The dog of the month on the stray dog calendar in the living room was an arrogant-looking poodle. It looked like the stick it was chasing had somehow got stuck up its arse. No wonder it was abandoned. It had probably been yapping all day long and annoying the neighbours. Frank would be glad to turn the page on it next month – perhaps for an Irish wolfhound or a miniature schnauzer. In the meantime he’d drawn a pair of glasses and a Hitler moustache on it.
Frank gets a lot of free calendars in the post. They come with begging letters and direct-debit forms that just need his signature. The older he gets the more junk mail he receives. Charity biros. Pictures of starving kids. Donkeys in distress. Beneath the Hitler poodle’s picture Frank had marked today’s date with a red cross.
He looked at the clock above the fireplace. It was 10.30 a.m. It was four minutes later on the clock in the kitchen, two minutes earlier on Frank’s wristwatch. And flashing a row of eights on and off on the DVD player. Kelly would be here soon.
He should probably put his teeth in.
At 11.15, Kelly arrived, parked the car, put the Nurse on Call sign in the windscreen, locked the doors and crossed the road.
Frank limped across to the other side of the living room, sat in his armchair, switched on the TV, picked up the newspaper and tried to look nonchalant, ready to sound surprised that she was here, as though it had completely slipped his mind that she was coming, because it wasn’t the highlight of his week, the only red letter day on his Nazi poodle calendar.
He waited while Kelly typed his birthday into the key safe and removed the key. He heard the front door open.
‘Mr Derrick?’
She came into the living room. There was a bunch of flowers sticking out of the top of her bag.
‘Do you have a vase?’ she said.
Frank started to get up.
‘Don’t get up. I’m sure I’ll find one.’ She went into the kitchen and found a vase in the cupboard, filled it with water and put the flowers in. She brought the vase into the living room and put it on the sideboard. She rearranged the flowers slightly and stood back to look at them.
‘There,’ she said, before rearranging them once more. ‘I’ve brought your clothes back from the launderette, Mr Derrick,’ she said. ‘They’re in the hall. I’ll put them away for you.’
She went into his bedroom. Frank heard her opening and closing drawers. He tried to remember what he kept in the drawers, hoping it was nothing more embarrassing than an old man’s Y-fronts and socks. After tidying up, Kelly asked Frank what else needed doing.
‘This itches,’ he said. He held his plaster cast up. ‘It’s driving me mad, actually.’
‘Hmmm,’ Kelly said. She started rooting around in her bag. ‘They prefer us just to tap on it or hold a hairdryer against the cast.’ She stopped looking in her bag. ‘You don’t have a hairdryer, do you?’ She looked at Frank’s long hair.
‘No,’ he said.
‘Oh well,’ Kelly said and continued to search through her bag, taking out things she wasn’t looking for and putting them on the sofa next to her. It was a cream-coloured cloth bag. Packed tightly with things. Bag for life was a more suitable boast for Kelly’s bag. She took out two purses and a thick diary, a sandwich and a pair of scissors.
‘It’s like Mary Poppins’s bag,’ Frank said. ‘Is there a hat stand in there too? Or a ladder? You could fix my roof.’ Frank thought he would probably trust Kelly to go up on his roof. She wouldn’t disappear from view to read the paper and have a nap. Kelly would fix any loose tiles and give him a very reasonable bill for the work carried out. Kelly wouldn’t suck her teeth or steal the lead from around his chimney.
‘Ah,’ Kelly said. She took out a ball of wool with two knitting needles poked through the centre. She pulled out one of the needles; it was a foot long with the number ‘3’ printed on its head. ‘We aren’t really supposed to do this, but.’
Kelly carefully stuck the knitting needle inside Frank’s plaster – which had started to smell a bit – and she began to scratch the itch on his arm. It was the greatest feeling in the world; he was probably going to be disappointed when it stopped.
‘So, what’s been happening since last week?’ Kelly said.
And in spite of everything that had happened in the past few days – the village crime wave, going out for the first time since the accident, using his walking stick, losing his walking stick, all the cold-calls he’d dealt with so cleverly and hilariously and all the television shows and DVD films that he’d watched – he couldn’t think of a single thing.
7
On Thursday or Friday, maybe even Saturday, it made no real difference to Frank, he was sitting at the living-room window pretending that he was James Stewart in Rear Window. Confined to his flat following an accident he spied on his neighbours, hoping to catch the man in the bungalow opposite dragging a heavy crate containing his dismembered wife’s body down the hall. Or perhaps he might see Anne, three doors further down the road, dancing around her bedroom in just her bra and pants, although he hoped not. Anne was ninety-four with a thicker moustache than the Hitler poodle. The postman cycled past. He was a large man with little hair left. There goes Alfred Hitchcock, Frank thought, making his cameo appearance.
Frank can do Jimmy Stewart’s voice.
In the nineteen seventies it would have been a good enough impression to get him his own Saturday-night TV series. He could have just turned his face away, ruffled his hair and then turned back to face the audience, and as long as he began with ‘Hi, I’m Jameshh Shhstewart’, the audience would have loved it.
Nowadays he would have to get the face right as well as the voice. He’d need a wig and historically correct costume. He’d have to spend five and a half hours in the prosthetic make-up chair. Frank would need to hire a wheelchair and an actress to play the part of Grace Kelly. He’d need people to say that his James Stewart was a better James Stewart than James Stewart’s James Stewart.
It hardly matters really.
There wasn’t much of an audience in Frank’s living room. Just a few disinterested-looking ornamental china animals on the mantelpiece, his own distorted reflection in the window and a Nazi poodle.
That’s show business.
Just as Jimmy Stewart’s plaster cast does in Rear Window, Frank’s was really making him itch. He picked up the knitting needle Kelly had left behind and carefully threaded it into the top of the cast and started to scratch his arm. It wasn’t quite the same.
‘It’s like trying to tickle yourself,’ he said to Bill, who seemed even more disinterested than usual, sprawled on his back on the sofa like Cleopatra waiting for a grape. Frank tapped the outside of the cast. His arm still itched, possibly slightly more. He scratched it with the needle again. The doorbell rang. Frank looked at Bill, waiting for him to move. ‘I’ll get it, shall I?’ Frank said.
He opened the front door to a comically short man wearing a green sweatshirt with the picture of a tree on the front.
‘Hello, mate. Sorry to bother you. Do you see that tree?’ The man pointed to the tall tree at the corner of Frank’s garden. ‘The roots of a tree like that could be as deep as the height of the tree itself.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Frank said. ‘What do you want?’
‘It doesn’t belong there. The roots of that tree.’ The man turned and pointed at the tree again in case Frank had forgotten what a tree was since he’d last pointed at it less than ten seconds ago. ‘Those roots are going to get into your pipes, they’re going to muck up your sewage, your drainage, they’ll cause cracks in your foundations. That tree,’ the man said, turning and pointing one more time, ‘is going to knock your bloody house over.’
‘Really?’ Frank said.
‘As sure as eggs.’
‘As sure as eggs?’
The man nodded. ‘Do you want me to cut it down for you?’
‘It’s all right, thank you,’ Frank said.
‘It will knock your house down, mate.’
/> ‘I doubt it.’
‘You doubt it?’
‘Well, I’m not as sure as eggs, but I’m willing to take a risk.’
‘Are you a tree surgeon?’
‘Me? No.’
The man seemed to become suddenly bored with trees and stopped talking. He was looking at Frank’s plaster cast.
‘You’ve got something. The top of your . . . out of your arm there,’ he said.
Frank looked at Kelly’s knitting needle sticking out from the top of his cast.
‘God, it itches, doesn’t it?’ the man said. ‘I broke my leg last year. Plaster right up to my thigh. Itched like nobody’s business. I used a coat hanger. Opened it out. One of them wire ones. Is it stuck?’ the man said. ‘The – what is it? Is that a knitting needle?’
‘No,’ Frank said. ‘It’s not stuck. I hadn’t finished. I had to answer the door.’
‘Right. Yes,’ the man said. ‘You should get your missus to do it for you. I used to get my missus to itch my leg. It’s not the same doing it yourself.’
‘I was just saying that to my cat,’ Frank said. ‘It’s a bit like trying to—’
The man interrupted him. ‘Like trying to strangle yourself, I know, I know.’
‘I was going to say tickle, but yes,’ Frank said.
Neither man said anything for a few seconds, as though they’d forgotten what it was that had brought them together on the doorstep in the first place, the catalyst that had led to this inaugural meeting of Cast Scratchers’ Anonymous. Then Frank said, ‘It’s not my tree. I only rent the upstairs flat. And I have to go now. I’m quite busy.’
‘Yes. Of course,’ the man said. He talked about and pointed at the tree for a bit more anyway and then he gave Frank a business card and left. Frank closed the door and went back upstairs to unravel a coat hanger.
8
Kelly was earlier than usual. Half the neighbourhood had been watching her for almost ten minutes and she still wasn’t due for another five. Frank thought about going downstairs to invite her in but he thought she might not want to come in to spend extra time with him when she wasn’t being paid for it – as though she was some sort of care prostitute. And if he went outside to invite her in, Kelly would realise that he was more active and capable of walking downstairs than he’d implied on the questionnaire he’d filled in on her first visit – when he had answered D instead of B to the question: ‘How is your mobility?’ She might stop coming. He wasn’t ready for that yet.
While he was waiting Frank gave some of his neighbours Sioux names. At the far end of the road he saw Trims His Lawn With Nail Scissors was hard at work in preparation for the Villages in Bloom competition and Washes His Car Too Much was hosing the soap off his car for the fifth time that week. At the bungalow next door, Picks Up Litter held a spiked stick with a crisp wrapper impaled on the tip. Frank’s Sioux name would be either Watches Television or Buys Things From the Charity Shop.
Kelly climbed out of the car, which was parked so badly that a large removals lorry had to drive onto the wrong side of the road to pass by. She shut the car door and started to cross the road. Frank took his seat and waited. A few minutes later he heard the front door open.
‘Mr Derrick.’
Kelly came into the living room carrying two 99 ice cream cornets. They had started to melt and she licked ice cream from the edge of her hand. She gave one of the ice creams to Frank.
‘Where did you get these?’ he said, thinking she must have carried them all the way here in her car. Which would explain her atrocious parking.
‘The ice cream man,’ Kelly said. ‘I had to wave to get him to stop.’
Frank held his ice cream, looking at it as though he’d never seen one before and didn’t know what to do next. Ice cream trickled down the cornet.
‘Don’t let it melt,’ Kelly said.
Frank licked the ice cream.
‘I didn’t hear “Popeye the sailor man”,’ he said.
‘“Greensleeves”,’ Kelly said. She leaned across and wiped a bit of ice cream from Frank’s cheek with a tissue that seemed to magically appear in her hand.
‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘We don’t get a lot of ice cream men here. There are no children. This bit of the village is like Vulgaria for ice cream men.’
‘What’s that?’ Kelly said.
‘It’s from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. It’s where the Child Catcher lives.’
‘Oh, he terrified me when I was young,’ Kelly said. ‘He still does.’
‘Me too,’ Frank said. ‘You know you’re doing that wrong.’
‘What?’ Kelly said.
‘When you’ve finished the ice cream at the top of the cornet, you have to push the chocolate down into the cone, then bite the end off and suck the rest of the ice cream out. Like it’s a straw.’ He demonstrated with his ice cream. Kelly copied him.
‘Ice creams aren’t just for children,’ she said.
‘In a cornet with a flake, bought from an ice cream van playing “Popeye the sailor man”, they are.’
‘“Greensleeves”,’ she corrected him again. ‘And there’s no age limit on ice cream.’
‘By my age we should be sucking mints,’ Frank said. ‘Wearing cardigans and drinking cups of tea. Now, eat the rest of the cornet with the chocolate inside.’ Kelly did as he instructed. ‘We should have chosen a television channel,’ Frank continued. ‘Preferably one showing repeats of old programmes and we should never turn over again. We will have forgotten how to use the remote control anyway. Life begins at forty. And ends around sixty or sixty-five.’ He rubbed his forehead. ‘I think I’ve given myself a headache.’
‘Well, I don’t think that’s true,’ Kelly said. She stood up. ‘The world is still your oyster. I’ll get you a glass of water and you can take some painkillers. You need to take them for your foot anyway.’ She went into the kitchen. ‘Maybe I should make you a cup of tea too,’ she called out. ‘Just to be on the safe side. I’ll get you a cardigan. There are some mints in my bag.’
Frank heard the sound of the kettle being filled.
‘I wonder if the ice cream man still sells those,’ he said.
‘What’s that?’
‘Oysters. It was an ice cream. It came in a sort of round-shaped shell that opened up into a sort of –’ he demonstrated the shell for himself with the cupped palms of his hands – ‘like an oyster, I suppose. Do you know, I’m not sure I ever made that connection until just now.’
Kelly came back into the living room.
‘Was there a correct way to eat one of those too?’ she said.
‘I’m sure there was.’
‘I was thinking,’ Kelly said, ‘we should clear some of your cupboards out.’
‘My what?’ Frank thought it might be a medical euphemism. He wondered whether a knitting needle would be used.
‘And your fridge. Before something in there kills you. Next Tuesday maybe.’
‘Tuesday?’
‘Monday’s a bank holiday.’
Kelly went out into the kitchen. The kettle had started to boil.
‘A bank holiday? What for?’ Frank called out.
‘I’m not sure. Spring?’
‘Bank holidays don’t really mean anything to me.’
‘Pardon?’ Kelly said. The noise of the boiling kettle increased in volume and Kelly raised her voice. ‘Even these peas are out of date.’
‘I don’t notice the difference. It’s just another day.’
‘Pardon?’
‘Bank holidays.’
‘Right.’
‘All the shops are open.’
‘Uh huh.’ She couldn’t hear what he was saying over the noise of the kettle.
‘Even the banks. Does frozen food go out of date?’
‘Pardon?’
‘I thought if things were frozen the date was frozen too.’
‘Pardon?’
The kettle boiled louder still and Kelly raised her voice again so that he could hear
her, even though it made no difference as she was the one standing next to the loud kettle and he could hear her perfectly well all along. She was just a woman standing next to a boiling kettle, shouting. Like she’d forgotten she had earphones in. It was she who couldn’t hear what Frank was saying. He took advantage of that.
‘I like it when you come,’ he said.
‘Sorry?’
‘I wish you could stay longer.’
‘I don’t think they even make this breakfast cereal any more,’ Kelly said. She brought a cup of tea in and put it on the table next to the armchair. She put a bag of frozen peas and a tea towel next to the tea and piled some cushions on the carpet in front of the armchair.
‘I’m not sure your toe should still be so swollen,’ she said. ‘Put your foot up on the cushions.’
She took a marker pen out of her bag, pulled the lid off with her teeth and wrote ‘For external use only’ on the packet of peas before wrapping them in the tea towel and putting them on Frank’s foot.
9
On the first day of May, Frank said auf Wiedersehen to the Hitler poodle and hello to a bulldog that looked like Winston Churchill.
‘We shall fight them on the beaches.’ Frank’s Churchill impression needed some work.
Because of spring, or the Equinox or the Queen’s birthday or something, Frank wouldn’t see Kelly until next Tuesday. He would have to have to wait an extra day for his finest hour. There was something else on the calendar this month though. A VE Day party at Greyflick House – the sheltered housing block where Smelly John lived – and Frank was John’s plus one. Which meant he was going to have to go on the bus.
The Extra Ordinary Life of Frank Derrick, Age 81 Page 4