Read Patrick Parker's Progress for Free Online Page A

'is - well - very - accepting.'
    'Nothing wrong with that,' said Dolly. 'Being accepting. Getting on with it. You can go a long way before you find something better than being ordinary. Think of Hitler.'
    Florence was silent for a moment. Normally when she was discussing her son there was no room to think about anyone else - but Hitler? 'And just what do you mean by that?'
    'Well,' said Dolly, 'we'd have all been a great deal better off if he'd stayed ordinary, now wouldn't we?' The logic was faultless. Florence ignored it.
    'My Patrick is different ’ she said. 'He's got a Destiny'
    'Destiny is as Destiny does,' said Dolly good-naturedly (she was now thinking of Gone With the Wind and Forever Amber).
    Both mothers stole a quick glance down the garden at their respective offspring. Patrick was lying on his stomach drawing something meticulous, a frown of concentration on his tender brow. Little Audrey was lying on her back, staring at the sky humming something in a low voice and playing cat's cradle with confident, unseen fingers. Both mothers wore an expression of profound certainty.
    'Ah,' said Dolly. 'But will it bring him happiness?'
    'What?'
    'Destiny?'
    Florence sipped from her cup of tea and said no more.
    Florence kept Patrick at home as much as she could but what the Attendance Officer found difficult to implement, Little Audrey did all on her own just by corning to visit and describing the jolly things she was going to do at school. Patrick suddenly wanted to go, and very much. Despite Florence's reminding him over and over again about the big hard playground and the rough, dirty boys, and how ill it would make him, Little Audrey's picture of it painted every day as a little adventure. Florence might baulk at the distance that Patrick would travel, but Little Audrey had to go to a school ever so far from where she lived, on account of the local one being bombed. Now the war was over and it was no longer in danger from air raids, Dolly sent her off on the bus with some of her friends, all holding hands so as not to lose anybody, and she managed very well. Patrick was enraptured at the idea of doing something entirely alone - free of parental restraint. He stamped his foot, he would go, he would, he would. And on a bus, too. Florence was horrified. That woman, she said to George, whose face did not flicker, that woman will be sorry one day ...
    'He's a very delicate little boy,' she told the Headmaster.
    The Headmaster smiled. "Then he will have to toughen up,' he said. "They always do.'
    'But my son is different.'
    The Headmaster, who had heard it all before, said he knew that. But the boy must attend every day because it was the law.
    'You'll never be able to cope ’ said his mother, clucking over him and tucking in his scarf and his shirt and his pull over. He was both thrilled and frightened to be going. Florence wrapped him up so closely that, despite the mildness of the September day, he began sweating. 'Oh my goodness look at that,' said his mother before they were halfway across the first field. 'You're starting a fever.' And she brought him straight back again. Patrick howled which made him all the hotter. "There you are,' said Florence with much satisfaction. 'I knew it, I knew it.'
    But the Attendance officer called again. And that was that.
    Patrick was excited when Jimmy two doors down told him that they gave you a gold star if you were good - and he wanted one. He was special and he would tell them so, which he did. The teacher, a round, grey-haired woman who was far too firm for Florence's liking, told him that he would have one when he had done something worthwhile. He immediately went away and drew from memory the most elegant picture he could of his father's model signal box. The gold star was his. And it was a great disappointment. He held his breath, he stamped his feet, he kicked the desk and said it was rotten. The gold star was made out of gummed paper and the size of a sixpence and went into