Patrick Parker's Progress (33 page)

There was nothing unseemly about the visit. Not the slightest hint of The Sheikh. She felt slightly disappointed. A little bit of her thought that it would be quite exciting to be made to lie in silken sheets and eat oranges (if that is what they did) - to have her clothes ripped off and be given spangled see-through bloomers and a sequinned bolero in their place. Fairy stories. Fantasy Land. She knew all about living in those. So she said yes in her heart. What did she have to lose?

'It will be better,' he said, 'when we get rid of all these mouldings and cornices and ornamental claptrap
...'
Audrey felt warmed by the way he said 'we'.

'What do you think I should do with these windows?' he asked. She walked over to them. They reminded her of Madame Minette's floor-to-ceiling windows, only there were many more of them. At the moment they were swathed in heavy, shiny, patterned curtains, as complex as a dowager's dance frock. She thought that she could never live where there were little square windows ever again. She studied them critically and remembered Patrick. Patrick had always wanted shutters and blinds at his windows. 'Shutters
’
she said, 'and plain white blinds.'

'Bravo!' said Edwin, clapping.

The estate agent looked horrified. "The apartment is sold with the curtaining
’
he reminded his client.

Edwin dismissed this with a wave of his hand.

He told the estate agent he would take the place and he told Audrey, as they strolled back towards the Metropole, with Edwin holding her hand through the crook of his arm, which felt very pleasant because she trusted him now, that she was
just
the sort of thing he needed to bounce his ideas off. Audrey said, Oh Yes, because, of course, she had been used to that with Patrick. And then she could not help adding, 'But what a shame to waste all that curtaining.'

Then Edwin laughed a delighted laugh and stopped and looked at the sea, still holding her hand in the warmth of his arm. 'What would you do with them if I gave them to you?' he asked.

She said, 'I could make a dress. Well - I could make two dresses really'

"Then they shall be yours.'

He put his briefcase down on the steps of the hotel and held on to both her hands. 'I will see you back here at five
’
he said. He looked anxious. 'And if you get lost you must take a taxi and I will pay.' It was almost worth getting lost for but she had no intention of going very far. Supposing he wasn't there, supposing something had happened and he had gone back to London early, she would have to pay the fare herself and that would be the last of her wages for the week.

‘I
think I shall go and look round the Pavilion. That'll do me.'

‘I
am so sorry
’
he said, 'that I cannot buy you lunch.' He shrugged. The shrug said, 'Mothers'.

"That's all right
’
she said. 'And I hope your mother enjoys herself.'

She was still in a state of shock when she walked back later to meet him. She took it very slowly because she was so early, the last hour of the afternoon having dragged almost unbearably. She wanted to be in France,
now.
She walked back in the lowering light, with the waves gently breaking, the seagulls making their last screeches of the day and the streets bustling with people going home from their work. She felt very happy and not at all guilty at having missed the exam. Indeed, she felt happier than she had felt for years, despite the ache in her heart that was Patrick. How he would have hated the Pavilion. More than anything, she realised, as she walked slowly back, she wanted to stop seeing the world through Patrick's eyes.

They re-met at five. Edwin took her hand and put it in the crook of his arm again and led her up the steps and into the big hotel. It looked very peaceful as well as grand, she thought, after the glaring excesses of the Pavilion. Edwin asked her what she thought of it and she said that, on the whole, she preferred somewhere like this to that.

'I looked at each and every thing that was on show
’
she said thoughtfully, 'and I wouldn't have wanted any of it.'

That pleased him. He told her that everything glorious and visionary stopped with the reign of Charles II. Yet another bell rang in her head. 'He liked Rubens, didn't he?' she said (Patrick liked Rubens) -she had tried to like all those fat women but they looked ill to her -very flushed
...
'No
’
said Edwin. "That was his father.'

'Oh yes,' she said. 'Now I remember. Charles II was
Wren

He looked at her in some surprise.

'I'd like to go to Paris,' she said. "They were Heroic builders, the French. They invited Bernini to build for them, you know.' If she said this slightly parrot fashion he did not seem to notice. 'But though he came and designed a new bit for the Louvre they never used it. But Wren was there in about sixteen-sixty-nine and he saw the plans and he said that the Parisian School of Architecture was probably the best of his day
...'

'You have a knowledge of such things?' said Edwin.

She liked the fact that he was surprised.
‘I
helped someone through their history of architecture exam once
’
she said in such a way that no further comment was required.

Edwin just said, 'Oh.'

They drank a cocktail in the hotel bar before he deposited her back on a train, with his card firmly pushed into her little Chanel bag, and her own telephone number and address pushed firmly into his wallet. And home she went to tell mother.

Mother, who up until now had thought this French thing was just a bit of a way to get over the miseries, was distraught. 'You can't go to
Paris
’
she said, horrified and very firm about it.

'Why not?' asked Audrey, serpentining her hips like crazy and pointing out one toe.

'He's a stranger. You'll never be heard of again.'

'He's a very respectable man. He's married with two children at university and he needs a bilingual personal assistant.'

'It will do you no good in the end,' said her mother.

'Why?'

'Because you've got to think about the future.'

Audrey looked puzzled. 'But that's exactly what I am doing,' she said. She changed hips and pointed her other toe. She was beginning to feel a new sensation as if she had actually grown a few inches. 'What's the point of speaking French in London?' she asked. 'Mother - it is a good job.'

'What will people think?' asked Dolly, lost for anything else to say.

Audrey re-angled the beret a little more jauntily, staring into the mirror over the hearth.

'Let them eat cake,' she said.

Her mother stared at her blankly. 'And what on earth has cake got to do with anything? You can't even bake a decent sponge.'

Audrey did not look at her, happily posing and posturing in front of the mirror, like a girl who was not to be pitied.

'And get that suit back to your teacher before you singe it,' added her mother, feeling that somehow, in some indefinable way, it was the suit's fault.

When all else failed Mrs Wapshott invoked her husband. 'We'll see what your father has to say about this,' she said grimly. But Audrey was unconcerned. 'I'm over twenty-one,' she said, and, she thought, I am Audrey Hepburn.

She handed her mother his card. 'You or Dad can ring him up and talk to him if you like.'

But neither had the courage.

When the parcel arrived Audrey and her mother put it on the kitchen table and circled around it for at least five minutes - prodding and poking and lifting flaps of brown paper, until Mr Wapshott came in and told them not to be so daft and to get on with it. Audrey found the sewing scissors and her mother cut the string. The parcel was addressed to Audrey but that made no difference, Mrs Wapshott pulled the packing apart. By the time she reached the tissue level, Audrey realised what it was. She began to laugh, a forgotten sound.

And a frisson of something called courage, confidence, certainty entered her. He had kept his promise - even in this small, humorous action, he had remembered what he said and stood by it. He had sent her the curtains from the Brighton apartment. He could be trusted.

‘
I
think Mr Bonnard will make a very good boss
’
said Audrey. 'And I'm going to Paris whether you like it or not.' She gave a little swivel on her perfectly turned heel, and added,
'Tout de suite.'

3

A Lesson in Poetry

Now Apsu is no longer in her parents' bed. She has a brother who has taken her place. Now she lies in her own cot and has time to investigate the many variations of texture and shape that surround her. Also the way light plays on the bars of the cot and how it is held together. Sometimes she stands with her hands gripping the rail and she bounces up and down on the plastic-covered mattress, watching the bolts jump and. rattle. Her grandmother peels her an apple and keeps the peel whole. She says that little Apsu will see her future husband's initial letter in the shape it is when it falls to the floor. Apsu takes the fallen peel and builds with it, enclosing space, making walls, making bridges. Her grandmother smiles, not knowing what the child thinks about but pleased to
see her so happy and absorbed
.

At approximately the same time, Audrey, much amused, much excited, took the curtaining from the dreary Wapshott kitchen into the exotic space of Minette's apartment. The sewing machine came out, scissors flashed, fingers flew, fabric took shape. It was like starring in a
Let's Do It Here
film and she had seen enough of those, and dreamed enough, to be happily absorbed.

Edwin Bonnard telephoned, spoke to her parents, told her the arrangements. He would meet her at the airport. Later he sent her a letter confirming her employment and enclosing her ticket. 'One way,' said Dolly sadly.

Audrey cried a little too, but whether with sadness or excitement she wasn't exactly sure. Here was something of her own at last. She was going to make her own place in the world. And bloody well bugger Patrick.

The dresses were finished. It was a joke, of course, but it was a seductive one. For the cocktail dress, Minette's use of the plum-coloured braid, scooped to follow the lines of Audrey's bosom, was shocking and chic. Audrey laughed when she tried it on. It was a far cry from Patrick's black on black. It was also a far cry from Wapshott parental approval. They did not laugh at all. When Audrey modelled the off-the-shoulder, tight-bodiced, straight-skirted dress of a dress, Mr Wapshott asked where the rest of it was. Her mother shook her head. But when she slipped on the little suit, with its neat jacket and short - well above the knee - skirt, neither parent had even the breath for a quip.

'You can't go out with your legs showing like that
’
said Mrs Wapshott. But Audrey did. All the way to the airport, and all the way on the aeroplane to Paris. She felt liberated. And she began to like the way men looked at her. From behind newspapers, from corner seats, they stared. She crossed her legs. Let them, she thought. What harm does it do?

The only drawback was that Patrick was not here to see her Triumph. He, apparently, and according to Florence (who could scarcely be trusted) was having many a Triumph of his own at some wonderful job in the City of London. The news was passed on to Dolly (who nearly broke off speaking terms again when she heard it) and thus passed on to Audrey, who had a little cry. So
...
Now she was flying off, leaving London behind, glad to be far away. And it was real. She could see it was real by the dwindling fields and the retreating cliffs of the English seaside. It was a real fairy tale. Certainly that was what the girls at the Exchange said about it. You meet a man on a train and you end up in Paris? That's called dreams come true. Even if what caused it to happen in the first place was not very nice.

Man Trouble - she heard her mother using the term to a neighbour as if it was a disease she, Audrey, had contracted wilfully - well she supposed that was the reason - Man Trouble - it sounded right for the times. The sort of thing the New Young Woman had - Man Trouble. It was a good deal more promising than a Broken Heart. 'Sex and the Single Girl' was a phrase being whispered among the more forward of the girls at the Exchange. Man Trouble sounded as if it went with that. If Edwin ever asked her why she was so happy to leave England, that is what she would tell him. Man Trouble. It sounded cool and it went with the kind of clothes she wore now.

With only the grey English Channel churning away beneath her she breathed a sigh of contentment. Fussy and stuffy old England, she thought. Never again. Begone, Bourgeois Sentiment. Oh, Patrick. Somehow she had to learn to live with the fact that he was still in her head.