Patrick Parker's Progress

by Mavis Cheek

  'You are not committing me to any loonie bin,' she said.

  He stood there completely at sea. What the hell was one to do with a deranged wife? And then, like an angel of mercy, the door of the kitchen opened and out came Audrey. At which point, Peggy Boxer fainted away.

  ‘I think she must be taking something,' said Patrick, as they helped the semi-conscious figure towards a kitchen chair. 'She feels very hot,' said Audrey.

  'Can't think why,' said Patrick, staring grimly at the open scrap of crochet she wore.

  But Audrey had taken the dishcloth from the sink and was wiping Peggy's face and neck, which seemed to revive her. She made a noise and sat up, blinking. At which point, Audrey took her hot head and thrust it down between her knees. The head attempted to bob up again, Audrey pushed it harder. There was some snuffling and a considerable amount of lively movement. 'Give her a drink,' she said. And nodded towards the whisky bottle.

  While Patrick poured whisky down his wife's throat (she who never took much more than a small glass of wine), Audrey sat opposite her and watched the woman's distress. It was not a pretty sight. The fear and anger on Peggy Boxer's face as she glowered across the table at her was very disturbing. And Patrick, who a moment ago was reasonably relaxed and friendly, now looked on his wife with loathing. Fascinating, thought Audrey, and So Sad.

  Peggy suddenly snapped into lucid, secretarial mode. 'I've brought your post. There's one with a crest on it.' She got up and tottered out of the room and down the hallway, coughing and spluttering and quite clearly not well. Audrey looked at Patrick who had put his hand to his mouth and closed his eyes, clearly enraptured at the prospect of the letter with the crest, unmoved and unconcerned about helping his sick wife.

  Amazing, thought Audrey.

  Absolutely amazing.

  To think that it could have been me.

  About halfway through her second cup of herbal tea, just as she began to feel really relaxed, the young woman in the London apartment overlooking the river (south side) remembered her post. Wearily she got up from her chair and returned to the kitchen to collect it. There was one envelope, long and cream-coloured and expensive, that had a crest on it. She sat down again, sipped her drink, turned the envelope over and over in her free hand and began to run her thumb along its length. The result of the competition. She tried to breathe evenly. Before she opened it she told herself that she was young, that there would be other bridges, that she could not expect ... But none of it stopped the hope in her heart as she pulled out the creamy white letter.

  Peggy returned with a handful of letters, coughed over them, handed them to Patrick, and sank back into her chair as if she had just climbed the Eiger. In flu sufferers' terms, thought Audrey, she probably had.

  Peggy whispered across the table, 'Have you?' she rolled her eyes ceilingwards.

  'What?' asked Audrey, kindly.

  'You know,' said Peggy, in a painful whisper. 'Been together - upstairs?'

  Patrick coughed very loudly. And sat down heavily next to his wife. 'What rubbish,' he said. 'It's the flu talking. And anyway you attach an importance to such things that is honestly not there.'

  "Thank you,' said Audrey.

  ‘I don't mean -' he said.

  'What do you mean?' asked his wife.

  Audrey decided enough was enough. Here she was in this miserable kitchen, which had seen such misery, God knows, and here was more misery. There was no fun attached to it any more, nothing playful, it was just about damaged lives. With her free hand she picked up the whisky bottle and slowly and deliberately recharged all their glasses.

  'To Godiva,' she said. And drank. Both looked perplexed.

  'Someone whom you, Patrick, used to refer to as That Silly Woman.'

  'Yes,' said Patrick, distractedly. ‘I did. And she was.' He sorted through the post. Then he picked out a letter, the one with the crest, and was about to open it. 'Ah,' he said, kissing it, 'my acceptance. At last. Good.'

  The creamy envelope crackled in his eager hands. 'Just a minute,' said Audrey. 'Wait, please.'

  Patrick looked up irritably. Out came the lower Up, and the jaw. 'What?' he said. His hand hovered, he was aching to take out the paper and read and know . . . His life meant nothing without the commission for this bridge, this important landmark to posterity which would bear his name. 'What?'

  Audrey removed from her handbag the pale-blue-tissue-wrapped shoe. She pushed it, dragon face first, across the old green oilcloth towards Patrick.

  'From Madame Koi,' she said. 'Of Paris. It seems you haven't always thought the importance attached to - going upstairs - was significant. You looked for her hard enough.' She pushed the dragon further towards him. ‘I believe you have the other abutment?'

  His gaze rose from the rustling paper and its all too familiar contents, to her, and then back again. A jumble of thoughts racketed through his head. Paris? Madame Koi? Tokyo Cinders? Did Audrey know her? Worse - did Audrey know ...? He made a little swallowing noise as he picked up the shoe and ran his fingers delicately over the beadwork.

  'Oh how lovely’ said Peggy, and coughed all over it.

  Patrick stared at what was in his hand as if it was the serpent itself. He knew that dragon. He could practically feel its heat. His face was - quite unreadable. He did not know what emotion to put there. 'How did you come to have this . ..?' he asked. But, really, he knew. There was something, a bell, that rang in his head. Ankles. Weak ankles. And other vague things. He gazed from the shoe to Audrey and back again. No, no, no, he mouthed silently.

  Yes, yes, yes, she mouthed back. Then she stood up, very slowly, removed her handbag from Florence's dull, green, unnatural oilcloth, tucked it over her arm, put her little fingertips to her mouth, wiggled them, giggled once from behind them in a way that was all to familiar to him - and then turned with a very sweet smile to Peggy. 'We have only been discussing a little business’ she said. 'No more than that.' And she squeezed Peggy Boxer As Was's hand.

  Peggy's mouth made a perfect circle. But nothing came out of it.

  'Patrick is going to make a nice little monument for his father's grave. Aren't you, Patrick? With appropriate wording about what gifts he gave to him, his grateful son.'

  He shook his head as if to say, she was fooling herself.

  But she went on standing there, waiting, her finger ends tapping at the shoe.

  Eventually she said, 'Think hard about what you consider trivial, Patrick, and remember - little acorns sometimes grow into big, unruly oak trees.' She adopted a voice from her youth, The Radio Doctor: 'You know, sometimes, Patrick, we don't know what we've got until we lose it. Remember Shakespeare? Have you read Shakespeare, Patrick? "How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is, to have a thankless child..." I was thinking of George. I was also thinking that the reverse is true. Sometimes you don't know how lucky you are that you have lost something until you find it again.' She laughed. Not very nicely.

  Patrick and Peggy both looked confused now.

  'And Euripides, Patrick. Do you know Euripides? Rhesus? Just a fragmentary play but good - very good.'

  He shook his head. 'I'm not very up on the Greeks,' he said, still fingering the envelope with longing.

  'Well, Euripides suggests that you "Slight not what's near through aiming at what's far" - which seems the perfect epitaph for your father and Lilly's grave.'

  'Lilly's?' said Peggy Boxer. 'Who's Lilly?' She was staring from one to the other of them and back at the shoe as if she was witnessing Armageddon.

  'Patrick?' said Audrey, tapping the shoe all the harder.

  It took a little while.

  But then he nodded. The unopened envelope weighing heavy in his hand. I'll do it,' he said.

  'Good,' she said. ‘I thought you would.'

  'Do what?' asked Peggy. But neither paid her the slightest attention. She mopped at her glowing face mournfully. ‘I always knew it would end like this,' she said.

  'Not an ending, Peggy,' said Audrey. 'A beginning.'r />
  She picked up her whisky glass. 'Let's all drink to Brunel,' she said. 'Whose reputation is - apparently - unassailable.' And she drained her glass to the very last drop.

  But Patrick was too busy reading his letter to notice.

  While he read, she saw that a small tear had begun to trickle down his cheek. She pushed the shoe further towards him and very quietly, she left.