to please herself.
Personally, she decided, as she looked out over the drabbish Bloomsbury street, I feel I have earned my keep and deserve a comfortable, early retirement. She had burnt her bridges - after mending them - and that was satisfactory. She shivered, remembering her visit to Madame Bonnard made on the day before she left for England. The sweet, dough-faced nun who glided ahead of her, wimple rippling like wings, said at the door, 'She has moments, Madame, she has moments. Pray God that she has one for you ...'
And into God Knew What moment she went.
At least the room was cheerful. Blue and white gingham, blue and white rug on the floor, bedcover of white with a blue cross-stitched border. The blue and white matched the pallor of the woman's face as it looked up from the pillow. The jaw, once so square and formidable, was now sunken, and the hands that lay lightly on the white and blue coverlet were shrunken and veined.
'Madame?' said Audrey.
The eyes, still dark, still seeing, though rheumy, focused on her. They registered a flicker of surprise. Both women stared at each other for a long time. Audrey listened to the bell tolling the half hour and to the woman's deep breathing.
Odd how quite suddenly the right words arrived. 'Madame. I ask your forgiveness ...'
The eyes looked her up and down. They were not kind. There was another long pause before the woman drew a deeper breath than the rest and said, 'Mad'moiselle. I grant it to you.'
On the plain wooden chest at the side of the bed were three framed photographs, incongruous in the ornateness of their silver frames; one of Edwin and Madame Bonnard on their wedding day; and one each of their children at the age of twenty-one. Audrey pointed to the photographs of the children. Madame Bonnard was clearly having a moment, for she understood, and shook her head slightly. Then she did that purely French shrug, which Audrey had never - quite - mastered and which Madame Bonnard could manage even while lying on her deathbed. She shrugged and it was clear that it meant, 'What use is anything at the end?'
Audrey bent and kissed the cold brow, and left.
Behind her Madame Bonnard rutted. It was not the way things were done. Mistresses did not kiss widows on the brow. At best they kissed their hands.
That was the bridge, built and burnt in a minute, though the pallid image would linger.
Audrey's life was unremarkable. Of course, she had done some remarkable things but she was - unremarkable. Staid now. And glad to be. She planned a good book, a nice warm room, the occasional dinner with a friend. In this final stage she would suit herself. But the news of Lilly disturbed her. The memory of Patrick disturbed her. She knew that a woman did not keep a single shoe for several years without there being a Big Reason - beyond whimsical sentimentality - for doing so.
Once settled in the hotel and to pass the time she reacquainted herself with the new London, including sailing down the Thames to the building site of the Dome near Greenwich. On the way the guide pointed out the site for the new Millennium Bridge. The Queen's Millennium Bridge it would be called. Big name for Big Project.
The tour boat journeyed down the river and slowly back up again. Time to notice things. All the way along she could see fine apartments, glinting, metallic, harsh - shocking the soft, dark brickwork. There were people - The People - sitting out on little balconies with glasses of wine, looking down at the oily, grey water which Dickens had cast as one of the darkest characters in London. When she left for Paris all those years ago those places had either been working warehouses or boarded up and crumbling. No one would have seen beauty in them. Now they were desirable, investment properties. Chic. It used to be one of her favourite words.
The new bridge would connect these Chic People to The People. Patrick's Bridge. It was bound to be Patrick's. He would be sixty in the year of the Millennium. The age at which - he had said to her, years ago - all serious creators should die. Did he still believe it? When he designed the ziggurat and was interviewed about it (not by Madame Koi) he said that a Millennium Bridge would probably be his swansong - his epitaph. The one thing on which he had set his heart. She wondered if she envied him the focus of his life. Hers had been utterly random.
Back in Bloomsbury she grew restless. She visited the British Museum but the Elgin Marbles, newly housed, reminded her painfully of how gauche she once was. Something must happen soon, she told herself, something to make a balance of it all. And then, God Bless Her, Florence Parker went and died, the death was announced in The Times and Audrey decided that the moment had finally arrived.
She opened her travel case, removed the little beaded shoe and unfolded it from its pale blue tissue paper. She looked at it, fondled it, smiled at it, slipped it on to her foot, removed it, re-wrapped it, and then tucked it into a black leather handbag. To await further action.
That night of the barricades, when she took the beautiful boy to her bed, he read to her from Verlaine's poems. Later she bought her own copy and when Edwin found it, and raised an eyebrow, she told him that she much preferred them to the likes of horrible old Robert Browning and his Duchesses. She could quote 'Aquarelle' which she loved:
Voici des fruits, des fleurs, des feuilles et des branches,
Et puis voici mon cceur, qui ne bat que pour vous ...
It made Edwin laugh. 'Oh la la!' he said, 'she has a brain . . .' She said nothing, thought much, about this remark. If she had a brain it was hers to own, his to ponder. Had she not later wept on his doorstep in the fear that she had overstepped the mark and lost him? So she kept her preference for Verlaine to herself. If she stood on her balcony in the evening she might remember, and whisper to herself,
Il pleure dans mon cceur
Comme il pleut sur la ville:
Quelle est cette langueur
Qui penetre mon coeur?
And think of Patrick. But now this ridiculous shoe brought comfort, for the shoe symbolised more than a good joke, more than a getting even, it symbolised her own regeneration. She was looking forward to Florence Parker's funeral, very much indeed.
3
Family Matters
I suppose it is almost like being a child, isn't it? Making a bridge and constructing something that goes over somewhere, over water ... we know we're not supposed to be there, really. Canon Andrew (sub-dean, Southwark Cathedral)
On the afternoon of his Nana's funeral Isambard Parker, in London, flopped back on th
e slightly greasy settee and flicked channels. Isambard ignored the telephone. He knew who it was and he knew what they wanted and he was not going to do anything he did not choose to do. From quite an early age he had worked out what was required of him, avoided doing it, and enjoyed the family frustration such perversity produced. If he did not know anything else he knew that he was not going to be like his father. Not in any way, shape or form. Which got right up his famous father's nose.
If he built anything at all - and he was toying with the idea - it would - so far as his father was concerned - be A Bloody Outrage. Isambard, amused, knew this because he asked his father to help him design it. To the eternal question 'What are you doing to do for the rest of your life?' Isambard merely told him that he wanted to open a cannabis cafe, because they were the things of the future, he had found a site. His father, quite predictably, shot his lid and said it was A Bloody Outrage. It was almost as sweet as the time Isambard ripped the drawing table from his bedroom wall and threw it into the garden.
