Patrick Parker's Progress (20 page)

After a while Audrey said. 'I'm thinking of applying to the International Service. I want to make something of myself.'

'You don't speak anything foreign
’
said her mother, without looking up from the heel she was turning. 'So that's that.'

'Nothing to say I can't learn
’
said Audrey. 'There's evening classes. And the school said I was bright, remember.'

If there was a hint of complaint in her voice, Dolly did not rise. Audrey had been just as keen as they were for her to get out in the world and start earning her own money. She put two pounds and a bunch of flowers on the table every Friday night and the rest was all hers. Now, having started all this carrying on with Patrick, Dolly wondered if he was turning her daughter's head
...

'And who would be expected to keep you if you did that?' asked her mother in a voice that said the question was absolutely rhetorical.

'Evening classes are better than college because you go on earning. Best of both worlds
’
said Audrey. But already she was yawning in the heat and the comforting dullness of the scene.

'And what does Patrick say about it?' Dolly asked, pursing her lips. She had a feeling that her daughter was being strung along.

'Oh I haven't - really - mentioned it to him yet
’
she said. 'But I think he'll be pleased. He's so clever himself. He needs clever people around him.'

Her mother tutted once and the matter was dropped. Personally she thought that if there were any evening classes to be attended, they were better spent on pastry making and good plain cookery. Her daughter had not inherited Dolly's light hand either with sponges or with pie crust and if a man had to choose between having a wife who talked foreign at him, and one who put a decent steak and kidney on the table, Dolly knew which he'd prefer.

Audrey decided, dreaming into the red hot caverns of the fire, that she would talk to Patrick about it and have a go if he thought it was a good idea. She fancied French. French was safest. Though Patrick would go on about how dynamic Berlin was nowadays, and Dresden and what a brilliant rebuilding programme they had despite being razed to the ground. He was also talking about his coming trip to Japan, which was also brilliant, apparently, despite its wartime sufferings. Anywhere where they had dropped a bomb appeared to be brilliant, she thought. Except, apparently, Patrick's poor old Coventry. She thought about trying to learn Japanese but one look at it convinced her she could be clever, but not that clever. Anyway, she was hardly likely to be able to go with him - not all the way to Tokyo - not on a telephonist's wages.

As for German - her father would never countenance her learning that particular language. Not with his feet. He always said that if he'd had George's feet, he'd have stayed at home all comfy. As it was he went out to Tobruk with a perfect pair, lovely to behold, toes all straight and everything, and he came back with bunions, corns and missing a toe. Every time the damp weather came and his twinges began, he cursed the German nation. And that bugger Rommel. As for Japanese - apart from the certain knowledge she would find it impossible to learn - she would also be in danger of being thrown out on the street for that, too. Patrick was right - they should forget history and the war and get on with life. It had better be French, then, definitely.

Audrey sighed and poked at the coals and took up one of the socks by her mother's chair. He went through his socks did her father. Dolly looked over her spectacles at her. Despite the pastry, she was a good girl when she wanted to be. Audrey shrugged and smiled back. Might as well get on with something. Later she would try to read the book Patrick had lent her but it looked very difficult. Jean Genet -
Querelles of Brest.
She couldn't even pronounce it properly, she was sure. All her father said when he saw the name of it was 'Trust the Frenchies to call a book something with
them
in the title.' So even French would be tricky. But she had to do something. Otherwise Patrick would outgrow her.

The next morning, off the two women went. Audrey's face was pale with make-up and she wore the customary black. She was excited at the thought of Patrick needing her. This would be her moment. Dolly said not to get her hopes up, funerals took people in different ways. Not all of them good ones. And when they arrived at the house it was perfectly clear that Mother Knew Best. Florence, opening the front door and seeing Audrey on the doorstep with her mother, was firm. 'I'm very sorry,' she said, in a tone that implied she was actually highly delighted (by now Dolly had gone upstairs with her bag), 'but you can't stay here. We've no room. All the beds are taken as you well know.'

‘
I
could sleep on the settee in the parlour,' said Audrey, determinedly walking past Florence and into the kitchen, looking for Patrick who was nowhere in sight.

Florence followed. 'Well, good luck to you if you want to do that -but the body's already in there.'

‘I
told you,' said Dolly, while Florence put the kettle on. 'You have to make room for people's ways with a bereavement.'

Eventually Patrick came down the stairs. He stood on the other side of the room and never even kissed her cheek. She felt humiliated.

'It was kind of you to come,' he said. 'But I think you'd probably better do what Mum says. Unless you can stay in a b. & b.?'

Dolly said it was a good idea but Florence shook her head. 'Too much distraction,' she said. 'We've got a lot to organise.'

'But I can help,' said Audrey.

'Too many cooks,' said Florence, which Dolly thought was highly inappropriate. All the same, Audrey had been wilful in coming, she had been warned, and it was Florence and Patrick's wishes that counted.

'Better go,' she said quietly.

'Yes,' said Patrick,
‘I
think so.'

And since it was his father who had just died, Audrey did not think she could do what she wanted to do which was scream at him and hit him very hard right where - she had learned from sunnier days - it hurt.

'All right
’
she agreed, and she stared at him with such a look that he went back upstairs again. He did not care to be made to feel in the wrong. She still made him feel like that and it was one of the reasons he held back. Sometimes what he read in her face was disturbing. Love - if that's what it was - seemed a demanding commodity to him

-
what with mothers and lovers - and he was glad his affections were more realistic.

'She'll have a cup of tea and a sandwich first
’
said Dolly.

'But of course
’
said Florence, more warmly now she had won. 'Can't send you back on an empty tummy'

But for the whole hour of her stay, Audrey had never felt so unwanted. To Hell With Everyone, was the way she felt about it. And she very grandly rang for a taxi to take her to the station. Patrick offered her the money for it, with Florence looking on, lips pursed, as she pressed out her pastry for the big day.

'No thanks
’
she said. 'I've got my own money'

'Hoity-toity
’
said Florence quietly to the short crust. But she was pleased. The girl would not keep him if she behaved like that.

Patrick might be a Genius and Geniuses might need to be handled differently from ordinary men, but all the same
...
A girl has her pride and her limits, thought Audrey. He went to kiss her on the cheek and she stepped back. Too late, far too late, she began to get an inkling that she, also, had power.

The taxi driver set off towards the station. Anger won over forlorn. You could excuse Patrick when he was being dedicated - and she did

-
but not for something so emotional, not for your father's funeral, which was so very much the right occasion for having the woman you loved by your side to see it through with you. That was not the way the Tracys and the Hepburns, the Hudsons and the Days did it in films, and neither was it the way people did it in real life. In real life there was always kindness and romance and the seeing-through of things together. Up to the surface came the memory of Coulter Hall and how he had gone without her; up to the surface came the standing
in
the rain for two hours because he couldn't be bothered to remember her - and bubbling alongside them came a little burst of rebellion. How dare he? And for some reason, alongside that thought, came the memory of the woman and the note and the bicycle. How careless Patrick had been. All those sweets and she'd bet he never passed the message on. She'd bet a hundred pounds on it.

And then it occurred to her that George was dead. Really dead. And who was there to care about that, really? She had seen no tears in that house. None at all. She leaned forward - suddenly determined - and told the taxi driver to take a detour. He did so cheerfully enough, after all, it was a quiet afternoon. And when she stepped out of the cab saying grandly, 'Just wait,' as she had also seen in films, he smiled and saluted her. If this was the wrong thing to do, she thought, it was the wrong thing to do, but it felt right. Best not to think, she decided, as she pushed open the door and marched into Willis's Stores.

The woman was there on her own. Just about recognisable. Audrey thought that the horrors time wreaked on people must never happen to her. Patrick would not be able to bear it. The woman's scarlet mouth was still there too, bright as ever, and so was the nail varnish. Odd the way women who were beyond all help still went on doing such things. The woman was humming softly as she swept behind the counter, so it couldn't be all bad. She looked up and said, very nicely, 'We're just about to close. Be quick now.' And she resumed the humming and the sweeping.

Audrey nearly failed and was on the point of asking for a quarter of mints instead. But she had come this far and surely the worst that could happen, when she gave her news, would be the woman staring at her blankly. Besides, right at that moment she hated Florence and if her suspicions were correct, this was a little bit of getting even that no one need ever know about.
‘I
don't know if I'm doing right,' she said to the woman. 'But George Parker died yesterday. Would I be correct in thinking that you would want to know that?'

The woman stopped her sweeping and her humming immediately and stood very still. She stared, half puzzled. The silence was chilling. Then she said, hesitantly, 'You might be .
..'
Which was really a question.

Audrey said,
‘I
came in here with his son a few years ago, and you gave him a note to pass on to George. Patrick - his son - never did. And I am very sorry.' She could not bear the way the woman's face changed, how miserable she suddenly looked - and suspicious.

'How do I know it's true?' she asked-

For a moment Audrey thought she was going to hit her with the broom and she made to leave. The woman called her back.

'I'm sorry
’
she said. 'My name is Lilly.' She crossed the floor of the shop to snag the door. 'Come through to the back.' 'I've got a taxi waiting
’
said Audrey, afraid suddenly. 'Ten minutes
’
said Lilly.

She put her finger to her lips as they went into the sitting room and pointed at the dingy ceiling. 'My husband's in bed up there
’
she said. 'Don't want to wake him.' Somehow the whispering added to the bond between the two women. 'Please
’
she said in a shaky voice, 'tell me
...'

In the House of Death, Palace of Mourning, Patrick sat in his old bedroom - still with the narrow bed and its orange candlewick spread, still with the desk and chair and the blue tatting rug - and he was drawing. He had to finish the plan and he might as well finish it here as anywhere. In fact here, in the House of Death, Palace of Mourning (not strictly true this latter but he liked the sound of it) the silence and the peace were perfect for the completion of the project. And he had to get on with
his
life, that was all there was to it, death or no death. Time waiteth for no man, he told himself, nor for the Gold Medal. It was going to be a big year for him, a big life, and in the grand, rolling course of things, the death of a parent was both inevitable and small.

Florence, trying not to look as happy as she felt, came in every so often to give him cups of tea and cocoa and titbits, or to summon him downstairs for a meal. For these few days there was the most perfect harmony between them and the harmony was conducive to genius
...
It reminded Patrick that what he needed was a wife - or, rather, (and this amused him) what he needed was a mother with sex.

'You'll stay on a bit after the funeral?' Florence asked, bringing him a tray of tea and scones.