The Extra Ordinary Life of Frank Derrick, Age 81

by J. B. Morrison

  They walked back up the hill of stones, climbed the three steps over the low wall and walked along the path. They passed the colourfully painted and ludicrously priced beach huts and a lot of people walking their dogs. Frank joked about how strange it was that they all seemed to be carrying the same tiny bags of shopping.

  The café was busy with bank holidaymakers and they joined the queue at the counter. While they waited to be served Kelly turned a carousel display of postcards depicting Fullwind-on-Sea from the past and present. Not much had changed. Next to the postcards there was a rack of flip-flops, straw hats and plastic sunglasses.

  A couple sitting by a table near the café window stood up and left.

  ‘Quick,’ Kelly whispered, ‘save that table.’ Frank walked over to the table. ‘What would you like?’ Kelly asked.

  ‘Just a cup of tea please.’

  ‘No ice cream?’

  ‘No thank you.’

  ‘A lolly? Crisps? Cream bun? It is a holiday. You can show me the right way to eat it.’

  ‘Just tea. Thank you, Kelly.’ It was the first time he’d said her name out loud. Kelly. It felt uncomfortable. Inappropriate. As though he was a teacher and Kelly was his pupil.

  ‘He’s a teacher and she’s his pupil,’ Frank imagined a woman on the other side of the café had just whispered to her friend. ‘She called him Mr Derrick earlier. I heard the young girl say that he’d taught her something.’ Frank felt people were staring at him and Kelly as soon as they’d come in the door. Trying to work out what their relationship was. Grandfather and granddaughter? Father and daughter? He was old enough and she was more than young enough for both to be true. They couldn’t be a couple, the café Jimmy Stewarts probably thought. Unless he was rich, of course. He could be her sugar daddy.

  Frank didn’t have enough sugar to buy a beach hut.

  He barely had enough to pay for the cup of tea.

  Frank often felt the adverts in between daytime television shows were aimed directly at him. His television was talking to him. Always asking if he had money problems and whether he needed cash in a hurry.

  If Kelly was a gold digger she was in for a shock. She was going to need a big spade.

  Money had been on Frank’s mind from the minute they’d walked into the café and he’d seen the tourist prices on the blackboard behind the counter. He was also worried about what this extended bank holiday care visit would cost. Double time? Time and a half? They’d been out for nearly an hour already. Plus petrol. He should at least pay something towards the petrol. And for lunch. Should he tip her?

  Kelly came over and put a cup of tea on the table in front of him, just like on a normal Monday.

  ‘I bought you a Twix,’ she said. She put the chocolate biscuit next to the tea. Frank thought about his rickety dentures. He wondered whether they could survive a Twix. A Kit Kat, yes, a Club biscuit or a Penguin, sure, but a Twix? All that chewy caramel to get through. He feared he would take a bite and pull the chocolate bar away from his mouth bringing his teeth with it. Next week he would let a wooden house fall on top of him.

  Frank thanked Kelly and hoped that she would either forget the Twix was there or the sun would soften the caramel so that he could suck his way through it.

  He remembered how he used to melt Mars bars in front of the fire for his daughter. It was the one great field of knowledge and set of skills he felt he might have passed on to his daughter – how to eat a chocolate bar, or a candy bar, as she probably called them now.

  Frank had shown Beth how to nibble away the biscuit part of a Jaffa cake, before peeling off the chocolate top layer until just the thin orange jelly circle was left to be dissolved on the tongue. He taught his daughter how she should first bite the sides off a Mars bar, then peel away the top layer of chocolate and caramel to leave just the soft nougat to either eat or roll into a ball and then eat. Eating a Twix involved much the same principle as a Mars bar – nibble away the chocolate sides, peel away the caramel and chocolate top layer, then eat the biscuit. All pretty much impossible without a decent set of teeth. Ice cream and the self-proclaimed ‘crumbliest, flakiest chocolate’ were the only fields of his confectionery expertise left now.

  ‘How much do I owe you?’ he said. He meant for the tea and the chocolate, although perhaps Kelly would take out a laptop and give him a run-down of the full day’s costs and expenses before presenting him with an invoice.

  ‘My treat,’ she said.

  ‘Thank you. I really hope I haven’t ruined your bank holiday.’

  ‘I wasn’t doing anything special. Sean’s working anyway.’

  ‘Sean?’

  ‘My boyfriend.’

  ‘Have you been together long?’

  ‘Long enough. We’re trying for a baby.’

  Don’t try too hard, Frank thought and immediately felt bad about it.

  Frank sat and watched Kelly looking into her coffee cup as she slowly stirred sugar into it, possibly thinking about Sean and their future son or daughter. Sean was a lucky man, Frank thought. Kelly was very pretty. Her teeth had a slight overbite and she had wide eyes which Frank thought would have been more pronounced when she was younger. She was probably picked on at school and called goofy and bug-eyed up until she grew into her face. Now she was pretty and could laugh in all the ugly stupid bullies’ faces.

  He had the urge to reach across the table and tweak her nose, pretending to pull it off like he used to do with Beth. Putting his thumb between his index and middle fingers, saying, ‘I’ve got your nose.’

  Kelly snapped out of her trance. She looked up from the cup.

  ‘I almost forgot,’ she said. She leaned across the table. Her face was close enough for Frank to see the colour of her eyes, which were green. Although if you’d asked him two seconds later what colour they were, he couldn’t have told you. There was no doubt something in Ron’s leaflet about that. Her face was really very close to Frank’s now. As close as when she’d brushed his hair or scratched his itchy arm. But different.

  Oh Jesus Christ, Frank thought.

  She reached her hand across and gently took Frank’s glasses off, taking care to not pull them apart again.

  Jesus Christ almighty.

  He really hadn’t been expecting this. Nope, definitely had not expected this. This was his heart-attack moment. Here it comes. Stroke. Heart attack. Charge up the defibrillator. Call an ambulance. F.A.C.E. Jesus H. Jehovah, he thought. She’s going to kiss me.

  And Kelly replaced Frank’s glasses with a pair of red plastic sunglasses she’d just bought and sat back in her chair and drank her coffee.

  On the walk back to the car Frank wondered if he’d taken a deep breath when he’d thought Kelly was going to kiss him. Had he puckered up, like Les Dawson – his dentures moving around inside his mouth as though he’d wound them up before putting them in? Did he close his eyes?

  She hadn’t said anything after she’d put the plastic sunglasses on him and didn’t seem to act any differently towards him afterwards. She didn’t appear scared or disgusted by him. She didn’t call the police, or send the Old Bat signal up into the sky to call for Janice. She didn’t fall off her chair laughing. She just drank her coffee, ate an apple doughnut and talked about babies and about Sean, who Frank was already developing a dislike for. She asked Frank about Sheila and about Beth and somehow got onto the subject of the war. It must have been awful to live through, she thought. The bombs, the air-raid shelters, the rationed food, but Frank shrugged it off as though it wasn’t a big deal at all. He told her that he’d been a young boy and his memory of the war was that it was all a big adventure.

  When they drove back along Sea Lane Frank put his head out the window again, letting the wind blow in his face as he watched the house prices drop, until Kelly bumped the car up onto the grass verge opposite the cheapest building on the street – the only house on Sea Lane without a name.

  Frank climbed out of the car and said goodbye. He wasn’t sure what to do nex
t. What was the correct way to end their day out at the seaside? Had it been business or pleasure for Kelly? He was unsure whether he should let her sit in the car watching him until he safely had the key in the door because he was still her patient. Or should he stand in the street like a gentleman, waving until she’d driven away?

  He stood outside his flat next to the fallen bollard, which he suddenly felt he was strong enough to pick up, and watched by his neighbours, some of whom hadn’t left their windows in the past two hours, letting their lunches go cold and desperate to go to the toilet, but not wanting to miss the little blue car’s return. They watched Frank waving to Kelly from behind their curtains and from between the slats of their Venetian blinds. He didn’t stop waving until she had driven out of sight. Which didn’t take all that long as the red plastic sunglasses he was still wearing didn’t have prescription lenses.

  19

  Kelly Christmas made Frank feel like getting out of bed in the morning. She was like a replacement hip. His half an Aspirin a day. She was his stair lift and his Zimmer frame, Kelly was his grab rail and his large-button telephone. She was his bath hoist. She was his easy-to-grip scissors, his one-touch battery-operated jar opener and his long-handled shoehorn. Kelly was all the vitamin supplements he needed.

  On the morning after their trip to the beach, once Frank had come to terms with the fact that as a result of the trip Kelly wouldn’t be coming again today as planned on all his calendars, he went to the charity shop and bought a scooter. Not a mobility scooter, with a comfy leather seat, a battery and a shopping basket on the front. Frank’s scooter was a child’s micro scooter. It had pink tassels hanging from the handlebars and the word POW! in graffiti-style lettering across its metallic silver deck. At speeds over one mile an hour the tiny wheels lit up.

  Frank’s foot was almost completely better and in two days’ time, when the plaster cast was off, he was going to ride the scooter around Fullwind like he was Marlon Brando.

  ‘Hey, Frankie, what are you rebelling against?’ people outside the library would ask.

  ‘Whaddayagot?’ Frank would reply before pulling a wheelie and scooting off to the shops in a blaze of tiny flickering lights to buy tinned spaghetti.

  On Thursday morning, Frank took a taxi to the hospital and sat in an incredibly hot waiting room until somebody came out and called his name.

  He was led into a small box-shaped room where a male nurse explained the cast-removal procedure.

  ‘Now, Francis. The saw is going to be quite loud. A bit like a vacuum cleaner.’ The nurse looked familiar to Frank. It was probably the green scrubs he was wearing, which Frank had seen so many actors wear on TV. ‘The blade cannot hurt you,’ the nurse said and demonstrated this with his party trick of rolling up his sleeve and letting the saw blade touch his arm without cutting it off. ‘You see. Perfectly harmless.’

  The nurse gave Frank a pair of ear-defender headphones to wear. They were pink with pictures of rabbits on and clearly intended only for patients on the children’s ward. Frank put the headphones on. The nurse started up the saw and said, ‘—’.

  ‘Pardon?’ Frank said.

  The nurse stopped the saw and lifted one side of the headphones.

  ‘This may tickle.’

  After he’d cut through and removed the cast he asked Frank if he’d like to take it home with him as a souvenir.

  ‘You can look back at it in the future and remember how your bones got better and look at all the names of your friends who signed it.’

  Frank said no thank you, because a) he wasn’t five years old and b) nobody had signed it.

  ‘It feels like a great weight has been lifted, doesn’t it?’ the nurse said. ‘After carrying that cast around with you for so long. You probably feel as though your arm may float up to the ceiling as though it’s filled with helium.’

  And then Frank remembered where he’d seen the nurse before.

  ‘Isn’t it such a joyful feeling to be free of the plaster cast, Francis?’ He hadn’t seen him on TV. ‘It is always a wonderful feeling to be freed from those things that hold us back or weigh us down, Francis.’ It was the tone of voice that was so familiar, not the hospital clothing. ‘In that same way we love that feeling when we take our shoes off at the end of a long day. Why do you think our spirits seem naturally to long for freedom, Francis?’ The nurse was one of the two smiling men in suits, who had stood on his doorstep for such a long time. ‘Is the story of Christ being raised from the dead not the ultimate story of freedom, Francis? Some people’s lives are wrapped in a cast. A cast of addiction or crime or abuse that stops their spirits from being truly free. We can find freedom in Christ, Francis.’

  It was about a mile and a half to Greyflick House from the hospital and after his cast was removed Frank went to see Smelly John. He hadn’t walked that far for years and a mile and a half sounded like a very long way. He should have dressed up in a Womble costume and collected sponsor money.

  He walked around the outside of the hospital building, through an empty car park and some waste ground to an industrial estate and then on to a long straight road with shops on both sides. At the beginning of the road, halfway up the brick wall between a kebab shop and a flat with fire-blackened windows, there was a sign that said ‘High Street’. Frank was relieved he hadn’t walked on to Low Street.

  The majority of the shops on High Street were either closed, closed down, or it was impossible to tell one way or another. Perhaps it was too early for chicken and chips. There were a lot of chicken shops and the pavement and the gutter were littered with chicken bits, French fries and greasy empty boxes. The first twenty minutes of Saving Private Ryan filmed with poultry.

  Frank walked past a shop with three mannequins dressed in crotchless pants, peephole bras and silk nighties in the window. One of the mannequins had a leg missing and another had a face like the shell of a dropped boiled egg. They were posed awkwardly on a newspaper-covered floor surrounded by what Frank presumed were sex toys. It was the least sexy thing he had ever seen.

  There was a pawnbroker, with a neon sign in the window that said CASH 4 STUFF. The second F was broken. Through the metal security grille and the dirt on the window Frank could see computers, watches, cameras and electric guitars. He walked past another chicken shop and a disco, a boarded-up pub that was actually open with three men in their sixties or seventies smoking outside. Another chicken shop, a charity shop that made the one in Fullwind look like Harrods and a tattoo parlour called Fat Pat’s Tats. He stopped, turned back and walked inside.

  It was the first tattoo parlour he’d ever been into. He’d seen them on television cop shows and in films. And they looked pretty much like this. Loud music was playing quietly. The music sounded exactly like Frank would have expected tattooing music would sound like. He couldn’t understand the words, and not because he was old and boring but because the singer was mumbling, probably embarrassed by the lyrics. The tattoo parlour’s edgy and dangerous look was spoiled by two hygienic hand-rub dispensers by the door. There was more chance of Frank catching something nasty in the hospital than in Fat Pat’s Tats, where the hand-rub dispensers were both full. The one outside the box-shaped room where his cast had been removed was empty and dispensed nothing more than a smoker’s wheeze when he tried to pump something out of it.

  Frank squeezed some of Fat Pat’s Tats hand gel onto his hands and rubbed them together. A large man, whom he presumed was Fat Pat, was tattooing the Bayeux Tapestry onto someone’s back. Frank stood at the front of the shop and looked at the pictures on the wall. The tattoo menu.

  Perhaps a small butterfly on his ankle or a rose on his buttock to start with. One of those Disney characters up there, or Marilyn Monroe maybe. Popeye the Sailor man or a skull and crossbones with a dagger through its centre. Hmmm. A flaming Satan on his neck, Mum and Dad, Beth, a simple LOVE and HATE across his knuckles, something mythical or mystical, some Japanese lettering or a spider’s web across his face, his Sioux name betw
een his shoulder blades, a mermaid. He could have something classic tattooed on his right arm. Kelly would notice it and ask him about it. ‘Oh that?’ he’d say. ‘I’ve had it for years.’ Pretending it had been there all along, hidden under the plaster cast like an unwrapped present – a wolf or a tiger whose back Kelly had unknowingly been scratching every week with a knitting needle. Perhaps he should push the tattoo boat out and get his whole upper body done, so it looked like he was wearing one of his charity shop shirts.

  People often say that tattoos are a bad idea because you’ll regret them when you’re old. But Frank was already old. Eighty-one was the optimum time to get a tattoo.

  ‘Hello, there.’ Frank hadn’t noticed that the sound of the tattoo needle or pen or whatever it was called had stopped whirring. ‘Can I help?’ Fat Pat said. Pat had a lot of tattoos. He was almost completely full. Frank wondered whether Fat Pat’s tats were all his own work. Or did he get his wife to do his back? And was Fat Pat his punk name or his Sioux name – presuming his name was actually Pat – it did suit him perfectly.

  ‘Something small, I was thinking,’ Frank said. ‘Subtle. On my arm.’ He raised his arm slightly in case Pat didn’t know what an arm was.

  ‘What sort of thing?’ Fat Pat said. He turned a metal ring in his earlobe. It was one of many shiny metal studs and chains that decorated his face.

  Frank looked at the art on the walls again.

  ‘Um. I hadn’t really thought about it. I was just passing by. It was an impulse to come in.’

  This wasn’t true. In his pocket Frank had a hand-drawn map with directions from the hospital to the High Street. Fat Pat’s Tats was marked on the map with a cross. On the other side of the map were crude pictures Frank had drawn of flowers and animals and the names Bogart, Stewart and Beth.

  ‘Let me take a look at the canvas,’ Pat said.