The Extra Ordinary Life of Frank Derrick, Age 81

by J. B. Morrison

The free bus to the big Sainsbury’s terrified Frank. It would only be him and the driver – who was protected by an inch of safety glass – preventing the bus from being entirely full of old women. As soon as the doors opened the giggling and high-pitched whooping would start. Making his way to the relative sanctuary of the seats at the back of the bus provided Frank with an insight into what it must be like to be a male stripper at a hen party for the over seventies. As he stepped around wheelie shopping baskets and support stockings he felt like Daniel Day-Lewis in that bit in The Last of the Mohicans that isn’t the waterfall scene.

  Once he was in his seat, the bus would start moving and the whispering would begin. It scared him more than the high-pitched screaming and laughter. He could never hear what it was they were whispering but it was obviously about him. The laughing and whooping would take over again as he re-walked the gauntlet to the front of the bus to get off. This was why Tom Jones always travels to his concerts by limo. Frank knew that whatever happened he mustn’t let them catch his eye, otherwise he would never escape. They had a cave in Worthing.

  It was 1945 in West Sussex’s premier armchair museum – the communal lounge of Greyflick House – Union Jack bunting hanging from the ceiling, Keep Calm and Carry On posters pinned to the walls, spam fritters and jam sandwiches for lunch and a man called Ryan in a khaki army uniform with a keyboard and a drum machine singing songs from the 1940s. Everyone had newspaper hats on and they were waving little paper Union Jack flags along to the beat of Ryan’s drum machine.

  Smelly John was like a wristwatch on a Ben Hur chariot driver. At just sixty-four he was at least thirteen years younger than all the other Greyflick residents. He was wearing a bright red trilby, a yellow shirt with a butterfly collar and a crème suit with wide-lapelled jacket and huge-flared trousers. He was sitting in his wheelchair, in the same corner of the lounge that he always sat in, setting up a game of Buckaroo! in anticipation of Frank’s arrival.

  Smelly John didn’t smell in the same way that Kevin Costner danced with wolves and Washes His Car Too Much washes his car too much. That’s not how he got his name. And if he did smell at all it was never unpleasant. John didn’t smell of wee, or mothballs or TCP. On most days you could have boiled him up to make soap or an advent candle. But it’s not how he got his name.

  Smelly John is his punk rock name. He’s had it since 1976. He was at the first ever Sex Pistols concert. He used to loiter on the King’s Road. Tourists would take his picture for a pound. There are postcards with him on. His best friend was called Steve Piss and he had a girlfriend named Blobb. They all lived in a squat in Chelsea with John’s pet rats Snot, Bogie and Prince Albert – which was also the name of the only piece of jewellery John claimed to wear, although Frank declined his frequent offers to prove it to him.

  ‘I thought you’d died!’ John shouted when Frank came into the lounge, causing Ryan to go out of time with his drum machine. ‘Where have you been, Francis?’

  Frank sat down opposite John and told him about his accident and Smelly John offered his sympathy and concern in the only way he knew how, by laughing hysterically and, as Frank had expected, making jokes about it.

  ‘And you’re sure it wasn’t your father driving the milk float?’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure it wasn’t my father.’

  ‘Your biological father?’

  ‘Yes. It definitely wasn’t my father.’

  ‘Hmm,’ John said and pretended that that was the end of it before adding, ‘I suppose it’s no use crying over spilt milk.’ And he laughed like a tickled baby, slapping the arms of his wheelchair, uncontrollably breaking wind and blowing bubbles of snot from his nose.

  And then, when he’d run out of jokes and laughter, in the middle of the celebration of the victory over fascism and the Third Reich, the two men attempted to place things on the back of a plastic mule without the mule kicking them all straight off again.

  ‘Buckaroo!’ John shouted as the mule bucked and Ryan lost his timing again and forgot what the three things everyone was supposed to do after packing up their troubles in their old kit bags were.

  Most of Smelly John’s favourite games ended with him shouting out the game’s name. Buckaroo! Jenga! Mouse trap! Ker plunk! Frank wondered whether it was the shouting John enjoyed rather than the actual games. The destination rather than the journey. John’s favourite games also tended to require a steady hand. With the spasms from his Ms and Frank currently playing left-handed, this was something neither of them had.

  John gathered together the Buckaroo! objects and reset the mule in place on the table. Ryan had started a new song about how brilliant the war was.

  ‘Do you like this music, Francis?’ John said.

  ‘Not really.’ Frank looked around at the other residents, who didn’t seem to be enjoying it enormously either. A few were singing along, some just mumbling or mouthing the words or tapping their fingers. Their flag-waving looked like it was being orchestrated at gunpoint to massage an evil dictator’s ego. Mostly everyone just seemed bored.

  The Greyflick residents were the same as the kids who’d pulled up the FOR SALE signs and tipped over the bollards in Fullwind. They had keep-fit on Tuesday afternoons, salsa dancing every third Friday and sherry and a quiz on Thursdays. They had whist drives, bridge clubs, Bingo and tea dances. There was half-price swimming a mile up the road and every weekday afternoon it was 25 per cent off OAP tickets at the cinema. The buses were free and the trains were half price but they were all too bored to take advantage of any of it. Greyflick House was a riot waiting to happen. Teenagers would be talking about the vandalism and the damage.

  ‘It’s pensioners,’ the boy on the Nintendo would say.

  ‘Definitely pensioners,’ his friend throwing chips at a swan would agree.

  ‘They’re bored,’ a girl texting votes to a TV talent show would add.

  ‘I bet most of the people in this room’, John said, ‘have more in common with the music of the Beatles or Elvis Presley or even the Sex Pistols than these old war songs. This is their parents’ music.’

  The warden who sat in the small office in the reception at the front of Greyflick House, the man who answered the residents’ panic calls and carried their shopping up the stairs when the lift was broken – as it frequently was – came into the lounge. He had a slight limp. He slipped on a slice of spam and dropped a tray of teacups and saucers. Smelly John cheered.

  The warden looked over. He straightened his tin hat. It had a W painted on the front like the man who shouts at everyone in Dad’s Army. He picked up the dropped crockery.

  ‘See the way he’s looking at me?’ John said. He placed the plastic saddle on the back of the mule.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Graham,’ John said. ‘The warden. He’s a racist. You go first.’

  ‘I just went. It’s your turn. He’s not a racist.’

  John picked up the plastic guitar. ‘How would you know?’ He hooked the guitar onto the saddle. Ryan started a new song as part of a medley. It had the same plinky plonky drum machine intro as the song before. Frank and John listened, both playing their own private game of Guess the Intro.

  ‘What did you do in the war, Francis?’ John said.

  ‘The war?’ Frank said.

  ‘Did you fight? Which was your favourite. War one or two?’

  ‘My favourite? How old do you think I am?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ John said. ‘You all look the same to me.’

  Frank picked up the plastic lamp and hung it on the mule. ‘I don’t like talking about it.’

  ‘Because you’d have to kill me?’

  ‘Because it makes me feel old. Although I can kill you if you want.’

  ‘No, you’re all right, thanks, Francis.’

  John picked up the frying pan. His arm jolted slightly. He waited a second for the spasm to pass and then carefully placed the frying pan on the mule.

  ‘You are old,’ John said.

  ‘I don’t need
reminding all the time.’

  Frank put the rope on the mule. This was a long game for them. Smelly John picked up the plastic Stetson. He took his red trilby off and put it on the table and he put the tiny toy cowboy hat on his head.

  ‘Does it suit me?’ he said.

  ‘It makes you look slightly bigger headed than usual.’

  ‘Ha ha.’ Smelly John took the plastic Stetson off and put it on the mule and the mule kicked it straight back off again.

  ‘Buckaroo!’ John shouted, causing Ryan to lose his place again.

  ‘Everybody. Sing along,’ Ryan said, trying to rescue his composure. ‘Let’s show Jerry what we’re made of.’

  ‘Who’s Jerry?’ Smelly John called out.

  ‘Come on, lads,’ Ryan said. He probably hadn’t expected to be heckled at this gig. The drum machine beat plip plopped to a finish.

  ‘Lads?’ John shouted into the now silent room. ‘He’s eighty-three.’ He pointed at Frank.

  ‘Eighty-one,’ Frank said.

  ‘Oh, I get it,’ John said. ‘You mean geriatric.’ He looked at Frank. ‘He’s calling you old, Francis. You’d better be careful, mate,’ he shouted across the room at Ryan. ‘Francis is a trained assassin. He fought in two wars.’

  ‘Has anybody got any requests?’ Ryan said, doing his best to ignore the hecklers, keeping calm and carrying on.

  ‘Play something we know,’ John said.

  ‘What would you all like to hear?’ Ryan said, to anyone else in the room other than John.

  ‘Do you know any Bob Marley?’ John said.

  ‘Come on, lads,’ Ryan said. ‘Play fair.’

  ‘Lads again? I told you. He’s eighty-two.’

  ‘Three. I mean one.’

  Ryan decided to ignore the heckling again and started singing ‘We’ll Meet Again’ without accompaniment.

  ‘Some Sex Pistols, then,’ John said.

  It wasn’t the first time Smelly John had disrupted a special event at Greyflick House. He’d almost started a food fight at the Diamond Jubilee garden party the year before and ruined Mick’s Marvellous Magic Show at Christmas by insisting the Ace of Hearts he’d chosen from Mick’s pack of cards had been the seven of clubs. He frequently spoiled a quiet game of dominoes by dramatically slamming the tiles down on the table, and who would ever forget the time he played Hungry Hippos noisily on his own during the two minutes’ silence on Remembrance Day.

  Smelly John put the Buckaroo! pieces back in their box.

  ‘The war’s over, Francis,’ he said. ‘Let’s go home. Give me a push.’

  ‘I’ll give it a try,’ Frank said, showing John his plaster cast. He stood up and took hold of the handles of John’s wheelchair, leaning on them like they were the handles of a Zimmer frame. He pushed Smelly John’s wheelchair towards the exit of the lounge.

  ‘She must be enjoying this,’ John said as they passed a sleeping woman. Her make-up bag was open on her lap and it looked as though somebody had used the lipstick to draw on her face. Bored pensioners.

  ‘Why’s that?’ Frank said.

  Smelly John put the index finger of his left hand between his nose and top lip and with his right hand he did a Nazi salute. It wasn’t the best Adolf Hitler impression Frank had ever seen. Somewhere between Freddie Starr’s, Frank’s calendar poodle’s and Charlie Chaplin’s. Definitely not enough to get him his own Saturday night TV show.

  ‘What are you saying?’ Frank said.

  ‘She’s German,’ John whispered, so loudly that even the deafer Greyflick residents could hear. Frank pushed the wheelchair faster to get John away before he caused any more trouble. Before the door had fully closed behind them John shouted Yahtzee! Although it sounded very much like Nazi! At least he was finally entering into the spirit of the day.

  Frank pushed John along the sticky carpet of the poorly lit ground-floor corridor of Greyflick House, trying not to crash the wheelchair into the wall as his plastered arm wanted him to do. The wall on one side of the corridor was bare brick, more like an outside wall. With the sticky carpet and bad lighting it was more like the corridor of a neglected city-centre budget hotel than the ‘luxury retirement apartment complex’ the brochures in the reception area described Greyflick House as.

  They stopped in front of the lift at the end of the corridor, John pressed the button to call the lift, and the doors scraped and screeched almost completely open. Frank wheeled John inside. After a long and shaky ride they juddered to a stop on the first floor, and the doors opened just wide enough for them both to squeeze through.

  As he wheeled John along another sticky carpeted, poorly lit brick corridor, Frank thought that soon a lot more of the residents would be retired Sex Pistols fans like John. There’d be nobody left alive who remembered the war. Even less people would be singing along or mouthing the words to songs they’d never heard or had any connection to. Mods and rockers in their seventies and eighties would be chasing each other along the corridor on mobility scooters covered in headlights and wing mirrors.

  They stopped outside the door to John’s apartment – a word that always suggested to Frank that Audrey Hepburn might be inside smoking a long cigarette and drinking a Martini. John pushed the unlocked door open and Frank wheeled him inside.

  Even the most verbose estate agent would have his work cut out describing Smelly John’s ‘apartment’ for very long. A small, rectangular lounge with adjoining kitchen and bathroom and a bedroom that wasn’t big enough to swing Bill around in. Other than the front door and the toilet door there were no other doors. Each room was reached through a poorly carved arch. It was more sheltered caving than housing. Along the walls and by the side of the bath there were grab rails and hoists and various fixtures to help Smelly John get around and in and out of things. John’s apartment was like a showroom for one of the many home-mobility gadget catalogues that came through Frank’s letterbox every month.

  Through a small window Frank could see the top of a tree. There was a carrier bag full of dog shit hanging from one of the branches. It had been there as long as Frank had been coming here. Possibly before Greyflick House was built. Audrey Hepburn must have been downstairs in the lounge.

  As Frank wheeled him inside John reached down and picked up a padded envelope.

  ‘My medicine has arrived,’ John said. He started opening the envelope, releasing a sweet but sickly smell into the air. ‘Oh balls,’ he said. He felt the top of his head, ‘I’ve left my hat downstairs.’

  Frank offered to go back down and get it for him.

  ‘No need,’ John said. He wheeled himself into the centre of the room and pushed the red panic-alarm button on the wall causing the pager to vibrate in Graham the warden’s pocket downstairs in the lounge. ‘I might as well get my money’s worth.’

  The gang of grannies were still on the big Sainsbury’s charabanc for the return journey to Fullwind. Still giggling. Frank wondered whether they had even got off at the supermarket. Was there anything in their wheelie shopping baskets? Perhaps this was what they did all day. Riding the bus route to the big Sainsbury’s and back, laughing and woo-hooing every time a man got on, like an all-female cast of Cocoon.

  Frank got off the bus and went to the chemist. He bought some denture fixative powder and then went next door to the charity shop to get his walking stick back.

  ‘It’s got a price on it,’ the woman behind the counter said.

  ‘Yes, but I left it in here the other day.’

  The woman turned the stick over in her hand. She checked the price label again. ‘One pound fifty,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, but—’

  ‘That does seem ever so cheap,’ the woman said. ‘June?’ she called out. ‘This walking stick – one pound fifty, is that right?’

  Frank waited while the woman behind the counter and another unseen woman – presumably June – had a conversation about the pricing of his walking stick. A small queue formed behind him.

  ‘One pound fifty, then,’ the wom
an behind the counter said. ‘A bargain.’

  ‘But it’s my stick.’

  The woman looked at the stick.

  ‘It says property of West Sussex Healthcare Trust.’

  ‘I know, but—’

  ‘Is everything all right?’ June called out from behind the curtain.

  ‘Yes, thank you, June. Do you want the stick?’ the woman behind the counter said. ‘It is for charity.’

  Someone in the queue looked at their watch and tutted.

  Frank bought his own walking stick back. He handed the woman the money.

  ‘How much is that?’ he said. He pointed at the shelf behind the counter. The woman took down a shirt with a colourful flowery pattern as loud as heavy metal. The shirt was still in its original wrapper. It was a few sizes too large but allowing for the plaster on his arm it should be a snug fit on one side of his body at least. Frank bought it. He also bought a bottle of aftershave that smelled like wallpaper paste.

  10

  Frank got out of bed before the aeroplanes to remove all the pins and strips of cardboard and plastic from his new shirt. He hadn’t opened a new shirt for a long time. He’d forgotten what a simple thrill it was.

  Putting the shirt on was less of a joyride. It seemed like he’d only just finished freeing himself from the blue canvas jacket and now he was forcing his arm into another difficult sleeve. After he’d squeezed his plastered arm into the shirt he put his good arm into the other sleeve and discovered he’d left a pin in the shirt. It stabbed his arm and a spot of blood started to bloom and grow at the centre of one of the shirt’s many flowers.

  Frank fastened the buttons and looked in the bathroom mirror. One sleeve was loose-fitting while the other was skin-tight, as though it was made from two different shirts sewn together – a cut-and-shut shirt. He put on some of the second-hand aftershave, and, looking and smelling like wallpaper, took his place by the window.

  ‘Is that a new shirt?’ Kelly said when she arrived. She was carrying black bin bags and two pairs of rubber gloves.

  ‘This?’ Frank shrugged. ‘I’ve had it for years.’