Patrick Parker's Progress (9 page)

Patrick nodded. 'I now know
’
he said, in a voice that Audrey had great difficulty in taking seriously. "That one day I will build bridges and be the new Isambard Kingdom
Brunel
.'

'Ooh,' said Audrey.

'Coo,' said Sandy. 'Well, so do I.'

'What?' asked Patrick, fearing for a moment he had a rival.

'Know what I want to be. I want to be like Stanley Matthews
...'

Audrey gave him a clip round the ear and told Patrick, very sweetly, to go on.

'No, Sandy
’
he said. 'I do not want to be
like
anybody. I want to be better, or the best. There was Abraham Darby and Ironbridge, and after him Isambard Kingdom
Brunel
- who is the greatest so far - and after him . . . there will be me. Patrick Parker.' He said it with such supreme confidence that Audrey nearly clapped.

'I'll build another great bridge. Here in England. The best bridge. The bridge of the century
’
he said.

'I'll bet you will,' she said, fervently. The fervour was genuine.

To know what you wanted to do for the rest of your life, and to be capable of it, struck her as both exciting and a relief. So far all she'd got were dreams of being an air hostess, advice that she should concentrate on her sewing skills, and the comfort of her mother's words which were that she would get married one day and have children and that was more than enough for any girl to deal with. It didn't quite ring true to her after seeing the Queen being crowned because, after all, she was married, with a husband (obviously) and two children - yet she was Ruler of the World - Malaya and Africa and everywhere. When Audrey pointed this out to her mother, her mother told her not to be so silly, that the Queen of England had blue blood which made the difference. As Audrey knew very well that her blood was only red she accepted this explanation. Patrick's blood was red the same as hers. But it was different for boys.

'Do you remember when we went to see the Coronation decorations?' asked Audrey. 'And you looked up at those Coronation Arches and said they were too small?'

He nodded. 'And my dad explained about the stresses and the strains of them and how their proportions were perfect. Any bigger, he said, and they'd out-do Queen Elizabeth.'

‘I
thought they were lovely
’
she said. 'But you didn't think they were big or grand enough?'

'Well, they weren't
’
he said.

'Well, maybe they were for a queen but not for a king?' She was thinking that at home they had just bought two new fireside chairs and the one for her father was bigger than the one for her mother (though her mother's bottom, if she thought about it, was considerably bigger than her dad's) so it seemed logical.

'When I build my bridge it won't just be for the Queen - or a king for that matter. It will be for posterity.'

'What's that? 'asked Sandy drowsily.

'Eternal fame
’
said Patrick.

'Like Greta Garbo
’
said Audrey dreamily.

'Not
like Greta Garbo
’
he said, but he gave up. What did she or Sandy or any of them know?

Audrey gazed out of the window with longing as they sped past fields and cows and sweet little tucked-away cottages. She would like to live in one of them. With somebody clever like Patrick. They were what her mother called Little Palaces. Patrick stared out of the window too, half listening, also half dreaming. 'Trouble with that
’
he said, 'is that she won't be crowned again. They only do it once.'

'Oh there'll be something else
’
said Audrey to cheer him up. 'Something else to do with her wearing her crown and going in a coach and all that. She'll want a bridge for something one day.'

"There is always
’
said Patrick, brightening, 'her funeral.'

Audrey laughed, but she was shocked.
'Patrick
¹
.'
she said. 'You could get your head chopped off for that.'

Patrick was so woebegone that she dared to take his hand in hers. She gazed into his eyes with adoring admiration. "There'll be something else, you bet,' she said. 'Something big and historical. You can do it then.' And she snuggled up even further, liking it. Patrick quite liked it too, though he was also quite enjoying his troubled aura. Sandy suddenly threw himself between the two of them and looked up smiling. 'Oh no, you don't
’
he said, and wedged himself firmly in.

When they arrived at the station nearest to Ironbridge, Audrey let the boys deal with the bicycles while she nipped into the waiting room, rolled up her shorts, put on a bit of lipstick in the mirror and emerged feeling suitably sophisticated. The map was consulted, water bottles filled and off they set. Despite her bro
ther's best efforts Audrey made
sure that she cycled right next to Patrick. Sandy was behind them and puffing to keep up.

'I'll tell on you
’
he said, though whether it was the lipstick, the shorts or the way his sister ignored him, neither of the two front parties bothered to find out. Patrick hunched his shoulders, pressing on, longing to get there, and Audrey was cycling as languorously close to him as she could while keeping up. Patrick noticed that he was puffing and sweating considerably more than she was, which increased his determination to stay ahead. And she, also determined, kept up. In the end he could neither ignore her legs as they moved up and down, up and down so close to him and in such a mesmerising rhythm, nor her smile which appeared to be stuck on with glue. It was all very disturbing.

Eventually honour was served when he skidded to a halt and said that he thought they really ought to go a bit more slowly for Sandy's sake. She, still smiling that smile, agreed. Sitting on the grass verge she undid the top two buttons of her blouse, threw back her head, and took a long drink of water. He was even more disturbed and vaguely irritated. He did not want to think about anything else but getting to Ironbridge. Once back on the road he cycled faster saying he thought single file was safer. She agreed. Sandy wailed behind them. She shouted to him to keep pedalling and shut up, gained and then slightly overtook Patrick. That was not what he had meant. It was even worse staring straight at her bottom and thighs which were now only a yard or two in front. He tried to suggest that he should overtake her but he needed all his breath. In the end he gave up and suffered the disturbing pleasure of it all.

When they were all very red in the face and sweating and when the sun was low and giving out an almost unbearably sultry heat, Audrey looked back at Patrick and, marking him and his confusion, was just about to deliver her
coup de grace
and suggest they stop and sit on the grass and have a cheese sandwich from her rucksack (cheese being something of a luxury still) when Patrick suddenly took both hands off his handlebars, wobbled about dangerously, pointed with both hands and yelled ecstatically: 'There, look, isn't she
wonderful?'
Audrey nearly lost her balance but he did not seem to notice. He put his hands back on the handlebars and began to cycle like a demon towards the brick and iron bridge, lit up like a stage setting by the rich, rosy sun and rising romantically out of the early evening mist.

'It looks just like a fairytale bridge
’
said Audrey for it did to her.

He tutted. 'Nothing fairytale about it
’
he said firmly. 'A thirty-metre span, not particularly wide, and its architectural style is not unusual. But it does mark one of the most significant bits of progress in the development of bridge engineering.'

Audrey rather wished she had managed to mark one of the most significant bits of progress in something altogether different, but she said no more, except to go into ecstasies herself about the beauties of Abraham Darby's vision and what not. She was about to add, and then thought better of it, that she also thought the ironwork definitely had the look of a spider's web - but she remembered his contempt from the incident in the tree that summer and decided ecstatic silence would be sensible. Behind her Sandy was crying that he wanted to go home. Oh, how she wished he would.

From Audrey's lipstick and shorts perspective, the trip was not a success. They cycled so far that they were too tired to do much more than eat and fall into bed, separated by gender of course, in the hostel dormitories. Even had they managed to stay awake, Sandy was horrible and vigilant and either playing tricks with pillows and the like, or moaning. He seemed determined never to let them out of his sight.

They revisited Ironbridge the following day, and Patrick made drawings, took photographs, made Audrey stand on the bridge, by the bridge and under the bridge, to get the scale, and generally ignored any aspect of anything that was not directly to do with Darby's wonder. She posed as provocatively as she could but it was quite hard to compete and she felt a rising sense of resentment. After all, she did like the place too, and she did think the bridge was in a lovely setting and rather a nice bit of fancy work, but she also felt that you could do both - that is, enjoy being together (she was still vague about exactly what she meant by that) and enjoy studying the thing. Patrick seemed unable to do more than one of these, and it was not the former. It did not help that Sandy, when he was not crying to go home, spent a lot of time winking at her - a trick newly learned and in her opinion, on him, particularly grotesque.

The youth hostel they settled on before they reached Clifton was more hopeful as they were its only inhabitants. When she tiptoed into Patrick's dormitory at dawn on the day they were due to reach Bristol, she sat down very gently on the bed so as not to disturb her brother in the next cot and leaned over Patrick wondering what exactly to do next. In Doris Day films it was the other way round. He was supposed to kiss her. A girl, she knew, was not allowed to kiss first. But she felt drawn to that sleeping face. He was so, so beautiful. And she admired him, he was clever and artistic: she loved him, as she confessed nightly in her diary at home. He was so - well - different. Interesting. Better than she was.

In the end, as the dawn sent more silvery light into the room and Sandy began to stir, she shook Patrick's shoulder, leaning closer, putting her face exactly above his and smiling that Ring of Confidence for the umpteenth time. It worked in the adverts. Patrick opened his eyes and in the half light saw dark eye sockets and a row of gleaming teeth above him, upon which, not surprisingly, he screamed, and jumped out of bed and ran down the corridor for the warden. For the first time, but not for the last, Audrey suffered humiliation in Patrick's wake.

When they returned, the warden holding a torch and a cricket bat, Patrick holding the warden's arm and peering from behind, she just about managed to explain her presence in the boys' room by saying she wanted to get an early start because she was so keen. The warden said that four-fifteen was a bit too early, in his opinion, and that anyway they had their tasks to do before moving on and that she was a very silly girl indeed not to check her watch. Audrey burst into tears. Patrick rolled his eyes, looked heavenward and went back to his bed. Sandy followed him, snivelling. Audrey went back to her own empty dormitory and lay there stony-faced and sleepless. Love was harder than she thought.

In the morning, by way of further humiliation and reprisal, she did both Patrick's and Sandy's jobs, cooking their eggs, washing up, sweeping the floor, and generally keeping her head down. The lipstick was put away, the shorts rolled down to a more comfortable length, and off they went.

On the next part of the journey the only thing that helped Audrey over her misery, apart from saying
bugger, bugger, bugger
under her breath with each pedal push, was that she could go faster than him, and she did so, and to hell with Sandy who could either get lost or keep up. He just about kept up, as did Patrick who was even more galled by her speed and her sudden indifference to staying together which she had been so good about until now. If she had but known it, at that precise moment Audrey had lighted upon one of the golden rules of girlhood. That less is more and to withdraw is to tantalise.

The Clifton Suspension Bridge, when they reached it, drew from Patrick the smile of astonishment and delight that she rather hoped her kiss might have produced. But at least she seemed forgiven. Love me, love my bridges was the message of this trip and not a lot of room left over for anything else. She decided to approach Patrick that way.

"This is wonderful
’
she said, when they gazed upon the bridge.

Patrick sighed a deep and happy sigh. 'Yes
’
he said.

She moved a little closer.
‘I
don't think there can be a better bridge anywhere in the world.'