Patrick Parker's Progress Read Online Free PDF Page B

Instinctively, she pulled the laughing boy to her and looked up accusingly at George. He looked back at her wondering what he could possibly have done wrong now. Was it, he wanted to shout, a crime to laugh with your own son? He opened his mouth to speak, but he had no chance. Florence immediately began to tell him what had happened that day, how afraid she was, and that he must get rid of the horrible stuff in the shed at once. He refused. She asked him what kind of father he thought he was. George laughed at her, a sneering, bitter laugh, and went out to his beloved shed. He might stand up to his wife. He might tell her that he, too, wanted a share in the pleasures of their son, he might, he might - and then he saw the pieces of Meccano and the half-dismantled signal box. It was as if his son had kicked him in the stomach.
    He returned to the house. Now that Lilly was out of the picture, the constructions he made in his shed were his only private pleasure. The only physical and mental place that he could say was his. And now his own son had defiled it. He was angry. Cold with rage. It was as if the last vestiges of him as a man, as anything, were wiped out. A small boy, one who held him in contempt, had shattered the last bastion that was George alive. For the first and only time he gave Patrick a good telling off. Just for once, Florence allowed him to do so.
    'You must never, ever go out there again,' he said sternly. 'And you must never, ever be so destructive of something that doesn't belong to you ever again. You must, must, must respect other people's things.' He paused. 'Even your father's,' he added, in a sudden burst of sour irony. No one noticed.
    'But ...' said Patrick.
    His father wagged his finger. 'Never. Understood?' And Florence said, meek as a lamb, "There now, Patrick. Do as your father says ...'
    Patrick, unused to such unity and such sternness, was silent.
    What he wanted to tell them was that he had dismantled the thing once and put it back together, and that when his mother found him he was doing it for the second time and thinking of ways to improve it. If they had only left him alone it would all have been good as ninepence and no one any the wiser. From that day on he held not only his father but both of them in his child's version of contempt. What did they know?
    George bought a large padlock for the shed and on the few occasions Patrick tried to follow him out and spy through the window, his mother, now on her guard, stopped him. If Patrick tried to talk to his father about what went on out there, whether the unpronounceable name's bridge would be finished soon, George merely went on reading the paper. He was under Florence's watchful eye. One false move and it could be the shed's last. But though he worked away on Brunel 's wonder, the relish had gone, he felt under threat, observed, about to be punished for this little bit of freedom. And he was.
    In the end, catching Patrick sneaking down the garden path with a torch in a freezing wind, Florence declared that enough was enough. She could not stand the stress. George must get rid of his hobby. George, accepting the inevitable, did so. He ripped down the pictures and threw them away. He packed everything else into tea chests, covered them with sacking, locked the shed and pretended to forget about the whole wretched thing. As he pretended to forget about Lilly and the Wednesday afternoons. This, he thought, was what you got if you didn't look out. What you got if you married the wrong woman. What you got for being weak and cowardly.
    It was the weak and cowardly that had him marry Florence - that and her cooking. George was friendly with her youngest brother and the two of them used to sit at the table of a Sunday tea time and stuff themselves with her cakes and biscuits. While Florence looked on smiling, neat as a pin. It was the highlight of the week in gastronomic terms. Then Raymond - so quickly - died of a burst appendix. It was over before