Frank Derrick's Holiday of a Lifetime Read online

  Sleep patterns 6.5/10 (erratic).

  Appetite 7/10.

  Energy 6/10.

  Mood – Audrey Hepburn with traces of Princess Diana.

  Happy whatever year it is now where you are.

  L

  Frank didn’t know if the traces of Princess Diana were positive or not. He sent a short reply to ask her and left the library and went over the road to the chemist and then to Fullwind Food & Wine, but neither shop sold flight compression socks. In the charity shop the angle-eyed woman, whom Frank had given the Sioux name of Eyes Facing South-West, suggested that he might try wearing a pair of pop socks instead. She went over to one of the shelves and brought back a packet.

  ‘They’re new,’ she said and she put the pop socks on the counter. ‘They haven’t been worn.’ On the front of the packet it said 5 Pairs 15 Denier Knee-Highs – colour nude above a picture of a woman’s crossed legs. ‘Would you like to take them?’

  Frank nodded and Eyes Facing South-West picked up a pile of brown paper bags.

  ‘They’re made for women,’ she said – she had such a loud voice, though Frank hadn’t noticed it before – ‘but I’m sure that doesn’t matter.’ She rubbed the paper bags together to free one of the bags. ‘My husband worked on the oil rigs and he used to wear my tights to keep himself warm.’

  Frank just wished she would stop talking or at least turn the volume down and put the women’s socks in the bag so that he could leave. He felt like he was buying a dirty magazine. After he’d paid and left the shop, just as the door was closing, he was convinced that he heard high-pitched laughter just like on the bus to the big Sainsbury’s.

  In the second week of January, a man arrived in a van and hammered a FOR SALE sign into the grass verge outside Frank’s flat. The sign was twice the height of most of the other FOR SALE signs outside the bungalows on Sea Lane even though it advertised a property that was at least half the price. Frank had presumed that the landlord would be selling his flat to be demolished to make way for more bungalows or developing the property himself and he was surprised to see the sign. It would also mean that he would now have to answer a lot of annoying questions every time he saw one of his neighbours.

  ‘Are you moving?’

  ‘Where are you moving to?’

  ‘What’s the asking price?’

  And so on.

  The first people to view the flat were a young couple. Frank’s neighbours came out and pretended to wash their cars, trim their lawns and pick up litter so that they could see who their new neighbours might be. Hilary, the head of the Neighbourhood Watch, would have created a spreadsheet and a wall chart.

  The estate agent showed the young couple around while Frank sat in the living room watching television. When they came out of his bedroom Frank heard the man say to the estate agent that it would be a nice flat once all the clutter was cleared and Frank knew that he wasn’t talking about the dismantled Christmas tree and the box of decorations in the hall; he wasn’t referring to the DVDs and charity-shop ornaments on every available surface in the living room; he didn’t mean the giraffes and elephants or any of the ornamental animals in the oversubscribed ark on the mantelpiece; he wasn’t even referring to the mess in the garden, the cat litter tray in the kitchen or the junk mail at the bottom of the stairs. The man was talking about him. Frank. He was the clutter.

  After that first viewing, whenever people came to look at the flat, Frank tried to make sure that he was out. He felt as though many of the people who came to look around were just being nosy and had no real interest in buying the flat. He thought that he recognized some of them from the village and they were only there to snoop around and to have a go on his unusual doorbell. So whenever a viewing was arranged he’d go to the shops or to the library to look at America online and read the latest email from Laura.

  Hi, Frank,

  Today Mom’s mood was Sandra Bullock. I think it’s because you’re coming over soon. And just one more week of X-ray zaps left for Lump.

  PS: Reunion Project is progressing well.

  L

  Frank was pleased that Beth was in a better mood. He was sure that was what ‘Sandra Bullock’ represented. He sent a reply to say how much he was looking forward to coming even though he was a little apprehensive about the flight. He joked about the last plane that he had been on, saying that the pilot wore goggles and the propeller had to be started by hand.

  When Frank’s passport arrived the photograph was terrible. Worse than he remembered on the screen when he’d chosen to accept it. The man in the photograph didn’t even look that much like him. His skin was a greyish-green colour and it hung from his cheeks like the jowls of a drooling dog. He looked as though he was in some form of discomfort. Frank had been trying so hard not to show any emotion in his photo-booth pose that he looked like he had piles – and was he really that old? He held the passport open to show Bill.

  ‘Do I look like that, Bill?’ he said.

  Bill seemed to be considering his answer, looking at the passport and then at Frank, the inanimate object that was always his face seeming to be asking the question:

  Why have you got a passport? Where the hell do you think you’re going?

  Frank picked up a silver-coloured serving tray and compared his reflection with the picture on the passport.

  ‘It’s like the passport of Dorian Gray,’ he said, and felt a little too pleased with himself for his pun and made a mental note to repeat the joke for Beth or Laura as he put the passport away in the desk drawer. On the calendar in the kitchen he wrote, ‘passport in desk drawer’.

  As January headed towards February and Frank’s holiday, he became more and more paranoid; he was convinced that something would prevent him from going. He took more care walking down the stairs in case he should fall and he avoided eating anything that he might choke on. When he heard the sound of the first aeroplane above his flat in the mornings it had taken on a new meaning. It wasn’t simply a way of telling the time any more, it was also a sign that there were no Icelandic volcanic eruptions or baggage handler strikes today and his holiday was still on. Whenever the phone rang, he was afraid to answer it in case it was Beth with more bad news or the landlord asking for his money back because nobody had viewed the flat for almost a week. But it would just be more silent phonebots, telesales reps and market researchers wanting just a few minutes of his time.

  There was one last email from Laura, reminding Frank not to mention the Reunion Project to Beth. She also asked if he could pack any old photos of the family and requested that he ‘bring memories’. She ended the email by telling Frank that she was excited about seeing him and that he was her ‘secret weapon’.

  The night before he left for America Frank was unable to sleep. He still didn’t really believe that he was going. If he did manage to fall asleep, he half expected to wake up to find that he’d been having a dream more complex than Judy Garland’s in the Wizard of Oz. And he’d still be stuck in boring old monochrome Fullwind-on-Sea, looking up at the bedroom ceiling that needed painting, in his bed surrounded by Beth and Laura, Jimmy, the funny-eyed woman from the charity shop and his landlord, all looking at him with the identical freeze-framed features of his cat.

  He closed his eyes and tried to picture Beth and Laura at the airport in Los Angeles, their faces wet with tears of joy and happiness. They were holding a sign with his name on. He thought about hamburgers and about popcorn, drive-in movies and cycling along the beach beside the blue sea with the equally blue sky above. He could almost feel the sun on his face just thinking about it, even though his flat was freezing and the bedroom window was etched with frost. He opened his eyes and looked over at the clock on the bedside table; it was the one and only time that he’d ever set the alarm and he’d tested it about ten times, terrified that it wouldn’t go off. He thought about checking it once more to be sure. He turned over in bed and closed his eyes again, and even though it wasn’t due for hours yet, he listened out for the
first aeroplane of the day and thought that tomorrow it could be him up there.

  7

  480,000 flights on 84 airlines, serving 184 destinations, take off from and land at Heathrow Airport every year. Seventy million passengers pass through the airport, an average of 191,200 a day, all watched from hundreds of different angles by over ten thousand CCTV cameras, relayed to a vast wall of monitors in a security-camera control room, where, finally, there was something worth watching.

  An eighty-two-year-old man wearing a pair of Desert Storm camouflage cargo pants, with long white hair that ended halfway down the back of what was – even at an airport where all day flights arrived bringing passengers back from holidays in Hawaii and Acapulco – an incredibly loud shirt, was walking towards the check-in desks.

  As he walked through the airport, sidestepping and tripping over wheelie suitcases, a text message would be circulating around Heathrow’s other security staff telling them to come quickly to the control room and have a look. Someone would suggest ordering a pizza or some popcorn. It would have been a good time to steal a plane or smuggle a few hundred cigarettes through customs.

  When Frank had almost reached the safety of his check-in desk, a small child riding a tiger-skin suitcase with a face and ears for handlebars ran over his foot, and other passengers in the queue stifled their laughter in various different dialects. An Albanian woman laughed out loud. Frank would probably now be as popular a comedian in Albania as Norman Wisdom.

  The woman behind the desk checked Frank and his heavy suitcase in. She strapped a paper label around the handle and sent it on its journey through the rubber curtains. Frank was seriously considering not collecting it when he arrived in LA and leaving it to circle round and round on the baggage carousel indefinitely.

  He walked towards security. Without the cumbersome baggage he could now afford a swagger more suited to his shirt, swinging his overnight bag by his side like John Travolta with his paint pot during the opening credits of Saturday Night Fever.

  In the security area Frank took off his shoes and removed his belt. The 15 denier nude women’s knee-highs that he’d been so desperate for Eyes Facing South-West to put in a brown paper bag could now be seen by the passengers and staff at the world’s third-busiest airport. Ten thousand CCTV cameras filmed him from hundreds of different angles as he edged towards the hand luggage X-ray machine in his ladies’ tights, trying not to slip on the polished airport floor.

  He put his shoes and his belt into a grey plastic tray with his overnight bag and placed the tray at the entrance to the X-ray machine; it reminded him of when Laura had described Beth’s radiation therapy as ‘like being passed through an airport bag scanner five times a week’. He tried to get the image out of his mind in case it made him laugh or burst into tears in this high-security no man’s land between ground and airside where laughter or tears might be enough to get him barred from ever getting on a plane.

  The grey tray disappeared inside the X-ray machine and while he waited to be ushered through the metal detector arch to retrieve his hand luggage he checked all six of his trouser pockets for coins. He wondered whether the small gold studs on the belt loops of the trousers would set the alarm off. A member of the security staff waved him through the metal detector arch and he was relieved that it didn’t make a sound. His trousers were a couple of sizes too big and he was worried about what might happen if he let go of the waistband to be searched.

  On the other side of the arch the conveyor belt conveyed his belt, shoes and bag through the X-ray machine. For a moment it stopped and the security staff studied the monitor. Then it started moving again, a uniformed woman following the plastic tray along the conveyor belt. She picked the tray up and asked Frank to come with her to a table, where she unzipped Frank’s bag.

  ‘Is this your bag, sir?’ she said, putting on a pair of white latex gloves.

  ‘Yes,’ Frank said.

  ‘Could you tell me what’s in the bag, sir?’

  ‘Um,’ Frank said, ‘toiletries, um . . . a comb . . . oh yes, a sandwich. I wasn’t sure what the food would be like. On the plane, I mean. Not in America. Er –’ he scratched his head – ‘this is a bit like The Generation Game.’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir?’

  Frank wanted to do his Bruce Forsyth impression to illustrate: ‘Good game, good game. Cuddly toy.’ But he knew airport security was a serious business. Everyone knew that airport staff didn’t appreciate jokes about bombs and even though there was no red-circled picture of Bruce Forsyth on the forbidden-items chart behind the woman (there was a firework, a gas canister, a Stanley knife, lighter fuel, matches and a bottle of acid but no Brucie), it was possible that any joking, however light, was best avoided.

  ‘I’m sorry. Nothing,’ he said.

  ‘Where are you travelling to, sir?’ the woman said. She took his folded jacket out of the bag and put it on the table.

  ‘America.’

  The security woman took a small alarm clock out of Frank’s bag.

  ‘A clock,’ Frank said, suddenly remembering that he’d packed it.

  ‘Business or pleasure?’ the woman said. ‘Your trip today?’

  ‘Holiday,’ he said. ‘I’m going to visit my daughter and my granddaughter.’

  The woman took another clock out from the bag.

  ‘Oh yes,’ Frank said. ‘Clocks.’

  ‘Can you tell me why you have so many clocks, sir?’ the woman said as she removed a third clock from Frank’s bag. It was the clock from his bedside table. The lid of the battery compartment on the back of the clock had snapped off and the batteries had fallen out into Frank’s bag. The woman took the batteries out of the bag and put them next to the three clocks.

  Frank explained about a leaflet that his daughter had sent him once and how the leaflet had suggested ways to prevent dementia.

  ‘Being aware of the time is important,’ Frank said.

  The security woman took a small A5 children’s charity calendar out of the bag.

  ‘And the date,’ Frank said.

  He explained to the woman how his daughter was always asking him whether he was looking after himself and if he was eating properly. He didn’t tell her that they had recently reversed those roles and it was now he who was constantly concerned about his daughter’s health. He said that he’d packed the clocks and the calendar so that Beth would see that he was taking his health as seriously as she did.

  ‘It’s a sort of joke,’ he said.

  ‘A sort of joke?’ the woman said.

  ‘She sends me emails with titles like “Are you eating well?”’ Frank said. ‘Or “Ten great memory tips”. Sometimes I put them straight in the trash, thinking they’re spam.’

  ‘Spam?’ the woman said. Frank had the distinct feeling that she was one of the few people left in the world without a computer and she might have thought that Frank was talking about processed cold meat. He looked for a picture of Spam on the prohibited items board behind the woman.

  ‘Can you tell me why today’s date is circled, sir?’ she said, looking at the open calendar.

  It seemed such a ludicrous question to Frank, with such an obvious answer, that he had to try really quite hard not to say something hugely sarcastic. He wondered if the airport security was always this thorough. It seemed a bit over the top right now but their diligence actually made him feel more comfortable about stepping onto an enormous aeroplane with four hundred complete strangers.

  As he explained that the date was circled because it was the day he was flying to America to see his daughter, the security woman took a fourth clock out of Frank’s bag. Even Frank now accepted that carrying four clocks in your hand luggage was a bit unusual.

  ‘That one is set to Los Angeles time,’ he said.

  The woman looked at Frank and decided that he wasn’t a terrorist but just a bit of an idiot. She wished him a nice trip and waved him on with a gloved hand and a look of bewilderment.

  Frank put everything back in h
is bag, letting go of the waistband of his trousers so that they slipped down his hips revealing his underpants like he was a rapper. He dropped the belt into the bag and put his shoes back on. The laces of the right shoe were still tied in a knot and he couldn’t get his heel in and he had to hold the shoe on by clenching his toes and dragging his foot along the ground. With his passport between his teeth, his bag unzipped, his jacket slung over one arm and the other hand holding his trousers up by the waistband, he walked into the departure lounge. The older members of staff in the airport’s security-camera control room sighed as they were reminded of 1970s sex comedies and the hero escaping through the window of his lover’s house after her husband had come home early from work unexpectedly. The same woman who’d laughed at Frank earlier walked past smiling at Frank: Albania’s Robin Askwith.

  He sat down in the departure lounge and rethreaded his belt. He took off his right shoe and untied the knot in his shoelace. He rolled the pop socks down almost to his ankles and scratched his legs. He put his jacket on, careful not to rush things and crick his neck. And then he relaxed as best he could. He had quite a while to wait before his flight but he was so paranoid that he would be late and miss it that he’d turned up far too early. He squinted at the departures board but the words were too small. He would have to walk over and take a closer look.

  There were more shops in the departure lounge than Frank had ever seen before in one place, and certainly in an airport. The last time he’d flown anywhere was to Portugal in the 1980s. He couldn’t remember which airport he’d flown from but he was fairly sure there weren’t this many shops and restaurants: just a duty free shop selling booze and fags and somewhere to buy a drink and a sandwich. At Heathrow now there were chemists and jewellers, bookshops and toyshops. There was a mini Harrods and a tiny Tiffany’s, a caviar house, a Sunglasses Hut, a perfume gallery and a World of Whiskies. People were sitting on stools at a circular bar eating sushi and oysters and washing Beluga roe down with pink champagne. There was even a posh luggage shop for anyone who hadn’t had time to pack properly and had turned up at the airport with everything in carrier bags.