Patrick Parker's Progress Read Online Free PDF Page A

across town to Lilly-Her-That-One for them?' he said.
    Florence looked at him with a new expression on her face, which was a mixture of anger and fear, and it was then she decided that enough was enough.
    When his father came home on that Wednesday evening, Patrick was waiting for him.
    'Where is your present?' he asked.
    George stared at him.
    'From Lilly-Her-That-One?'
    'You see,' hissed Florence. 'You see?'
    George never went for a Wednesday afternoon again. He told Lilly, by letter, that it was for the boy's sake, and for the respectability of his wife and the community. Lilly tore it up into tiny little pieces and did not reply. She knew that it was not what he wanted, that the sanctimonious tone was not his but his wife's. What she did not know was that what he really wanted to write but which was buried somewhere beneath the priggish, stilted phrases, was 'Come away with me ...' But you could not say that to someone who only wanted a bit of fun. And whose husband was impaired.
    Without those afternoons there was little in life that pleased George and nothing to relish and he became more and more morose. Once more he tried to assert himself in the matter of his son. He showed him the Meccano model of the station signal box in the shed and watched, pleased, as the boy ran his fingers over it with a gentle reverence. Emboldened, George then took him for a tour of the station, letting him collect and issue tickets, and stand with one of the drivers right up next to him in the engine. He also took him down to meet Joe Mundy in the signal box. But while the levers and switches quite interested the boy, they did not thrill him and he showed more interest in being high up, which he considered grand, and in the still damaged footbridge over the rails, replaced by a temporary structure. He stood staring at it from the signal box for a long time. Eventually he said to his father, 'You could mend that, couldn't you, Dad?' And George thought he probably could if they ever asked him. He nodded. 'So could ‘I ’ said Patrick firmly.
    George felt a momentary flicker of excitement and fear. 'When we get home,' he offered, 'we could go into the shed and see how I made one. A model. A little one.'
    Patrick nodded. 'And then I can make a big one later ’ he said. George - without thinking too much about it - held his son's hand. It felt warm and soft and as he held it, it was as if the muscles in his body were suddenly released. They sang songs like 'Ten Green Bottles' for the rest of the journey and Patrick looked at his father with a new admiration.
    When they arrived home, Florence, who was standing at the front-room net curtains as if she had never stirred from the spot, watched them coming down the road. Saw them holding hands and how brightly Patrick chattered up at his father. Saw how their hands swung as if they hadn't a care in the world. Patrick came rushing in, words jumbling over themselves as he described the afternoon and how high up they were. Florence said, 'Yes, yes,' and sat him down at the table in front a plate of fresh-baked biscuits and said that his father shouldn't have taken him all the way up the box. 'Why?' asked Patrick, still quite happily. George sat down opposite him and knew what was coming. When Florence had finished describing to Patrick what might have happened to him (you might have missed your step and plunged onto the rails below. You could have been splattered all over the line) the boy burst into tears and looked at his father with reproving eyes. George said nothing and they did not mention the shed. No doubt Florence could have drummed up a major catastrophe for that too - the roof falling in or spider bites or a screwdriver piercing his heart. He gave up.
    But Patrick was still intrigued. On the day that he knew his mother went into town on the bus to do her shopping he feigned an earache. Very occasionally, Mrs Glaister from next door was requested (or given the privilege, as Mr Glaister would