Patrick Parker's Progress (56 page)

'What do you mean?' asked his wife.

Audrey decided enough was enough. Here she was in this miserable kitchen, which had seen such misery, God knows, and here was more misery. There was no fun attached to it any more, nothing playful, it was just about damaged lives. With her free hand she picked up the whisky bottle and slowly and deliberately recharged all their glasses.

'To Godiva,' she said. And drank. Both looked perplexed.

'Someone whom you, Patrick, used to refer to as That Silly Woman.'

'Yes,' said Patrick, distractedly.
‘I
did. And she was.' He sorted through the post. Then he picked out a letter, the one with the crest, and was about to open it. 'Ah,' he said, kissing it, 'my acceptance. At last. Good.'

The creamy envelope crackled in his eager hands. 'Just a minute,' said Audrey. 'Wait, please.'

Patrick looked up irritably. Out came the lower Up, and the jaw. 'What?' he said. His hand hovered, he was aching to take out the paper and read and
know
. . . His life meant nothing without the commission for this bridge, this important landmark to posterity which would bear his name.
'What?'

Audrey removed from her handbag the pale-blue-tissue-wrapped shoe. She pushed it, dragon face first, across the old green oilcloth towards Patrick.

'From Madame Koi,' she said. 'Of Paris. It seems you haven't always thought the importance attached
to - going upstairs - was
significant. You looked for her hard enough.' She pushed the dragon further towards him.
‘I
beli
eve you have the other abutment?'

His gaze rose from the rustling paper and its all too familiar contents, to her, and then back again. A jumble of thoughts racketed through his head. Paris? Madame Koi? Tokyo Cinders? Did Audrey know her? Worse - did Audrey
know
..
.? He made a little swallowing noise as he picked up the shoe and ran his fingers delicately over the beadwork.

'Oh how lovely
’
said Peggy, and coughed all over it.

Patrick stared at what was in his hand as if it was the serpent itself. He knew that dragon. He could practically feel its heat. His face was - quite unreadable. He did not know what emotion to put there. 'How did you come to have this . ..?' he asked. But, really, he knew. There was something, a bell, that rang in his head. Ankles. Weak ankles. And other vague things. He gazed from the shoe to Audrey and back again. No, no, no, he mouthed silently.

Yes, yes, yes, she mouthed back. Then she stood up, very slowly, removed her handbag from
Florence
's dull, green, unnatural oilcloth, tucked it over her arm, put her little fingertips to her mouth, wiggled them, giggled once from behind them in a way that was all to familiar to him - and then turned with a very sweet smile to Peggy. 'We have only been discussing a little business
’
she said. 'No more than that.' And she squeezed Peggy Boxer As Was's hand.

Peggy's mouth made a perfect circle. But nothing came out of it.

'Patrick is going to make a nice little monument for his father's grave. Aren't you, Patrick? With appropriate wording about what gifts he gave to him, his grateful son.'

He shook his head as if to say, she was fooling herself.

But she went on standing there, waiting, her finger ends tapping at the shoe.

Eventually she said, 'Think hard about what you consider trivial, Patrick, and remember - little acorns sometimes grow into big, unruly oak trees.' She adopted a voice from her youth, The Radio Doctor: 'You know, sometimes, Patrick, we don't know what we've got until we lose it. Remember Shakespeare? Have you read Shakespeare, Patrick? "How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is, to have a thankless child
..."
I was thinking of George. I was also thinking that the reverse is true. Sometimes you don't know how lucky you are that you have lost something until you find it again.' She laughed. Not very nicely.

Patrick and Peggy both looked confused now.

'And Euripides, Patrick. Do you know Euripides?
Rhesus
? Just a fragmentary play but good - very good.'

He shook his head. 'I'm not very up on the Greeks,' he said, still fingering the envelope with longing.

'Well, Euripides suggests that you "
Slight not what's near through aiming at what's far
" - which seems the perfect epitaph for your father and Lilly's grave.'

'Lilly's?' said Peggy Boxer. 'Who's Lilly?' She was staring from one to the other of them and back at the shoe as if she was witnessing Armageddon.

'Patrick?' said Audrey, tapping the shoe all the harder.

It took a little while.

But then he nodded. The unopened envelope weighing heavy in his hand. I'll do it,' he said.

'Good,' she said.
‘I
thought you would.'

'Do what?' asked Peggy. But neither paid her the slightest attention. She mopped at her glowing face mournfully.
‘I
always knew it would end like this,' she said.

'Not an ending, Peggy,' said Audrey. 'A beginning.'

She picked up her whisky glass. 'Let's all drink to
Brunel
,' she said. 'Whose reputation is - apparently - unassailable.' And she drained her glass to the very last drop.

But Patrick was too busy reading his letter to notice.

While he read, she saw that a small tear had begun to trickle down his cheek. She pushed the shoe further towards him and very quietly, she left.