Frank had to pull the shopping basket with some force to free it from the ivy that, in just a few days, had already begun to reclaim the contents of his garden shed.
He oiled the wheel of the basket. The squeak was at least quieter now, although at this time of the morning it sounded like thunder on helium. He pushed the basket slowly. It didn’t reduce the volume of the wheel’s noise but at least the squeaks were less frequent. He tried to keep to the grass verges that ran along both sides of the road to further muffle the squeak but every now and then the verge would end and he’d push the basket out into the road and the volume would rise. He would tense his jaw and try to use the flow of blood to block his ears, as if not being able to hear the wheel would somehow make his progress quieter for everyone else.
He was dressed in his darkest clothing and his softest shoes. He’d considered putting boot polish on his face but remembered how Smelly John had teased him about wearing clean underwear in case he was ever run over. He decided that being run over and taken to hospital with boot polish on his face would be seen as worse than wearing dirty pants. Particularly by Smelly John.
Not that he was likely to be run over at three o’clock in the morning on Sea Lane. There was no traffic. There was no street lighting either. When the security light outside his front door switched itself off, Frank was plunged into darkness. The sky was as black as a children’s crayon picture of sky. Black paper with the stars stuck on. He switched on the red torch that would have been Sheila’s usherette light. Nothing happened. He shook the torch and a dim yellow beamless light reluctantly came on. Frank thought he could smell popcorn.
About ten yards along the road he stopped to get his bearings. He shone the torch on the gate in front of him – ‘3 Chimneys,’ the sign on the gate said. He tried to remember whether the bungalow actually had three chimneys. Why would a bungalow need so many chimneys? He didn’t want to point the torch at the bungalow’s roof to find out in case he woke somebody in the bedroom below.
There was a sudden noise close by. Frank froze. He switched off the torch. The noise stopped. He held his breath. He heard the noise again. It was coming from a bit further along the road. A rustling sound. He slowly moved the switch along the torch back to the on position. The dull light came on and the rustling stopped again. Frank froze again. There was a whistle up his nostril. If he sniffed to clear it, he might wake up the whole of Fullwind. The rustling began again. Frank slowly raised his arm and aimed the torch in its direction.
A fox stared back at Frank. It was a look Frank had seen before. The same blank stare of judgement and disappointment that was on Bill’s face as he went through the swing doors at the dogs and cats home. The same look the actors on the front of the DVD boxes had given him when he’d placed them on the counter of CASH 4 STUFF.
‘It’s not stealing,’ Frank wanted to say to the fox. ‘Taking things from plastic charity bags left outside people’s houses is not stealing. The charity name printed on the bags is probably fake, anyway. There is no such charity. Everybody knows the charity bags are a scam. Everybody. And even if, on this one particular occasion, the charity turns out to be genuine, any bags that haven’t been used as rubbish bags – like the one you’re scavenging your dinner from now – will have to be collected in a few hours’ time by a man in a van. He’s going to have to drive them to a warehouse where the contents of the bags will be sorted into piles. Clothing and shoes, linen and textiles, curtains, bedding, DVDs and CDs, books, toys, jewellery, watches, gold and silver, etc.
‘Everything will then have to be sorted again. This time by quality and resaleable value. The wheat will be sorted from the chaff. The DVDs from the video cassettes. Some of it will be recycled or sent straight to landfill. Everything else will be loaded back into vans and taken to charity shops. Old ladies are going to have to spend hours on the Internet and looking in mail order catalogues to decide what the items would cost if they were new. Based on that information, they’ll write out price labels and stick them on everything and then wait for people to come into the shops and buy the items. After the cost of the manufacture and printing of the bags, the van driver’s wages and fuel, the sticky labels and various other expenses are all taken away, any proceeds left will be used to help the charity’s intended beneficiaries. In this case, the elderly. Me.’
So there, Basil Brush. Frank was merely cutting out the middleman. At the very worst it was like filling in lottery numbers with one of the charity pens that had come through his door, or drinking Nescafé from his Fairtrade mug.
The fox shook his head, sighed, tutted, turned and trotted off down the road with a chicken bone in his mouth. Frank watched him disappear almost immediately into the darkness in search of more scraps of food – some chips to go with the chicken, or some dessert, maybe an espresso, or just a place where he could eat in peace without old men, who should be in bed, shining cinema torches in his face.
Frank had seen a lot of films where, following a great crime caper, the hero or heroine throws hundreds of dollar bills or pound notes up into the air and then lets them rain down again like confetti. If Frank had thrown the spoils of his charity bag robbery up in the air, when it came back down again, the large bottle of perfume would have hurt. And the carriage clock would have killed him.
Police investigating his unexplained death would have said, ‘At least we know the exact time of death was three thirty-five a.m. And just what is that delightful smell?’
Frank laid out his spoils on the living-room carpet. The people of Fullwind were clearly suffering from compassion fatigue. There were better things in his shed. He looked at the broken carriage clock and wondered what the actual time was. He wondered what the time was in Los Angeles. This could be the ideal time to ring Beth.
He took his address book out of the desk drawer and dialled her number.
‘Hello?’
‘Beth? How are you?’
‘What time is it?’
Their conversations always seemed to begin like this, establishing the time.
‘Oh, I don’t know. Quite late,’ Frank said. ‘Or quite early. It depends, I suppose.’
Beth sensed something wasn’t right in Frank’s voice.
‘Is everything okay, Dad?’
‘Oh, yes. Everything is fine. How is everyone? Laura and Jimmy?’
‘They’re both fine, Dad.’
It seemed so quiet in his living room at this time of day, his lone voice like the squeaking wheel of the shopping basket on the deserted road outside, and he felt like he was shouting into the phone. He picked up the remote control and switched the television on to filter out the silence. The Antiques Roadshow was just finishing. The volume was incredibly loud at this time of night.
‘Oh no!’ Beth said. ‘That music!’ she laughed. ‘Is that show still on? I feel like I’ve got school in the morning now.’ Frank laughed and muted the TV, blindfolded US Marine-style.
‘It was always Last of the Summer Wine for me,’ Frank said. ‘As soon as I heard the music all I could think of was another new week at work.’
‘At least you don’t have to worry about that any more.’
‘The joys of retirement.’
‘What have you been doing? Anything fun?’
‘Oh, this and that. I went to the supermarket.’
‘Ooh,’ Beth said, immediately regretting her mock-sarcasm.
‘Not the normal one,’ Frank said. ‘The big one. Two floors. It would probably seem tiny to you over there. Like a corner shop.’
‘I think we’re pretty even supermarket size wise these days.’
‘I went to the beach too.’
‘Swimming?’
‘No. Not this time. I haven’t been there for years.’
‘Has it changed?’
‘Not much. Still the same sand and stones and a big expanse of salty water. The café has been painted. You wouldn’t believe the price of the beach huts.’
‘I’m glad to hear you’re taking
your retirement seriously at last. You watch way too much TV. You need to get out more. Do you remember when we used to fly kites on the beach?’
‘Of course. I’ve still got the scar.’ Frank looked at his hand. He turned his fingers over. He did the same with the other hand. He couldn’t find the scar from the time Beth had let go of the kite and Frank had tried to catch it and had cut his finger on the string.
‘I wonder if the kite ever came back down,’ Beth said.
‘I expect it’s still up there. Somewhere. Do you still swim?’
‘Not much, to be honest. I did when I was teaching Laura. She swims like a fish now. Like Mum. The way she used to swim out to sea for miles. I never liked it. When I asked you where Mum was going, you’d say France. You’d say she was going to buy French bread and I’d ask how she’d keep it dry. I can’t remember what you said.’
‘She holds it above her head.’
If it hadn’t been for the window cleaner preventing him from seeing that part of Dirty Dancing, an image of Patrick swayze holding Jennifer Grey above his head like a baguette would have flashed through Frank’s mind.
‘What are you up to today?’ Beth said.
‘The usual.’
‘In a minute, darling,’ Beth called out to somebody. ‘I better go, Dad. I’ll ring soon.’
‘Say hello to Laura from me. And Jimmy.’
‘Sure. Love you.’
Frank put the phone down. A second episode of The Antiques Roadshow was on. A man was looking at the expert, open-mouthed. And then he probably said, ‘as much as that? And then lied to the expert that he would never sell it because it had been in the family for years.
Frank looked on the carpet at the things he’d stolen from his neighbours’ charity bags. It wasn’t impressive. He should have walked the other way along Sea Lane, towards the sea and the bigger houses.
He put a DVD on and fell asleep in his armchair. When he woke he went to the shops. He stole a small plate and a ring from the charity shop and tried the lock on the cabinet at the centre of the shop that contained the supposedly valuable oriental vase. He went next door to Fullwind Food & Wine and when the man behind the counter’s reflection in the big round security mirror was looking the other way, he put two batteries and a bag of sweets in his pocket and left the shop.
Frank filled the rest of the day with another garden sweep for treasure, finding five pence and a drawing pin. When it was dark and Sea Lane was free of traffic, he put new batteries in the usherette torch, put it in the pocket of his anorak and set off again with his shopping basket. This time he walked in the opposite direction along Sea Lane, towards El Dorado and Xanadu.
When his basket was full he continued walking until he was at the beach. He was so tired now he was practically sleepwalking. He sat down on a bench. The tide was almost completely out. The edge of the water was further away than when he’d been here with Kelly. He sat and watched the sunrise over the horizon. He looked for Beth’s kite. He checked his hands again for string cuts. He was hungry. He fancied an ice cream. Some bacon and eggs. The beach café wouldn’t be open for another three hours yet.
He had the urge to cry but couldn’t. He felt as though he should be crying. He tried to force himself by thinking of the sadder times in his life. He pictured Sheila in her hospital bed, not knowing who he was any more but still convinced he was trying to murder her. He thought about the two or three times the hospital had miraculously saved her life but how she always left the hospital slightly less well than when she’d been taken in. He looked at the sea and remembered Sheila swimming out of sight. He thought of dangling Beth’s feet into the water for the very first time and how she’d struggled, trying to wriggle her legs back up, as though she could fold them back inside her body like the ladder of his kitchen stool. And, soon after that, how they could never get her to come out of the water because she loved it so much. He thought of the cowboys sitting round a campfire farting. He thought about Debbie Reynolds rubbing onions into her eyes in Singin’ in the Rain. Frank sat on the bench for ages, trying to make himself cry like a method actor, without shedding a single tear. When the first aeroplane of the day flew overhead he went home.
31
Frank overslept. With the exception of when he was in hospital it was the first time he’d been in bed later than 11 a.m. For as long as he could remember. Since records began, as they always said on the television.
Shoplifting and stealing from his neighbours had worn him out. He’d slept through the sound of twenty or thirty different aeroplanes, a heavy thunderstorm and who knows how many cold-callers.
He knew it was late but he wasn’t sure exactly how late. He reached over to get his watch and remembered that he’d sold it 4 CASH. Unless he retraced his steps backwards until he reached something that told him what the previous day had been, he wouldn’t really know what day this new day was. It was liberating.
Frank lay in bed and remembered what was on last night’s television. Snooker and a gardening show, a war film and a camcorder calamities clips show, The Antiques Roadshow.
‘Shit!’
Frank got out of his bed like it was on fire. He cricked his neck. He almost twisted his ankle. He was too old for such sudden movement. He had pins and needles. He stamped his foot until they went. He opened the curtains, almost pulling them off the rail. A white plastic curtain hook shot across the room.
‘Shit!’
It was light outside. There was traffic on Sea Lane. The free bus to the big Sainsbury’s went by. If the windows were open and the wind was blowing in the right direction, Frank would have heard the old women cackling and wolf-whistling at the postman as the bus overtook his red bicycle.
‘No!’
It was Monday and Frank had missed Kelly.
It was the last time he was ever going to see her and he’d slept through it. Yes, she had her own key in a safe screwed to the wall, but Frank had put the chain on the front door before going to bed. Kelly wouldn’t have been able to open the door. She would have called his name out through the gap between the door and the frame. ‘Frank? Hello?’ and then she would have rung the doorbell, not realising that Frank had disconnected it. She would have called him on the phone next. Surely he would have heard the phone ringing? But he had been in a very deep sleep. Stealing was exhausting. He might have slept through it.
He went into the living room. It was a mess. The tartan shopping basket was in the middle of the room surrounded by Fullwind’s charity donations. DVDs spared from the CASH 4 STUFF cull were scattered all over the carpet. He looked at the clock above the fireplace. Twenty-five past eleven. It was eleven twenty-nine on the clock in the kitchen and a row of eights were flashing on and off on the DVD player.
Frank had gone to bed in his clothes. He hadn’t even really gone to bed. He’d just gone for a lie-down and must have drifted off into a deep sleep. He couldn’t remember if he’d dreamed. Maybe this was a dream. He was Judy Garland and he wasn’t in Kansas any more. He put his ruby slippers on and went downstairs. The newspaper was on the doormat. The paperboy always only pushed it halfway through the letterbox. Frank presumed Kelly must have pushed the newspaper the rest of the way through the letterbox, so that she could look through and see if he was collapsed unconscious at the bottom of the stairs, and to call out his name through the gap. ‘Mr Derrick?’
Frank walked down the garden path. For a second he wondered what all the holes were in his lawn. He put his hand in his pocket and felt the five pence in small change, the hairgrips, Bill’s name tag and the brooch he’d stolen from the charity shop. Somewhere buried deep in the fluff and loose cotton in his pocket was the tiny screw from his glasses.
He stood on the verge outside the front gate and looked both ways along the road for Kelly’s blue car. The grass was wet, but with no knowledge of the thunderstorm he presumed it was just particularly heavy dewfall. Seeing no trace of Kelly’s car, Frank started walking along the road in the direction of the shops. He too
k his glasses off and rubbed his eyes. He wasn’t completely awake yet. He felt as though he should be running. He wondered if he still knew how. If he gradually broke into a trot and worked his way up through the gears, his legs might collapse under him before he was properly running.
Washes His Car Too Much was washing his car. He said hello. Frank didn’t answer but forced a smile. He had a vague recollection that on his second night of charity-bag theft he’d keyed the side of his car. He felt in his pocket for the car-scratching weapon – a hair grip or a coin, the brooch or Bill’s name tag . . . keys, he had no keys; he’d left his keys in the flat. Frank had locked himself out. What if he couldn’t remember his birthday to open the key safe?
He was about ten yards along the road when he saw a car coming towards him. It was the same blue as Kelly’s car. He wanted to wave but he wasn’t sure it was her. He didn’t want to end up with the Sioux name Waves At Strangers. When it was closer he could see there were two people in the car. Kelly was driving and there was a man in the passenger seat, in Frank’s seat. Kelly suddenly pulled the car across the road towards Frank. He thought she was going to run him over. Either deliberately or by accident – she wasn’t a great driver. If she ran him over, would that disqualify her from being his home care visitor while he recovered?
He stepped back further onto the verge, almost leaning against the fence in front of 3 Chimneys. He looked back at the bungalow to see that it did indeed have three chimneys and again he thought why would a bungalow need three chimneys? Maybe they built the house to match the name on the gate. If he wasn’t so tired, he would have worked out that there were probably three fireplaces.
Kelly pulled the car onto the edge of the grass and opened the window. Frank walked over and bent to look in.
‘The chain was on,’ Kelly said. ‘so I knew you must be in. I rang. You weren’t answering the phone. Is everything all right?’
‘I overslept,’ Frank said. He knew from Kelly’s concerned expression that he looked awful. The same man she’d met for the first time three months earlier following his dirty protest. He was sweating and out of breath. There were bags under his eyes. His hair was all over the place. He hadn’t shaved for a few days and nose hair was escaping from his nostrils. He needed to put Denis Healey Impression back on his CV.
The Extra Ordinary Life of Frank Derrick, Age 81 Page 19