Happy Birthday and All That

by Rebecca Smith

  ‘This and that,’ Frank said. And a length of hosepipe long enough to reach from the exhaust of an E-reg Volvo estate through the driver’s window, and if there are any special clips for attaching it securely, and if you have any maps of the New Forest showing pretty but deserted parking places … What was it that Grandpa had wanted? Frank supposed that he should be grateful that they didn’t have a garage. Imagine the constant temptation to top oneself in there. To park inside and let it fill up with fumes, or to hang oneself from the up and over door …

  ‘Have you got one of those stupid metal things that old people have in their sinks to catch disgusting gunk?’

  ‘Sinkmate? Just to your left. Eighty-three pence.’

  ‘Thanks, mate.’

  Frank smiled as he remembered a joke that he’d read in James’s Best Joke Book In The World Ever. ‘Did you hear about the ice-cream man found dead in his van, covered in nuts and strawberry sauce? The police think he topped himself.’ Posy had said that she thought it was very unsuitable.

  Fancy Ways was just along the road.

  ‘Francis!’ His mum looked really pleased to see him. ‘How are you all? We haven’t seen you for ages.’

  ‘Mum, you saw us all last week!’

  ‘Last week is ages when you only live a few minutes away,’ she told him.

  ‘Well, I’m here now.’ She could manage to make him feel guilty within seconds of walking through the door, it got him every time. ‘How’s Dad?’

  ‘Oh not so bad. He was out of breath badly from moving all the new glass pierrots. They are much heavier than they look.’

  ‘You should have waited for me. I’d have done it for you,’ Frank told her, thinking, ‘Send in the clowns, there ought to be clowns. Don’t bother, they’re here.’

  ‘How can I wait for you if I never know when you might be coming?’ He couldn’t think of an answer to this.

  ‘Grandpa phoned me,’ he told her. ‘He wants some help with something.’ He hoped that this might win him a few more points, get him off the hook a bit. Luckily a customer came towards the counter with a paperweight and a gift box. ‘I’ll just go up and see how he is.’ Frank skedaddled for the stairs behind the ‘Staff Only’ door.

  He knocked on his grandfather’s flat door and went straight in. He could hear the TV. Grandpa was watching Trisha.

  ‘She’s pretty, this one,’ he told Frank.

  ‘Hi Grandpa, you OK?’ Frank didn’t bend down to kiss the grizzled, unshaven cheek, or to shake his grandfather’s very cold, stiff hand. His grandfather’s shoulders looked bony through the layers of vest, shirt, pullover and cardigan. His thin knees were pointy and painful-looking through his trousers. Frank was reminded of the skeletons of some of the smaller beaky dinosaurs, Ornithomimus or Compsognathus, the one that was no bigger than a hen. He and James knew all the names of them from The Big Book of Dinosaurs, and his other favourite If Dinosaurs Came To Town. Don’t bother, they’re here, Frank thought to himself.

  ‘Cup of tea, Grandpa?’

  ‘If you’re making one.’ Frank would certainly never choose to make a cup of tea in Grandpa’s kitchen, which was cluttered beyond even Frank’s disorder threshold. Doing the simplest thing involved negotiating a path through trailing flexes, past the Calor gas heater (always on, even on the hottest days), moving piles of dishes (clean and dirty were hard to differentiate), as well as the boxes of tissues, Scholl ointments, empty glasses cases, letters, Christmas cards and pictures by the children dating back years, and the foot file which was perpetually clogged with pieces of grey debris that always made Frank think, ‘Dust you are, and to dust you shall return.’ Frank knew that his mother was up here, several times a day, trying to impose some order on things, but that Grandpa undid it all within minutes, scattering dirty tissues around his feet, filling the bath with cold water and then hurling his bedding in because he thought it needed a good soak, or balancing the two-bar electric fire on the draining board to try to keep his hands warm while he failed to wash up. The possibilities for creating chaos and squalor, and for setting up accidents waiting to happen, were endless. Frank thought that even Flora would be unable to keep Grandpa in check. Eventually Frank returned to the sitting room with two mugs of tea and half a packet of fig rolls that he had found beside the washing-up liquid.

  ‘No point getting the best china out, eh?’ Grandpa said, taking a big slurp from the chipped Garfield mug Frank handed him. Frank’s was a Farside Christmas-theme mug, also damaged stock from the shop downstairs.

  ‘Good for you to have a mugful, Grandpa. Posy told me she heard something on the radio saying that old people don’t drink enough.’

  ‘What’s that? What are you saying?’

  Frank ignored the question. How could he explain that what he had said was, as so often the case with Grandpa, too banal to merit repeating.

  ‘So what did you want some help with?’ he asked, loud, clear and slow.

  ‘Them books. In the bedroom. Arrived yesterday.’

  Frank found his way back across the room and into the bedroom. The BettaKleen catalogues were piled high on Grandpa’s unmade bed, next to a Kleenex Mansize box stuffed with apple cores, satsuma peel, an empty Digestives’ packet, the filmy wrappings of processed cheese slices, and the papers of several packets of Halls Extra Strong Mentholyptus throat sweets: the detritus of Grandpa’s most recent midnight feast, which, Frank surmised, must have ended in a coughing fit. Or perhaps he just ate packets and packets of Halls for the taste alone. Frank saw that there weren’t just the BettaKleen catalogues to get rid of, but two supplements, a health and diet one (a particular favourite of his) and something new, ‘Your Lucky Magic’. They would weigh a ton. Grandpa would never be able to shift them. Frank cursed the man who had talked Grandpa into this whole network selling thing in the first place. It was despicable. Grandpa had lapped up all the stories about ‘part-time job - full-time money’, about people building pyramids of sellers and then retiring in splendour, of people whose sales won them holidays with spending money. As if Grandpa was ever going to attain those dizzy heights. The only person he’d ever managed to persuade to join him in the enterprise was Frank, and that was only because Frank felt so sorry for him and worried about him going up and down the stairs in the blocks that were part of Grandpa’s round. It wasn’t even a local round. Portswood would probably have been much more lucrative, but that was already somebody else’s territory. Somehow Grandpa had agreed to do Weston, bloody miles away on the other side of the city, the most easterly part of Southampton, a huge estate washed up on a green no man’s land that dissolved into a pebbly shore.

  Frank was often tempted to suggest to Grandpa that they swap BettaKleen for a paper round. It would be less onerous and more lucrative. Grandpa wouldn’t even discuss giving up BettaKleen though; he said that he would soon be fit enough to do it by himself again, and if Frank didn’t want to help, well, then he’d manage somehow. And of course Grandpa didn’t want anyone else to get his round, BettaKleen or a rival company. Oh no, not after he had spent all that time building it up.

  It seemed that there was nothing to be done apart from doing it. Frank began to load the catalogues into the tartan trolley that was their trusty BettaKleen companion. And here’s a few kilos of disappointment, pointlessness and futility, Frank muttered as he put the last few bundles in.

  ‘What’s that? What’s that?’ Grandpa asked.

  ‘Nothing Grandpa, just checking we had enough.’ If only the world, and especially Posy, could have seen that there was something heroic about lugging that trolley down the steps and into the boot of the car, and then going back to get Grandpa and his carrier bag of things he’d need for the journey, the spare glasses, Spaldings catalogue, packet of Tunes and a half-empty box of tissues in case of emergencies, and the little black vinyl purse which contained Grandpa’s money as he insisted on paying for the toll bridge and then on giving Frank a pound coin, towards, he said, petrol and tobacco. If only this work wa
s rewarded the way being a hospital consultant was, or an accountant, or a systems analyst. If only ‘Being Frank’ was considered to be a proper job in itself.

  ‘Going well is she?’ Grandpa asked.

  ‘What?’ Did he mean Posy?

  ‘The car. Going well is she?’

  ‘Like a dream,’ said Frank. He always forgot that he and Grandpa had to have these manly conversations about how the Parousellis’ car was running. Each time Frank took Grandpa out he resolved to clean the car so that it resembled a more fitting topic of conversation, but every time he forgot. Fortunately Grandpa was too short-sighted to see how dusty and crisp-crumbed the car was, or to notice the Sunmaid raisins (preferred snack of modern middle-class toddlers) that studded the floor and back seats. Frank had no idea why anyone ever bought them. Sure, children liked the cute little boxes, but they never actually seemed to eat the raisins, just to scatter them in trails wherever they went. Perhaps they were all leaving messages for each other in some sort of toddler raisin morse code: ‘Why can’t she just be done with it and give me Wotsits and chocolate buttons on car journeys?’ ‘Wibbly is a fat pig’, things like that.

  They drove off down Portswood High Street, past Safeway, past Wickes, down into the badlands of Bevois Valley, over the level crossing, past the Saints Stadium, finally onto the Itchen bridge. Off peak fifty pence. To the Parousellis the elegant concrete arch, surely the biggest bridge in the South, with its views up and down the river and out past Ocean Village towards the sea was worth much more than that. Frank always wondered why the sides hadn’t been made even higher; a suicide would be able to jump quite easily. Could it be that the bridge made people feel so cheerful that they changed their minds?

  Woolston, on the other side of the bridge, really did seem like the sticks to Frank.

  ‘I remember when all there was was the floating bridge,’ Grandpa told him, just as he always did. ‘They said then it would take till past the year 2000 for the bridge to pay for itself. I wonder if it has yet.’

  ‘Doubt it,’ said Frank, as he always did.

  Soon they were driving along the road beside Weston Shore. This wasn’t necessary, but Frank always made this minor detour so that Grandpa could have a quick look at the sea. The shingle and mud had once been thought of as a beach, and families had spent whole days there, now it was usually deserted. The water had a caustic look and nobody paddled any more. There were dog-walkers and people digging for lugworms, but no picnickers and rarely any children. Just yards from this was Weston estate, six towering blocks that looked like the last of England, innumerable flats, a precinct, some houses, and when she was in, Melody.

  Weston had been the subject of every government and local authority improvement scheme ever. There was a long, impressive roll-call of them - Local Projects, Estate Action, Housing Renewal, Community Safety Initiatives, Community Action, Single Regeneration Budget - but these might never have happened. It still needed more. Now it was a Sure Start Area. The vortices between the blocks capsized prams and blew over buggies. It was a struggle for the young mums to get to the bus stop for the number 17 that would take them away past the Vospers yard, over the Itchen Bridge and into town. Melody didn’t have a baby though. She lived with her parents. To be still at home at twenty-two! Frank and The Wild Years found it astonishing, but to Melody the pros were obvious - wide screen TV, DVD player, another TV in her own room, everything comfy, Mum doing all the cooking and washing, all for £20 a week. She did have to put up with her little brother, Mark, who at nineteen was not that little and worked at Q Tyres earning more than she did. Just the dog would have been enough to drive Frank away. It was a spiteful little Jack Russell cross, a really pointless dog. It always seemed to have a special sneer for Frank.

  The music teacher at Melody’s school had said that she would go far. Melody had a future as Southampton’s answer to Celine Dion, but without the nose. So far though, she had only made it to the box office of The Mayflower, where she had landed a job as an assistant after Frank cost her the job at Asda. It had been a blessing in disguise, really. The Mayflower was much classier than Asda. In quiet moments she would read the programmes and daydream about being in one of the shows herself. She would undo her ponytail and let her silky blonde hair fall over her face. She had the ideal hair for a contemporary young person, dead straight, longish, fair, very manageable. She could have been mistaken for one of Atomic Kitten.

  Frank knew that Melody would be at work. There was no chance of meeting her. Her mum had placed an order last time. Frank had got Grandpa to knock on the door with that one. It had been for a stupid white plastic shelf-thing that was designed to stand on a corner of a bath. Frank could imagine Melody’s mum thinking that it would be very handy. He wondered if she had been disappointed or if it had changed her life after all.

  Taking the catalogues round wasn’t really that bad; all they had to do was shove them through people’s letter boxes. It was going back and trying to retrieve them or, if they were lucky, some orders that Frank dreaded. People out here went for bulky, awkward things, buckets, brooms, bins, wipeable self-assembly bedside cabinets, the sort of things that they wouldn’t want to carry home themselves. Frank was hoping that Asda.com home delivery, Argos Homedirect, and all that crew would put paid to the whole BettaKleen empire. Surely it could only be a matter of time.

  In the tower blocks they rode to the top in the lifts that were all, thankfully, working that day and then slowly made their way down, floor by floor, using the stairs. Grandpa waited and looked out of the landing windows while Frank went along the corridors shoving catalogues through people’s letter boxes. They broke for lunch and got fish and chips, eating in, both paying for their own and having second cups of tea to put off returning to their deliveries. There were still many more blocks to do.

  ‘If Posy could see this she wouldn’t always be bloody moaning,’ Frank constantly told himself. They met almost no one, but he could hear the sounds of life coming from behind the doors - hoovering and washing machines and Tweenies, all merging. Frank had the feeling that he was visiting the back doors of a cliff-top gull colony. On the other side would be the young in their nests squawking for more food, while their parents were off fishing and flying.

  Posy would still have been moaning if she had seen him. He should be doing a proper job. She should have married a GP or a solicitor or someone who worked for IBM. He wasn’t even any good at DIY.

  A couple of hours later they were done. He took Grandpa home, dropping him outside to avoid going into the shop again. Frank thought that just as there is a theory that each heart has a prescribed number of beats, so there was a limit to the number of times he could set foot in Fancy Ways without dropping dead. He thought that he must be somewhere near the maximum already. He parked the car just as Posy and the children were arriving home from school. Isobel was fretting in the pram.

  ‘Daddy!’

  ‘Daddy!’

  ‘Daddy!’

  ‘That was good timing,’ he said to Posy. He loved how pleased the children were to see him.

  ‘Would have been better if you’d been in time to collect them,’ Posy grumbled. ‘I had to break Izzie’s feed.’

  ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Sorry. I was just helping Grandpa.’

  ‘Why do those stupid leftover catalogues have to live at our house?’ Posy demanded, as she always did.

  ‘You know how cramped his flat is …’

  ‘Huh.’ She turned away from him. He saw that Grandpa’s trolley was still in the boot of the car. It would doubtless be needed. He would have to take it back. Dear God, hadn’t he already paid his debt to society?

  ‘Could you make the kids some toast? I just want to go and finish this feed.’ Well, he could manage that.

  An hour later Posy still hadn’t come down. He went up to see her. She was lying on their bed, Isobel blissed out with sucking; they were both asleep. Radio Four would keep them that way.

  When CBBC finished the child
ren realised that they were still hungry.

  ‘Let’s go and get some chips,’ Frank told them. ‘A nice surprise for Mummy.’ He could take back Grandpa’s trolley at the same time. With the kids waiting in the car and some chips cooling in their paper, he would have a good excuse not to go in.

  ‘Oh no! Not chips! You know I’m trying to lose this weight,’ Posy said when they returned. ‘Well I’ll just have a few.’ She piled a side plate with them. Lashings of Waistline salad cream meant that it wasn’t really that fattening. Brown bread and Flora Light for the butties made it positively healthy. ‘Do you mind doing the baths before you go out? I’m just really tired …’ No he didn’t mind, not much.

  Frank felt as though Posy really made him pay for his nights out with the band. Of course he enjoyed them, but conveniently she seemed to forget that the band was his work, and their main source of income. It was a long time since she’d brought in any money, and all she did was complain. Frank always played on Wednesdays. It was Posy’s favourite night of the week.

  When the children were in bed she remembered that she hadn’t shut up the rabbit for the night. Lettice received constant death threats from local foxes. Posy and Frank found pigeons’ wings, scatterings of feathers, chewed shoes, disembowelled and slashed balls on the so-called lawn, and had to dispose of them appropriately. Posy put on her bendy M & S sandals and went out into the garden. Lettice was calmy nibbling dandelions.

  ‘All organic,’ Posy told her. ‘Guaranteed 100 per cent pesticide free, the rabbit equivalent of eating the finest fresh rocket salad.’ She gave Lettice a brief cuddle, kissed her silky ears, and shut her securely in the hutch. The first stars were coming out. Posy sat down on the steps, hugging her knees under her soft cotton skirt, the way she had when she was a girl. Django the cat came and joined her. The flower bed beside them was over-run by evening primroses. She watched as they started opening. ‘One enchanted evening …’ she thought, and made her breathing slow and calm. She no longer heard the hum of the traffic on The Avenue. Her ears were tuned into the soft whispers and creaks that came from the Common, overlaid by Lettice’s rustlings. Through the dusk came the opening bars of a song ‘Da da du du du da da …’ She smiled. ‘When You Wish Upon a Star’. She would sit there all evening and drink in the beauty and tranquillity. Then she heard the sound of crying coming from upstairs. Ho hum, Isobel. She heaved herself up and went inside. By the time she reached Isobel’s room the noise had stopped. Just a bad dream. She turned off the children’s lights, lifting a Beano off James’s face, returning a monkey to Poppy’s pillow, putting the quilt back on Tom. Back downstairs everything was dark. The garden seemed uninviting and cold now. She might as well watch ER and Sex in the City, neither of which Frank would tolerate. She really ought to do her fitness video. She drank two glasses of water instead. There was a family-size bag of Rolos in the cupboard, perhaps she would just have one.