The Coming of Derek (a quirky comedy)

by A. J. Carpenter

  ‘Mr Stone, I’m Officer O’ Brian, this is Officer Khan. I’m sorry to wake you. Would it be okay if we came in?

  Derek nodded at them nervously, unable to shake the thought that they were actually strip-o-grams.

  ‘Mr Stone, I’m afraid I have some uncomfortable news for you. Do you know an Edith Stone?’

  ‘Yes...um...she’s my grandmother. Is she in...er... trouble?’ Derek replied, dazed.

  ‘I’m afraid your grandmother passed away alone in her house this week. We believe she died two days ago. I understand that you were her only next of kin is that right?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right,’ Derek replied numbly.

  The police officer went through a few details and explained the causes of death, Derek didn’t take in a word. All the negative thoughts and anger at his grandmother came gushing out of his body and were replaced instead with immense guilt.

  ‘I shouldn’t have stayed away so long. She died alone. Maybe she did want to see me, but she was just so stubborn that she couldn’t bring herself to contact me.’

  Derek’s right hand began twitching impulsively. He couldn’t concentrate, he felt as though he had lost all control. He was relieved then when the police officers got up to leave. They handed Derek the details of his grandmothers resting whereabouts, gave their apologies and left.

  Derek’s felt as though his insides had been scooped out like a kiwi fruit.

  Felicity waited in the car, due to her phobia of the recently deceased, whilst Derek proceeded up the path to the backdoor. For as long as he could remember, his grandmother had hidden a key to the front door in a stone at the back of the house. Derek had tried to warn her that this was a security risk but, as usual, his grandmother hadn’t listened.

  Thankfully, her neighbour had also had knowledge of the key and had been sneaking in to retrieve a platter of hers, when she had found Edith dead in her armchair. With no idea that she had been breaking into the home of a dead woman, the neighbour had managed to retrieve her platter successfully without making very much noise. She had known Edith kept a bowl of toffees in the living room, so despite thinking that there was no one else in the house, she had tiptoed through as quietly as possible to get one. But as she had ferried herself over to the toffee bowl like a ballet dancing mouse, she had felt as though someone was watching her. Unnerved, she had turned around suddenly and gasped. Derek’s grandmother had been looking at her over her glasses, from the green velvet chair by the fire.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Mrs Stone. I did knock, but there was no answer.’

  The neighbour had hung her head in shame and waited for the cold hard response, but there had been silence.

  ‘Mrs Stone?’ she had asked tentatively.

  ‘Mrs Stone?’ she had asked again anxiously.

  ‘Mrs Stone,’ she had blubbered, before taking tiny steps towards the body.

  She had prodded the arm, nothing. She had prodded the forehead, nothing, and then she had begun on an almighty screaming fit. Her husband had been the first to arrive, garden shears in hand. They had called the emergency services and had helped themselves to a handful of toffees on the premise that Edith would not be needing them, which indeed she would not.

  Derek wandered back around to the front of the house with the successfully acquired key in hand. He felt a rush of memories bouncing through his mind as he came face to face with his grandmother’s big red front door. Turning the key in the lock, he suddenly felt like a teenager again, like his grandmother would be waiting for him inside, ready to dictate the bible to him. Opening the door, a stagnant musty smell fragranced with pot pourri bounded out and a thin layer of dust could be seen hanging in the air. Directly in front of him was the staircase and to his right, on the wall to the downstairs toilet, was the crucifix. Derek felt uneasy as he looked around himself. It felt morbid, it felt dirty and he wished that he could just shut the door and never go back. But he couldn’t. He had no choice, he had to do this. But he couldn’t do it alone and so he hurried out to the car to get Felicity.

  ‘Come in, it’s fine.’

  ‘Derek, it’s weird. Hospitals are bad enough.’

  ‘I really need you right now,’ Derek pressed on.

  ‘Okay, okay. You win. I’ll go into the haunted house with you,’ she agreed, getting out of the car heavily and catching hold of Derek’s hand.

  ‘How did you know that it was haunted?’ he asked pan-faced.

  ‘It’s not, is it? Is it? Oh, no way, no way am I going in. I’m sorry, but no way!’ she exclaimed, breaking the hand hold and running back to the car.

  Derek chased after her.

  ‘Felicity, I was joking.’

  She didn’t turn around and so he tried louder.

  ‘I was joking!’

  She stopped. Her face cinched up and her brow furrowed, before she punched Derek in the chest and erupted into laughter. Derek joined in, leading a persuaded Felicity into the house.

  ‘Wow!’ Felicity cooed, as she gushed around the hall like she was shopping at Harrods. ‘This is proper grand, are you rich?’

  ‘I’m not, no,’ Derek replied, heading straight to the paperwork. ‘But my grandmother is...was.’

  As Felicity foraged around, it suddenly came to her.

  ‘You are gonna inherit all this.’

  ‘I doubt it very much,’ Derek scoffed, focusing again on her unopened mail.

  ‘You so are. Didn’t you say you were her only relative?’

  ‘Well, yes, but...’

  ‘Well, who else is she gonna leave it to then?’

  ‘Well, it won’t be to me.’

  ‘Maybe she’ll give it to charity or something?’ Felicity suggested.

  Derek laughed.

  ‘Trust me, she won’t be giving it to charity.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘She thinks...thought...they were con artists,’ Derek chuckled to himself.

  It hadn’t occurred to him before but Felicity was right. He couldn’t imagine who his grandmother would leave everything to if it wasn’t to him.

  Felicity was now in the sitting room, she saw a bowl of toffees sitting on the table and walked over to take one. Looking up, she saw that the seat in front of her was still indented and that a toffee wrapper lay at the top corner of the cushion. Suddenly alarmingly aware of the dangers of death by toffee, Felicity politely put the toffee back, made a weird little nod to the chair and scurried out of the room.

  She found Derek sat on the dark wood staircase, under a painting of Jesus. Or at least she presumed it was meant to be Jesus because he had very long hair.

  ‘You okay?’ she asked gently.

  Derek had been thinking about his mum. Before she had died he had never met his grandmother or visited the house. He remembered being collected from social services and brought back to her dull, dark mansion. His grandmother hadn’t come down to meet him on the first night. He was taken care of by her general house helper, Agnes, whilst his grandmother had stayed in her room.

  Derek was now sat on the same stair that he had sat on all those years before, listening to his estranged grandmother cry in her room. She had cried for three days solid, before eventually emerging with her bible and her largest gold crucifix firmly planted around her neck. She had been hard and withheld with Derek, treating him like she was his matron at a boarding school.

  Felicity had now climbed the stairs to see him.

  ‘Hey, mister, you okay?’ she worried, placing her hand on his shoulder.

  Derek jumped out of his memories and up to his feet.

  ‘Yes, I’m fine. I just want to take a look around the rest of the house and we’ll get out of here, okay?’ he answered.

  ‘Yeah, cool,’ Felicity agreed, sensing that he needed to do it alone. So she sat on the stairs and waited.

  Derek’s first instinct was to go into his grandmother’s bedroom because he had never been allowed to as a child. But he didn’t. His conscience still resisted. Instead he walked across the lan
ding to what had been his own room. There had only ever been two people living in the house, himself and his grandmother. Despite a massive six bedrooms, Derek had been allocated the smallest of the rooms, a space that might have been more suitable for a study or a walk in cupboard. The walls were painted white, the curtains were a sperm like beige and the carpet was a stagnant blue colour, with a thin coating of dust. The walls were still perfectly painted. Derek had never been allowed to hang anything up, partly due to the holes that would be created, but also due to the quality of the substance that his grandmother believed he would want to put up there. The bed was still made with the same once white, now yellow sheets tucked forcefully down as though it were a hospital. It made him shudder. He had hated nothing more than the feeling of being tucked and trapped into a wrap that he couldn’t fight his way out of, like a sausage trying to escape its death by pastry. Derek’s old dictionary still sat solitarily on the shelf and his oboe still lay under the bed. But other than that the room was empty.

  Being back in the house again brought with it a great many emotions. The most prominent one being guilt. Derek was unable to shake the sensation that his grandmother had died still mad at him and that his mother had died still angry with her mum. He was racked with regret. He wanted nothing more than for is grandmother to wake up so that he could tell her that he was sorry. He hated to think that she had been getting old and unable to take care of herself and that he had done nothing. But it was truth. He knew that Agnes had passed away, so she was all alone. So many times he had thought about visiting her and making sure that she was okay. She was his only relative after all. So many times he had thought about it. But he had never done it. History had repeated itself and he had let it. His grandmother had been too stubborn to call her own daughter and the next thing she knew her daughter had died, and she had never got the chance to say goodbye. And now Derek had done the same to her and it was devastating.

  The sound of his grandmother crying was still clear in his mind as he strode purposefully towards her room. The door opened easily. It had always been locked before. It creaked as it shifted on the hinges and then swung open. The room was painted a soft lilac colour and had the same life stained curtains that hung in his room. The bedding was a soft pink but was arranged just like Derek’s, as though it was in a monastery. A huge dark stained wood unit stood dominantly in front of the bed and was decorated with white lace and an array of beauty products. Looking through the makeup, Derek was struggling to remember his grandmother wearing any makeup at all. If she had, her face must have swallowed it up because he was convinced that she had been bare faced brute.

  Looking over to the bedside table near the window, Derek stopped. Underneath the brass base table lamp sat two silver photo frames, just like the ones that he had. In one there was his mother, Rebecca and in the other there was Derek. Fumbling over to the photos, he sat down slowly and stared into the faces. A teardrop squeezed itself to the surface of his eye and began running uninvited down his cheek. He didn’t know whether he was crying for his grandmother, for his mum or for himself, but it had been a long time coming.

  Sitting quietly on the bed, he prayed that there was an afterlife and that his grandmother and mother would get the chance to meet again and make things right. Little did he know though that up in the clouds his mother had heard of her own mother’s imminent arrival and was desperately tidying up.

  ‘Derek? You okay?’ Felicity asked from behind the door.

  Derek paused before taking a deep breath and replying, ‘I’ll be out in a moment.’

  He started rubbing his eyes aggressively in an attempt to remove any moisture from his cheeks. It had been a wrenching day and yet it still hadn’t quite sunk in.

  ‘You ready?’ Felicity asked, poking her head around the door cautiously.

  She noticed the red blotchiness like a sexually transmitted disease around his eyes and knew immediately that he had been crying. She walked over to him and without any hesitation wrapped him up in her arms, holding him tightly, until she thought that she was in danger of cutting off his blood supply. Then she gently released him, planting a big wet kiss on his cheek.

  ‘Takeaway for tea, I think,’ she announced.

  Derek looked concerned.

  ‘Or we can do beans on toast or something if you don’t fancy that. I just thought...’

  ‘...I think I need to have some time alone,’ Derek interrupted after much thought. He knew that he would need her at some point throughout the evening, but he needed time on his own more. She was a good friend, but there was no way he was going to let her see him cry.

  Felicity was well aware that Derek eye drought was now up, so she was reluctant to leave him on his own but she didn’t feel that she had a choice.

  ‘Okay, well, if that’s what you want.’

  ‘Yes, I think it is...just so much...so much to take in.’

  ‘Yeah, I know,’ she sympathised, squeezing his arm as he started to leave. ‘Well, you are to call me if you need me and I’ll be around first thing in the morning before work, okay? Oh, and don’t worry about the funeral. I’ll help you with everything. I’m a dab hand. I had to help Mum once with her bitch of a sister’s funeral.’

  ‘The funeral?’ Derek responded alarmed.

  ‘Yeah, at least I presume it’ll be you.’

  ‘What? Do you think I will have to organize it?’

  ‘Oh I don’t know. I just presumed so. Probably not. I’m probably wrong. Don’t worry about it.’

  Derek was though. He knew that Felicity was more than likely right. He should do it for her, as a final goodbye and a gift of forgiveness. If he got some of those chocolate coated biscuits that she had secretly loved but kept hidden in the cupboard, she would definitely forgive him.

  The pair got back in the car, ready for the journey back to Crackerley. Spirits were low but hope was high. It was a shame then that Derek managed to squish a rabbit on the road and left it engrained into the tarmac like a flatbread filled with tomatoes.

  After a fatal but relatively quiet journey back, Derek had returned home to find a voicemail from his grandmother’s priest. Apparently he had heard the news, and he had wanted to send his greatest condolences to Derek and his family from all at St Mary’s. Derek found that odd. He didn’t have a family. Nevertheless, he was mightily impressed by the man’s dedication to the job. He thought about picking up the phone to call him back there and then, but he just couldn’t quite face it. Instead, he took the remainder of a bottle of wine out of the fridge and one of the cigarettes Felicity had left there and sat down on the sofa.

  Much to his delight, he turned on the telly to discover that ‘Jurassic Park’ was on. Derek was a huge fan and as he puffed on the fag and sipped from his wine, he thought about how much harder life would be if there were Dinosaurs around.

  21

  TOO LITTLE, TOO LATE?

  It was two weeks since the day of his grandmother’s death and one week since the funeral. He had learnt this week that he was the sole benefactor in his grandmother’s will and that he would be inheriting her house. Derek thought it ridiculous to own such a stupendous house and rent a flat, so he had given his notice to the landlord on Monday. He was still paid up for the next three weeks but he had to go. The time was right. There were mountains of things he needed to do at his grandmother’s place; piles of paperwork and charity shop donations. It was going to be sad not living in Crackerley anymore, but he needed the fresh start and Southcove was only a fifteen minute drive away.

  Derek had now finished packing. The flat hardly looked any different, apart from six boxes sat by the front door. It wasn’t until Derek had removed his limited collection of bits and bobs, that the vast quantities of dust and stains had become evident. A woman would have attacked the entire flat with bleach for the rest of the night but Derek was more concerned about his belly. His stomach was now rumbling like a violently brewing fart and with everything now boxed and taped, there was nothing for h
im to eat and nothing for him to eat off.

  He had been thinking for a while about going to see Donna. He wanted her to know that he was leaving. Maybe then she wouldn’t have to hide behind the counter and scurry out the back whenever he was around.

  With that thought, Derek felt the desire for a cold, harsh wank. Instead of succumbing to his needs, he swallowed hard, grabbed his keys and wallet and bounded out of the flat. He was like a wrestler before a match, storming up the road, determined and inspired. He marched passed the chip shop and all the way to the local garage, taking only half the recommended amount of breaths.

  On arrival, he was confronted with a limited array of packaged flowers, all glowing bright and desperate to live a life on a windowsill instead of sat miserably in a gas chamber. He was immediately attracted to the sunflowers. They were his favourite and could easily have been photographed for any number of butter brands. He knew though, that Donna would like the pink bouquet. She loved pink so it was a no brainer. Then, when he trotted into the shop to pay, he spotted a rather tempting abundance of chocolate. He looked straight passed the Ferrero Rocher and the seashells and picked a large Toblerone to give to her instead. Now laden with an oversized chocolate bar and a camp bouquet of battery flowers, Derek started on his walk back to the chip shop.

  As he got closer and closer, he switched his attentions to his current appearance. He had worn the trousers for two days running, the t-shirt for three days and his boxer shorts and socks had been worn for at least four days. With Felicity, the distant smell of cheese or off milk was okay because she would just douse him with her perfume and call him a ‘minger’. But Derek realized that Donna was an entirely different kettle of fish. So he hurried back to his flat for a quick wash and a change of clothes.

  Standing impatiently in the shower, thinking about his plan of attack, Derek couldn’t help but visualize Donna leaning over the counter, whilst he thrust her from behind, feeling her sumptuous curves rolling through his fingers. No sooner had the thought been thought, the wind had raised the sail and Derek’s kite was now flying high in the shower.