Patrick Parker's Progress (55 page)

She walked him to his father's grave. It was dark now and she felt it was time.

'Lilly will be buried next to him,' she said.

'What about my mother?'

Audrey smiled.
‘I
have arranged it'

He said nothing.

'And you will make them a monument. Lilly and George.' Then he laughed, and it was not the whisky.
‘I
don't do little things like that,' he said.
‘I
don't know how.' 'You will,' she said.

But he shook his head.
‘I
thought you understood,' he said bleakly. He suddenly felt very empty. And old. They walked back to the house in silence. In the kitchen they sat at the table. 'A drink?' he said.

'How about', said Audrey ironically, 'a nice cup of tea?' 'Yes,' said Patrick.

He waited for her to say that she would do the honours. But she did not. There was nothing else for it. Audrey sat at the kitchen table while Patrick made a pot of tea, staring about him until the kettle boiled.

It was still, very much, his mother's domain. Draped over the scrubbed wooden table was the ancient and worn oilcloth - an oilcloth in that peculiarly unappetising shade of dull green that is never seen in nature and made even more dull by years of wiping. Florence's colour.

He was not very certain of the tea-making procedure but she looked away at each mistake - at the unwarmed pot into which he shovelled four heaped spoons of loose-leaf, at the small amount of boiling water that followed them, at the uncovered pot, sitting on the chill of the old wooden draining board in the back door's draught
...
She kept her mouth shut. It was not her job. He gazed at her and then back at his watch. They waited for five minutes during which time he took the lid off the pot three times and stirred it vigorously, peering in as if the steamy depth would yield up secrets.

'How much longer?' he asked.

'For what?'

"The tea. To brew?'

'Depends how you like it,' she said, quite indifferently, and tapped the waiting cups and saucers. 'How do you like it?' he asked. 'As it comes,' she said.

At which point he gave up and poured. Tea grouts floated on the top of the orangey-brown liquid.

'Lovely,' she said. In a voice that suggested she was looking at six-day-old Kattomeat. 'Lovely' And she thought - he can build ten thousand bridges and they'll all stay up - but he can't make a cup of tea. Just as he could not turn a heel.

And he thought - well she should have offered to help - I'm a bridge builder not a bloody caterer -

They both smiled at each other a little uneasily.

She pushed the scummy tea away from her. Her handbag, so potent with its little piece of pale blue tissue peeking out, was on the table between them. Right there on Florence's old green cloth. He did the same, pausing to collect two glasses from the draining board and the whisky from the pantry. He poured them each a tot.

'Do you love anyone, Patrick?' she asked. 'I mean, we buried your mother today and you seem - well -'

‘I
have a lot on my mind,' he said, the whisky relaxing him. 'I'm waiting for a letter.' Love, he thought. I love my work.

Then he asked, 'Have you seen the Sistine Chapel?' In such a way that she nearly said, 'Is the Pope a Catholic?' But years of diplomacy forbore. 'Oh once or twice,' fairly calmly.

He nodded. 'Michelangelo understood how it is to be what I am. He has a poem called something like
"Costei pur si delibra"
- they gave me a copy when I picked up my medal.'

'Woman without boundaries
...?'
she said, half to herself.

He was surprised. 'You know Italian?'

'Poco,'
she said sharply, keeping her hands firmly around her glass in case she really did throw it this time.
'Continuare
...'

'He likens his art to "This savage woman, by no strictures bound, who has ruled that I'm to burn, die, suffer, though the sins she scolds weigh but an ounce or two
...
"'

'Patrick
’
she said, 'You have never burned for anything.'

'I'm burning now
’
he said. 'For the Millennium Bridge.' Whisky and
Brunel
made a powerful dynamic. 'My darling.'

She knew that the endearment was not for her.

'We all have one great moment in us, and that will be mine
’
he said.

'You have just buried your mother, Patrick
’
she said. 'Don't you feel anything?'

He looked at her, dry-eyed, shrugged, and said nothing.

'Your great moment won't be the building of another bloody-well-bugger-it
bridge,'
she said, so viciously that it made him jump. 'Your great moment will be when you shed a genuine tear.'

‘I
can't do a gravestone, Aud. I can't. It's just too trivial.'

'Well just you
memento mori,
Patrick, that's all I can say'

He refilled their glasses. They were both wondering what to do next when into the stillness and the calm came the sound of the front-door knocker thundering through the house as if Mephistopheles himself had arrived to claim his prize of one damned soul. Or "This savage woman by no strictures bound
...'
And Patrick thought - surely not - it couldn't be - did he hear the frenzied tones of his wife
...?

5

The Godiva Principle

There is no Mostarian who has not made love near the Old Bridge.
Jasna

And then came
9
November
1993.
General Slobodan Praljak, a man from Mostar, a theatre director, was the commander of the Croat forces. Their tanks fired
68
shells of
100mm
calibre at the bridge in two days
...
After the
68th
shell the old bridge could hold no more. It gave in to shelling at
10.16
a.m. With a horrible crash the gracious white arch collapsed into the Neretva River. Centuries collapsed, a friend of mine wrote. Our lives collapsed.

Lucy Blakstad,
Bridge: The Architecture of Connection

It took some calming down, the situation. On opening the door and expecting to find nothing more than some well-wishers, or religious doorsteppers, or someone arriving with late condolences, Patrick had the breath barged out of him as Peggy Boxer As Was flew past him, along the passage and up the stairs
...
He assumed she needed the bathroom but he heard her opening and shutting the bedroom doors. Wrenching and slamming would be nearer the descriptive truth of it
...
Unlike her - he thought idly - she was usually so quiet.

On the step stood the driver, Johnson, whom Patrick knew well. They had often used him. He looked agitated. Patrick asked why. It was Johnson's opinion that Lady Parker was very unwell - that the flu was causing a serious malfunction - that a doctor would do the trick. And then Johnson, looking quite nervous, retreated.

'On the account, then,' called Patrick, as normally as he could under the circumstances, and he waved the man into the car before turning back. The last door upstairs was flung open and then slammed before Peggy came whipping down the stairs again -dressed, he noticed for the first time, in an odd assortment of clothes.

Plainly she was very ill indeed.

'You'd better come and sit down,' he said, quite at a loss to do more.

'Where is she?' hissed his wife. 'Who?'

'You know who
...
her
...'

He thought for a moment. There could only be one explanation. Florence. His wife had become demented. 'Why, in the churchyard,' he answered soothingly.

'Liar!' yelled his wife. Her face ran with sweat, white and glistening; she looked dangerous. Delirious.

Patrick wondered if he should slap her. Round the face or on the back - or somewhere
...
'She is at rest,' he said. ‘I
t is all over.'

'She'll never be at rest, that one,' shrieked his wife. 'Never.'

Johnson was right. No wonder he'd backed off. Patrick felt helpless in the face of what was clear, mental derangement. He stood there, involuntarily blocking her way down the passage to the kitchen. 'Perhaps you should get into bed?' he said nervously.

'After she's been in there?'

'Well - there are other bedrooms,' said Patrick, not unreasonably.
‘I
could put you in my old bed - that's made up - if the other one puts you off
...'

Peggy then went several shades of increasingly pale, shiny beige.

'You are not well,' he said, and advanced to hold her.

But Peggy Boxer had seen
Gaslight.
She knew what could happen when a husband said that to his wife.

'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.