Patrick Parker's Progress (52 page)

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 Mill
ennium. 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 London 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 co
eur?

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 the 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.

True, his father happened to be passing beneath his window at the time, which was unfortunate. 'You might have killed me,' Patrick yelled at him.

To which Isambard, feeling very shaken but he wasn't going to tell his dad, replied that if it had happened it would have been an act of Extreme Fate because Patrick was so seldom there that the likelihood of hitting hirn in the garden with anything would have been miraculous.

Oh no. Isambard Kingdom Parker had no reason to go up to Coventry for his Nana's funeral. His Nana was dead, so she wouldn't know, and he was too old to play the 'supportive son to the famous dad' role. He'd done that all his life, the clean and brushed son, holding hands with his clean and brushed sister, posing for the cameras for the Sunday supplements and looking up admiringly at whatever it was his youthful, dynamic father had just finished. Squirming with embarrassment and not knowing why.

And then in his teens he did know why. By naming his son after -in his opinion - England's greatest builder of bridges I. K.
Brunel
, his father thought he had founded a new dynasty. In the press interviews, of which there were many given the drama of his son's name, Patrick said he was sure that little Isambard Parker would follow in his father's footsteps. But he never did anything practical about it. He never invited Isambard to sit with him and draw, he never invited Isambard to come on site with him, he never even showed him the basic draughtsman's skills. The few times he did complete a little drawing of an idea it was either lost long before his father came home, or if he showed it to him he said, 'No - this bit wouldn't work, and that elevation is misdrawn,' or similar. The only thing his father did to include him in his life was to summon him and Polly when the cameras were out. As Isambard grew up he watched his father change from Patrick Parker iconoclastic Whizz Kid, to Patrick Parker International Man of Vision - and now (he watched only from the sidelines) finally into Sir Patrick Parker Distinguished Member of the Design Establishment.