by Mavis Cheek
'Flo is a very bitter woman,' said Dolly, nodding into her teacup with deep satisfaction. 'Too upset to come,' she said.
‘I never thought she cared for Dad that much.'
'Nor does she. No - she's upset about Patrick and that wife of his and the children. Never go up. Never see her. If they remember her birthday it's a miracle, she says. And after all she's done, she says.'
‘I know how she feels,' said Audrey wryly.
'Oh she's bitter,' said Dolly. 'Just sits up there in Coventry and gets bitter. Very bitter.'
All Audrey could think was, Good.
Perhaps it was something about funerals. Or mention of that town, but Audrey decided to take the train up to Coventry. Dolly was busy enough with Sandy and Jeannie and the children (all those grandchildren - and thank God for it, thought Audrey) and she could be spared for a day. She went to see Lilly. It was a cold, grey day and the journey depressed her. Not so much for the lowering clouds and the dull light over the fields, but because she remembered the way she used to feel when she travelled up to Coventry. No matter how bad the weather, how low the light, she was always excited, expectant, alive with possibilities. Even when she travelled up that last time to see Patrick, to be by his side at his father's funeral, even then -guiltily - she had felt excited at the thought of being with him. All that innocence. Hardly bore thinking about.
Ghosts were there to meet her as she left the train - she saw Florence and Patrick on the station - she saw George sucking on his pipe - Poor George - and she heard herself, suddenly, saying 'My arse' to Patrick when he launched into yet another lecture on the virtues of bloody old Brunel. Bloody Old Brunel. She wished she had said it to him more often. Just once, she thought, as she skittered down the station stairs and hailed a taxi, just once, she would like the chance to meet with Patrick again and tell him what she really thought about his bloody old bugger-it Monumental Odyssey. My arse just about summed it up.
As the cab pulled away she looked about her. She had not been back since George's death and it was strange to find that - despite Patrick's scathing dismissals - she still liked the town. The Cathedral had mellowed, the surrounding buildings did not look quite so stark and there was a sense of community in the streets as busy people hurried about. Such boring little lives, Patrick used to say. How arrogant he was. How arrogant she let him be. Looking at them now, they seemed nice, ordinary, kind. She could well imagine them turning their faces to the wall to preserve a lady's dignity. She had a warm regard for Godiva, despite the way Patrick used to dismiss her as That Silly Woman. Now she could think beyond the drama of her naked ride and wonder how she ever managed to return to her husband after he had humiliated her so. Probably like the rest of Womankind, Audrey decided, she kept her head down, said nothing, and just got on with it. Pragma, Godiva. We are all at it, she thought. And smiled. 'That Silly Woman', indeed. To Audrey she seemed remarkably wise. After all - she got what she wanted - it was her husband who ended up with egg on his face. And then, just as the taxi turned into Chapel Street, she had a little thought ... Just a very tiny one - a little daydream ... Which made her smile. Just a little thought about egg on a face ...
Lilly was pleased to see her. The shop was to close. You could not compete with the clever, industrious work-all-hours Asians. Nor did she want to. Lilly's husband was dead now so she had time to spare. She often thought about George and cursed Florence. 'One day,' she said, smiling a wicked smile, ‘I will dance on that woman's grave. I told her that. And I will.'
‘I know how you feel,' said Audrey. 'She's a bitter woman.'
'It's no way to be,' said Lilly. 'Don't ask for wages in this life. You have to look forwards, not back. It's what might be - not what was, that counts.'
Audrey nodded.
'How's that son of hers?' said Lilly. She said it with such fierce contempt that Audrey was shocked. 'He's doing very nicely'
'Nicely is as nicely does,' said Lilly contemptuously. 'Unfeeling little bugger. Needs taking down a peg or two.' Audrey nodded again. Wise old bird, Lilly.
She kissed her on the cheek as she left and waved until the taxi turned the corner of Chapel Street. Lilly looked sad, orphaned almost, as she stood at the kerb, waving back. 'Keep in touch,' she said and Audrey thought that she would. Then, on a whim, she asked the driver to go slowly past Patrick's old house. A low light was on in the hallway, otherwise it was in darkness. Inside lives a bitter woman, thought Audrey. And I must not let that happen to me.
It was harder to leave London this time. Not so much in the leaving her mother because Sandy and his family were there - but because one of her roots had died and it made her remember, even to cherish, the rest. In her heart she was no different from Little Audrey Wapshott who would one day want to come home. And be forgiven? Only one person could do that, and that was herself.
In the meantime she and Edwin moved into a life of comfortable affection. Edwin was satisfied that her love for him was love and she did not say any different. Frankly, she thought, his own view of love was wonky enough; quite as strange as the Duke of Ferrara's, if less fatal. He had kept his bargain and she would keep hers. To him she was now - if not youth - and if not Simone de Beauvoir mixed with Lesley Caron - then at least an attractive, sometimes beautiful, woman. Audrey liked to call herself, with irony, a very well-kept woman. She had adapted over the years as a companion (less bed, more read nowadays) too, and could converse in an informed and amusing way. Edwin had a good bargain. She was something between a female Faustus and (Edwin loved her to read Oscar Wilde to him) a Dorian - Dora? - Gray ... Except that if she were the heroine of that novel she would be found at the end with a dagger through her heart, her face unlined, and the painting crumbled to dust. The wages of sin, it appeared, were smooth features.
Well - she deserved something for being a Duchess in a Cage and in a land dedicated to such pursuits she put it down, publicly, to the excellent face products she used. To herself she put it down to her ability, hard won, to detach herself from too much reality. And to remain untouched. True, if she stood on a bridge with Edwin, it was Patrick she always remembered; and a litany of phrases - 'tensioned cables and struts', 'open lattice work without masonry skin', 'multiple span', 'heavy catenaries and slender timbers' - all sounding more poetic than they looked. And then maybe, while she stood there, the little flame would leap up again, fear or anger, sadness or regret, something intangible was ignited - but on the whole she kept the damper down. Lilly was right. Look to the future.
As part of the less bed and more read rhythm of life, she began, on a whim, subscribing to the English-language Architecture Today -which certainly surprised Edwin when he found her curled up with it. She lied to him. She said that she was losing her grip on the more difficult aspects of English and this was good exercise. It saved his questioning her. Whatever her motives, they were private.
She was equally surprised at how much she enjoyed reading it, and - even more surprising - how much of it she understood. If things had been different, she thought, if things had only been different ... But she remembered her little frisottis's face when she told him she had never voted. Despite his claim that the world was beyond needing such puny stuff, he was clearly astonished - horrified even. It took a while, quite a long while, for her to understand that things could only be different if she had made them different. And she had not. It was as simple as that. She had fallen into Edwin's arms without giving anything else a second thought. A random moment changing the whole course of her life. But a random moment caused by - Oh Bugger Lilly and her Good Forward Planning - caused by Patrick Parker, and it was him she blamed. Oh and Florence, mustn't forget Florence. But at least it seemed that Florence Parker had got her Come-Uppance, was paying the price. Patrick had not. Unjust. She saw the happy newspaper cuttings with all those smiling teeth of his. Oh, no. Patrick had paid for none of it. Nor ever would ... All the same - she liked to daydream - that one day he might.
Gradually a few minor changes in Aud
rey's status took place as Madame Bonnard became less sprightly. Invitations occasionally arrived which would once have requested 'Monsieur et Madame Edwin Bonnard'; now, sometimes, they tactfully suggested that he bring either an unnamed guest, or - occasionally - they mentioned Audrey by name. She understood that she was a recognised - even accepted - fixture. Edwin's children were grown up with families of their own and quite unconcerned about their father's morality. Life had moved on since her youth. Many great men had been delivered of their haloes by the women they once kept and then abandoned thinking they could do so with impunity. The world had seen enough to find it salacious amusement rather than genuinely shocking. It was the way of things, now, thought Audrey. The world was confused about its women so it was the women's job not to be confused about themselves. At least she was clear on where she stood and she did not mind. A kept women without an independent existence of her own, she thought, can be anything. Edwin was growing old now, and as he once predicted, she was still young. Or young enough. Caterpillar, Chrysalis and Butterfly: if she had lived in the days when heraldry designated status and belief, that is what she would have borne on her shield. In the meantime, she was content enough. Like a good bourgeoise. Indeed, sometimes Audrey laughed outright to see how much they appeared to be living in a painting by one of Edwin's ancestors.
And then, as if to spite their calm, affectionate, almost bourgeois life together, along came a fierce little zephyr to blow on that near-dormant flame of hers. It happened in Paris, and it was thus ...
9
Madame Bonnard Regnant
Apsu wrote an answer to one of her A-level papers in which she suggested that if the world designed its new roads to be curved, then people would necessarily drive more slowly. A short answer, she wrote, to some of the gravest ecological problems, and a way of taking the masculine style out of fast driving. She was marked down for making design a gender issue in such a blatant, unprovable way. She objected. Her examiner, one Peter Greene, who was very keen on the stylistic qualities of garden decking, fought back. Apsu fought, too. Taking it to the very top. She stood before the panel and she made her apologia. 'Testosterone rules such things,' she said. 'It is drawn on the caveman's walls.' But she also produced statistics kindly provided by the Automobile Association.
She won. She was granted her A level. Peter Greene gave an interview in the Daily Express saying that the world had gone far too far in its political correctness - it was all the Americans' fault with their vertically challenged for short and their sight impaired for downright blind.
Apsu countered this with an interview in the Daily Mail. She said the issues had not been taken far enough. They asked her to pull her skirt a little higher over her knees for the photograph. She turned on her heels (flat), and left.
'That is some young woman,' said the journalist. With admiration. She wrote a scathing piece about Apsu and her arrogance.
The French had long recognised the gifts of J. M. W. Turner, smiling to themselves at the English who took such a long time to understand the bridge he formed between the old and the new, the living world and the sublime. How absurd, they shrugged, that he has no museum of his own. How idiotic that there is no monument. Well, they would show those Philistine English how they regarded genius. Like buccaneers rifling through a stolen jewel chest, they plucked him out. They would honour him if his fellow countrymen would not. The French cultural establishment licked its lips and clapped its hands as it began to arrange a grand exhibition of his work to be held in the newly built Centre L’Arlesienne. Along with works from the great collections by artists who were known to have been influenced by him. Girtin, Cotman and Gilchrist, of course, and all the 'landskip' greats - but also the French moderns, Monet, Van Gogh, Cezanne, hung there in homage. The English, but only in very rare exceptions, were once more fashionable.
Audrey became excited. She expected to be asked to accompany Edwin and there was something delightful about the appropriateness of her first major public appearance with him coinciding with this essentially English exhibition. A landmark in her life. A moment of acceptance. Head held high.
But no.
Not to be.
Madame Bonnard would accompany her husband to the opening of 'Turner and his World', and to the banquet afterwards. Audrey swallowed hard and accepted it. But a few days before the exhibition's official opening, and when the show was hung, Edwin took Audrey for a private evening viewing. Edwin and the Curator were old friends and the Curator also had his little secret sweetheart. It was, Edwin suggested to Audrey as they walked around the exhibition, a handsome show. And a fitting opening to a fine building, which, curiously enough, was also designed by a British partnership. 'Really?' said Audrey, wide-eyed, though she already knew: it was Patrick's. Dolly had sent her the cutting. With exclamation marks in biro all over it. Not that she needed that, either. It was all very well documented in her Architecture Today.
'Monsieur Parker and his colleagues will be taking on the Louvre next,' the Curator said, highly amused at his wit. ‘I am told that his practice is one of the best in the world. So - naturally enough - they do most of their best work abroad. Oh, the British, the British...' He laughed even more uproariously.
At the private dinner, later, she congratulated the Curator on his remarkably outward-looking vision - 'Not only painters, of course’ she said. 'As you say - we have produced some of the finest engineers, the finest architects, the finest design visionaries in the world ...' She waited for his response. 'It would make a marvellous exhibition, don't you think? "Brunel and His World"?' ~
The Curator smiled at her politely, if a little uncomfortably, as he filled her glass. 'But yes,' he said smoothly. 'Take a little more of the foie gras, why not?'
Such men were nothing if not polite. Then he turned to Edwin and resumed his conversation.
Once Audrey would have said nothing more. Taken the hint. But this time she had something to say and she wished to speak. She interrupted them. "Think of Telford,' she said. "Think of Stephenson. And think of the great, great genius that was Isambard Kingdom Brunel.' And then there's all the other great men -' She thought desperately. 'Darwin,' she said triumphantly. 'Even Prince Albert in his way'
The Curator and Edwin both looked at her and blinked. Sometimes the notion of de Beauvoir and Moreau met the reality and that could be awkward. They both gave her a polite smile. The Curator's little friend looked from one to the other and smiled prettily, too. What was going on?
Audrey, suddenly annoyed, raised her glass in defiance. 'Perhaps, Monsieur, you should have an exhibition about Brunel next,' she said. 'After all - he was half French.' She sipped her drink before adding, 'Normandy I believe. And he was educated in Paris. I've always been very fond of his Box Tunnel on the Great Western. Haven't you?'
It would have been a good victory had it not been spoilt by the sudden flash of vivid images from the past - the posters on the wall, the bed - lying there listening to him, believing in his genius and happy to be chosen by him. That Silly Woman, she thought, Daft. 'To Isambard Kingdom Brunel,' she said loudly, and then, much more quietly, 'My arse.' And she downed the rather fine Saint-Emilion in one.
Edwin patted her hand and suggested, in an aside, that she should perhaps calm down a little . . . The foie gras really was exceptionally good.
But she was still looking fixedly at the Curator.
The Curator smiled. As if to humour her. 'Indeed, indeed,' he said, Isambard Kingdom Brunel is - a - future possibility' He made a note on a little pad he requested from his mistress's handbag, before moving the conversation on to the quality of the wine. Later the Curator said quietly to Edwin that women were always a surprise. Edwin agreed. But by now Audrey was properly and safely demure again.
And so Madame Bonnard took her husband's arm for the L'Arlesienne Grand Opening and the Grand Opening Dinner and Audrey waved Edwin off from her balcony with her usual good humour. Not the end of the world, she told herself, not the end of the world. But s
he would have liked to take a peek at Patrick in the flesh again after all these years. Somewhere in the apartment she had a pile of his books - never returned. She could have returned them to him tonight - and dropped them on his foot. She closed the windows of her balcony, thought for a moment, then went to her cupboard and lifted from under the yellowing linen the pile of books, still wrapped in Wapshott brown paper and string. She settled down with them by the fire. Memory Lane. Here was the Clifton Suspension Bridge, the Great Western Line with its revolutionary Box Tunnel, and the gigantic Great Eastern - the heroic construction which she had once referred to innocently enough as Brunel's Big Boat to Patrick's horror - 'Ship, Audrey, it's a ruddy ship!' She reached the biographical section. What she wanted to find was the man.
10
Florence and Audrey
Apsu was offered several places at several universities and colleges and by chance she chose to become a student at Patrick Parker's alma mater. She took the Parker Bursary. Though personally as she told her tutor afterwards, she did not trust the man as a designer of bridges at all. All thrust and bollocks, she said of him. Too big for his boots, she called him. She had the English vernacular to a T.
But not in her designs which were, so all agreed, entirely her own. When Patrick visited the college, as he did from time to time, and gave a seminar or two, he found Apsu difficult. Sometimes, when he was halfway through a remark, she interrupted him and suggested that there were always multiple ways of looking at the shape of things and it was unlikely that theirs would agree. At the same time he was fascinated by her mixture of old and new, simple and complex - and he used (though he would never acknowledge it) her idea of stayed walkways as developed from the rigging and spars of sailing boats.