Patrick Parker's Progress (37 page)

She stared at her mother, willing her to answer. Her mother shook her head, then she stood up again, took the kettle and shook it, a gesture so familiar that Audrey in her jittery state could barely stop the tears. She put it on the Rayburn and began making the tea things dance. Audrey was nearly beside herself.

'Infection?' her mother said uncomfortably. 'Not that I know of.' And then, with her back to her daughter, and as if addressing the cups and saucers, she added, more softly, 'It's natural to feel it a bit down there. It'll be better when - well - when you get married.'

For one moment of confused astonishment, Audrey had a vision of herself dressed in a frock made up entirely of white crocheted daisies As Worn By Mary Quant, walking down the aisle to meet her bridegroom, while carelessly chucking away bottles of aspirin and packets of Anadin over her shoulder into the smiling congregation.

'Er - how will it
...
How different?' she mumbled to her mother's back.

Mrs Wapshott continued to busy herself. 'You know.'
‘I
am asking.'

'When you are - well.
Married.'

Back came the crocheted daisies. 'I don't understand.'

Mrs Wapshott sighed into the tea-caddy. 'You - and your husband - the honeymoon - it's what married people do.'

'What? Go on holiday?' said Audrey incredulously. She was practically hysterical. 'You mean going to Bournemouth for a week?'

'A bit more than that.'

'A bit more than what?'

Her mother tutted with embarrassed irritation. I'm talking about what they
do
on holiday -'

Audrey's hysteria grew. 'What? Make sandcastles? Ride donkeys? What mother, what, what, what?'

Mrs Wapshott was defeated. She picked up the steaming kettle and poured its contents into the pot. 'You'll find out soon enough,' she said, with a wearily kind - but definitely dismissive nod. 'Now have a cup of tea.'

As if to cheer her daughter up even further Mrs Wapshott produced a packet of chocolate digestives, hidden behind the flour bin and for very special occasions, and from a kitchen drawer she removed a newspaper. 'I was saving this for you,' she said, as if it were priced beyond rubies. Audrey took it and spread it out on the table. Mrs Wapshott turned a page and - lo - there - suddenly - was Patrick's smiling face.

'He's won a foreign medal for something. Florence is over the moon. And now he's off doing something else.' She went on talking, oblivious to Audrey's hungry reading of the piece. Not a mention of his wife, she noticed, not a mention of anything beyond the fact that Patrick Parker was the youngest engineer ever to win the
Globo de Milano.

'Only a foot and bicycle bridge,' said Dolly. 'And it's only in Italy. Early days, Florence says Patrick says.'

The headline read 'Genius of the Juniors'. And Patrick himself was quoted as saying that he had a very long way to go to match his hero, Isambard Kingdom
Brunel
. He had designed
his
footbridge for the Thames at Erith when he was three years younger than Patrick. That it was little known about and never built was immaterial. It was and always would be a very fine design . . . Patrick was pictured on the steps of his workplace in the City. He looked every inch a part of Swinging London. Sharp shoulders to his suit, wide lapels, big cuffs - hair curling over his ears. What Edwin called, in Paris, a brave young buck. Last time Audrey saw him he was wearing corduroy jackets, sweaters and jeans. To be more accurate, she corrected, the last time she saw him he was wearing nothing.

'It's good that he's got on,' she said, as calmly as she could.

'He'd have been hard put not to given all that effort his mother put into him,' said her mother waspishly.

"Then why,' said Audrey, 'didn't you do the same for me?'

The cry rang out in the kitchen. Her mother paused. Looked at the tablecloth, looked at her cup. And then she softened her voice and said, 'It wasn't your fault he went and got someone else in trouble. Or you'd be in clover with him now.'

'In clover? In clover? You show me one mention of Peggy Boxer in this.' She stabbed the article with her finger and her nail broke. That was appropriate.

Dolly blinked.

'Why didn't you do for me what Florence did for Patrick? Why didn't you say Yes to me? Instead of always saying No? I might have built something, too.'

Dolly looked at her incredulously, as if her daughter had gone raving mad. Audrey immediately backed down and apologised. Which just about summed everything up. And that was an end of it.

When Audrey came to pack, she put the newspaper cutting at the bottom of her case. She also took from her room some of the books that Patrick had lent to her to help her expand her mind - books on
Brunel
's projects, books on planning and building and conquering and the heroism of design - all those things that Patrick set his star by. He had requested that she send them back and she never had. A little rebellion. A mini-revenge. Hers by right.

By the time she set off to meet Edwin in London she was better, or at least, resigned. Dolly told her to go carefully (the outburst in the kitchen she privately put down to nerves) and Audrey thought how apt the warning was. After so long apart, Edwin was bound to be ardent. Better than cold, anyway. So she shed London. Shed the zesti-ness - shed the feeling of being young again - shed the skirt and the boots which had been like dressing up and being someone different -and now it was back to work. She was certainly physically better, anyway, which as she told herself on the train was just as well. No good returning with dud currency. She was a different person, though. Scarred. It really did not do to venture in this life unless you were feeling strong. And she was feeling particularly weak. Weak and Scarred, then. But she smiled, composed herself before the train pulled into the station, and she remained smiling and composed as Edwin walked eagerly along the platform to greet her. Smile, smile. Though something burned inside her - flaring up in moments when she was alone -making her restless and downright angry, without her quite knowing why. Paris, she hoped, would make her feel calm - real - again.

Edwin had a car to take them to Gatwick and she found that a comfort. He had bought her a gift - a dress - she found that a comfort, too. Now she knew where she was again. La Dame aux Cadeaux. When he asked her if she ha
d had a good time, she said, ver
y brightly, that she had. She really and truly had. She hung on his arm as she hung on his words. She smiled, she laughed. The thought of Edwin going out of her life now was more than she could bear.

In the plane he asked her, very pointedly, if everything was now 'all right'. She knew what he meant.

'Everything is absolutely settled,' she said, with complete conviction, and she damped down the familiar little fire that began flaring. 'One hundred per cent
fine.'

The matter was not referred to again.

Patrick was just a press cutting, a mound of books in her case. He had escaped. She was forever locked in.

6

A Touch of Rebellion

Apsu began to notice her environment. The buildings. The streets. At the age of eleven, about to start senior school, a large comprehensive close to home, she began to walk around her neighbourhood of London, along by the river, the desolate areas, and slowly she saw that she was part of a whole, yet an individual, and the walking gave her a vision of both the journey and the beyond. Her grandmother talked about the past, how their lives might have been, the baking, the growing things, the days of heat and cold. Her parents cared only for the future and she felt that she was somewhere in between. A mixture of ancient and modern. She could not put this into words, but she could put it into drawings. Which she did. And in every drawing of every cityscape, real or imagined, she put people at the centre. 'This girl has a special talent,' said her new teachers. 'Of course she has,' said her parents and her grandmother, and they left her alone. She wrote in her notebook, alongside her drawings, 'Our present way of building and living is one that denies what we hold to be natural in so many ways
...
I would
like to change
such things.'

Back in her apartment, in familiar, delightful Paris, as the year passed and another and another, she began to wonder what had made her so unhappy. The lovely sitting room was always filled with flowers, the bedroom was sweetly orderly and inviting, the bathroom gleamed and glistened, and Edwin was loving. She worried about nothing material. And as she became more involved in the life she and Edwin led together, she became more important to him. He trusted her. She trusted him. They had a contract. If it was not marriage, then it was as good as. Peggy did not appear in Patrick's professional life, she did not appear in Edwin's. They were both little pendants.

Audrey became more and more - so Edwin said - indispensable to him. She spent time at his office. The others there, if they knew of her role in his life beyond the office walls, looked the other way. Indispensable was a good word - it made her feel safe. And it took away the days of boredom. She involved herself more, arranged his travel if he was to be away, reminded him of things left undone, sent gifts and thanks to whoever required it, dealt with his tailor, his shoemaker, his hatter - even his dentist and his barber. If, on occasion, he was late for a meeting at his offices, or a meeting overran, she engaged the waiting appointment in general conversation and called for coffee or cognac or tea to placate. I work for my living, she told herself, and felt better about herself for that. I am, in all senses - save one - his dutiful wife.

But she could not make friends. She must remain aloof. Her friends were the others - the giggling girl who talked of cachet, the men who liked men and could hide their preferences from their wives. There was no one in whom she could confide. Even her maid was paid for by Edwin. The memories of films in which the heroine talked into the mirror as her maid did her hair and dispensed wisdom were not real. And her weekly telephone conversation with her mother was almost held by rote. When she asked Edwin if Madame Minette could come to stay for a few days while he was away being something grand, he seemed unwilling. She began to wonder if he was as scared of losing her as she was of being abandoned by him. 'Please,' she said, resenting having to ask. He smiled. There were exhibitions to see - a new one on costume at the Musee des Arts Decoratifs, a new one on Goya at the Louvre for example; she was t
o have dinner with the Maguires -
two of his friends from the English connections - when they came over; he wanted her to attend a couple of book auctions on his behalf
...
she would be very busy. And it was only a little less than a week
-
then he would be back.

The flame flared up again, surprising her. She stroked his arm, let a tear fall, and said, 'Edwin - you have no idea how it feels when I know that you are away on some grand business pleasure with your wife.' This was true - but not, perhaps, in the healthy way of simple jealousy - more in the darker way of feeling wronged and wanting revenge. Madame Bonnard did nothing except be Edwin's wife. This coming trip would be interesting, she knew, because she had helped arrange some of Edwin's part in it. There would be many meetings with cultural officials from the European Union regarding a new, Union-financed, business and arts complex. There would be a banquet given by the President of France, and - among other hospitalities - a lunch would be hosted by Madame Bonnard. The woman walked in sunlight while Audrey was permanently in her shade. It would not do
...

Madame Bonnard - only ever glimpsed by Audrey - was the same age as her husband. She was square in the way some French women end their days, short of stature, well-groomed, perfectly cropped hair, large-chinned - and probably hairy, though Audrey never could not get close enough to see. Madame Bonnard would eat with the President of France, sit smiling and nodding next to her husband as the photographers' cameras popped, she would be gracious as she presided at the Ladies Only Anniversary fundraising lunch for the families of soldiers killed in Algeria. And she would have done - not a thing. Not even warmed her husband's bed. Audrey had done all three - the organising of the lunch, the dispatching of the invitations, and the surrendering in bed.

The flame grew more fiercely. If Minette had come to stay they might have shared a bottle of wine and laughed it away. But she did not. Chattering lunches in the latest smart bistro bored her to distraction; a game of bezique which she tried to play with the now withering and crotchety Madame Helene irritated her. When it came to
Marriage
and
Royal Marriage
in the trumps she clucked at her cards acidly. When it came to pointing out to Madame Helene (who was losing her memory, fair enough) that in
both
Royal and Common Marriages, widowed spouses may not remarry, she threw her cards across the room. Madame Helene, who had seen it all before, said nothing and departed. Audrey then drank a bottle of wine,
toute seule.
Which, of course, made the fire grow hotter. It was, in any case, summer - Paris was steaming - and had Edwin not been away on this trip they would have been cooling themselves in Cannes by now. Unfair, she thought, and slept badly and woke in a temper. She would do something about it. If nothing else she would have a little revenge.