The Extra Ordinary Life of Frank Derrick, Age 81

by J. B. Morrison

  From now on his most vivid memory of Dirty Dancing wouldn’t be Patrick Swayze lifting Jennifer Grey over his head like a canoe – he hadn’t even seen that scene – it would be Art Garfunkel at his living-room window.

  ‘Why are you cleaning my windows?’ Frank said.

  ‘They are fairly dirty.’

  ‘I do them myself.’ If he’d been sitting in a car at the traffic lights and the man had started washing his windscreen without invitation, at least he would have understood that there was a precedent for it. But not this.

  ‘I rang your bell,’ the window cleaner said. ‘I don’t think it works.’

  ‘It doesn’t.’

  A few days ago Frank had answered the door to a young man who smiled and lifted a laminate that was hanging on a chain around his neck. Other than now knowing the man’s name was Tony, the laminate was meaningless. When did a laminated piece of card become such a trusted form of security? Anyone could take a picture of themselves on their phone and stick it on a piece of card with their name above it. They could print it at home. A laminator machine didn’t cost much at all. They had one in the library.

  Tony had held his index finger up to suggest that Frank should wait and pay very close attention. Tony then pressed Frank’s doorbell.

  ‘Do you see?’ Tony had said.

  ‘What?’ Frank had said.

  Tony had pressed the doorbell again. He’d held it for longer this time. He screwed his face up and shook his head.

  ‘It doesn’t sound good, does it?’ Tony had said.

  And he’d tried to sell Frank a doorbell.

  When he’d got rid of Tony, Frank disconnected his doorbell. Nobody he actually wanted to see ever rang it anyway. Smelly John never left Greyflick House, the postman always knocked – both versions of that film were factually inaccurate – and Kelly had the combination to a safe that held her own key. Now he was going to have to put shutters on his windows and anti-climb paint up the walls. They just keep evolving, he thought. Finding a way.

  ‘It’s finished,’ the window cleaner said. Frank presumed he meant the window but the man pointed with a piece of dirty yellow chamois leather into the living room. Frank turned to see the closing credits of Dirty Dancing moving up his television screen. He looked through the open window at the ground below. At his age the fall should kill him but if he aimed for the bush it might cushion his fall just enough to break his legs or an arm. Enough for a few more home visits. If he angled his trajectory right he might be able to take Art Garfunkel with him.

  On the back of the Dirty Dancing DVD box it said: ‘Feature length: 96 minutes approx.’ It took Frank 197 minutes approx. to get to the end of it. He hadn’t enjoyed Dirty Dancing. But he decided he would tell Kelly that he had.

  26

  Frank brushed the cobwebs from the red tartan shopping basket. He shook a spider off onto the grass and took the basket upstairs where he wiped it with a wet cloth and filled it with anything in his flat that he thought he might be able to sell. He took some ornaments from the mantelpiece – owls and pigs and a small vase. He wrapped a dozen giraffes in newspaper and put them in the basket. He took two tiny silver spoons out of the kitchen drawer and put them in the basket too. He spent half an hour choosing some DVDs he could bear to lose from his collection. It was worse than getting rid of the videotapes. Just looking at the backs of the boxes of films he hadn’t watched more than once and probably would never have ever watched again made him want to stop what he was doing immediately and watch them now. He tried selecting ten DVDs at random, without looking at what they were, but he ended up taking them all out of the basket again, terrified that he was getting rid of his most favourite films.

  When the basket was full Frank bumped it down the stairs one at a time and pushed it to the bus stop. The wheel squeaked and he was glad when he reached the end of Sea Lane where the traffic was heavier and drowned out the squeak.

  When the bus came, the driver lowered the vehicle so that Frank could push the heavy basket onboard. He could feel the old women on the bus shaking their heads, wondering why he needed the bus lowering. He doesn’t appear to have a disability. The driver didn’t lower the bus for any of our shopping baskets. Perhaps his basket is full. Who takes a full shopping basket to the supermarket? Typical lazy man.

  Frank pushed his basket towards the back of the bus and the wheels caught against the wheels of one of the old ladies’ shopping baskets. It was the clash of the tartans. The green and blue tartan of the old lady’s basket against the red tartan of Frank’s – the same red tartan as the cover of his photo albums and also of the blanket in Bill’s cat basket. Frank didn’t know the clan, or if the tartan even belonged to a clan. It was probably just a checked pattern. Frank apologised and untangled the wheels. He sat down and looked out of the back window like a new poster for yet another Edvard Munch retrospective.

  The bus stopped at the hospital to let a passenger on and Frank took the opportunity to get off. The driver was annoyed with him for leaving the bus before the supermarket and didn’t lower the vehicle to let him off. Frank bumped the basket down onto the pavement and thanked the driver anyway.

  He wheeled the basket around the outside of the hospital and through the industrial estate until he was on the shitty High Street. He passed the kebab and chicken shops, wading knee-deep through poultry body parts and discarded kebab salad. There was a new display in the window of the sex shop. The three mannequins had been joined by a fourth. It was dressed in head-to-toe black rubber. Round its waist there was some sort of false solid plastic penis. Frank felt so old.

  The pawnbroker’s looked closed. The neon CASH 4 STUFF sign was switched off. Frank looked through the filthy window. There was no obvious sign of life inside, other than two flashing signs, one that said CHEQUES and another saying CASHED. Frank wished he’d brought his chequebook with him. If someone would just cash a cheque for him it would make everything a lot simpler. It would bounce, of course.

  He tried the shop door, it opened with a loud buzzing noise that didn’t stop until he’d dragged his heavy shopping basket inside and shut the door. Once the buzzer had stopped it was very quiet in the shop and the squeaking wheel of Frank’s basket sounded incredibly loud as he wheeled it towards the counter.

  On every wall there were glass cabinets and shelves containing stereos and DVD players, video-game consoles, computers and electric guitars. There were three drum sets for sale. Typical. You wait ages for a drum set and just when you haven’t got any money three turn up at once. Frank walked to the counter. He wondered how much CASH he was going to get for his STUFF. If he got enough, he’d buy one of the drum sets with the leftover money.

  The woman behind the counter stopped reading her magazine.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Hello. I’ve got some things to sell.’

  ‘What have you got?’

  Frank started taking things out of the shopping basket and putting them on the counter.

  ‘No,’ the woman said. Frank put the vase on the counter. ‘No,’ she said. ‘No.’ She said it over and over again. Nothing more elaborate than that. Just no. For every object Frank produced from the basket, just ‘No.’ Frank took out a newspaper parcel and started unwrapping it on the counter. When she saw the first ornamental giraffe the woman was about to say no but seeing there were more giraffes – a collection even – she paused. ‘No,’ she said after the twelfth giraffe. Frank realised that other than the life-size leopard in the corner his were the only china animals in the shop. He’d come to the wrong shop.

  The woman showed a bit more interest in Frank’s wristwatch. She held the watch in her hand to feel its weight and looked at the second hand turning for a while. She didn’t say yes, but she put the watch to one side on the counter. She did the same with a small silver – in colour at least – box and also one of the tiny spoons. Frank decided this must be the ‘maybe’ pile. It now consisted of five items. The ‘no’ pile was everything else.

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bsp; ‘I’ll tell you what,’ the woman said. ‘Twenty.’

  ‘Twenty?’

  ‘The whole lot. Stop now. Twenty pounds. Twenty-five. Save you taking everything out of your mum’s shopping basket, putting it on the counter and then putting it all back in the basket and wheeling it home again.’

  Twenty-five pounds. Frank pictured Kelly leaving for the last time, while he didn’t accompany her on the drums. He wanted to walk out of the shop and under a bus. But it wasn’t due back from the big Sainsbury’s for another half an hour yet.

  ‘I’ve got a few DVDs,’ he said. He started taking the DVDs out of the basket. The woman screwed her nose up and breathed impatiently.

  ‘It’s all downloading these days,’ she said.

  Frank made five small piles of DVDs on the counter.

  ‘Streaming online. Nobody wants DVDs any more. I could take them away from you for ten pounds, I suppose.’

  ‘Each?’

  ‘Altogether. Save you lugging them home again.’

  Frank looked at his DVDs. He really wanted to watch all of these films now. He hadn’t realised until they were laid out on the counter how much he wanted to see all of these films right now. These films were his favourite films of all time.

  ‘Some of these are classics,’ he said.

  ‘Yes. But as I said, it’s all downloads these days. Tomorrow it will be something else. Film channels in your glasses or something. Video implants in your brain. These aren’t even retro. Retro I might be interested in. These are just old. Out of date. Come back in fifty years and they might be worth something. Twenty pounds. Plus twenty-five for the other stuff. To save you carting it all back home again. Forty-five pounds. Do you have ID?’

  ‘ID?’

  ‘I have to see ID. In case all this stuff is stolen. A utility bill and something with a photo on,’ and then she added, ‘your photo,’ because he was old and therefore an idiot. She pointed at a sign on the wall that explained it all. ‘It’s the law. A driving licence or a passport.’

  I’m eighty-one, Frank thought. Why would I have a driving licence or a passport?

  ‘I’ve got my bus pass.’ He took his pensioner’s bus pass out of his pocket. The bus to the big Sainsbury’s was free. This would be the first time he’d actually used his pass.

  ‘Is that you?’ the woman said, looking at his photograph.

  Frank looked at his photo on the bus pass as though he wasn’t sure himself.

  ‘Yes. I was younger.’

  The woman’s face said, no, you weren’t. You were old then. Now you’re just older.

  ‘And a utility bill,’ she said.

  ‘I could go and get something,’ Frank said. He could clearly picture at least two utility bills at home, unopened and unpaid in red-coloured envelopes, somewhere in the pile of newspapers by his armchair in the living room.

  ‘I’ll tell you what,’ the woman said. ‘Call it forty pounds. For the DVDs and the watch and the spoons and so on and I’ll ignore the lack of utility bill.’

  Frank knew he was being ripped off, but he was used to it and, following some token haggling, and after giving the woman a short lecture on the historical importance of his film collection, he left the shop with £25 and a metal detector.

  The man in Fullwind Food & Wine was right.

  You have to speculate to accumulate.

  On the long walk to Greyflick House, Frank tried to avoid the housing estate by taking an earlier turning off the High Street but just found himself on either a different housing estate or another part of the same one. If anything it was more terrifying here. A small group of men were gathered around a dead tree. There was a pit bull dog hanging by its teeth from a branch and the men were encouraging another dog to jump up to bite the dog hanging from the tree. They threw stones at the dogs and laughed. Frank imagined both dogs would be very lucky if they ended up in a warehouse behind Sainsbury’s or on a calendar on his living-room wall. He tried to walk by without attracting their attention.

  Whenever people complained that things were so much better in the old days and that crime and poverty were so much worse now, Frank would always disagree. Things were just as bad in the past, he’d say. Hadn’t people read Charles Dickens? (Frank hadn’t read Charles Dickens but he had seen a lot of cinema adaptations.) But walking through this estate, he changed his mind. It was worse now than it had ever been. Being torpedoed on a Dutch liner in 1940 would be a picnic compared to growing up as a child here.

  Walking through the estate quickly and quietly wasn’t easy with a red tartan shopping basket with a metal detector sticking out of it and with the basket’s wheel squeaking like a siren. The £25 in his inside jacket pocket felt like a flashing beacon. He put his hand over the pocket. It was the same pocket where he carried his imaginary gun.

  Frank signed the visitor’s book at Greyflick House and took the lift up to the first floor. The lift doors reluctantly scraped open and Frank stepped out. There was a strong smell in the corridor of whatever drugs John smoked. Frank knocked on John’s door.

  ‘Come in.’ John’s words came out as a deep exhale. As though he’d been holding his breath with those two words, waiting for somebody to knock on the door so that he could release them.

  Frank slowly opened the door. He was half expecting to find John flat out beneath silk sheets on a bed full of prostitutes while an ancient Chinaman prepared his next hit of opium. Instead, John was sitting on a metal-framed armchair watching daytime television. He was smoking a spliff, though. Frank had never been in a room with anyone taking drugs before. He sat down on the only other seat in the room, which was John’s wheelchair. On the television distant relatives of people who had died without leaving a will were tracked down so that they could be given an unexpected inheritance. John offered the spliff to Frank.

  ‘Oh, no thanks. Thank you, John. I think I’m probably a bit too old to start that.’

  A woman on TV was struggling with the mixed emotions of finding out her second cousin had died and being five grand richer.

  ‘Have you been shopping?’ John said. He gestured towards the shopping basket.

  ‘The opposite. I was trying to sell a few things.’ Frank looked at the television. He wished that one of his cousins was still alive so that they could die and make him five grand richer. ‘Go on, then,’ he said.

  ‘Go on what?’

  ‘The thing.’ He pointed at John’s hand.

  John held the joint up. ‘This?’

  Frank nodded.

  John passed the spliff to Frank.

  ‘What do I do?’

  ‘Have you ever smoked?’

  ‘Only cigarettes.’

  ‘Pretend it’s a cigarette.’

  Frank took a tentative drag on the joint.

  ‘Hold it in,’ John said.

  Frank took another drag. This time he inhaled deeply. If he’d been standing up he would have fallen over. He waited for the dizziness to pass. He felt hot and pulled at his shirt collar to loosen it.

  ‘Why are you selling things?’ John said.

  ‘I need money. I sold some of my films. I think I’ve made a big mistake. Do you ever feel lonely, John?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Frank was surprised by the speed at which John had answered the question. He hadn’t needed to think about it for a second. John must have been waiting a long time for someone to ask him. Frank gave the spliff back to John. He wondered whether he was now a drug addict.

  ‘You haven’t got any spare money, have you?’ Frank said.

  John answered with a loud short laugh.

  ‘I haven’t got a pot to piss in.’

  ‘You should have said. I’ve just sold one.’

  Smelly John suggested all the ways he thought Frank might get rich quick and Frank rejected and dismissed them in the same monosyllabic way the woman had rejected his giraffes and owls in CASH 4 STUFF.

  ‘Nude modelling?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Rent boy?’
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  ‘No.’

  ‘You could sell some organs.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do they still buy sperm?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘I don’t know. The blood people.’

  ‘I think they buy blood.’

  ‘The sperm people, then. The bank. The sperm bank.’

  ‘I think mine might be past its sell-by date.’

  Both men shuddered at the thought.

  John pulled himself up from his chair and made his way via a series of handrails along the wall to a cupboard. He opened the cupboard and started looking through a cardboard box of letters and envelopes. He found a postcard and gave it to Frank. Frank looked at the postcard of John as a young punk – Smelly John – sneering for the camera next to a policeman and a red telephone box.

  ‘You could spike your long hair up, Francis and pose for the tourists. England’s oldest punk rocker.’

  ‘I think that’s your title.’

  On the postcard John’s hair was green and in foot-high spikes. He was wearing a silver-studded leather jacket and there was a drinks can ring-pull hanging from his earlobe. Frank looked at the postcard and at John now, comparing the two men. The earring and spiky hair were gone, John’s head was now almost as bald as Frank’s dad’s and he wasn’t wearing a studded leather jacket with ‘piss off’ painted on the back. But he could tell it was the same man. Frank realised he was comparing the colour of John’s skin on the postcard to John now. Allowing for ageing and the fading postcard ink there was little change. About two squares on an extensive household paint chart. He stopped short of holding the postcard up to John’s face.

  As he made his way back to his armchair, John saw the metal detector sticking out of Frank’s shopping basket.

  ‘Get up,’ he said. He clicked his fingers to signify urgency. Frank stood up from the wheelchair and John took his place.