‘I won’t be coming back,’ Kelly said. She wasn’t going to be tricked into coming back that easily.
‘Post it,’ Frank said.
‘I’m not sure I should really . . .’
‘Keep it. I’ve seen it hundreds of times. I’ve got two copies.’
Kelly thanked him. She took the DVD and put it in her bag.
‘Well. Goodbye, Frank,’ she said. ‘Try not to get run over by any milkmen.’
And she left.
Frank stood at the window watching her walk down the path. She opened the gate. If she turns and looks up, Frank thought. She went through the gate and closed it behind her. She didn’t turn or look up. It wasn’t a film.
He watched her walk along Sea Lane. All the other Jimmy Stewarts would be watching too. Hilary would be making an entry in her incidents book: ‘No car’.
Frank watched Kelly for as far as his Belgian architect’s glasses, the angle of the window and the bend in the road would allow. From his first-floor window he could see more of her and for longer than all the other nosy neighbours in their bungalows with their hanging baskets, chimneys and Sioux names above their front doors. Frank was glad he lived one floor higher than all of them. He watched Kelly follow the curve of the road and then she was gone. He looked down at the charity bags on the grass verge. He needed to bring them back inside before someone walking by recognised the shape of one of the bulges in the bags as something that had come from their home.
32
Lemons Care rang four times over the course of the next few days. They wanted to talk to Mr Watson. Frank told them they had the wrong number. Then he said that Mr Watson wasn’t in. On the third phone call Frank summoned the spirit of Ron the marbles man to tell them that sadly his father had passed away. The woman on the phone was very sympathetic and kind but still rang back a day later to ask to speak to Mr Watson. Frank told them they had the wrong number. He put the phone down. He knew that they would eventually ring again. Lemons Care were now just somebody else with his phone number in their system.
Frank watched television, he ate badly and infrequently, and got out of bed long after the flight attendants had cleared away the breakfast trays and collected the empty plastic coffee cups. Something he himself had stopped doing.
On the first Monday that followed Kelly’s final visit you might have expected that Frank had forgotten that she wasn’t coming and had got out of bed early and washed, shaved and dressed himself in a loud shirt to sit at the window and wait for her to arrive. Frank hadn’t forgotten that Kelly wasn’t coming. He would have preferred it if he could have.
The tartan shopping basket was still in the living room and the charity bags full of his neighbours’ stolen donations were in the hall. He might never have left the house ever again if it wasn’t for an advert in the free local paper for HUGE! GIANT! BOARD GAMES IN THE PARK! Buckaroo! A mule as big as a mule! KerPlunk with football-sized marbles! Jenga as high as a house! Mouse Trap and many, many more!
It was just the motivation he needed. He would go and see Smelly John and surprise him by taking him out to the park to play giant Kerplunk! and Connect 4. The park was a mile from Greyflick House. They’d take the bus. The driver would have to lower the vehicle for John’s wheelchair and nobody on the bus could complain. It would be the first time the bus had seen more than one male passenger. The old ladies were going to think the Chippendales or the cast of The Full Monty had just got on.
Frank and Smelly John would ring the bell to stop the bus at the park. The driver would lower the vehicle again to let them off. He wouldn’t tut and moan in the way he usually did when Frank wanted to get off the bus before its final destination. Not for a black man in a wheelchair.
Frank and Smelly John would go to the park and they’d trap a giant mouse. They’d connect four and pile huge Jenga blocks up higher than most of the buildings on Sea Lane, before watching them all fall down again as Smelly John shouted out ‘Jenga!’ louder than he’d ever shouted it before.
Frank got dressed and put the charity bags into the tartan shopping basket. He thought of the time Kelly had surprised him with a trip to the beach. He pictured the look on John’s face when he turned up unannounced and showed him the advert for the life-sized board games. It would be John’s first trip outside since Frank had stopped him from rolling down the hill into the sea.
Frank walked to the library and parked the shopping basket outside. He went in and borrowed the book with the picture of himself standing on the deck of the Dutch liner. It was the first book he’d taken out of the library for ages. He was going to tell Smelly John exactly what he did in the war.
In the charity shop Frank took the plastic bags out of the basket and donated the contents to the shop. As he tipped them out onto the floor at the back of the shop, a woman said she thought she recognised some of the things and she wondered whether they’d already been sold before by the shop. Frank asked the woman if they would like the shopping basket as well. She said no.
On the way out of the charity shop Frank saw a Sex Pistols CD for sale. He bought the CD and put it in the front zip pocket of the shopping basket with the library book. He left the shop and walked to the bus stop.
He sat on the bus behind a woman who was a lot younger than all the other old dears. She had a small child with her. The child was standing on the seat and staring at Frank. He didn’t know where to look. Children always stared at him on public transport and in queues in shops. He always felt embarrassed and awkward and worried that he was blushing or sweating in the way a man who had an awful disgusting secret to hide might.
He turned and looked out of the window, hoping the child would have stopped staring by the time he turned back. The child continued to stare. Every time Frank looked back, there the child was, staring. He seemed particularly fascinated by Frank’s long white hair. When Frank walked to the front of the bus to get off, the staring child said, ‘Father Christmas.’
It was what Father Christmas did in June. He shaved his beard off and went out after dark stealing toys from sacks.
The reception of Greyflick House was empty. Frank signed himself in and took the lift up to the first floor. There was no answer when he knocked on Smelly John’s door. He tried the handle. The door was unlocked as usual. Nobody locked their doors at Greyflick House. There were no thieves here. Frank felt John’s dope in his pocket.
He opened the door and went inside. The empty wheelchair was by the window as though smelly John, too, had been impersonating James Stewart. His impression would have been superior to Frank’s because John had props. Frank could do the voice but Smelly John had a wheelchair. Frank had a better view though. All John had to spy on through his rear window was the top of a tree and a carrier bag full of dog shit.
Frank stood by the window and waited for John to come out of the toilet. He wondered if there was time to return the drugs before he came out but he was too fearful of being caught. He’d wait until later.
After about five minutes he called out John’s name. There was no answer. He knocked on the toilet door. There was still no answer. Frank slowly opened the door. The seat of the toilet was raised and there were foam-padded arms on either side of it. There were grab rails along both sidewalls of the room and an emergency cord which Frank immediately had the urge to pull and pretend that he’d thought it was the light switch. There was no sign of Smelly John.
He took the lift back down to the ground floor. When the lift doors opened, Walks at an Angle, Sees Things That Aren’t There and Gets Famous People’s Names Wrong had just come in through the main entrance. They were dressed up for a wedding or a funeral. Even No Interest in Personal Hygiene had combed his hair and put a tie on.
Frank presumed another resident had died. Three deaths in a year. John would get his undercover television documentary. Frank was about to go into the lounge to find John when Graham the warden came in.
‘Hello,’ Frank said. ‘I was looking for John.’ He realised that h
e didn’t know John’s surname. He knew his punk name and could come up with a number of suitable Sioux names for him, but he didn’t know his surname.
‘Are you a relative?’ Graham said.
Frank had seen enough films to know what that meant.
Smelly John was dead.
Frank couldn’t speak. He shook his head.
‘I don’t suppose it matters,’ Graham said. ‘I’m afraid he passed away, just over a week ago.’
Frank still couldn’t find the right words.
‘He had MS,’ Graham said.
‘But I just saw him,’ Frank said. ‘I didn’t think it was fatal.’
‘Sometimes it isn’t the falling so much as it is the hitting the ground.’ It was something the vicar had said at the funeral service and Graham was passing the piece of wisdom on.
‘How? How did he die?’
‘I’m not exactly certain. He picked up an infection. I think he had difficulty swallowing. He had pneumonia and then organ failure. Although they do tend to die slightly younger, I’m afraid.’
‘They?’ Frank said. ‘What do you mean they?’ He wanted to tell John he was right. He wanted to ring Kelly and tell her too. Graham was a racist.
‘People with MS,’ Graham said.
‘Oh.’
‘Did you want to come through? We’re having a small drink in the lounge.’
Frank gave the answer that his character would have given in a film, ‘No. No, thank you. I should be going.’ Even though he really did want a drink. And not a small one. Frank wanted a big drink. He wanted to get really drunk.
‘He was quite a character,’ Graham said. ‘He’ll be missed.’ He held his hand out and Frank shook it. Graham asked Frank if he could sign himself out. He said goodbye and followed the residents to the lounge.
As Frank was signing the visitors book, he saw on the shelf of Graham’s office what looked like a small green plastic figure in the pose of a man who was about to dive from a seesaw into a tub causing a cage to shake and fall, trapping a mouse.
Frank didn’t know where to go or what to do. His whole world was collapsing – Jenga! Kerplunk! Bucka-fucking-roo! He didn’t want to go home, not yet, so he walked in the opposite direction. Perhaps he should still go to the park and play some oversized games in Smelly John’s memory. Shout their names out at the top of his voice.
Without intending to, he walked through the housing estate and towards two young boys who were play-fighting so violently that it was only their laughter that distinguished it from real fighting. How would they have fared on a torpedoed ship at night in the middle of the Atlantic? Frank wondered. Maybe some of his more stereotypical contemporaries were right and what the youngsters of today needed was a war.
The boys stopped fighting each other and turned their attention to Frank. He put his hand in his pocket – the same pocket where he carried his imaginary gun and his money and, today, John’s dope. The boys could probably smell it.
Frank wanted to scoop the boys up, one under each arm, and take them as far away as possible from this dreadful place. Before it was too late for them. He thought he should at least stop and talk to them. Tell them something useful or insightful. He must have something worth sharing from his many years’ experience. Perhaps he should come back with two ice creams and some chocolate bars. He didn’t imagine the ice cream man ever stopped here either. It would probably even be a no-go zone for the Child Catcher.
If he did speak to them, would they listen? There was a chance that, like Kelly, they might think he was a wise man. They might not be like everyone else their age who thought old people were all incontinent dribbling halfwits, to be ridiculed and laughed at, spoken down to and stolen from, the only victims left for television comedians to bully. The boys might stop to listen to this wise old man. They’d end up thanking him for changing their lives for the better and he’d ruffle their hair before they waved him safely on his journey.
If his wisdom fantasy failed, Frank would throw Smelly John’s dope as far as he could and make his escape while the boys chased after it like dogs after a stick. As he walked through the centre of the boys, they spat on the ground and laughed at him. He thought they had a point.
At the edge of the housing estate Frank saw two men. They both carried babies on their chests in slings. It was an unexpectedly touching sight in amongst all the filth and fury and spit and dog mess – these two otherwise tough men in touch with their feminine sides, looking after their young and giving the mothers a well-earned rest. Perhaps there was hope and a future for the boys after all. As he walked by, Frank saw the men weren’t carrying babies in the slings but small angry dogs.
Frank walked onto the High Street. He waded through giblets and lettuce and went in through the door of CASH 4 STUFF. It was only when he lifted the shopping basket up the steps into the shop that he realised that, other than a library book and a Sex Pistols CD, the shopping basket was completely empty and he had nothing left to sell.
‘Do you want to buy a shopping basket?’ he said to the woman behind the counter.
‘No.’
33
Frank’s latest retirement plan wasn’t one he would have found advertised or written about in the Sunday supplements. Not least because he hadn’t paid his paper bill and the only thing the paperboys put through his letterbox now were handwritten notes from the newsagent reminding Frank that his bill was overdue.
He’d taken the phone off the hook and then unplugged it from the wall after the receiver had started sending out an alarm signal and a woman’s voice, repeatedly saying, ‘Please hang up.’ It had taken him twenty minutes to discover the source of the alarm signal. He’d unplugged various things and climbed up on the stool ladder to take the smoke alarm apart. It had been his most productive ten minutes in as many days.
He was eating. But he wasn’t washing up afterwards, tipping another tin of spaghetti into the saucepan on top of the dried tomato sauce left from the previous day’s spaghetti. He was cutting so much blue from the edges of the bread to make toast that he was losing the small slices of bread in the toaster, leaving behind bits of stale bread that would burn the next time he used the toaster. In his one other recent moment of activity he’d tipped the toaster upside down to clear it and showered the kitchen with toast crumbs. Two days later the crumbs were still there – on the kitchen floor, in the grooves of the draining board and in Frank’s long white hair.
A week after finding out about Smelly John’s death, Frank started watching his DVD collection in alphabetical order. When he reached Blazing Saddles his tears during the farting scene continued all the way to the opening credits of Blue Murder at St Trinians.
Some of his DVDs seemed to be trying to tell him something in the same way all the television adverts had done when he was thinking about money. Home Alone, for instance, and The Goodbye Girl. Brief Encounter and The Day the Earth Stood Still. He didn’t really notice.
He ignored Liza Minelli’s advice in Cabaret about the uselessness of sitting alone in his room and also the simple motivational message in the titles of all four of his Carry On films. He abandoned The Dam Busters halfway through out of respect for Smelly John and, although he attempted impersonating James Stewart while watching Harvey, he just couldn’t get the voice right. It was the same for his Michael Caine during The Italian Job. Towards the end of Jaws, shortly after the shark had swallowed Robert Shaw, Frank decided to go for a swim.
It was a long walk to the beach. He could have taken the bus as it made its return journey from the big supermarket but he didn’t think he could face all the mad old women.
He walked through the alleyway that led to the sea. The high stone walls blocked out the sound of the outside world, or at least changed it so that it was like holding a shell to his ear or a cardboard tube. If he could have just stopped there he would have been happy. What a great place to die. ‘He passed away peacefully in an alley,’ people would say. About halfway along the alleyway Frank st
amped his feet and listened to the short, metallic echo.
He came out of the alleyway and walked to the low wall and looked at the sea. The tide was all the way in. There was no sand visible. Just stones and then water. He climbed the steps over the wall and stood at the top of the hill of stones. He watched a dog playing a game of chicken with the tide until his owner called out to him and threw a tennis ball for the dog to chase instead.
Frank walked down towards the sea. He stopped by the groyne about fifteen feet from the water’s edge and undressed, putting his clothes in a pile on the stones by the rusty orange drinks can. He took his glasses off, placed them on top of the pile of clothes and walked into the sea.
The feel of the seaweed under his feet took his mind off how cold the water was. Frank hated seaweed. He wished he’d kept his shoes on. When he’d been to the big Sainsbury’s with Kelly, she’d shown him crispy seaweed. She’d told him it was delicious but he’d refused to believe that was possible. The seaweed under his feet was not crispy. It was soft and greasy. It felt alive, like it might drag him under the water and take him prisoner like the ivy had done to the ladder in his garden shed. When the water was deep enough to tread, Frank lifted his feet and took his first stroke.
Already he knew that his arms were going to ache later, even if he stopped now, got dressed and went home. He took a second stroke and a third and he was swimming. A wave filled his mouth with water and took him back about six strokes towards the shore. He coughed and spat salty water out.
He wondered how far he could swim. As far as the first orange plastic buoy? Out to the church that had been swallowed by the water a hundred years ago when the sea moved closer inland, annexing the dry land? He wondered whether he could swim as far as Sheila used to do. When her memory had started to fade, Frank had worried that Sheila might forget where she’d started swimming from and would think she was French and carry on swimming away from the shore, until she was picked up by a fishing boat with no idea who she was, like Jason Bourne. Or that she might forget not just who she was but what she was, and, thinking that she was a stone or a crab or a piece of seaweed, would stop swimming and sink to the bottom.
The Extra Ordinary Life of Frank Derrick, Age 81 Page 21