‘I knew something was wrong. Do you know what my first response was when I heard about the accident? My very first split-second thought was I knew it. There was just a sense that he was heading towards some catastrophe.’ She hesitated before adding: ‘I think his death was connected to his behaviour in those last few weeks.’
‘It was a hit and run.’
‘It’s a straight road – no blind corners. The police were completely puzzled by it. The driver never braked.’
Frank didn’t think it would help to say that he’d seen the road and thought exactly the same thing. Instead he tried Andrea’s theory. ‘Maybe the driver fell asleep.’
Michelle shook her head. ‘It was suspicious, and the police have never found the driver; their investigation got nowhere. There was something going on, Frank. I feel ridiculous speaking like this – like a character in a film – that’s why I didn’t say anything before.’
‘What’s changed now?’
Michelle saw Mo heading back towards them with what appeared to be an orange tracksuit, a black pillbox hat and some red patent-leather stilettos. She was smiling proudly and called as she approached, ‘Get ready to have your life turned around!’
Michelle turned to Frank just before Mo reached them and said quietly: ‘Now I know about the money.’
24
Rhombus House was designed by Douglas H. Allcroft and Partners. Built in 1974 to house several council departments in the heart of the city centre, its bold, brutalist exterior was striking enough to cause a stir in the local media. Frank recalled sitting with his parents watching the broadcast of his father being interviewed by a reporter for the regional news slot. Years later he discovered that Phil had been the large-collared man conducting the interview. His father’s contribution was cut down to a few words and the rest of the report was filled with a vox pop of passers-by.
A middle-aged woman with a clipped voice and pointed glasses spoke as if she had just been waiting to be asked: ‘I’m afraid to say I think it is terribly ugly. A blot on the landscape. If that is the fashion, then I’m very glad I’m not “with it”.’
A young man with enormous sideburns grinned shyly: ‘Iss all right, ennit? I mean it looks modern; it looks now. I dunno where the door is, though.’
The entrance, in fact, was situated thirty feet off the ground and approached via two large concrete ramps forming an apex in front of the building. At some point the rumour started that the architects had forgotten all about the entrance and the ramp approach had been added as a hasty afterthought. It was amazing to Frank that anyone could believe such a clearly improbable tale, but the idea that architects were so out of touch with the needs of ordinary people that they might overlook something as fundamental as a doorway rang true for many.
In the early nineties the council departments had outgrown the building and moved to new premises. Rhombus House, like all of Frank’s father’s buildings, had been designed in close consultation with the clients, the features and layout tailor-made for their specific needs and the idiosyncrasies of their complex departmental relationships. As a result, no other tenants could be found and its obsolescence combined with an exterior appearance that had passed from being avant-garde and controversial to just controversial meant the council opted for demolition.
Frank remembered the shock of hearing the news. It was the first of his father’s buildings to be destroyed. Douglas had always talked about building for the future; Frank was relieved he hadn’t lived to discover just how brief that future had been.
Before it was demolished Phil and Frank walked over to the site one evening after work. Phil looked up at the dark grey exterior. ‘I don’t like this. I don’t like it one bit.’
‘What?’
‘Outliving a building. It makes me feel old.’
‘You are old.’
‘Mature is what I am. Distinguished maybe. Suave certainly. Not old. Your tie is old.’ He looked at the boarded-up entrance. ‘I remember doing the report on the ribbon-cutting; I didn’t expect to be around at the demolition.’
‘I remember watching it and thinking how incredibly suave the reporter was.’
‘You’re funny. It was a landmark building, though. I remember how ahead of its time it looked then. Your father was very intense. He was talking in terms way over the heads of the viewers. We kept having to retake, get him to just say something simple. In the end we gave up and slapped in some members of the great Joe P. instead.’
‘Communication wasn’t his strong suit.’
‘What do you think of them tearing it down?’
Frank struggled to answer. ‘Too many things.’ He had a brief image of himself as a boy looking at drawings of the tower on the wall of his father’s study. He shrugged. ‘It’s hard to take in.’
Phil nodded. ‘No offence, Frank, but the building has seen better days. It’s a bit of an eyesore now. I mean this whole part of town has been redeveloped and here’s Rhombus House still stood in the middle in all its concrete glory like an old pair of flares lurking in the wardrobe. I know when it was built your father had the best intentions, and it looked amazing then, but it’s better to rip it down now than watch it fall apart.’
Frank had heard this argument before. ‘I don’t think so. It’s the newer buildings that are the problem. The council sold off the area around Rhombus House that was supposed to be a series of tree-lined plazas and gardens. That was an integral part of Dad’s plan. You can’t just hack the scheme to pieces and then blame the building for looking wrong. The council flogged the land and let developers build right up against Rhombus House and now they notice that it looks out of place. It was a landmark building – it should have been respected; it should have been planned around.’
‘But they gave it that facelift ten years ago and it didn’t make any difference.’
‘It made it worse. It was a cheap eighties fascia on a seventies building. They should have respected it for what it was, not tried to reinvent it and not tear it down.’
Phil shook his head. ‘I don’t think it works like that in the real world. Things age, they start to look tired and crap and nobody wants to see them … even if they age well. Look at me. I’m an extremely well-maintained, handsome bastard, but I have to change with the times – change my appearance, change my patter, and it’s not bloody easy keeping up with it. The fashions change and you have to look like you know what’s going on. You have to act like you know why a load of young kids suddenly think you’re cool again, or why some twenty-five-year-old git in a trilby wants you in his advert. Facelifts – Jesus, yes, I’m all for ’em. And when that stops working then I’m afraid it’s time for demolition.’
Frank shook his head. ‘I never understood that advert. Why were you dressed as Mr T? What did that have to do with banking?’
‘Irony apparently. It’s always irony.’
Frank nodded. ‘I bet it is.’ He turned his back on Rhombus House and looked at the newer buildings around them. He tried to imagine Rhombus House gone, disappeared from the earth and how that would feel. ‘It’s not just that.’
Phil frowned. ‘Not just what?’
‘What I was just saying about the building. It’s more than that.’
Phil waited and then finally said: ‘Jesus, Frank. Is this pause supposed to be building suspense? What’s more than what?’
‘I mean this demolition. It’s not just because it was my father’s building, or about its architectural merits, or the lack of foresight and planning. Even if you disagree with all that, even if you think this building is a hideous mistake, I don’t think you should simply erase your mistakes.’
‘Of course you don’t, Frank. Cling stubbornly to them, keep them as a penance, a constant reminder of how you fucked up. This explains those shoes with the rubber soles you insist on wearing for work. You’re punishing yourself.’
‘No, I’m punishing you with those shoes – that’s my only reason for wearing them. Okay, some mistakes can be er
ased, but I think to wipe out all traces of the past is wrong. Do you remember the mechanized car park they built in the original Bull Ring?’
‘Course I remember it. I was one of the few people to use it and get out alive. You drove into a lift thing and then left the car there – the magic of technology did the rest, transporting the car to a space. Total ease and comfort for the motorist, until it broke down on the second day entombing that last Ford Anglia there for the next twenty years.’
‘That’s what I like about this city.’
‘What? That it’s crap and everything fails?’
‘No. That it has these ridiculous dreams, that it always tries to reinvent itself, to be the city of the future, but then always changes its mind about what the future should be. I love the little glimpses you catch of the old dreams, the old ideas of what Utopia should be. I think if you get rid of all of them, no matter how embarrassing or naive they are, then you lose something essential about the place.’
‘Is that how you feel about your father’s buildings? I mean behind all your talk of their architectural significance, is it just that you think they’re quaint reminders of what used to seem like good ideas?’
Frank shrugged. ‘I don’t know. It’s different when it comes to my father. I know how hard he worked on this building, on all his buildings. He built them for the future. They were his legacy.’ He turned back now and looked at Rhombus House and sighed. ‘You know it’s an incredibly beautiful building inside? The people who worked there loved it.’
Phil smiled. ‘You’ll never understand, will you? It’s only the outside that’s visible. That’s all people care about, mate.’
Looking back, Frank thought he did understand now. He’d had a hard schooling. Worcester House, the last but one of his father’s public buildings remaining, was due to be demolished the following week. Frank knew that even if all his father’s buildings were torn down, his memory would live on in him, but he knew also that such an intangible legacy would have meant nothing to his father.
25
Francis
1975
His mother walks in from the kitchen carrying a tray. Francis studies her closely. He looks at her mouth, her eyes, the line of her shoulders and he knows that today is an orange day. As if to confirm it, she looks at him and flashes a wide smile.
He was very little when he decided that his mother had orange days and purple days. Now he’s more grown-up he could use other words to describe the contrast, but the notion of colours has stuck and nothing else seems quite right.
‘Well, are we ready for the party?’
He grins and nods.
On purple days his mother pulls plants up in the garden, she looks out of the window at nothing in particular for impossibly long stretches and speaks to her sister in a low voice on the telephone for hours. Sometimes she is cross with Francis whilst at others she doesn’t seem to notice he’s there at all.
On orange days she tells stories, she invents games, she takes Francis on expeditions and most of all she makes him laugh.
She sets the tray down on the coffee table and Francis surveys the assortment of crisps and sweets, which his mother always inexplicably refers to as ‘rocks’. They have been carefully placed as usual in an eccentric selection of crockery. A few Smarties in an egg cup, a heap of cheese snips in a gravy boat, assorted crisps laid out on best plates. She and Francis refer to this arrangement as ‘a party’, though no other guests are ever invited.
Francis’s father is out for the evening attending something called a consultation meeting and when Francis asked his father explained what that was, but the explanation seemed to pass straight through his ears. Francis doesn’t know if his father knows about the little parties that sometimes happen in his absence. He suspects that Douglas would not approve of such indulgence and crockery transgression.
Francis sits in his usual place, perched on something his mother calls ‘a pouffe’. Sometimes when she rests her feet on the pouffe while reading a book, Francis notices his father’s eyes narrowing slightly in the direction of the pouffe, which seems to offend him. The pouffe is black and white and made of leather or maybe plastic. When he was very little, Francis used to pretend it was the driver’s seat of a sports car and use a plate as a steering wheel whilst revving away noisily. Now, though, he is older and more sophisticated and is happy enough to sit and just imagine the car around him whilst enjoying the goodies on the table in front of him.
His mother has put fizzy orange pop in the teapot and now holds the teapot high to pour it into their teacups. Francis knows what’s coming next.
His mother puts on a funny high voice: ‘More tea, vicar?’
‘Yes, please,’ Francis replies, in what he thinks is a vicar’s voice.
His mother then pretends not to notice the teacup that Francis holds out, and with a shocked expression says: ‘Oh, vicar, not from the spout! Why, you’re no better than a filthy chimp!’
And the idea of a vicar drinking orange pop straight from the teapot never fails to make Francis laugh so much he falls off the pouffe.
Francis wonders if the reason he thinks of his mother’s moods as purple and orange might be something to do with her clothes. He remembers a purple dress she used to wear years ago. The fabric was shiny and patterned and the noise it made as it rubbed against her tights used to make Francis’s teeth feel horrible. Around the same time she used to wear a bright orange polo-neck jumper made of soft, fluffy wool that he loved to press his face against when she picked him up.
His mother has more purple days now. When he was little, they were very rare – small dark clouds that would drift across an otherwise clear sky. Now, though, the orange days seem rarer. He has noticed too that sometimes what starts as an orange day can suddenly become a purple day for no apparent reason. Last Saturday his father worked in his study all day. At first his mother seemed fine, but by lunchtime Francis noticed that she was banging pans more loudly on the hob than seemed necessary and then she forgot to put chocolate powder in his milk and shouted at him when he asked about it. He has noticed that a purple day never changes into an orange one.
They sit now at the coffee table, he on his pouffe, his mother kneeling on the floor, munching their way through the smorgasbord and listening to records. Maureen has piles of records from her teenage years and early twenties. She says they are rock-and-roll records and Francis quite likes them too. He hears the sound of the arm moving mechanically and lowering the needle to the record. There are a few moments of hiss and mild crackle before he recognizes the song about the thin girl called Bony Maronie.
His mother laughs: ‘Do you remember when I tried to teach you to dance?’
‘Which time?’
‘Any of them – they always ended the same way – us in a heap on the floor.’
Francis smiles.
‘You’re made of elastic. I’ve never known a floppier dancier. It was like dancing with an eel. Nothing like your father.’
Francis looks at her. ‘Dad doesn’t dance.’
‘No, of course he doesn’t now, but he used to, when I first met him. He was a marvellous dancer. He took it very seriously.’ Her eyes flicker. ‘Well – you can imagine.’
In fact, Francis can’t imagine at all. He can think of nothing more incredible than the idea of his father dancing to a song about a girl who resembles macaroni. He has to stop himself thinking about it.
‘That’s why I’m rubbish at rugby.’
‘Are you really rubbish, dear?’
‘I’m too floppy – everyone pushes me out of the way.’
His mother looks worried. ‘Do the other boys tease you?’
Francis shrugs. ‘Sometimes they say things, but I don’t mind.’
‘Really?’
‘I think rugby’s silly.’
‘Well, I couldn’t agree more.’ She is quiet for a moment and then adds, ‘But I dare say you write far better essays than some of those boys, or are better at whistling, o
r know more about cars. People put emphasis on all the wrong things, Francis – being good at rugby, or being a fast runner or living in a nice big house. They think as long as everything looks good on the surface that’s all that matters – but it’s not, is it? It’s what’s underneath that counts.’
Francis doesn’t really understand what his mother is talking about, but he nods anyway.
She looks at him and smiles. ‘I’m preaching to the converted, aren’t I?’
Francis frowns. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Nothing. Ignore me, Francis.’ She reaches over and holds his head tightly with both hands and pretends to try to twist it. She gasps with the effort and gives up: ‘No, can’t be done!’
‘What are you doing?’
‘Your head – it’s screwed on nice and tight already– can’t be budged.’
Francis thinks this may be a new game. ‘Shall I test yours is on tight?’
His mother laughs. ‘Oh, goodness no. I’m sure it’s not – you might twist it right off. I’m sure living with your father for fifteen years has loosened a few of my screws.’
Her laughter dies off and Francis panics that the day is about to change colour. He scurries off to his room to find Mrs Bumbles, a cuddly cat from his infancy. Mrs Bumbles should have been discarded years ago, but the expression of outright alarm on her face has always amused both Francis and his mother and has led to a colourful history being created for the stuffed toy. Francis runs back into the living room to the pile of records. He finds the one he’s looking for and puts it on the turntable. As Guy Mitchell starts to sing, Mrs Bumbles rises wide-eyed from behind the sofa:
(She wears red feathers and a hooly-hooly skirt)
(She wears red feathers and a hooly-hooly skirt)
She lives on just cokey-nuts and fish from the sea
A rose in her hair, a gleam in her eyes
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