The old woman nodded her head in the direction of Frank. ‘He’s off the telly.’
The young man looked embarrassed. ‘I’m sorry. She thinks all English men look the same. She used to think Frank Bough was the one married to the Queen.’
Frank smiled and showed the man the photo.
‘Oh yeah, I recognize him. Mr Church. On number three paper round. Daily Mirror and Evening Mail Monday to Friday, nothing at the weekend.’
‘Did he come in the shop much?’
‘He’d come in and settle his bill every month – that was about it.’ He remembered the box of crisps. ‘I need to get these out before the kids are out of school.’
Frank picked up the photo and the old lady spoke. ‘My grandson doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He doesn’t even recognize you. He spends so long trying to keep up with the offers at Asda he doesn’t know who comes in and out of the shop. That man used to come in a lot. His wife was sick and he looked after her. A very good man. He’d always ask about my husband and I’d ask about his wife. Good manners.’ She looked at Frank. ‘Is he dead?’
‘Yes, I’m sorry.’
She nodded. ‘After his wife died I don’t think he wanted to live. He stopped coming in, got the papers delivered instead.’
Frank had seen Elsie Church’s death certificate at Michael’s house. She had died two years ago. He thanked the old lady and took the photo from her.
As he was moving away from the counter, she said: ‘My husband is gone now too, but I’m still here.’ Her tone was combative, as if contradicting something Frank had said. He nodded, then left.
Dixieland Chick King was not due to open until 5 p.m. so Frank moved on to Greggs. Two women were behind the counter, one wiping all the surfaces while the other cleared out the few remaining lunchtime sandwiches. Frank bought a gingerbread man for Mo and an éclair for him to eat in the car. He thought the woman serving recognized him, but she said nothing. He showed her the photo.
‘Oh, that’s Michael. Poor man. Found dead on a bench! Can you believe that? People just walked by him. Terrible.’
‘You saw it in the paper? Did you see that the police were appealing for information about him?’
The woman pulled a face. ‘Yeah, but what could I tell them? I didn’t know him well. His wife used to be a regular, though, didn’t she, Maz?’
The other woman came over. She recognized Frank now as well and smiled shyly. ‘Are we going to be on telly?’
Frank laughed as if he hadn’t heard that before.
The second woman looked at the photo. ‘Oh, yeah –it’s Elsie’s husband. She was a lovely woman. She’d buy a loaf every other day and on Saturdays she’d get cakes for the weekend. Custard slices for him, éclairs for her, or maybe it was the other way round.’
The first woman nodded. ‘You should have seen her, though. The weight fell off her, didn’t it? In the end he was pushing her up in a wheelchair.’
Though neither woman had asked, Frank thought he should explain his interest. ‘I’m just trying to help track any next of kin. I know they didn’t have children, but I wondered if you knew of any other relatives.’
The two women blew out their cheeks and chewed their lips as they thought. ‘I can’t think of any, love. It was always just the two of them – self-contained. I know he looked after her when she got ill. She never mentioned anyone else apart from the nurses who’d visit.’
Maz nodded in agreement. ‘She was worried about him, though. Do you remember he’d wheel her in here and she’d send him next door for the paper, cos she wanted a natter without him standing over her? We’d ask her how she was and she’d laugh and say she was only going in one direction. Ever so cheerful, though. Considering some of the people we get in here moaning about all their ailments when there’s sod all wrong with them. Anyway I remember she said she worried about him after she was gone. She said she’d always been the sociable one, the one who’d make an effort with friends; he was more of a loner, I think.’
The other woman nodded solemnly. ‘Looks like she was right to worry. It’s a shame.’
The three of them stood in silence for a moment until Frank spoke. ‘Did he come in after she died?’
‘Very rarely at first, but then he started back at work and would come and get a jam doughnut to take in with him every day.’
Frank looked at her. ‘Work? He was retired, surely.’
‘Oh no. You’d think it, at his age, but he kept on. He had his own business. I think it took his mind off Elsie. What was it Maz? What did he do?’
‘Oh, you’re asking the wrong one here. Something with machines. Engineering? To be honest, love, I probably wouldn’t know even if you told me.’
The other woman closed her eyes to think. ‘It was something to do with tools – you know, something like that. It was on the Silver Street industrial estate in town. I remember that because Elsie used to say it had brought them precious little silver for all the time he spent there.’
Frank thanked them. As he was leaving, they asked if they could take some photos of him on their phones. He posed for various shots in front of the cakes, thumbs aloft with a different woman each time.
They said they’d put them up and start a wall of fame. ‘Who knows who we’ll get in here next. Tell the rest of them about us. Even that stuck-up bit. She looks like she needs to eat a sausage roll or two.’
Frank said he’d be sure to pass that on, grinning at the thought of it, and headed back out into the wind.
28
He could never reconcile the interior with the exterior of Evergreen. The corridors inside seemed to stretch too far and in too many directions to fit inside the visible shell of the building. He sometimes wondered if the disorientation was a deliberate effect intended to match the residents’ internal confusion with a wider sense of the dreamlike and unreal. The corridors were thickly carpeted and as he walked along an apparently empty stretch he would often be alarmed to turn and find some diminutive figure had appeared behind him, shuffling silently in his wake. Perspective seemed skewed in the long hallways; bedroom doors stretched ahead of him on both sides, diminishing in size towards a vanishing point that retreated at his approach.
Today he and Andrea made slow progress down the corridor, caught behind two women he didn’t know haltingly moving themselves and their Zimmer frames to some assignation.
Andrea looked at the shelves next to every resident’s bedroom door: ‘Do you think we ever really change?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean,’ she lowered her voice, ‘look at these two ahead of us. Do you think in their minds they’re still the same teenage girls they once were, walking up the street to call on their mate, hoping she won’t be wearing the same cardigan as them?’
‘Is that a big worry for teenage girls?’
Andrea ignored him. ‘This place reminds me of school. The shelves outside each room where everyone puts their personal trinkets out on display – framed photographs or ornaments or dried flowers or whatever – everyone’s trying to show who they really are. Just like at school – all of us having to wear school uniform but doing everything we could to show something else, to say “this is the real me”.’
‘Did you do that? I find it hard to imagine you at school.’
‘Of course I did. I’d wear my tie backwards – with the thin bit at the front and the shameful fat part tucked into the shirt. Then there were the badges on my blazer and most importantly the bag. I’d spend hours copying the typeface from albums – like some medieval monk, painstakingly inking “PiL” onto my canvas bag.’
Frank shook his head. ‘You sound like the kind of girl who used to stand at the bus stop and laugh at me when I walked past.’
Andrea was, in fact, already laughing in exactly that way. ‘Why? What did you have written on your bag?’
‘Nothing. Obviously. You know I was clueless. I really had no idea what was going on. I think I was still wearing flares in 197
9. I had a nice sensible haircut – a big wiry helmet, eyebrows that had reached adulthood ahead of the rest of me and taken over most of my forehead, plenty of spots, brutal dental brace, obligatory bumfluff on the upper lip. I’m pretty sure I would have worn my tie the right way round, being unaware of just how sickening that was to everyone else. I wrote Supertramp on the front of my homework diary in pencil – I thought that was pretty wild.’
Andrea was laughing gleefully now whilst singing about kippers and breakfast.
Frank looked at her and shook his head: ‘You’re such a bully.’
She tried to stop laughing. ‘Sorry.’ She regained her composure. ‘But the reason we used to do all that was to attract boys or girls or whatever.’ She dropped her voice to a whisper. ‘Do you think maybe that’s what the trinkets are for? I mean maybe it’s a highly evolved coded language. Maybe a clown with an umbrella means “enjoys bridge” or a rabbit pushing a wheelbarrow means “I’m free”.’
‘Please stop.’
The two women with Zimmer frames had pulled over and knocked on a door with a toby jug outside. It was opened by an elderly man with a cravat. Andrea widened her eyes at Frank as they passed by and said nothing.
Halfway along the next corridor they finally came to Maureen’s room. Frank pointed to the empty shelf.
‘Mom’s, of course, is bare.’
‘Well, she’s not the only one – there are some other empty ones.’
‘No, they’re outside unoccupied rooms. She’s the only one with nothing. I suppose the absence says “this is the real me” better than any ornament.’
There was no answer to his knock, so Frank opened the door gently to find his mother dozing in her chair with a newspaper open on her lap. He and Andrea sat on chairs next to her for a while in silence, listening to the gradual escalation of her snores until a particularly violent one woke her up:
‘Oh!’ She always smiled when woken by her own snores. A mixture of embarrassment and humour. It seemed to Frank like a glimpse of her true self, before the veil of melancholy was drawn up again.
‘How long have you been there?’
‘We just arrived.’
‘Hello, Andrea darling. You must think I’m terrible, sleeping in the day.’
‘I do it myself whenever I get the chance.’
Maureen looked around. ‘Where’s little Mo?’
‘She’s at a friend’s party this afternoon.’
‘Oh, that’s good. That’s where she should be. Having fun, not stuck here in this necropolis. Is it still freezing outside? I looked out of the window this morning and I could just tell that it was a bitter, bitter day. Where on earth are your coats?’
Andrea smiled. ‘It’s quite warm out, well, warm for October. You should go outside for a walk in the garden. The trees look naked and beautiful.’
Maureen sat forward. ‘Ooh, now that reminds me of something. Could you just take a look out of the window for me, dear?’
Andrea got up and walked towards the window. ‘What is it? What do you want me to look at?’
‘Can you see that small fir tree towards the right? The one that they’ve squared off at the top?’
‘Yes.’
‘Aha! Now – what do you think of that?’
Frank joined Andrea at the window. ‘What do we think of what?’
‘Look at it! Can’t you see it?’
‘See what?’ said Frank, but then Andrea laughed.
‘Oh – do you mean the face?’
‘Yes. The face.’
‘Yeah, I see it. Look, Frank – there are two holes in the foliage like eyes, and just there, level with the birdbath, that’s the mouth.’
Frank squinted: ‘Oh … yeah, I suppose.’
His mother exclaimed in triumph. ‘Now you see it! The death’s head skull! Grinning at me day after day.’
Frank muttered to Andrea. ‘Of course, “the death’s head skull”. Couldn’t just be a smiley face.’
Maureen continued. ‘Oh yes, he’s there every day baring his teeth. Well, we’re old friends now. I get up in the morning and I look out of the window and say, “Not this morning, my friend, but it won’t be long.” Oh, he’s patient; he’s waiting for me.’
Frank chose not to engage with this. ‘So what have you been up to? Have you been to the lounge at all? Spoken to anyone else?’
‘Who is there to talk to? None of the staff speak English. On Wednesday one of them brought me an absolutely frightful cup of tea. Dark brown, the teaspoon virtually standing up in it. So I said, “I like my tea weak.” Well, she frowned at me, obviously without a clue as to what I was saying, so I said it louder: “Weak! I like my tea weak.” And the light bulb finally goes on and she says, “Ah! Week. Week. No every day. Too many tea!” And she’s off laughing away and I haven’t had a cup of tea since, the silly woman. I’m living my life trapped in some ghastly farce.
Andrea said: ‘Oh dear. I’ll go and talk to someone and explain.’
She left the room and Frank stood with his back to his mother, looking out of the window.
‘Why are they knocking it down?’
He turned to see his mother looking directly at him for the first time since he’d arrived.
‘Walter showed me the article in the paper. Why are they knocking it down?’
Frank saw now the report about the demolition of Worcester House lying on her lap. He went over and sat by her. ‘I don’t know, Mom. The owners want to build apartments there – they think they’ll get more revenue. They got an immunity from listing and there was nothing more we could do about it.’
She said nothing for a while and then, ‘How many are left in Birmingham now?’
‘After that one, just one.’
She smiled sadly and looked at Frank. ‘If only he’d known. We’re going to outlive them all.’
29
Francis
1975
His father’s study is littered with architectural drawings. They cover the walls and every surface. Endless, minutely differentiated views of the same buildings showing different aspects or focusing on small details of design. Occasionally, though, perhaps to illustrate scale, the drawings include human forms scattered about lobbies, or descending staircases. These figures are always faceless and Francis finds their blankness horrifying. They have become very real for him. He calls them the Future People. He imagines them moving through tree-lined plazas and along elevated walkways unseeing, unhearing and silent. He thinks that one day they will come to get him and make him like them.
At night he lies in his bed and hopes that he won’t dream of them, but still he does. The dream is the same: he’s running after his father along a light-filled, glass-lined corridor. He calls out, but his father doesn’t hear, and Francis keeps running, trying to close the gap between them. Eventually, after what feels like a whole night of running, his father gradually starts to turn his head and Francis realizes in that final split second that when his father turns he will have no face. He wakes up, heart racing and breathless, before he sees it. He reaches up to his own face and checks that he still has a nose, a mouth. He turns on his light to check that he can see. He has an old Ladybird book hidden under his pillow. He hides it because Peter and Jane are too babyish for him and he outgrew their books years ago, but when he has the dream he pulls it out to look at their faces and the face of Pat the dog. He likes Jane’s smile.
His father goes to work on Saturdays now to work on the new town. Before he would work from his study, but now he announces at breakfast that there is just too much to be done at the office. Francis’s mother butters her toast and says nothing. She spends a lot of time in the garden and Francis watches her from his bedroom window. The garden was designed by his father to complement the modern design of the house. He watches his mother dig up the gravel borders and cacti and replace them with soil and flowering plants. He sees her try to soften the geometric edges of the beds and cover the concrete blocks with foliage. He thinks the garden i
s a type of conversation between his parents. He looks at it and tries to hear what it’s saying.
Francis stands at the top of the stairs underneath the picture that isn’t really a picture. He isn’t sure what it is. A mess of twigs and stones. Dinosaur sick, perhaps. There are pictures like it all over the house. His father chose them especially to complement his design. Francis wishes they had proper pictures instead, of horses or boats by someone who could draw. Downstairs his mother is on the phone, speaking in a low voice to her sister. She is talking about the new town. It is a purple day. Francis can only hear the occasional word. He thinks he hears her swear and he quietly moves down two stairs. He hears her say something about being invisible. He is alarmed and cranes his head round the banister to see if she really is and is half relieved and half disappointed to see that she is still quite visible, her back to him, cigarette smoke coiling around her head. She talks about packing bags, and Francis thinks that they are going away somewhere, but when she hangs up the phone she just returns to the garden.
One evening Francis is carefully carrying a cup of tea to his father in his study when he sees the model for the first time. A neat label reads: PROPOSED CENTRE DARNLEY NEW TOWN – DOUGLAS H. ALLCROFT AND PARTNERS.
Francis stands rooted to the spot, the cup of tea forgotten in his hand. An entire toy town stretches out ahead of him covering twenty feet or more. After a while his father looks up and asks: ‘What do you think of that?’
Francis gazes at the streets and houses. ‘It’s amazing.’
His father assumes he’s referring to the elegance of the design. He smiles and nods, getting up from his chair to walk over to the model and point with the stem of his pipe.
‘You can see that the town centre is encircled by a gyratory road system with points of access at regular intervals. The passing motorist can navigate around the centre without being impeded by delivery vehicles. The shopping area is in the heart of the town in an enclosed precinct, where the shoppers can buy the things they need whilst protected from the elements. The shoppers’ cars go on top of the precinct in a tiered car-parking area. The lorries make their deliveries to the service areas that lie around the perimeter of the precinct. This is how the towns of tomorrow will look. The squalid high streets we now see, Francis, clogged with cars, blackened with soot, their pedestrians assailed by rain and traffic spray, they will be things of the past. The ring road will encircle the centre and pedestrians will be separated safely from cars by a series of subways and elevated walkways.’
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