Patrick Parker's Progress (7 page)

'Get back at once,' said Florence. 'It's dangerous.' And she pulled the girl away and put her back with the other assorted pixie hoods and berets and plaits. Patrick, much interested at the warmth and softness of the very small hand, turned and waved at her. She waved back and beamed with pleasure, putting her chin on her gloved hands, much as she had seen Shirley Temple's pose in
Animal Crackers.

The helpers built the bonfire higher than had ever been achieved before. Cheffy took the praise for it, squinting at Patrick to see how the land lay, but everyone knew it was really down to the boy. Patrick let it pass for he was now absorbed elsewhere. Between two women. Twelve-year-old Peggy eyed middle-aged Florence, and was eyed back in turn. Well over thirty years' difference in their ages but they both knew what was going on in that little scene.

Mr Murdoch persisted with Patrick. Maths was important and Patrick was good at it when he concentrated. It was a boy's school and it prided itself on its good results in the Sciences. Patrick was again to be kept in. 'But it's my birthday tomorrow,' he said.

'And how old will you be, boy?'

'Thirteen. Sir.'

'You'll be a little Euclid by your fourteenth birthday
’
said Mr Murdoch sarcastically. 'Or one of us will be six feet under. And it won't be me
...'

What Florence called Spirit - and the school called the Devil in Him

- made him perverse. Sometimes he refused to do his work, stuck out his lower lip, folded his arms, sat back in his desk and stared at the ceiling. Mr Murdoch, having warned him that he would be treated like an infant if it happened again, duly shut him in the stationery cupboard. Fortunately it had two glass panels. When the doors were opened at the end of the lesson, they found him sitting cross-legged on the floor with a construction made up of large and small paint brushes and ink bottles, rulers and pencils. 'What is it?' asked the teacher, amazed at its complexity. But Patrick was in no mood to be civil. In any case, anyone could see perfectly well that it was a bridge.

'When I leave school,' said Patrick, in a voice that had the teacher's fingertips tingling, 'I shall become the greatest builder of bridges since
Brunel
.'

'In that case,' said Mr Murdoch, swiping at the back of his head, 'you will first need to cross the
Pons Asinorum
...'
Patrick looked at him blankly.

'Pons
- bridge,
Asinorum
- of asses: in other words, Parker - know your Euclid: the bridge of donkeys, the bridge of the ignorant, the bridge of learning which you must cross over in order to achieve building your Brunellian wonders
...'

Patrick looked up, smiling. 'Oh no, sir,' he said. "The bridges will be mine - they'll be known as Parkerian wonders
...'

Mr Murdoch said nothing, but he thought that they probably would be.

Audrey sent him a cake she had made at school. It was not a very good cake, as Florence pointed out, but he was impressed. When he telephoned her to thank her and they started to talk about the whole horrible business of class work, he said that he'd begun to see the sense of numbers. At least with sums you were right or wrong and that was that. Audrey laughed. That was the problem with sums. There was only ever one answer and if you didn't know it you could go hang. You had to be clever for them and she certainly wasn't
that.
She much preferred Poetry and English - you had a bit of leeway there. Even her little brother was better at numbers than she was. Oh no. She just couldn't make sense of them beyond adding and subtracting and even then she got confused with putting one on the doorstep and carry ten
...
She knew her pounds and ounces, how to check her change in shops, how to measure fabrics and the like, and that seemed to be about all she needed. Patrick said he thought she was probably right. That was the way of it. His mother was the same.

While Audrey idled away her fourteenth summer in London, lying on a rug in the sun and reading books or filmgoer magazines, or splashing about in the Lido, or giggling about the streets with some of her friends, Patrick was busy. In their garden in Coventry, where others might grow vegetables or keep pigeons, Patrick began to build constructions - of wood, of metal, of steel, or anything he could get his hands on. He lusted after Meccano as others lusted after cider and girls. His father, wishing for no further trouble, did not remind his son of what was hidden away in the now overgrown shed at the bottom of the garden. As far as Florence could remember, the stuff had been thrown out. Patrick got everything new. Shiny and new. And his father watched with quiet pleasure as his son worked away at his creations. Perhaps he had given the boy something, after all.

He bought Patrick a book on Great Victorian Builders, with a picture of Isambard Kingdom
Brunel
on the cover. Patrick stared at it reverently. There was his hero in a cocky stance, with cigar and tall hat, standing like a king against the vast links made for his Heroic Ship (as the book called it) the
Great Eastern.
Inside were pictures of everything he had ever created - and, crowning them all, the Clifton Suspension Bridge.

'You made a model of that once,' he said to his father.

George nodded. 'Once,' he said. 'And now you can. But you'll have to see it first.'

Hope rising from the ashes, George suggested that they visit
Brunel
's great bridge together, just the two of them. He emphasised Just The Two Of Them, and Patrick nodded. This was a man's adventure. While George and Patrick pored happily over maps, Florence ate her heart out. But she cheered up, for with ten days to go, George was told he had to cover for a fellow worker - the chap had broken his leg. It was too near the end of the school holidays to hope it was only postponement - suddenly the trip was not going to happen. Father and son were miserable. And then Patrick had a wonderful idea. Abandoning all thoughts that it was a man's adventure, he remembered Audrey. He telephoned her straight away and suggested that she come instead. They could set off by train, with their bicycles in the guard's van, and Youth Hostel the rest of it. Dolly, called to the telephone by an excited Audrey, agreed, providing little brother Sandy went too. And providing they looked after him. Florence was half furious, half frightened. 'I just don't think it's on, Dolly,' she said, as calmly as she could. "They're far too -' she searched for the right word - 'inexperienced.' "They'll love it,' said Dolly.

'How could you let your boy go away so young?' Florence asked, meaning, of course, her own.

'Oh, Aud's a sensible girl,' said her mother. 'She'll look after them both.'

And then, without so much as a by-your-leave, George stood behind his wife, took the telephone from her hand, looked her straight in the eye and, speaking very slowly and clearly into the mouthpiece, said, 'It's a grand idea, Doll. And they'll be fine. We've got it all mapped out, Patrick and me. He knows where to go and what to do.'

When the telephone was replaced both father and son stood foursquare in front of a speechless Florence. And that - was that. Audrey and her brother arrived.

"Thanks Dad,' said Patrick, later.

George nodded. 'You have a good look at those piers. Beautiful they are. Beautiful.'

There was nothing for Florence to fault except the unlikely possibility of a plunge in the temperature to minus several degrees. They had thermos flasks, puncture outfits, cycling capes in bright yellow, torches, rucksacks and water bottles. It was late August and the weather, if damp, was warm. They'd be fine. Audrey had money in her pocket from a summer job helping out at the local cinema, and Sandy had money that he had saved from his pocket money (and a little added by his dad.) Patrick also had money but he had been given it. Audrey gave him a smile that she had been practising ever since seeing an advertisement for toothpaste that according to the poster, went 'ping!' and called itself the Ring of Confidence. The smile was part of the plan. She'd turn her shorts up, too, once they were on the train tomorrow and out of sight. All the older girls at school did it, noticing that the football-playing boys next to the hockey pitch became noticeably more appreciative when they did.

The two older children waited until Florence was busy getting tea (proper tea with cakes and scones and home-made jam - Florence was determined to remind Patrick of what he would be missing with his bottles of pop and dried-out sandwiches) and slipped off into the town with their new bicycles. They went up Greyfriars Road, along Queen Victoria Road and into Corporation Street. Much of the area they passed still bore the scars of the bombing but Patrick no longer thought about being the person to rebuild the place. Coventry bored him. Buildings bored him. Just by looking at picture books and seeing what was being built in the rest of the country, in the rest of the world, he knew that he would leave the city one day. Head south.

'Boring isn't it?' he called to Audrey over his shoulder.

'Yes,' she agreed. 'You should come to London.'

‘I
know,' he said, trying not to think of his mother.

'Where are we going?' asked Audrey. 'Not that I care,' she added, shrugging as she pedalled. 'I'm enjoying this.'

'Just stick with me,' he said.

His plan was to cycle in a circle all around the city and end up back at home, just for the sheer glorious freedom of it, but suddenly Audrey, looking to her left, started laughing and pedalling off down a side road in a dingy area he didn't know. Chapel Street. He called to her, irritated, but she paid no heed, so he followed. Then, at the corner of Lamb Street, he saw why. A sweet shop. Well, a shop that sold sweets as well as everything else. Called 'Willis's Stores'. Audrey pointed and then flapped her hand in an approximate gesture for slowing down. He pulled up behind her, cross that she had taken the lead, and let his wheel ride into hers as they coasted to a halt. As if to say he was in control of the situation really.

They were still not used to sweets being off-ration. Both Dolly and Florence, whose children's teeth had been cared for and nurtured, now did sweet rationing of their own (they themselves had false teeth already, Dolly's being pulled out without so much as a by-your-leave just before she gave birth to Audrey; she never did find out why) - so this was freedom indeed. They parked their bikes at the kerb, peered into the greasy windows and pointed at a few things, and feeling very grown up, in they went. The door rattled. They stood in the dingy, cream-painted interior, with its vaguely fusty smell of sweetness and bacon and cheese, and waited. Patrick tapped his shilling on the counter, Audrey took out a sixpence and copied him. Next to the boring tins and the mundane packets of tea and cough drops and cigarettes on the shelf behind the counter, stood several rows of large jars containing various wonderfully coloured sweets. Gobstoppers, bullseyes, toffees in bright wrappings, liquorice allsorts, gooseberry eyes, lemon drops
...

'What are you going to have?' he asked Audrey eventually.

'Everything,' she replied. 'Four - from each jar.'

'Oh no you won't, young lady,' said a voice from the other end of the counter, "That'd take all blessed night.'

The woman wore a loose fawn cardigan over a faded print dress and would have melted into the background of the shop perfectly, except that she had very yellow hair, pinned back with dark grips, and a brilliant, brilliant red mouth. Audrey gazed at the mouth with great envy as it moved its lips and called to someone in the back. It called, 'Won't be a minute Alf, just got some kids to serve.' Through the two glass panels of the door behind the woman, they saw Alf in the room beyond. He was sitting in an upright chair, awkwardly, and he was as thin and pale and white as a ghost. 'Now be quick,' said the woman. 'I've got to get his tea.'

While she weighed out the lemon drops chosen by Patrick, Audrey said, 'Your mum would kill us if she knew where we were
...
What are you going to say?'

Patrick thought. 'Don't know,' he mused. 'Might say we went to see Dad at the station. Check he's got our train tickets for tomorrow.'

'Ooh, Patrick,' she said. "That's a good idea. We'll go to the station and see Uncle George. Then your mother won't know any different.'

The woman with the red mouth made a little noise and clattered the lemon drops on to the counter. They looked up. She was staring at Patrick very hard, still holding the large jar at an angle to the scales. He felt uncomfortable.

'My mum doesn't like me eating too many sweets,' he said, very nicely. 'But it's OK. I clean my teeth. Can I have two ounces of the toffees after that?'

The woman continued to stare. Then, very slowly, she put down the jar and leaned across the counter and looked at his face in such a way that he wanted to run. 'It's all right,' he said. 'We won't tell her where we got them.'

The woman with the red mouth looked amused, or excited. 'That might be a very good idea, young man,' she said sardonically. 'Now tell me. What's your name?'