Patrick Parker's Progress (10 page)

'Yet
’
said Patrick.

'Yet
’
she agreed, and took the liberty of putting her arm around his waist. A liberty which he did not deny her, though even she realised that it was debatable whether he had actually noticed . . . Sandy, however, did - and he smacked his sister's bottom hard. The resultant fight between them put her, she was well aware, in a very bad light. On the other hand, after all the frustrations and humiliations she had suffered it seemed a great release
...
'Oh
’
she said, slightly less than under her breath this time, 'Oh bloody well bugger it.'

Later, when they had paced across and back and observed the masterpiece from every angle - Audrey dared to venture that it was a sight grander than Ironbridge. Patrick took this well and she gained in confidence. The bridge was also almost entirely empty of people and traffic, Sandy had his back to them, staring at a couple of boats very far off, and it was the perfect moment and the perfect place to kiss. She was just wondering how to approach it for the second time when Patrick said, 'Well done for getting us here so early, Aud
’
and gave her a slap on the back. Not a hard one but it brought tears to her eyes and very little comfort. She looked down. It was a very long way to the water below which looked sludgy and greasy.

'His name is up there
’
said Patrick, pointing at one of the Egyptianesque piers. She dutifully returned her gaze upwards.

'Still going strong
’
said Patrick, shaking his head manfully. 'After all these
years. And still known as Brunel
's bridge.'

'Great
’
said Audrey.

'I knew you'd like it
’
he said.

She cheered up at once. He meant that she alone was capable of understanding and appreciating his special place.

'See what I mean about those London bridges?' he asked. She nodded.

'Very boring in comparison.'

She nodded more emphatically 'Oh, they are. Very, very boring.' 'Old hat.'

'Oh yes. Very, very old hat indeed.' 'Gothic, my elbow.'

'And mine,' she said, hoping to God he would not ask her what Gothic actually was.

They cycled backwards and forwards across the bridge for the sheer pleasure of having it all to themselves, while Sandy dropped stones and spat into the water. Then they stopped to lean over the railings once more and Patrick pointed out the abutment on the far shore that Stephenson's cowardice had caused.

'I suppose you could call it cowardice,' she said, her toes tingling again as she looked down. 'But maybe he was just being careful?'

'Careful!' said Patrick scornfully. 'Do you know what
Brunel
said to him in reply?'

Audrey longed to say what a daft question that was, how could she possibly, and she very nearly said sharply
No but I think you are going to tell me.
Instead she shook her head invitingly.

'
Brunel
said, "What a reflection such timidity will cast on the state of the Arts today
..."
Meaning, of course, that you get nowhere without taking risks. Heroism is the Design of Risks.'

It crossed Audrey's mind to ask whose risk but she kept quiet. She wasn't very bright, and that was that, but she was happy leaning on the rail there with him. It was enough for her.

'You're not disappointed then?' she asked, eventually.

His eyes were shining as he looked into hers. 'Oh,
no,'
he said.

'Oh,
no,'
she mimicked, but he did not notice. She was getting just a little fed up with all this standing about. She liked the bridge well enough but she also saw that it had countryside beyond it, that it could take them somewhere new - and she wanted to explore. She gave him a sharp poke in the ribs. Then she laughed, and set off towards the-other side calling, 'Come on, race you, race you
...'

Patrick was offended. They were in the presence of his hero and she was laughing about it. He sulked. He wheeled his bicycle to where she stood and shook his head at her disapprovingly. Sandy called from the far-off riverbank below, and waved.

'Watch out for my brother, please,' she said, with her best effort at being hoity-toity, and she rode off. Leaving Patrick feeling even sulkier. Largely because he really wanted to follow her. But he could not and he would not.

When she returned, they both sat down, not talking, chewing grass and spitting it out. Stalemate. Eventually when she knew someone had to break the silence, Audrey suggested that they leave Sandy for an hour and go for a bit of a walk, and pointed to the trees in front of them - 'It's the Gloucestershire side,' she said. 'I've been up there and it's really pretty'

He said nothing.

'Please?' she asked quietly. 'For me?' Patrick said that he had weak ankles.

'Don't believe you,' she said. 'Patrick Parker, you're afraid to be on your own with me.'

'Of course I'm not,' he said. 'I've always suffered.' And, as if to prove it, he stood up, proceeded to march off, and one of his feet turned over there and then and began to swell. 'See?' he said, pleased.

Audrey gave up. When they returned to the hostel he noticed that she wore her shorts longer, her mouth looked ordinary, and she scarcely spoke. Which was both a shame, and not a shame. All in all, he thought, she was a confusing person, and disturbing, not least because the image of those legs of hers going up and down, up and down, like strong, pale pistons, stayed with him and bothered him for far too long.

When he came back from that trip Florence was standing at the front room window, behind the nets, once more looking as if she had never moved from the spot. Audrey and Sandy were safely on the train to London, she had sent George on several errands, and she could have her boy all to herself. Up the path he came and closed the gate with a flourish. Florence saw the jauntiness of his step, the new confidence about him, and did not believe it could only be the bridges. Her heart began to pound. Patrick waved and mouthed through the glass of the window, "The bridge was a cracker, Mother. Let me in.'

Florence made her slow way to the front door and opened it. Straight away Patrick saw that she was - well - something. Ill or upset - affected in some way.

'I missed you
’
he said, and kissed her cheek. And he lifted his turned ankle to show the bruising. 'I told Aud it happened all the time so we couldn't go for a walk.' He laughed. 'She was not best pleased.'

'Good was it?' she asked.

'Yes
’
he said. 'But I'm very glad to be home.'

If this delighted her, it was short-lived. She was just putting the kettle on when Patrick said, 'Youth hostelling is good fun, Mum . . . We'll do the Royal Albert Bridge over the Tamar next and we'll ride over it by train because that's the best way to see it. Aud's OK for a girl
...
And we won't take stupid Sandy with us next time, either.'

Whereupon Florence scalded her hand, suffered her first serious heart palpitations and started wheezing.

Back in London and considering aspects of frustrated love, Audrey suddenly remembered the toffee and the note from the woman in the shop. She told her mother about it. 'Wasn't it odd?' she said.

Dolly said that it was. And then added in a casual voice, 'And did Patrick give the envelope to his dad?'

'Shouldn't think so
’
said Audrey, already bored with the subject. 'He's got a head a like a sieve. Unless it's about bridges, of course. I wish I'd been born a bloody bridge.'

Dolly's mind seemed to be elsewhere. 'Just as well
’
she said, instead of telling her daughter off.

Audrey had one last try. In preparation for the trip to Cornwall she bought a brassiere and struggled into it in the lavatory as the train pulled out of Paddington. She then returned to their compartment with determined confidence, only to find that they had been joined by a woman with grey hair in a bun, some brownish knitting, and a willingness to talk. Audrey hitched up her straps, stuck out her chest and refused the woman's offer of a boiled sweet. If thoughts could kill, decided Audrey, the woman would be splattered all over the carriage floor with a knitting needle up her nose.

All through Hanwell Patrick was exhilarated, leaping from one side of the carriage to the other to pull down the window and peer out, telling Audrey and the woman (who looked up and smiled vaguely when Patrick accosted her) that this - he gestured grandly out of the window -
this
was the stretch where
Brunel
finally invented a new kind of U-shaped track. He paused for effect. Two pairs of eyes waited. Good. 'Well - it was safer and smoother because it did not have the mass - so it cooled evenly, free of latent faults

'Goodness,' said the woman.

'Golly,'
said Audrey vehemently.

To which Patrick added, 'But the silly arse never patented it
...'

Which made the woman tut and blink and return to her knitting.

Audrey, who had no idea what patented meant but was feeling quite confident with the brassiere in place, smiled.

Patrick, apparently addressing some distant, passionate vision, continued, 'Because he was not after the money. He was after the glory
...
And in the end he got both.'

'Smashing,' said Audrey, taking a deep breath and holding it. But it was pointless - Patrick had his head out of the window.

At Maidenhead she and the grey-haired woman learned that this bridge with its long, low arches was considered one of the wonders of Isambard Kingdom
Brunel
's world. To Audrey it looked very ordinary.

Patrick was frowning. His face, deep in concentration, was as handsome as James Stewart's in
The Glenn Miller Story.
More, really

'Audrey?'

'Yes?' She blinked herself back to reality.

'I was saying - he managed to get the whole of that first run of track, up to here, rushed through in time for the Queen's Coronation. They told him it couldn't be done and he said it could - and so they did. He got it done earlier, in fact. It was sensational.' Then he fixed his eyes upon Audrey, causing her to go bright red, and said,
‘I
expect to you now it looks very ordinary?'

'Gracious no,' she said.

He stopped and peered at her as if she were one of Mr Murdoch's hopefuls. Audrey had a definite urge to stick out her tongue but managed to smile. Patrick might be beautiful and tall and all that but he couldn't half go on about things.

'This,' he said, 'was one of Isambard's greatest achievements.' Again he paced about the carriage tapping his finger on his chin as if he were a schoolteacher. 'How to span a river one hundred yards wide without making a hump in his beautiful bridge.'

'Why?' dared Audrey.

'Because he had to make headroom for the masts of sailing barges - which would soon be made obsolete by the railway anyway but he had to accommodate them for the moment
...'

'Why without a hump?'

Patrick sighed. 'He did not want a hump because it would spoil the beautiful simplicity of his design
...'

'Why not make the hump part of the design?' asked the woman with the knitting.

Phew! thought Audrey, who was glad
she
hadn't asked that.

By the time they came to the Royal Albert Bridge, Audrey's head was buzzing with facts, all of which she had to deal with alone now, as the woman with the knitting (rather thankfully, Audrey thought) left the carriage at Exeter. She was determined not to make any mistake with this one and pronounced the bridge 'a wonder' and 'just as lacy as the Ironbridge.'

‘I
don't think so,' he said pitying. 'Bridges like these are known as lattice-girders.' And that, he hoped, was that.

As far as Audrey was concerned it bloody well was.

When Audrey, accidentally on purpose (as seen in a Marilyn Monroe film) fell against him in the carriage and he pushed her away quite roughly for the very important reason that they were just about to follow a curve which meant he could look back and take more pictures of the bridge and the setting, she finally gave in to her feelings and had a good long sulk. He did not notice. So she told him. 'I am sulking,' she said, arms crossed despite their hiding her chest, 'because when we went over that bump just then, I fell, and you couldn't be bothered.'

Patrick put down his camera and stared at her in absolute puzzlement. 'We cannot have gone over a bump,' he said.